overrun11

5 ms·

1.
by overrun11 4mo ago
Most Americans directly own stocks and a college graduate is even more likely to. This isn't the 1860's so a lot of these critiques of capitalism are anachronistic. The reality is "shareholders" are fairly ordinary peopl
2.
by overrun11 4mo ago
> AI represents the ultimate dream of the capitalist: the elimination of the need of human labor entirely Decreasing human toil for the same level of production should be the dream of _everyone_. If it's only capitalists in favor th
3.
by overrun11 4mo ago
They aren't profitable on a GAAP basis and no one claims this. This obsession over profits is misguided. These are hyper growth companies growing at a scale never seen before. It is both deliberate and uncontroversial to invest in grow
4.
by overrun11 4mo ago
Yes that is exactly what is happening. OpenAI and Anthropic are the fastest growing companies by revenue ever and their gross profit margins are healthy.
5.
by overrun11 4mo ago
Arguably nothing even has to change with training for this to be sustainable. Dario has claimed that Anthropic is profitable on a per training run basis. They aren't profitable because they choose to keep investing in increasingly larg
6.
by overrun11 5mo ago
> hypothetically, if a construction company sold houses for more than it cost to build them, that company could be considered profitable. Construction companies capitalize and depreciate over many years so they can answer "yes"
7.
by overrun11 5mo ago
Google can't do any of these things
8.
by overrun11 6mo ago
Gross margins and cost of revenue are well defined accounting terms that apply to any type of business. > Does it include: > Inference used for training? Modern training pipelines aren't just gradient descent, there's a ton
9.
by overrun11 6mo ago
The article is about compute cost though. By "lose money on inference" I mean the assertion that inference has negative gross margins which a lot of people truly believe. This is important because it's common to reason from t
10.
by overrun11 6mo ago
> which would imply that the money their making off it isn't enough I don't think this logically follows. An unlimited buffet doesn't let you resell all of the food out the backdoor. At some level of usage any fixed price
11.
by overrun11 6mo ago
A huge number of people are convinced that OpenAI and Anthropic are selling inference tokens at a loss despite the fact that there's no evidence this is true and a lot of evidence that it isn't. It's just become a meme uncrit
12.
by overrun11 7mo ago
> If they are, they should be compensated for the constant risk they bear. I suspect that they are. US tech workers likely make dramatically more than the country you are from with better worker protections.
13.
by overrun11 7mo ago
To the extent that this is even true it appears to be caused by three things: stock option compensation accounting, R&D deductions and bonus depreciation. Stock option compensation rules have been a boon because Meta stock has risen 6x
14.
by overrun11 7mo ago
Most small businesses are pass through entities in the United States and pay no corporate taxes at all so it's certainly not the case that "The game is heavily rigged to favor large companies."
15.
by overrun11 7mo ago
21% has been the highest possible corporate tax rate since 2017. It's not really fair to compare what Meta pays now to what you paid under an entirely different tax regime. You would also pay less in taxes running your business today t
16.
by overrun11 9mo ago
> It only applies to estates over $14MM Yes this entire conversation is about the ultra wealthy not paying their "fair share". A $14MM exemption is practically irrelevant here. > most large estates get reorganized into trust
17.
by overrun11 9mo ago
No that's just a really misleading graph. Most of the gap disappears once you include variable pay like benefits, overtime, bonuses, stock comp etc. See this explanation and corrected graph: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org&#x2
18.
by overrun11 9mo ago
First, taxes still get paid when the individual dies as estate tax. Second, increased shareholder value typically means more corporate profit which is also taxed. Third, dividends are taxed. So your claim that the shareholder value never ma
19.
by overrun11 9mo ago
It's implicit. Amazon has billions of dollars because customers freely handed over the money. We know they found the service valuable because they wouldn't have done so otherwise. The poster is suggesting there is some _true_ valu
20.
by overrun11 10mo ago
Twitter pays more for US impressions so slop accounts often target a US audience and the payments are relatively more attractive to people in less developed countries. Aside from the fact that Americans are only 4% of the world population.
21.
by overrun11 10mo ago
No slop accounts being run from third world countries is not a global scandal
22.
by overrun11 10mo ago
That people from third world countries are making slop political accounts to make money? Hardly a news story at all
23.
by overrun11 11mo ago
If it's impossible to measure art's value then there can't be any cutoff point at which we stop funding ever more art. Anyone who attempts to put a number on its value is treated as an overly rational boor but we obviously ca
24.
by overrun11 11mo ago
You have to make an argument on _why_ market forces don't compensate artists fairly. The standard argument is that art is a public good with a free rider problem– a mural might produce value to everyone who looks at it but there is no
25.
by overrun11 11mo ago
Art is highly valued it's just a winner takes most market just like sports. A tiny minority make all the money and the rest get nothing.
26.
by overrun11 11mo ago
The person you're responding to's argument is incoherent and not worth engaging in. The crux of it is that long term shareholders aren't benefited by buybacks because share price doesn't matter to them because they will
27.
by overrun11 11mo ago
Buybacks in theory do not cause share price to rise like your example though. Investors already price in that cash will be either reinvested at a high rate or returned to shareholders. You are reducing share count of a company that now has
28.
by overrun11 11mo ago
Buybacks are still better if you want to hold forever and don't care about share price. With a dividend distribution you must pay taxes and reinvest the diminished proceeds. You end up with a smaller share of the company than in the bu
29.
by overrun11 11mo ago
Where do you think the capital being returned is going? If it's not being consumed but instead is mostly getting reinvested somewhere else than what is the problem? Capital markets are working as intended to move capital out of a firm
30.
by overrun11 11mo ago
This is just nonsense. Anyone can sell the stock if they wish, there is no privilege for the high-net worth. Additionally, shareholders benefit from reduced share count because it increases their claim on future profits thereby increasing c

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