Imo they're right, if you're faced with the option of running away from some crazy person or interacting with the police in the USA, the safer option is to run.
A police interaction can escalate to ruinous heights within seconds due to no fault of your own. Remember that cop that got scared by an acorn falling and started shooting at random? I don't care how many "good cops" there are, I'm not rolling the dice on encountering an acorn cop.
It's an interesting question of comparison actually. Valve run the world's biggest videogame ecommerce platform, for PCs only (including handheld PCs like steam deck). Nintendo run a comparably large videogame ecommerce platform, but only for their two hardware platforms: switch and switch 2. Just roughly based on hardware sales, seems to be roundabout the same audience size. Nintendo maybe comes ahead because they're well established in the hardware space (Valve is trying to close the distance), and of course far, far away in terms of 1st party game development - Valve has, what, 8 games? All phenomenal, but nothing compared to Nintendo's library.
Does Valve even make games anymore? The only thing of note they've done since like 2020 is put a fresh coat of paint on CounterStrike. Which still counts of course but it feels like they are REALLY coasting on the reputation of games that came out 20+ years ago.
Valve's working on Deadlock, an FPS / MOBA. It's very polished, but in early access right now. Based on what I've seen when I tried playing it, and just what I hear in the gaming sphere, it'll probably be a decade-defining multiplayer game once it's done, like TF2 or CSGO both are.
They definitely coast, but when they do release something, it's always phenomenal. I do wish they'd make more games, though.
I'm starting to think in these conversations we're all often talking about two different things. You're talking about running an LLM service through its provided tooling (codex, Claude, cursor), others seem to be talking token costs because they're integrating LLMs into software or are using harness systems like opencode, pi, or openclaw and balancing tasks across models.
Fair enough, I read it quickly and assumed the person they replied to was talking about Claude Code
But I run a AI SaaS and we do offer Opus 4.6, too. Our use case is not nearly as token intensive as something like coding so we are still able to offer it with a good profit margin.
Also you can run OpenClaw with your CC subscription. It's what I do.
I wrap Opus 4.5 in a consumer product with 0 economic utility and people pay for it, I'm sure plenty of end users are willing to pay for it in their software.
Edit: I'm not using the term of art, I mean it literally cannot make them money.
Lots of places are socialist or collectivist and have a different set of problems, so the argument that EU problems can be solely attributed to that don't make sense.
I'm also not sure "collectivist" is the correct label. We can't describe Japan (and the PRC, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, a couple other SEasian nations) and the EU as both collectivist, considering Japan is the far more extreme version of it (I would say, only Japan is collectivist, not the EU). One or the other needs a different word.
At least your traffic engineers set standards. In Taiwan often the standards come straight from the legislative yuan, aka just vibes laws from people who are driven around in private cars their whole lives.
Don’t worry, we’re getting there. They just started dismantling what they refer to as the “administrative state”, but which largely deferred substantial questions requiring skill and non-partisan judgement to their respective experts. It was never perfect, nor free from partisan and/or economic concerns, but the replacement appears to be self-interested narcissists and sycophants and their personal fiefdoms, with precious little space for competence, logic, or integrity.
It was never between the left and the right or any other false dichotomies, but always between the Epstein-class and the actual human beings.
The question now is that do the normal people realize and act on the fact that the elevator to Epstein class was never working. Or even better, they don't want to become the zillionaire class husk of a human.
The current fight is within the Eppstein class (both right and left elites), between the old money (Wall Street) and new money (techno-fascists/feudalists of Silicon Valley).
The rabble is just taken for the ride, fooled by left vs right show and exploited along the way.
Heh, it would have been more precise to say 'the leaderships of both Republican and Democratic parties'.
Left & right is too imprecise, there is left/right on economic issues (worker rights, curtailing power of monopolies), and there is left/right on cultural issues (abortion, gay rights, ...).
The big coup of the rich elites has been distracting and redirecting the Democrats from economic issues to cultural ones (along the way losing the culturally conservative worker class).
I consider "this" right to be moral in a different way.
Now the right all around the world is hijacked by narcissistic greed that punishes any voicing of conservative moral.
In the US some republicans are daring to challenge the extreme narcissistic greed and a lot more are thinking about this privately.
I also mentioned the other dichotomies and perhaps the "right" could be hopelessness and the the "left" false hope.
As in "no point trying to curb the emissions or addressing any social causes, because the zillionaires choke hold of the planet" vs. the "eternal green growth and economy will save us and make us rich".
The Trump humangod class is not the right IMO.
I believe that power (via money or absolute power) corrupts and thus me must find a way to prevent individuals from becoming human-gods.
The left (without the "") pretends to know this but ends up being corrupted anyway and the right (the one that has some moral and spine left) seems to believe that they will not be corrupted by power.
You're still making a leftist argument here, even if you end up dismissing the left as "corrupt" without pointing to anything specific.
Maybe you have some personal difficulty identifying with the left? You're not wrong in your characterizations, you just seem to be using different labels to me.
Maybe this is a US thing? Because there barely is a left wing in US politics. Democrats are right wing, for one.
I'm from Finland and more aligned to the left I guess.
I'm trying to distance myself from though as I'm currently seeing everything as merely corrupt (by power) elite vs. normal people.
But yes, perhaps the thing I'm looking after is something like the real equality side, which to me doesn't seem to exist as even the left here in Finland seems to disregard the laws of physics and nature in terms of the impossible eternal growth.
Vas. definitely has degrowth as a part of their platform, and is often speaking against eternal growth and trying to get climate laws passed. They're only one party, and the last govt's more left-leaning SD was the best partner they could have had here, but Kesk. dragged down their efforts. Of course now, with Antti Lindtman, we have a right-wing SD, I agree that they aren't very clear on policy, and are fine with sitting around waiting to win the election on the current govt's failures.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't recognize your picture of the left within Finland. Which to be clear is something like Vas. + some parts of SD (Mäkynen, Kiuru e.g.).
Okay, I'm seeing a lot of old industrial/growth speech in the established left too, and the economic talk doesn't differ that drastically from the greens eternal growth vision.
I guess I'm thinking anything that doesn't hilight the tax free global narcissist pedi meta-zillionaire class tax evasion scheme to be one (or THE) root causes and also the easy fixes.
I talked to a lot of candidates from different parties during last spring campaigning and what I drew from proposing a "global fix the zillionaire-issue" was that new candidates saw this as a, perhaps unlikely, but a mandatory step in gaining a future for normal people.
And I talked to few front line politicians from the left and sdp and they didn't see any need for fixing the issue with individuals who've accumulated enough power.
Perhaps some of the top politicians also think this way but haven't realized that this is what the actual human beings want.
Or wanted a year ago, things are significantly worse for the normal people on both sides of the aisle.
I agree that Vas. also talks about economics within the growth framework, but that's because it's how the economy is measured, and how other parties work. And so in order to collaborate, you must at least partially adopt the framework.
But if you read Vas.'s party programme, you'll find a proposed millionaire tax, and a proposed progression to capital gains taxation.
I don't remember if an exit tax is a part of the current program, but it was at least discussed during the previous govt. (iirc, Kesk. killed it).
But I get your frustration, certainly the oikeistodemari -block is just a "nicer" Kok., and doesn't actually question any of the current frameworks.
Kiitos ajatustenvaihdosta, ja hyvää alkanutta viikonloppua.
Are you an American? It would help me frame my response better to know. I assume yes for now, apologies if not.
> The Trump humangod class is not the right IMO.
Basically the problem with American education is that they started using the wrong words to describe things. American libertarians are right wing and not anarchists, American liberals are right wing, American right wingers are religious ethno-fascists, and American "communists" are neoliberals. Or democratic socialists. Or just protestors.
Trump is absolutely on the Right Wing of politics, specifically he's a populist fascist: obsession with masculinity, hearkening to the culture of a mythical "before times," referencing national strength coming from ethnic purity, huge emphasis on marketing over policy, support for centralization of power around a dictator, militarism, and suppression of opposition through force. Verbatim fascist ideals, he's just not as powerful (yet) as previous fascist leaders.
Fascist ideology is pretty much as far-right you can get, if we use useful definitions of "left wing" and "right wing." Anarchism would be as far-left as you can get, for comparison.
Regarding the current discussion, those who are making critiques of a narcissistic greed class overriding morality and buying politics, are making, even if unintentionally, a leftist, anti-capitalist critique. A right-wing critique of the current USA government wouldn't be a class-analysis (Marxist analysis) like you did in your previous comment comparing "Epstein-class" (ultra wealthy) and "actual human beings" (the working class).
A right wing critique would be more along the lines of: the government is incompetent, it's putting the needs of a few individuals above those of the state, it's not cracking down hard enough on leftist opposition, it should jail all opposition leaders, it should pass apartheid laws against members of the non-chosen ethnic group.
So basically, if your issue with the USA is that power can be purchased with money, welcome to the Left, I promise we're not all as cringe as the ones you've seen on Twitter. Just kidding, it's perfectly possible to make leftist critiques without being a leftist, of course. You see American liberals do it all the time when they make right-wing critiques of the Left, in e.g. their opposition to anti-fascist and anti-capitalist elements of the left.
> The left (without the "") pretends to know this but ends up being corrupted anyway
Yes, absolutely, this is often a critique anarchists make of revolutionary communists. I think one American politician that will be very interesting to pay attention to for the next decade is Zohran Mamdani. He's already significantly softened his stance on Israel, I'm curious how far away from his original values he'll move.
Yup, I'm still thinking that also the right has had some moral foundations and even some classical Christian values before, but just like Mamdani has centraled already the right has been Republican-Jesused from the classical Jesus (not that they ever were 100% that).
But the both show (at least to me) the corruption by power thus compromising. Either consciously or un.
I'm seeing as the natural solution, something that has been a bit field tested here in Finland, that we start the discussion on what is the safe limit for individual power or money before the risk of corruption. After the latest year almost everyone agrees that this is a conversation we must have to stand a chance.
1) If the Gini index is 1, they have taken all your money by definition.
2) They are not creating wealth, they are extracting it from the the population at large. Those who actually work, and those who are forced / manipulated by the societal systems in place (and by marketing) to pay them money. Using assets snd resources as leverage to gain more assets and resources is not "creating wealth".
3) If there is no balance point, it does not matter how much wealth they create, the inequality in itself is a much bigger issue. The billionaires get richer and more powerful, and who do they hold power over? The poor. They are taking my (and presumably yours) time and opportunity, limiting the careers I can have, limiting what free society can politically decide to do. Most obviously in terms of climate change, but also in terms of health care, welfare, social mobility, free time, etc.
> They are not creating wealth, they are extracting it from the the population at large.
For an obvious example, trillionaire "extracted" the wealth from the population? For another one, compare the aggregate wealth today with the aggregate wealth from a century ago (or two centuries ago!). How do explain the enormous increase? Who was it extracted from?
> The billionaires get richer and more powerful
Bill Gates cannot put you in jail. Nor can Bezos, Musk, Zuckerburg, etc. Nor can they send you a bill and demand payment.
> They are taking my (and presumably yours) time
Nope.
> and opportunity,
Nope. If opportunity is limited, it is the government regulations and taxes that limit it.
> limiting the careers I can have,
Nope. You're free to start your own business and embark on any (legal) career you want to.
> limiting what free society can politically decide to do.
Nope. We still have free elections.
> Most obviously in terms of climate change,
Billionaires do not do climate change.
> but also in terms of health care, welfare,
That's been handed over to the government, not billionaires.
> social mobility,
America still has plenty of rags to riches people. See Taylor Swift, for example. Did she "extract" her billions, too? To be fair, she hasn't extracted a penny from me.
> free time, etc.
When I started my career 50 years ago, all I did was work. First in college (lots of studying), my first job was 50 hrs a week for years, then I started my own side businesses, etc., work work work. It was all my choice, though. Nobody made me.
BTW, Americans work a lot less than they did 200 years ago, when there were zero billionaires. There didn't use to be a concept of "retirement".
Hey again, Walter, we always seem to find eachother in these comment threads.
The Soviet Union didn't create wealth? It put a man in space before the USA - that took "wealth" by some definition of the word, perhaps just not "personal wealth."
In order to prevent famine, the Soviets decided to allow farmers a portion of land where they could sell what they grew. It kept the country from collapsing. Every historical attempt at collective farms collapsed from starvation or was propped up by government money.
I don't understand why people are still engaging with Walter on economics. He only ever posts the same things again and again: hot takes after taking econ 101.
> Lebanon is already annexed by Iran using Hezbollah which has more power than the official Lebanon government
I invite you to argue it, despite the Lebanese army, in their own words, "happily" working with Hezbollah in fighting against Israeli invasion into Lebanon.
> Also I don't beleive Israel is going to annex Lebanon but they may create a buffer zone in the south of the country.
A police interaction can escalate to ruinous heights within seconds due to no fault of your own. Remember that cop that got scared by an acorn falling and started shooting at random? I don't care how many "good cops" there are, I'm not rolling the dice on encountering an acorn cop.
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