Nothing will change until the rich take a big haircut.

You’d think that, but a depressingly large percent of middle managers identify more with the bosses than with the people doing real work. They believe that if they toe the line and work hard at enabling the sociopaths, they might eventually get the promised invisible handjob.

Interestingly, I’ve known more senior managers than middle managers who are radical. I’m one, and I’ve known many others. I think that those who really understand how the system works end up advancing, but they’re also the ones with no illusions about how the sausage is made.

Capitalism has made me moderately rich (and I started from near-destitution), but that doesn’t mean I am unaware of its many toxic side effects. You have to live within the system that exists. People who don’t know how to do anything make shitty revolutionaries and incompetent reformers.

Malcolm X was a fringe figure: the NOI got lots of press but didn’t really do all that much besides indulging in infighting and encouraging local Black businesses. Their approach to politics was separatism. H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, the Panthers, and many others were more closely involved in direct action.

And let’s not forget all the freedoms that were granted because we asked nicely while tugging our forelocks.

Those are easy to remember because there are none.

The regime we have is made up of real capitalists, who behave as capitalists often have throughout history. The kind of capitalism that’s fake is the Chicago-school free maket kind, which has never existed in real life, because it embodies a contradiction in terms. The market is either “free” as in freedom from regulation, or it’s “free” in terms of no oligopolistic barriers to entry. It can’t be both simultaneously. Tuly free markets have a lifetime comparable to free hydrogen atoms: they quickly settle to an equilibrium state that’s less free (by either definition).

“The hand that lifts you up holds you down.” Yeah, that’s a risk.

But if it’s unconditional, it can be beneficial for many people, especially those in music and the arts, caregivers, and others who contribute to the economy now without receiving much in the way of compensation.

Unions will not increase the average wage.

Unions (and redistributive policies) can increase median, not just mean wages. That’s the figure that matters to the “average” (50th-percentile) worker. The trillions of dollars hoarded by billionaires do nobody any good but the billionaires themselves.

Unions lobbying the current US government isn’t going to happen. Nothing short of a general strike will make them listen.

I suggest they unionize, demand seats on the board for their unions, and crush excessive C-level compensation. Moving on just moves the exploitation to a new kind of job.

It’s generally used to refer to programmers by people who have no idea of what programming entails.

The thing that’s not average about them is their social position and consequent connections. I’ve met a lot of them, from firms whose name you’d know, and they’re the types who would have been B students at competitive universities. Not stupid by any means, but not brilliant. But their network of acquaintances is aways extensive and elite.

It’s always been that way. Otherwise General Motors wouldn’t exist. Neither would Microsoft.

Crypto is one of the only businesses where use of the Enron name could conceivably improve their reputation.

It’s also like that for nearly every technology that has failed. For every Amazon that ran in the red until it grabbed enough market share to make a profit, there are 1000 firms that went tits-up, never having turned a profit. (Actual constant may vary from 1000, but it’s pretty damn big regardless).

They’ll upgrade the Aibo and stick Altman’s face on it. People in offices can enjoy kicking it.

Capitalism is extremely good at breeding superficial, go-to-market innovation. It’s less good at funding the pure research that leads to major discoveries. But once it gets closer to engineering than to science, it’s highly effective. Even Marx commented on that.

Open Your Wallet AI

You may see killer drones near you home in 20 years or so.

Operated by your friendly local police force.

Physical simulations factor in a dozen or so weather conditions to predict outcomes.

Many more parameters than that.

Machine learning can track thousands of conditions

Scientists already know which ones are relevant. You’re not going find any big surprises there with an AI. Shotgun-style factor analysis has already been done to death. The price of baked beans doesn’t impact the wind direction in the Persian Gulf. It’s OK to not consider it.

drawing connections not realized in physical models

Again, it’s possible but unlikely. And you’d need an AI that could be queried to tell you what factors it considered, and most of them don’t work that way right now.

Statistical models don’t become more accurate because you throw irrelevant parameters at them. But that’s how ML systems work.