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Is it me or does this seem like naked corruption at its worst? These tech CEOs hang out at the White House and donate to superfluous causes and suddenly the exe
by rubyfan 9mo ago
Is it me or does this seem like naked corruption at its worst? These tech CEOs hang out at the White House and donate to superfluous causes and suddenly the executive is protecting their interests. This does nothing to protect working US citizens from AI alien (agents) coming to take their jobs and displace their incomes.
- whynotmaybe 9mo agoThat's lobbying simplified, no need to pay lobbyist.
- rchaud 9mo agoThis is a tribute system, way past lobbying. Lobbying is cheap, Senators can be bought off for 5-figure sums. CEOs pay lobbyists so they don't have to meet with them personally. What's happening now involves CEOs appearing at political events and lobbying the president personally, to the tune of millions of dollars in declared "donations" for "ballroom construction", in exchange for security guarantees for their business empires.
- jfengel 9mo agoLobbying is tightly regulated, and the FEC really does keep a close eye. This is just flat out bribery, using the thinnest of legal fig leaves. Which would not possibly pass muster if he hadn't also packed the court with supporters.
- davidw 9mo ago> does keep a close eye "kept", I think.
- outside1234 9mo agoYou aren't missing anything. This is oligarchic capture of the government.
- parineum 9mo ago[flagged]
- fhd2 9mo agoI think people commonly use the word to refer to business oligarchs, which are not technically government: "A business oligarch is generally a business magnate who controls sufficient resources to influence national politics." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_oligarch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_oligarch
- reactordev 9mo ago[flagged]
- AndrewKemendo 9mo ago> protect working US citizens from AI alien (agents) coming to take their jobs and displace their incomes So where is this coalition that’s organized to actually make this real? Software engineers are allergic to unionization (despite the recent id win) and 100% of capital owners (this is NOT business owner and operators I’m talking about LPs and Fund Managers) are in support of labor automation as a priority, the same people also run every government and overwhelmingly select the politicians available to vote for, so who will fund and lead your advocacy?
- soulofmischief 9mo agoGame developers are subject to much more abuse than the average software engineering job, for less pay. It's a different environment. I'm open to the idea of guilds, but personally I do not want others negotiating for me with the type of work I do, I'd prefer it to be a contract between me, my employer and nothing else. Unions aren't always a net benefit for every industry. Of course, with AI going the way it is, collective bargaining might become more attractive in our field. But institutions can be slow to catch up and not everyone always agrees with the outcome. Personally, if I worked in Hollywood, I'd be upset about the kind of anti-AI scaremongering and regulation taking place in the WGA and SAG-AFTRA.
- roenxi 9mo ago[flagged]
- rubyfan 9mo agoI’m not an expert but my understanding is a slow migration from agriculture oriented jobs to industrial to information jobs. Yes we all have more cheap junk but also economic disparity and a hollowing out of the middle class. That will get worse faster than new types of jobs can be created. Will the new jobs even replace the same levels of income? It seems impossible.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- TrainedMonkey 9mo ago> we need a hyper-productive world where someone working a few hours a year generates enough wealth to secure a comfortable lifestyle up there with the best of them. This is naive, productivity increases had decoupled from compensation a long time ago. See https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ for example. AI certainly can create wealth, and in fact already did (hey NVDA), but somehow that did not trickle down. I think more likely than not, AI will further stratify our society.
- IncreasePosts 9mo agoBut humans aren't more productive for the most part. What had made people more productive is, for the most part, mechanization, computerization, and other tech tree improvements. Even though everyone didn't get rich from the industrial revolution, ultimately people led easier lives, more stuff, and less work.
- N_Lens 9mo agoI read that a peasant in the middle ages typically worked less and had much more leisure than a worker in the 21st century.
- oceanplexian 9mo ago> This does nothing to protect working US citizens from AI alien (agents) coming to take their jobs and displace their incomes. Where did you get the idea that banning new technology that could eliminate jobs is even remotely an American value? Going back to the Industrial Revolution the United States has been 100% gas pedal all the time on innovation and disruption, which has in turn created millions of jobs that didn't exist before and led to the US running the world's largest economy.
- slg 9mo agoThe patent system. I know someone will respond detailing why the patent system is pro-business, but it is objectively government regulation that puts restrictions on new technology, so it's proof that regulation of that sort is at least an American tradition if not fully an "American value".
- johnebgd 9mo agoPatents and trademarks are the only ways to create legal monopolies. They are/were intended to reward innovation but despite good intentions are abused.
- lucas_membrane 9mo agoNot exactly. For example, Major League Baseball has been granted an anti-trust exemption by the US Supreme Court, because they said it was not a business. In some cases in which firms have been found guilty of violating the anti-trust laws, they were fined amounts minuscule in relation to the profits they gained by operating the monopoly. Various governments in the US outsource public services to private monopolies, and the results have sometimes amounted to a serious restraint of trade. The chicanery goes back a long way. For the first decade or so after the passage of the Sherman Act, it was not used against the corporate monopolies that it was written to limit; it was invoked only against labor unions trying to find a way to get a better deal out of the firms operating company stores and company towns etc, etc. Then Teddy Roosevelt, the so-called trust-buster, invoked it under the assumption that he could tell the difference between good and bad monopolies and that he had the power to leave the good monopolies alone. 120 years later, we are in the same sorry situation.
- Alex2037 9mo ago[flagged]
- SilverElfin 9mo agoIt is definitely naked corruption. Lobbying was always around, but I would say that with this administration things are a lot more transactional and a lot more in the open. Companies like Palantir and Anduril and others are being gifted contracts all over the place - that’s money we taxpayers are losing.
- A_D_E_P_T 9mo ago> Companies like . . . Anduril are being gifted contracts all over the place - that’s money we taxpayers are losing. Can you point to a concrete example of this?
- mikeyouse 9mo agoIt's hard to say what they're actually qualified to do but they went from receiving 1 or 2 contracts per year in the early 2020s for a few 10s of millions and I think one larger $200M one to this since Trump was reelected; $200M - https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/1527a7adaff14a5280fc77ceba72adb1/view https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/1527a7adaff14a5280fc7... $140M - https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/c0203e75ec2949e78966fdbfebc1b708/view https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/c0203e75ec2949e78966f... $31M - https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/8b0b944955064864942fc468afd83143/view https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/8b0b944955064864942fc... $1M - https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/86d997fbd8a74d0cb298c5c888f9542f/view https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/86d997fbd8a74d0cb298c... $642M over 10 years - https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/c9878b113f5143cba7edbfa4dc8cca6d/view https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/c9878b113f5143cba7edb... $3.1M - https://sam.gov/opp/f15d4b63ebc846cd9f4870cfa0772fff/view https://sam.gov/opp/f15d4b63ebc846cd9f4870cfa0772fff/view $160M - https://www.anduril.com/news/anduril-awarded-contract-to-redefine-the-future-of-mixed-reality https://www.anduril.com/news/anduril-awarded-contract-to-red... $86M - https://www.anduril.com/news/special-operations-command-selects-anduril-as-mission-autonomy-systems-integration-partner https://www.anduril.com/news/special-operations-command-sele... $100M - https://www.anduril.com/news/anduril-awarded-usd99-6m-for-u-s-army-next-generation-command-and-control-prototype https://www.anduril.com/news/anduril-awarded-usd99-6m-for-u-...
- viccis 9mo agoJust another step towards Russian style naked oligarchy.
- N_Lens 9mo agoPar for the course with this administration.
- IAmGraydon 9mo agoIs it you? I mean, the guy started his term by launching a scam coin along with his wife. He hates the United States and sees it as just something to exploit for financial gain and power. That's it. That's literally all there is to all of his actions.
- ETH_start 9mo ago[flagged]
- rubyfan 9mo ago> AI agents being able to do jobs means more income for U.S.-based companies, which translates to higher wages for U.S.-based workers. Um, no. Higher productivity translates to greater return on equity for those that hold it, not necessarily workers.
- hvb2 9mo ago> Higher productivity is also why jobs pay so much more in the U.S. than the E.U. You mean the top tier jobs or the bottom 90%? They pay so much more because the US is very ok with big income inequality. Those unions represent a much bigger share of the population, so shouldn't they have more away in a democratic system (where demos is people)
- ETH_start 9mo agoMedian income and the purchasing power of disposable income are substantially higher in the U.S. The public sector unions do represent a much larger share of the population than the CEOs but in absolute terms public sector workers constitute a very small share of the population, while receiving a large share of public spending. Given they are being rewarded with huge amounts of tax dollars from the party they help keep/put in power, the concern that there's a systemic pay-to-play dynamic at work is very justified.
- hvb2 9mo ago> but in absolute terms public sector workers constitute a very small share of the population, while receiving a large share of public spending Uh... Just no? Public spending? That's défense, health care, entitlements etcetera etcetera I'll actually back it up with some numbers too: > That’s 1% of gross domestic product, and almost 5% of total federal spending. The government payroll for other developed countries is typically 5% of GDP, Kettl said. From: https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/03/06/federal-workers-salaries-represent-less-than-5-of-federal-spending-and-1-of-gdp https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/03/06/federal-workers... And this > Median income and the purchasing power of disposable income are substantially higher in the U.S. Not sure what you're basing that on but there's this too > The statistic is used to show how unequal things have become in the U.S.: Some 40% of Americans would struggle to come up with even $400 to pay for an unexpected bill From: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2021/what-a-400-dollar-emergency-expense-tells-us-about-the-economy https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2021/what-a-400-dolla... So unless they're all spending money irrationally, they have no money to save meaning little or no disposable income
- bparsons 9mo agoFor this brief moment in time, crime is legal.
- SXX 9mo agoWhats wrong if US population has voted for this? There was no surprises this time - everyone can expect what is going to happen.
- wood_spirit 9mo agoDidn’t the majority of people vote to “drain the swamp” and “bring down the cost of living”?
- krapp 9mo agoPeople had nearly a decade of experience with Donald Trump as a known political entity and decades of receipts and lawsuits prior to 2016 to speak to his amoral and corrupt nature. If they didn't know exactly what they were buying into they were idiots. He isn't exactly a master manipulator. Also, The first time Trump was elected, the majority of voters went for Hillary Clinton. Second time, it was still 49% versus 48% for Kamala Harris. The majority of Americans have never voted for Donald Trump nor ever supported him.
- soulofmischief 9mo agoI actually don't want to suffer just because my neighbor is racist.
- SXX 9mo agoI'm not saying I support either. I am just looking at US politics from outside. But this is how your democracy system works.
- soulofmischief 9mo agoYou asked, "Whats wrong if US population has voted for this?" in response to someone complaining that the system is not working, and so I explained it: the rest of us are not represented. I'm unsure what point you're getting at.
- carabiner 9mo agoThis is the most pro-tech admin in decades, and that terrifies me.
- mahirsaid 9mo agodid you not see who was standing next to him. All of the top tech bros of silicon valley in their search for the fountain of youth.
- conartist6 9mo agoI'm in agreement because what is there to say about AI policy? This govt clearly isn't going to regulate against harms like perpetuating systems of racism. This government adores to perpetuate systems of racism. So fuck it. Let's race to the bottom like the companies want to so badly.
- seanhunter 9mo agoYou don’t seem to appreciate: they paid for the ballroom. They have a right to set policy. That’s how an oligarchy works
- testing22321 9mo agoThat’s how campaign contributions have worked for a long time. Now it’s just a touch more blatant. The rest of the world has always called it corruption.
- cyanydeez 9mo ago[flagged]