No, we shouldn't be grateful for the "job creators"

 So...I was watching the news today and there was a discussion about how OMG, what would we do if not for the jobs of the job creators! We'd literally be poor without them!

I know I once felt prey to this logic in my conservative days, so I really wanna break people out of this.

The structural functionalist argument

 So, I would argue that every advanced society needs a system to determine who does what, and who gets what. Hunter gatherer tribes had a division of labor of...hunting and gathering. Feudal societies had the kings ruling, the nobles fighting, and the peasants growing food. In more modern societies, we have capitalism. We let the financial rewards of the system do things that way. Businesses create jobs out of their desire for profit, and workers work for their desire for a paycheck. It's argued things need to be done this way because we need people to work, to create the goods and services we rely on. When we talk about communism, the argument is often presented that under that system, without financial incentives, there are no real incentives to work, and I agree with that.

The function of work

However, when we ask why things have to be this way, let us not forget that the whole reason is because we need work to be done. We could just give everyone stuff for free, but the argument is that if we do, work incentives would disappear and we'd all starve to death as no one would do the work necessary for the survival and functioning of society.

As such, let's really emphasize this, the function of tying income to work is to motivate work, under the pretense that work is necessary. if work is not necessary, then this structure for society makes no sense and is cruel. 

The necessity of work

While I'll agree that some level of work is necessary for society to function, we've long since evolved beyond the needs of the entire society to work all of the time. As capitalism has allowed us to become more productive, we have been more and more able to do more with less. In theory, we should be able to support at least subsistence level living with relatively little work these days. Working hours reduced through the 19th century, but after the New Deal was struck, hours stagnated at 40, and were never reduced from there. Now, we work for higher and higher standard of living under the pretense that growth is good. Rather than working for necessity, we work for consumerism. 

A lot of this was due to fear of what would happen if we moved away from a work based system. Businesses feared losing money if we became so efficient at producing our needs that we didn't have to work any more. Businesses might close up and disappear because there was no need for those products. So we invented consumerism to keep people on a treadmill of working for higher and higher standards of living, all while imposing the same economic coercion on them we always did.

On the flip side, because the labor unions were the first dominant means of resisting the tyrannies of capitalism, narratives shifted from work being seen as evil among the working class, to work being "dignified." Because unions gain their power through organized resistance to employer demands through the labor system, and the benefits of capitalism for the lower classes are tied to jobs, they also became dependent on this job based system, fearing what would happen if human workers remained irrelevant. This caused them to develop what I consider luddite style anti progress attitudes at preserving old work.

We could have shifted toward a system less dependent on work, but this would upset stakeholders of the existing system, and cause us to have to rewrite our social contract to find ways to provide for people in an absence of work. As such, capitalism has remained coercive at forcing people into the work based system whether they like it or not, and because most people are invested enough in the existing system, and unimaginative enough at thinking beyond it, we've mostly preserved some variation of this system since, with there being intense political inertia to change the system. As such, work is no longer a necessity in the past, although many people believe it. The real reason we don't move toward less work is people fear what would happen if we do. Again, it's political inertia. 

The myth of the "job creator"

While for the first half of this past century's economic arc, we operated under the principles of Fordism and Keynesianism, the idea that it is consumption that drives the economy, and that it's useful for workers to make good money so they can buy more products and keep this consumerist loop going, in the second half, we shifted toward "supply side" economics rather than "demand side" economics, where we see the wealthy as the producers of everything. Rather than businesses merely responding to human needs and employing people to meet those needs, we started seeing the narrative that if only we give all of the wealth to the wealthy, that it would trickle down to the rest of us. This has largely been untrue. For the next 45 years since this way of thinking became dominant, the rich have grown significantly richer, while the wealth of the majority has stayed the same or declined. For this narrative of growth as a tide that raises all boats, it really doesn't. It raises the boats of the few while the rest struggle to tread water. And in the 2020s, as we enter our first real inflationary period since the beginning of this paradigm, it's quite clear the problems are largely corporate greed and the economy shifting away from appealing to actual middle class people and below, toward the wealthy top 20% of people who captured most of the economic gains since the 1980s and who now hold the vast majority of money and make up the vast majority of spending, and especially the mega wealthy who are buying up everything and distorting entire economies in fields like computing and electricity (AI data centers go brrr). 

But yeah, in all of this, we're still talking about the "job creators" as if they're the ones who make the economy work and we should be grateful for the opportunity to work for them or we'd be poor. Uh....again, we could have shifted away from jobs in any point in the past century. Our economy is 5x as productive per person as it was 100 years ago, not even per WORKER. Per CAPITA. We could functionally eliminate poverty at any time, but we don't, because we are so invested in this stupid system.

And that's the thing. None of this is necessary any more. And if anything, relying on this old system IS the problem with the economy. Because businesses dont wanna pay workers, they never did. And honestly, as a "worker", I don't really wanna work anyway. I HATE this system. I always have. And I've always been of the opinion that if we could do away with this system we should. The real question is, how, and is that viable?

A hybrid system

Obviously, we can't do away with all work. However, if we redistributed about 20% of the income, enough to keep people out of poverty, we could establish a compromise. Much of the economy would still operate under capitalist principles as we understand them. We need that stuff, after all just to keep the engine of capitalism functional. I have no desire to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. However, if we give people a UBI, we take the first step toward liberating people from this system. We could also reduce the work week over time, rather than pursuing infinite economic growth, which would allow us to spend more time enjoying life, than spending all of our time working. At this point this work and consumption cycle is artificial. It's not necessary. We operate this way because we've made ourselves slaves to our system and the moral assumptions that underlie it, rather than those systems working for our benefit. And we've so brainwashed the populace into this culture of work and jobs that we actually have them begging the wealthy to create jobs for them so they can meet their needs. This is sickening, and without its absolute necessary, it is functionally enslavement IMO. We don't call it that, it's slavery with extra steps, but yeah. 

I don't have all the answers to what a post work society would look like. However, I'm not trying to create a true post work society. Rather, I'm just trying to take the first steps toward one. Give people an unconditional basic income, reduce the work week, etc. I don't see us slaying the beast of work entirely any time soon. It ain't gonna happen in my lifetime. But by taking the first steps toward such a goal, we can at least move away from it gradually. And when we need to transition to another system, if we ever get that far, we can. Quite frankly, I remain unsure if we ever will. I think some human labor will always be necessary. it's just a matter of how much. 

To be edgy...

 If I wanted to be really edgy on this topic, I could even discuss the ideas of colonialism and prehistory of captialism and the work ethic. We had work before capitalism. And for much of history, reducing work was necessary. But we introduced this capitalist work ethic through protestantism that created this pathological obsession with gathering more wealth at all costs. In the early days of capitalism, people tried giving say, other cultures fertilizer that can grow 4x the food. However, rather than growing 4x as much food and selling it, they'd just work 1/4 as much. We had, for example, the irish, who would grow potatoes. And the British stopped them from doing so, to impose the work ethic on them, which contributed to the 1848 famine. We privatized all of the land, and forced people to get jobs in factories. For all the talk about how money "doesn't grow on trees", actually, some of our needs do grow on trees, but capitalism made picking the fruits illegal as they belonged to someone else, and we enforced that system of property with force. This is what really drove the masses to the factorys, to live at the mercy of the "job creators." And even know, these "job creators" are heralded as heroes as we ask why people would do if not for the jobs they create. They'd be in poverty and would starve without them. Except, we literally took people over, disrupted traditional precapitalist ways of life, and imposed this culture onto them. And then we act like we should be grateful to sell them the cure (jobs) for the disease (poverty) we created. 

So...yeah. F the job creators. let them shove those jobs where the sun doesn't shine. This society is sick, we should stop acting like it isn't, and we should understand that LIFE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.  So yeah, that's my answer on this. 

Ya know, reading my old essays I can kinda understand why I despise centrist democrats now...

 So...in last night's group of essays, I covered my reactions to Jean Jacque Rousseau and Karl Marx when I read them for a political philosophy class back in 2009. And....when I really dissect my beliefs, despite calling myself a "moderate conservative" at the time, it's quite clear my economic views were closer toward establishment liberalism. Like, I always had this pro labor and anti elite aspect to my politics. I never trusted the wealthy to look after the best interests of the people, I always recognized they screwed people over, and I quite frankly only voted conservative because I literally didn't believe liberal ideas could work. I mean, stuff we already had, like social security, minimum wage laws, etc., I could get behind. I mean, I was a structural functionalist, we tried those ideas and they worked. But I was very anti welfare (outside of like social security), and I opposed any efforts to shift America even further left. This was because, at the center of my ideology, I understood that what made capitalism work was its incentive structure. The profit motive was what motivated people to work. When you take that away, there's no longer any motivation in the system. If you made people too economically comfortable not working, they wouldnt work. if you taxed people too much, they would stop trying to excel. So...for me, it was like "yeah, it sucks, but we kind of need society to be like this to function."

What changed for me? Well, first of all, after the Tea Party took over and I saw them scream about the budget deficit and arguing we need to cut spending in the middle of a recession, while also proposing tax cuts for the wealthy, the ruse fell apart. When my dad was laid off and told that they did it so the company could keep its record profits, I understood that trickle down was a scam. When I analyzed republican tax plans like Herman Cain's 999 plan and the fairtax, I understood the net benefit of this plan was rich people. We normal people pay MORE in taxes, wealthy people pay less. I understood that in an economy with no jobs, where the rich have no money, cutting taxes on the rich while also cutting safety nets was literally psychotic, and I realized conservative ideals are just bad at their core and abandoned that belief system. 

And then as I built up my views under a more humanistic approach, I continued to look for solutions for the economic mess we were in, only for UBI to fit the bill. And like many people, I was skeptical at first. Like, come on, we're gonna raise taxes to the tune of $3 billion to fund a guaranteed safety net for everyone? No one would work, and we'd lose all motivation. But being scientifically minded, I was willing to look for evidence, and evidence, UBI supporters had. There are countless studies showing that at least up to the poverty line, work incentives are minimal. The fact is, UBI isn't enough to give everyone a GOOD life, it's just enough for the bare minimum, and most would still be motivated to work. We'd see SOME reduction in work ethic, like, maybe 10-15% in terms of hours worked AT MOST, but all in all, it was sustainable. Quite frankly, I would need to look at studies of those who won the lottery to find a significant work reduction, and even those guys only dropped out at like a 50% rate despite having to the tune of say, 3-8x the poverty line worth of income a year. Think the "$1000 a week for life" kind of people. And then the tax rates. Sure, if we taxed at like 100%, we'd see a reduction of work ethic, but at like 50%, which is where most tax schemes with UBI would end up? Not really. With rates studied between 30% and 70%, yeah, the 70% stopped working more than 30%, but still, it was relatively sustainable in that curve. If we looked at international studies on tax rates and what's sustainable, the maximum sustainable rate is somewhere around 70%. So with that said, we can say motivation if a spectrum, and that we can move up to social democracy level taxation with a poverty line level UBI, and still have a functioning capitalist economy. 

So...why don't we do that? Why don't the left push for that? At first, I thought it was simply because the pressure from the Reagan revolution forced them to the center. And they just needed to rediscover their voice and convictions. The great recession was the greatest economic crisis since the great depression, and it was clear what we're doing wasn't working, and it was clear trickle down economics were a scam. If we wanted to retake the narrative from the right, the 2010s were the time to do it. 

So imagine when 2008's sloppy seconds came back and insisted it was her turn, and how we can't have nice things. Clinton was perfectly amenable to me in 2008. Seriously, given Bill clinton's approach to the national debt, and Hillary's opposition to the Iraq War, I liked Clinton better than McCain. Because she WAS a moderate, I knew it, and I understood despite my conservative beliefs, that I could be comfortable with a moderate liberal president. I just was told by Fox News that Obama was a literal communist and thought that that was too much. 

But then Obama governed like I expected Clinton to, and I found him far more reasonable than the republicans, who were very quickly radicalizing. And given my evolving views at the time, yeah, I became pro Obama in 2012, and in his second term, I shifted further left to where I am now. So yeah, by 2016, I wasn't interested in Clinton. If anything, I found her views to be far too moderate, closer to my own 2008 views. I mean, you got this moderate christian who was wishy washy on abortion, gay marriage, and who supported minimum wage laws and the economic status quo but was otherwise quite fiscally conservative, and it's like...this is me in 2008. And I had long since evolved since then.

I mean, it's quite clear college was a transitory time for me, and while most of the ideological shifts explicitly happened in 2011-2013 or so, with 2012 being the big focal point for me, I was moderating from like 2006 onward. Because my Biblical Christian worldview was shattered back in my freshman year in college, and while I maintained some level of my Christian and conservative views in the following years, my worldview was conflicted and I didn't really have a consistent, coherent worldview.

Quite frankly, moderate democrats have exactly that worldview. They are trying to constantly compromise with the right. They don't have solid convictions. They got these weird liberal Christian beliefs, and they basically let the right's worldview serve as an ideological anchor while walking it back a bit from the edge of extremism. But here's the thing, as an ex conservative and ex Christian, this isn't a good place to be. Because such an ideological zone is a storm of cognitive dissonance. It appeals to virtually no one. Remember, I voted for McCain. Did Obama need my moderate vote to win elections? Hillary was the more "moderate" candidate. She was the conventionally "electable" one. Did that fricking matter? No. Obama won in a landslide, and the whole electability narrative was repudiated for me. It isn't the more moderate, candidate who wins elections, it's the one who fires people up and excites them. "Hope, change, yes we can!" That's what did it. Not "well we need to be moderate, so we can win moderates, because moderation is good, for some reason." That's McCain 2008, that's Romney 2012, it's an enthusiasm killer. Because you're alienating your own side and not doing a darned thing to win over voters from the other side. But now we're in our weird McCain/Romney esque desert running people like HRC, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. 

Really. I guess I'm rambling now. I really just got on to say that, yeah, 2009 me was a fricking centrist lib and didn't even know it. Conservative me, was economically a very moderate liberal. I was pro minimum wage laws, pro unions, I was just super pro work ethic and anti welfare. Which is basically a moderate lib anyway. I mean, no wonder I liked Obama once he governed a bit, right? My views were always closer to that than the republicans on economic issues. I was just a brainwashed idiot voting against my own interests. But thankfully, i grew out of that at a relatively young age, and now I have logically consistent beliefs that actually stand for something. And now I look at centrist dems like...ew you're like old me, the one I called conservative, actual progressives should be so much further left. 

I mean, let's face it, these centrist libs have conservative convictions, they just recognize that they shouldn't just go so far right they lose touch with reality. And yeah. Again, my views are just cut from a different cloth now, and as such, I despise that old belief system.  

Marx Reaction (5/5/2009)

So...in this political theory class, I also covered Marx. You will see some references to John Stuart Mill in this reaction. We read that between Rousseau and Marx, and while I did not react directly to mill, mainly because the Rousseau reaction took so much out of me, I'd say Mill was my favorite philosopher who I studied in this class, and my brand of libertarianism was based more on Mill's "On Liberty", rather than someone like say, Ayn Rand or something.

Anyway, here's my reaction to Karl Marx's writings:

Overall, as someone who is rather economically conservative and overall prefers the free market system, I have to say that I liked Marx a lot more than I thought I would. I do not agree with his ideas for overthrowing the system as I will mention later, but I did agree with many of the premises he built his arguments on (Marx, 70-200). I also like the fact that he used history to back up his arguments (Marx, 145-200); one thing I did not like about some other authors I have read in this class is the fact that they did not offer such a grounded approach to their philosophy. I agree with Marx about how the current system of labor completely wrecks a person’s life and does not allow people to act as individuals (Marx, 70-101). I think that some people really do throw their lives away seeking careers solely to make money (Marx, 94-97). Some people seem to spend their whole lives working and never really enjoy life or even the fruits of their labor (Marx, 94-97). What is the point in owning a huge mansion, a seventy-two inch plasma TV, and having five cars if you never have the time to enjoy them and you are too busy working in order to get more money to buy more stuff that you will in turn never enjoy? I think that labor is necessary in all systems in order for society to function and for people to live. I am not against the concept of work here; I just think that spending one’s whole life in pursuit of money without ever really living is a waste (Marx, 94-97). In short, I think that work is necessary, but it should not be the primary function of their life unless they want it to be1; if they do not, it should only be a means of living and nothing more. Some people actually do enjoy their work; the president of the United States probably feels great satisfaction for being president and will spend years on the campaign trail to get there, but this is not the case in all jobs, and not everyone would want to be president.

I also agree with Marx’ views regarding the modern relationship between a worker and an employer to an extent (Marx, 74-75). While I think that such a relationship is necessary, it is true that a worker is ultimately working for his employer’s benefit instead of his own (Marx, 73-74). I also agree that such a relationship can consume one’s life against their will and turn them into robots (Marx, 74-75). I know my dad’s former employer once told him that he had to work for like twelve hours every day and that the fact that he had a family was his problem and that his job was more important. I could not think of a clearer example of people being alienated from their lives other than this (Marx, 74-75).

On the other hand, I do not really buy into the whole concept that such a relationship does in fact alienate everyone from their work (Marx, 70-81). While I understand that if someone makes a chair or something and then sells it himself, he can feel pride in making a good chair as opposed to merely producing one in the factory for someone else (Class, 4/29/09). However, given that the wages are good enough, I think that working in a factory could also be something to be proud of, which is something Marx did not agree with (Marx, 80). I think that if people earn enough money and can buy a house or something, they can take pride in that. I know this sounds a little contradictory to what I just said earlier about people working their lives away, but it really is not. If people work up the ladder to earn something that gives them great pride and enjoyment, who is to take that away? In my opinion, if that is what they want to do with their life, it is up to them as long as their quest for happiness does not interfere with someone else’s (Mill, 80).

I do not agree with Marx at all on his views regarding overthrowing the system (Marx, 162-200). As much as the current system is flawed (Marx, 70-200), I do not think abolishing it is a good idea at all. Marx’s what the ideal community is like is a bit too utopian to me, and I do not think that utopias work (Class, 5/4/09; Marx, 162-200). We live in a real world and that world just is not perfect and it is not going to change in that sense overnight if at all. Let’s say that the workers overthrew the system and abolished the state and the current ruling class (Marx, 162-200). Now what? Marx mentioned how people need to have the means to overthrow the system and people cannot just make the change mentally, but the converse is also true (Marx, 169). Marx talked about how our ideas are shaped by the people in charge, that being the bourgeoisie (Marx, 165-174). Merely getting rid of the system and setting up a new one based on principles just will not work (Marx, 165-174). When the North beat the South in the civil war, the former slave owners did not all of the sudden want black people to be equal to them and instead oppressed them with the Jim Crow laws (Pilgrim). The old paradigms were still there (Pilgrim), and this is a major problem with Marx’s revolution; the bourgeois paradigms would still be in peoples’ heads because they were exposed to them their entire lives (Marx, 165-174). Moreover, who is to say that when the proletariat overthrows the system that they will set up a system in the best interest of all? After all, it could become a democracy like Aristotle described, if not worse (Aristotle, 79). Since bourgeois paradigms still exist in peoples’ minds and people still like property (Marx, 165-174), people can just take advantage of the instability of the system and establish their dominance. Thus, like the bourgeoisie overthrowing the aristocrats before them, one ruling class will just be replaced with another (Marx, 174).

I also do not think abolishing the division of labor is practical (Marx, 197-200). I do not think it is really possible for someone to be a doctor one day, a garbage person the next, and then a nuclear physicist (Class, 5/4/09). The reason we are going to college is to get a degree in a certain field, or possibly two fields. While it is possible to be somewhat rounded, ultimately, people are probably going to specialize, since it takes years for people to prepare for their careers. Moreover, I would not want someone to do work in something that they are not qualified in. Think about this: would you want someone with no knowledge of medicine to do surgery on you, or would you prefer someone who has thorough knowledge of the field and a lot of experience? Marx’s ideas regarding no division of labor probably worked back in the old tribal system when life in general was much simpler (Marx, 151), but life now is very complex and I do not think abolishing the division of labor is practical.

Instead of overthrowing the system, I think that working to mitigate the negative effects of it is a better alternative. I base a lot of my views in economics off of Mill’s harm principle, which basically says that the only legitimate reason for government intervention into peoples’ lives is to prevent harm from being done to others (Mill, 80). I do not think that it is necessarily wrong for people to want to attain wealth; the problem is the harm that one’s conquest of wealth can do to others (Marx, 70-101; Mill, 80). Marx described this harm very well (Marx, 70-101). First of all, I think that workers in most professions should not be forced to work more than so many hours a day by law (the eight hour work day sounds good to me). This way, if people do not want to make the accumulation of wealth and the advancement of their career their top priority in life, they can still have time to develop as individuals and live their lives as they see fit (Marx, 94-97; Mill, 80). Moreover, I think that people should be guaranteed at least a certain wage. I am not saying everyone should be millionaires, but I think that people deserve fair compensation for their work and should not be starving after working for twelve hours a day (Class, 4/29/09). I think that this would be a better alternative to overthrowing the system and risking yet another perverted form of government emerging from the mess created (Marx, 165-174). It probably would not eliminate the underlying causes of the problems in the current system that Marx describes (Marx, 145-200), but I find his solution to be worse than these causes.

Overall, I found Marx to be a lot more interesting than I thought I would. He discussed an array of topics including the alienation of the worker from his labor and even his own life, how money can more or less dominate one’s life, a detailed description of economic history, how the ruling class shapes our views, and how to abolish the present system and build a new one on different principles (Marx, 70-200). I agree with a lot of Marx’s premises regarding the alienation and the place money has in modern life (Marx, 70-101), but I do not think overthrowing the system is possible or practical (Marx, 165-174). Since many of the same paradigms people have are present even after the system is overthrown, there is no guarantee a new system could work (Marx, 165-174). After all, when the bourgeoisie overthrew the aristocracy, they took control and did exactly what the aristocracy did (Marx, 174). At best, I think what could happen would be the development of a democracy similar to what Aristotle described (Aristotle, 79). I also do not agree with Marx’s ideas regarding abolishing the division of labor because nowadays, it takes years for people to become prepared for their careers and it makes no sense for them to change what they do for a living all the time (Marx, 197-200).


1 I am a strong supporter of Mill’s harm principle, and do not think people should be discouraged from working and earning money as long as they are not harming others in doing so (Mill, 80).

 So...keep in mind, I'm a conservative when I wrote this. But yeah. Also keep in mind, I was a conservative who hated rich people and wasn't really a fan of the idea of working for a living even then, I felt like work was necessary, I justified my views within structural functionalism, but yeah. Clearly not a fan and even I could understand what was so appealing about Marx. I just felt like communism didn't work. And it doesn't. 

But yeah. First paragraph, yeah, you can see where I was on work even then. Like...wasn't a fan of the concept, and clearly understood capitalism was oppressive. This was because of my own family's history with it. Of course, I cited my own dad's experience working with the HVAC company Sears, which in the 1990s had rather oppressive work policies and got no better in the years since. This is something I think we should really talk about. A lot of Trumpers, for example, dont seem to actually like the wealthy and the like either. But they're brainwashed into a conservative worldview. 

On alienation, I'll still agree that some people can feel pride in their work, but on factory work...I'm clearly referring to like 20th century union work here. Ya know, the kind that existed here in Pennsylvania between 1945 and 1980 or so, and that no longer does exist. And even then, uh...given how I've evolved on work, yeah I really dont agree with that whole model. Like, I AM a lot more anti work now than I was then. Back then i accepted it as a necessary evil. Now I realize we're creating jobs for their own sake and it's fricking stupid and that we shouldn't do it. 

STILL, I always did have that libertarian streak in me. And I kinda believed even then it was up to the individual. If people wanted to work, and truly liked it, that's up to them. It's kind of like the whole lazies vs crazies arguments Van parijs demonstrates in his ideology. Ideally society should support both. And while in my own personal ideology I think work is oppressive and people shouldnt aspire to work more than they have to, well, again, we're gonna live in a pluralistic libertarian society and people arent gonna agree with me. It's a lot like how I find organized religions to be distasteful but I still affirm freedom of religion. You gotta let people live as they want. Left wing authoritarians trying to impose their own ultimate version of truth on people are going to backfire.

But yeah. Between Rousseau, Mill, and Marx, and the influences all 3 have had on my thinking, it's not surprising i ended up where I am now. My view is kind of a mishmash of the three combined. I recognize from marx that capitalism and work is oppressive. I support my approach from a perspective that's pro freedom. And Rousseau, well, Rousseau had the whole property being the source of oppression thing and the idea of the social contract. 

But yeah, it's not really surprising where I ended up and my current worldview is like a synthesis of all of these guys. Or rather, I was driven toward more modern philosophers in the UBI movement like van parijs and widerquist who are more aligned with synthesizing these different schools of thought. 

I'm actually surprised how progressive I was. Like, despite being a conservative and a tea party republican during this time, I clearly supported things like minimum wage laws and worker protections as we were able to have them and wasn't for just unfettered capitalism. My positions were actually closer to democrats than republicans. But that's cognitive dissonance for you. And this is why I really have this view that a lot of conservatives are like this. Because I was like this, and once my deconversion and associated issues forced me to take a side, i realized that right wingers were just insane and evil and haven't supported them since.

And then in rebuilding my worldview, I ended up going toward concepts that reflected and actually synthesized these conflicting ideologies at the time into something that...isn't really conflicting and is quite logically consistent. 

And even when I started this blog, I pointed out, hey, marx, great analyzer of capitalism. Great at defining problems. But the revolution stuff, not so great. You gotta go in the more liberal direction there. And I did. And forging my own path, again...now I ain't really like "well I agree with marx but I also agree with mill", it's more "I agree with van parijs and widerquist who give us a form of left libertarianism that synthesizes these concepts into the political platform that I now support."

And yeah, that's all I really have to say here.  

Rousseau Reaction (4/4/2009)

 So, this is a part of an essay I did on Jean Jacques Rousseau back in 2009 for a political philosophy class. I will not post the whole essay as its 15 pages long and tedious, but long story short, I read a bunch of stuff Rousseau wrote and did an essay on it. This is the result of my actual reaction part.

Personally, I largely do not agree with much of what Rousseau says. I think he makes valid points at times, but I disagree with parts of his worldview as well as some of his conclusions. First of all, I question the validity of natural right and natural law (Rousseau, 4-6; Class, 3/23/09-4/1/09). I do not think that such things exist on their own. I may be turning this into a theological argument, but I believe that a god would have to establish natural right and natural law himself. This appears to be a rather American understand of natural rights, since this is what the Declaration of Independence seems to argue (Declaration of Independence). While one can make an argument that humans should have a right to life because their instincts drift toward self-preservation (Class, 3/23/09-3/30/09), I do not necessarily think that this has to be a case. Animals themselves often do not grant every being the right to live; some eat each other for food. I believe the same with natural law; without a supernatural being, who says that certain laws are so simple that they exist in nature and must be followed? Again, nature itself is silent on the subject in my opinion. I do believe that such rights and laws exist, but these come from my religious beliefs; I do not think they just occur naturally.

I also do not think that there is a man in the state of nature as Rousseau claimed (Rousseau, 11-34). I do not think that humans can survive on their own, at least not for long. If a human gets injured or sick in this state, which is very likely considering the hazards of living without civilization and medicine, he or she has no one to care for them and no one to turn to for help. When I was in high school, I dislocated my knee. The reason I am better today because we have a society that has health care and my parents and school helped me get around. If I were in nature, I would be lying there on the ground, not able to move, exposed to the elements, and I might even attacked by some wild animal. This is the complete opposite of what Rousseau thought, since he believed that it was possible for humans to recover from even serious injuries (Rousseau, 14). Life in nature, according to scientific theories, appears to be centered around the idea of natural selection, meaning those best able to survive in nature do, and the others eventually die out (Darwin and Natural Selection). While a man in nature probably is fitter than one in society due to constantly exercising his body in the fight of survival, I agree more with philosophers like Ibn Khaldun who thought that humans needed to be in groups to survive (Khaldun, 45-46). Like Rousseau, I think that families were some the first groups found among humans (Rousseau, 37).

The idea that people need one another and function in groups also removes the issue Rousseau had explaining language (Rousseau, 22-25); it probably developed among these groups as he eventually concluded (Rousseau, 37-38). These groups could have agreed to a language rather easily; many would be raised learning the language of their parents and group like we do today. Considering this, I do not think the creation of language was really that difficult. We do need consensus on what the words mean like Rousseau said (Rousseau, 22-25), but if someone in a group decided one day that this brown and green thing should be called a tree, are people really going to argue with him and say “no, I want that to be called a skunk”? I seriously doubt it, since the group would need a uniform code of communications to interact with one another. We can observe this behavior in the creation of pidgins, which are makeshift languages between groups of people who share no common language and need to communicate with one another for some purpose (Pidgins and Creoles). In modern times, it is observed that these languages come from the participants’ original languages (Pidgins and Creoles), but even in the absence of that, I could imagine people still agreeing on using a common sound to communicate if they needed to for some purpose. While coming up with grammatical rules is difficult, it probably happened naturally over time, since this also happens with pidgins that do not die out (Pidgins and Creoles). Languages probably started out as being very primitive as Rousseau described, and then became more complex over time (Pidgins and Creoles; Rousseau, 25).

I also do not agree with Rousseau on the issue of human nature and his views on passions and sentiments (Rousseau, 27-29). I do not think that there is really a difference between Rousseau’s two kinds of drives regarding the self (Rousseau, 27-28). While humans do show empathy, or pity as Rousseau put it (Rousseau, 28-29), they ultimately care for themselves in my opinion. People show pity because they can put themselves in that situation; if the self could not experience such a situation, there could not be pity (Rousseau, 28-29). Therefore, even in actions of putting oneself in another’s shoes, there is still an aspect of the self involved (Rousseau, 28-29) I thought Rousseau made a good point though when he said that a person does not “beat his mother when she is too slow in giving him her breast” or “strangled one of his young brothers when he inconvenienced him” (Rousseau, 27). Nevertheless, this does not mean that humans are not self-interested; it just means they are generally not extremely malicious for no reason. I believe reason merely changes the nature of a person’s passion regarding self-interest (Rousseau, 29), since then humans can actually think about what benefits them while limiting the amount of negative consequences they induce (Keel). This is often considered acting rationally (Keel). In other words, I believe it is the same passion regardless; reflecting on it merely takes it to a whole new level. I also think humans are malicious to an extent when the right stimuli are present. I am currently taking a course on criminal corrections and I have recently learned about all kinds of horrible methods of punishment people used in the past (Welch, 16-61; Lash, 2/5/09-2/12/09). Some of these methods of punishment remind me of something that belongs in the Saw movies, which is an extremely gory horror series (Welch, 16-61; Lash, 2/5/09-2/12/09). I do not think that Rousseau’s “timid” human who has a soft spot for human suffering (Rousseau, 12-29) can invent such horrible yet innovative methods of punishment throughout history (Welch, 16-61; Lash, 2/5/09-2/12/09). Moreover, in ancient times, people watched gladiator fights in the Coliseum for the fun of it (Lash, 2/5/09-2/12/09), and even today, much of our population has an interest in violent media such as movies and video games.

However, I largely agree with Rousseau on how societies developed beyond the family (Rousseau, 34-57). Eventually, families probably got so extended that they needed to work with one another and divide the labor among each other (Rousseau, 39-41). Moreover, it makes sense that the population eventually got big enough where the earth no longer had enough food for subsistence cultures (Rousseau, 35). After all, with the amount of food remaining constant and human population increasing, something would have to be done to prevent people from starving (Rousseau, 35). Moreover, I could see self-interested actors acting rationally and trying to secure advantages for themselves (Keel). I could see natural inequality being transformed into civil inequality among people; after all, some people are more productive than others (Rousseau, 41). I agree that this conquest of property could lead to a form of despotism as Rousseau described (Rousseau, 55). After all, I do not think the rich care about the poor, only about their own interests. I could also see this conquest develop out of a more legitimate form of government, as some people do try to bend the system to their own advantages (Rousseau, 46-55).

I agree with the main concept of a social contract, but I do not like Rousseau’s interpretation of it (Rousseau, 91-118). I agree that the best form of government is when people come together to form their own community, and give up some of their freedom found in nature to obtain security and be able to live freely within the confines of the law (Rousseau, 92-93). However, unlike Rousseau, I do not think that a people necessarily need to consent in order for a government to be legitimate (Rousseau, 87-93). After all, as long as the strongest tyrant remains the strongest, that government is legitimate enough since opposing it means that it will still succeed (Rousseau, 87-88). While a stronger force can defeat a tyrant (Rousseau, 55, 87-88), the same is the case among governments set up by a social contract. A tyrant can still defeat a social contract if it is stronger militarily. I think the social contract is the way government should be run and that it is best to live under a social contract as opposed to under any other form of government. In a way, I believe it is the “correct” form of government, although others are also “legitimate”, since I see force as legitimate enough (Rousseau, 87-93).

I also strongly disagree with Rousseau in terms of equality and how it relates to the social contract (Rousseau, 115-117). I do not see the social contract as a society where everyone relies on each other (Rousseau, 46-47, 92-93). After all, our own government is supposedly also a form of social contract in a sense, or at the very least it was based off of it in the sense that the Founding Fathers fought against a “despot” in order to establish themselves as independent and free (Declaration of Independence). However, we do not have equality, nor do I think that we should. I think the social contract is merely giving up some liberties found in nature to live in a more secure existence, much like what Hobbes described (Class, 3/25/09).1 While I understand why Rousseau wanted to make everyone equal so that we do not have people wield more influence than others and therefore become masters, I do not think it can be avoided (Rousseau, 46-47, 92-93). Society is like an organism. In order for it to be strong, people need to do different tasks. This is why division of labor began to begin with (Rousseau, 39-41). Moreover, not all jobs are equal. A doctor is not equal to a garbage man, but we need both for society to function. If we did not have garbage men, we would live in a really unsanitary society. However, one has to admit that becoming a doctor is much more difficult than becoming a garbage man. One needs to study for years to be a doctor while little education is necessary to pick up garbage. Therefore, there should be higher incentives for people wanting to become doctors; if everyone were to receive equal pay, why not just choose the easier job? Ibn Khaldun mentioned in his book that attacking peoples’ property can damage society (Khaldun, 238-239); I agree with this, and I think that trying to make everyone equal damages society because it takes away peoples’ will to excel (Khaldun, 238-239). While Khaldun was mostly speaking of injustice in his quote (Khaldun, 238-239), I still think taking away that which one has earned his unjust. Society, at least in today’s day and age, is not as simple as Rousseau seemed to think. People need to rely on one another; that is how society works. We cannot adopt a subsistence culture like Judith Skhlar described (Rousseau/Skhlar, 267); even if we could, why would anyone want to? It would require hard labor anyway (Rousseau/Skhlar, 267), and society would have nothing to show for it. In an unequal society, people might work for other people, but people would have to work anyway and in this case, progress can be made. Some people need to lead and some need to be led. In corporations, there are employers and employees. Not everyone can be an employer; if this were the case, nothing would get done. Without employers, the employees would not know what to do. While the rich or the strong do exploit the poor or the weak (Rousseau, 41-55), this does not mean that the system of inequality is necessarily bad; there just need to be limits on what the rich and the strong can do in order to protect the poor and the weak. This is where I agree with Rousseau’s idea of a sovereign (Rousseau, 94-95). Since the sovereign makes up everyone, and since the majority of people are not rich, the general will should have a distinct bias against the rich and powerful to an extent (Rousseau, 94-95).

I do not really agree with Rousseau’s attitudes toward life and death and the role of the state (Rousseau, 104-105). Rousseau said that if a state said that one should die, he should because the state provided the security he or she had lived in until that point (Rousseau, 104). While sacrifice in war is sometimes necessary, I support an all-volunteer military in most situations. I can understand such logic in a war like World War II, where the U.S. was facing an enemy that killed millions and wanted to take over the world. However, what about wars like Vietnam and Iraq? I do not support sending people to their deaths involuntarily over such operations. In Vietnam, many people opposed the war but were forced to fight anyway. They were basically sent to the grinder against their will in a war that posed no imminent threat to U.S. security. I believe this is morally wrong. No one, not even a “legitimate” state, should send someone to their death against their will. This breaks Rousseau’s own golden rule regarding “doing what is good for you with the least possible harm to others” (Rousseau, 29), which I agree with. I agree with Rousseau on the death penalty though in the sense that I do not think it should be used unless there is no other alternative (Rousseau, 105). However, in modern society, I think that the death penalty is not needed since prisons can hold people and stop them from becoming a threat to society.

Overall, I disagree with Rousseau on the public will (Rousseau, 100-101). I do not think that we can really count on people to do what is best for the community as a whole, although we should definitely try (Class, 4/1/09; Rousseau, 100-101). I like what Judith Skhlar said: “the force of things is always against it” (Rousseau/Skhlar, 271). For example, in the current economic crisis, I see a lot of individuals wills, but no general will. The unions do not want to cut back when it comes to the government bailing out the auto companies, the AIG executives want to keep their bonuses (CBS News), and the politicians seem to have their own interests. For example, Chris Dodd, who received money from AIG, actually signed the amendment that let the AIG executives keep their bonuses (Chicago Tribune). In the midst of this economic crisis, most people appear to more about themselves than the public good. Even if people did want the public good, who is to say which public good is correct? Many people have different ideas of what is best for the country. Some people might want small government and a strong defense, while others might want a larger government that provides goods to its people. There are different orientations of the general will, and not all of them are compatible with one another and are sometimes polar opposites.

1 I agree with Rousseau though on the fact that we should maintain as much of our liberty as possible within the social contract, as long as it does not harm other people (Rousseau, 29). On other words, I agree with the phrase: “do what is good for you with the least possible harm to others” (Rousseau, 29).

Reaction 

Okay, so...a few things before I begin. I tried to read some of the material I read for this class again before doing this response. And my god, I remember why I hate Rousseau. He his so fricking long winded and a bit of a blowhard IMO. Like, I think I'M long winded at times, but here I am trying to cut down my own work for the sake of readability and this dude just rambles for dozens of pages before getting to the point. It's insufferable to me. I hated reading him at the time, I had to reread him so many times just to understand him, and yeah, my brain just turns off trying to read this guy. it's the very definition of TLDR. 

He also seems to do a lot of speculation. Ironically, there's a lot more I agree with him now on than back then. he emphasized how humans were free in the state of nature and then someone made property and now we're all slaves. I actually agree with that. However, I came to that conclusion from studying Widerquist and McCall. And those guys used anthropology mixed with philosophy to build their worldview. Like, they actually attempted to study how humans behave. A lot of these enlightenment guys they just speculate, and even though Rousseau kinda got it right, I can't help but read his stuff and be like "where's the evidence?" It's like he's just spouting his mouth off and pulling this stuff out of you know where than actually basing his views on evidence. 

Still, I have to say, I've grown to respect the hustle. The state of nature is important, prehistory is important. A lot of enlightenment myths actually are based on a christian worldview, and if we're gonna do an atheistic perspective we kinda need a explanation for how we got from like, tribal societies to capitalism. And that's going to give us a Rousseau like understanding of that prehistory and property being more a force that enslaves people than something that's "natural." Like, if you properly understand history from a secular worldview, it actually does bolster that aspect of Rousseau. So Rousseau, despite being a bit of a blowhard, kinda got it right IMO. 

To go into what I wrote, I kinda like how I was evolving away from the Christian worldview even by this point. Like, I was basically saying natural rights are BS. Because they are. If you have a state of nature based around natural selection, crap just dies all the time. There are no natural rights, they're a convenient fiction we created later on. And while I support some variation of them (without property mind you) based on secular principles, yeah, I fully recognize that these are simply values that I believe morality should seek to advance and that failing to do so betrays the entire concept.

 I would uphold my rejection of humans as a solitary individualistic creature in the state of nature. We're more pack animals who operate in groups because it's a survival strategy. However, we largely operated in small band societies prior to the modern age of states. And while we were a lot freer in some ways, life was a bit more nasty, brutish, and short in others. Despite my heavy criticism of states and property, I'm not going to claim that life without states was, on the whole, better. It wasn't. 

On human nature, I'm going to offer a compromise. Humans are complex. I still agree humans are ultimately selfish, but at the same time, they are capable of pro social behaviors and empathy. All of this is related to the fact that we are animals with survival instincts, but sometimes those instincts extend beyond ourselves to what we consider in groups. There is complexity there. And yes, we are capable of great evil. However, most of the worst anti social behavior is geared toward out groups. people who exhibit extreme negative behavior toward in groups are often retaliated against and kicked out of the group or killed. Ya know, like murderers and the like. But a lot of the worst of human behavior is based on dehumanizing and "othering" people, where people don't see them as human. That's how the nazis treated people during the holocaust. And such views are common today where white nationalists are all about the in group and protecting it from outgroups like immigrants or those of otuer races. Meanwhile in my own ideology I consider racial minorities part of the in group in the group, "Americans." And I'm even accepting of immigrants who want to come here and genuinely be a part of our society. 

I actually think it takes a lot of effort to develop universalist tendencies, but if we follow kohlberg's stages of morality, that's essentially what it is. Preconventionally moral people are selfish and only interested in themselves. Conventional people are interested in the in group. Post conventional people like myself become more universalist. Although being universalist, like, TRULY universalist is hard, so we end up being in between in group and universalist. That's why so few stage 6 thinkers exist. Because it kinda means overcoming one's own nature of selfishness and bias toward in groups and it's hard to consistently operate at such a level of moral thinking. 

I think that Widerquist and McCall did a good job explaining how we got from band societies and families to larger societies. Societies settled down, established property, as societies became more complex, surpluses happened, leading to more inequality. The ruling class themselves developed their own in groups that favored themselves over the rest of society, and the ruling class became more and more isolated from the people. And societies also turned to conquest and enslavement where they took over other societies, forcibly integrated people into their societies against their will, and often practiced negative things like genocide and slavery. So again, I pretty much agree with Rousseau and what I wrote, but I prefer the more sociological and academic approach of reaching these conclusions rather than, ya know, pulling it out of one's behind, which is kinda what I felt like Rousseau did. Still, for some dude who wrote during the 18th century, his model of how societies arose holds up surprisingly well. So well I feel like Widerquist's work kind of bolsters his model, while refuting those of others, like Locke with his Lockean Proviso and natural rights to property. 

On my views on inequality, we gotta keep in mind, it was 2009, I was still very much conservative and defended my views within structural functionalism a la sociology. I bought into the line that if we didn't make people work, and we didn't basically punish people with poverty for not working, that people wouldn't work, and I also believed that we need some level of inequality to motivate people. 

I have evolved quite a bit on this issue over the years. I still accept some level of that functionalist argument, but if one can tell, even in 2009, I had this skepticism of the wealthy, and pretty much admitted that the wealthy "job creator" types abused their positions for their benefit. Over time, we can see how my skepticism of the wealthy and need for income inequality have ultimately been reconciled. I have come to understand that the functionalist aspects are very overblown. Even if we had, say, a UBI and every proposal I call for, there will still be significant income inequality due to meritocracy. Like, a UBI and the like doesn't necessarily mean rich people will no longer be rich, or that there will be different classes. As I said, I think some level of class difference based on a division of labor and the rewards associated with those different jobs is inevitable and healthy for society. BUT....a UBI would basically be compatible with that, while greatly reducing the poverty and suffering of the poor while reducing the ability of the wealthy to exploit people. Still it is interesting to see how 2009 me squared that circle. I can see how my current views evolved from there, but yeah I was still about 3 years out from leaving conservatism here, and about 5 years from evolving into my current views. 

On the draft, I still agree with what I wrote and am categorically against it. Only when we face a life and death crisis on the level of Russia invading Ukraine can a draft even be justified in my view. And even then I did feel some sympathy for those trying to escape Ukraine. It's natural to not want to die in war. And I don't support people being forced to fight in meatgrinders.

Yeah I would agree that American society is very pluralistic and individualistic. We have no "class consciousness." Of course, this is by design. The wealthy are invested in ensuring we don't develop a "public will" and keep us uneducated and divided amongst ourselves over BS issues that shouldnt matter like race and gender. A lack of education is a huge part of it, as discussed recently, Reagan killed off free college because he didn't want an educated working class to arise. And of course, there's the worldview issue with the fundie Christians in their own little world and liberals in a completely different world. While I agree more with the liberal view, as the conservative one is literally a cult, well...yeah. I would say we're even more divided now in the 2020s than we were in the 2000s. And we're to a point we can't even agree on basic scientific facts like vaccines being good things. It's messed up. 

So..yeah. Looking at what I wrote 16 years later...eh....I can see where I was evolving away from my Christian worldview a la 2004-2005ish and toward my current secular humanist one of 2012 and beyond. 2009 is where I started seriously having doubts of my perspective, and to be honest, a secular education did poke holes in my worldview quite a bit. I already basically gave up on bibical literalism by this point and was a far more conflicted and liberal Christian at this point wrestling with a lot of contradictions. We can see how some of the contradictions were bubbling up. And while I still had this edgy conservative worldview at the time that seemed to assume the worst of the world and human nature, ultimately, I can see why, when I left Christianity for good, and I finally reconciled some of the conflicting thoughts I had here, why I ended up where I did.

That's why I'm revisiting old essays like this. Because they are kind of fun for me to revisit, given what I believe now.  

Discussing AI, art, and why I don't give a crap

 So...AI. It's a polarizing topic these days. Sometimes people get too insufferably polarizing about it to the point it's REALLY fricking annoying and obnoxious on both sides. You got the pro AI side that thinks it's this end all be all of everything, like they're creating strong AI but in reality AI being pushed is weak AI with no actual human like cognition. And then you have the anti AI people who are super anti AI for....reasons, particularly in terms of job losses and stuff. 

And this is where I'm really gonna clobber the left. Okay, lefties? You guys got AI derangement syndrome. I'm not gonna lie. The amount of anti AI crap I see from the left is getting annoying, insufferable, and stupid. Like, from my ideology, it's so stupid.

Obviously, this is because unlike most leftists, I'm anti work, not pro work. AI is a tool that automates work. It threatens the livelihood of artists. And I understand it and sympathize, but hey, THAT'S WHY WE SHOULD HAVE A UBI! I feel like I keep saying it, but then I get this thing where leftists (and the right as well, it's the whole spectrum) has this thing where we can't have AI because we need people to work, but when we have automation threaten jobs, we need to preserve the jobs, and again, being anti work, I really just wanna fricking automate the jobs away so we don't have to work any more.

But...again, leftists are job lovers. They love work. They just hate capitalist exploitation. And we see this a lot with the art thing. I'm gonna be blunt. The reason leftists hate AI is because it puts artists out of work. And that sucks, I get that. But again...we should have a UBI for this. But yeah. Leftists glorify labor, they glorify work, and they are patting themselves on the back going on about how AI art sucks because it has no soul and lacks intentionality. Except, here's the thing, THE CAPITALISTS DON'T CARE! Like, seriously, most people aren't interested in masterpieces. They just wanna hire artists to get work done. If they can have an AI produce art that is 90% as good for 10% of the cost of hiring a person, they're gonna do it. And generally speaking, that's a good thing for society. Because we shouldn't be chained to jobs in the first place. We should celebrate automating jobs away. We should be like IM FREE! IM FREE! I DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS ANY MORE! But because we force people to work to get money, and we give all of the money to wealthy people to "create jobs" with, well, if you lose your job, you lose your paycheck. So the system incentivizes inefficiency from the worker side of things, where leftists wanna preserve old and inefficient jobs to justify giving people paychecks. Which is, quite frankly, anti progress. 

Again, my idea actually is the best of both worlds. I decouple work from income, I give people a check no matter if they work or not, I make work voluntary, and I let employers and individuals interested in working do what they do. If AI automates jobs away, so be it. If workers dont wanna work, so be it. Im tired of keeping this arrangement of working for money around simply because it's how we always did things. Institutions exist for human needs. We shouldnt exist to serve them, and we need to stop romanticizing this economic model where we force people to work, and give them money to work. if we no longer need to work, we need to come up with some other distribution mechanism to give people money. And that's where UBI and my other proposals come in. I want to build a world where people don't have to work any more, where poverty doesn't exist, where work is a means to an end, not an end in itself. 

And, again, what irks me about leftists is they're luddites. While I admit, AI will likely never replace the best art, it can replace enough of it, and produce results that are "good enough" where it will displace a lot of artists. Now, this is bad for the artists, but, in the long term it should make the economy more productive through added efficiency. And honestly, if we took care of the UBI thing, then job loss wouldnt be a problem.

Idk. Leftists just irk me because they miss the point. Dont get me wrong, I get it to some extent being pro worker, but it's just such short sighted thinking that misses the point. If more wealth is generated long term by having AI do the jobs humans used to do, then that should be good for us, but we have to create the mechanisms to allow the wealth to reach us. In the absence of jobs, mass redistributionary policies are how we do it.

Even then, it's not like we'll ever (at least in the foreseeable future) be without jobs. People just dont wanna do jobs in things they would otherwise have to. Because let's face it, those jobs are difficult, physically demanding, and don't pay very well. Another problem. But again, if we had a UBI, it would give workers more bargaining power to pressure employers to raise wages....or automate those jobs too. 

Again, point is, if you stop thinking in terms of preserving jobs, you just start seeing these things from a different angle and all this anti AI nonsense just comes off as luddism. Because that's what it is. It's just the modern luddites. And yeah. I'm really getting tired of the left's anti AI circlejerk. I'm not some elon musk you know what rider. I hate the guy too. But I just can't wrap my head around this anti AI crap. From my own ideology, it's just "yeah it sucks for the artists, jobs are lost, but should we want to preserve work for its own sake anyway?" Rather than insisting we work for a paycheck, I'd rather just give people a paycheck. Ya know? Would solve a metric crapton of problems and then we can appreciate societal progress to a greater degree without worrying as much about how it will affect our finances.  

"Why were liberals so harsh against Mitt Romney in 2012? Was this harshness justified?"

 I saw this question on reddit, and decided to respond to it here. 

The short story is YES! I hate how liberals now renovate this man, and people like Bush, and people like Reagan. In 2012, Romney was extreme. He was not a "moderate." The only people who thought he was "moderate" are the people who are basically half conservative anyway and who actually LIKE the clinton types.

My views literally arose as an opposition to Romney and his ilk. Socially, he might have moderate convictions himself, but let's be blunt, he was fronting the tea party and all of their nonsense, in an era when that was considered unthinkable and extreme. Like, we call the tea party "moderate" now, but again, that's because the GOP is openly fascist now and not even trying to hide it. 

And on economic issues, the dude was calling for kicking people off of extended unemployment in an era where unemployment was still extremely high since the great recession, and he was saying if we gave the "job creators" more money, they'd use it to create jobs, like we should be thankful for the "opportunity" to work for rich ###holes exploiting us. He dismissively talked about the "47%" who would never vote for him because they never pay taxes and were dependent on government services (because he was a free market guy trying to cut government  in the middle of a recession). 

And here's what modern libs don't understand, which is why I dont get along with many modern libs, and why I'm banned from this particular sub this is from. 2012 was an election based on economic populism. Well, all of the elections since were on the economy too, but in 2012, Obama was expanding services, at least temporarily, and Romney was for cutting them to give tax cuts to his rich buddies. Even a lot of traditionally conservative demographics were jumping ship from the GOP in this era, as the recession hit them in the face and they realized, gee, government does things. 

During this era, the only reason the dems did bad was because after 2008 with "hope and change", the democratic base got super unmotivated because Obama proved himself to be centrist AF and not the change they wanted. Sure, he was an improvement over Bush, but he wasn't what a lot of people wanted. Still, he was able to comfortably win 2012 because he did enough that kept people on his side (and even won some over in my case), and because the GOP was going flat out political suicide.

I'd even posit that in some regards, Trump came off as more moderate than Romney in 2016. Especially on economics. He was anti free trade, he wanted to bring the jobs back, and he promised not to go after social security and the like, which both Bush and Romney tried to do. You dont wanna mess with social security, it's the third rail of American politics. Like, Trump didn't start off where he was now. Sure, there were always elements of some radicalism there. The racism, the "lock her up" stuff, etc., but again, that was also fairly popular at the time. Trump tapped into something with the American people whereas Romney alienated them. And if anything, Clinton pivoting right to appeal to the "McCain/Romney vote" alienated me, after I left the GOP to join the left. 

So no, I don't think we were harsh on Romney at all. The harshness was deserved, and if anything I have scorn toward the democrats trying to renovate this man because ERMAHGERD TRUMP! And the reason I mock THAT sentiment is the dems were losing their fricking minds over Trump since 2015, which shows me many of them lack principles (or at least principles compatible with my worldview), when in reality, I didn't view Trump as a serious threat to democracy until 2021 when he pulled his January 6th crap. Before then I was just mockingly dismissive toward the guy like "look at this joke of a guy we have as president." But I wasn't bothered enough with him to actually side with the dems again (well at least the dem establishment) until after the fascist threat was so apparent I couldn't ignore it. Really, I just saw him as a joke until January 6th, then suddenly he was hitler, and that was the beer hall putsch. Even then i didnt realize how serious it was until details came out later. When it happened I was just like "get a load of his stupid supporters throwing a tantrum."

Also...Trump. Given Trump started out moderate, and heck, even started out as a democrat, why do you think he went further right? I don't think a lot of that came FROM HIM. Rather, there's a whole infrastructure of people behind him trying to push a radical agenda on the American people. It wasn't Trump who came up with project 2025, it was the heritage foundation.  And you know what? These people were behind Romney too. And he wouldn't have been very "moderate" at all. Really, I can't even really wrap my heads around people who think romney was a moderate. He was the republican equivalent of kamala harris. Sure, he could pivot moderate if he wanted, but if the political pressure was on him to go the other way, he would. As such, I don't give Romney ANY credit here. 

The only things that came from Trump himself were the rank authoritarianism, and the anti immigrant/trade stuff. Otherwise the dude is, himself, a political chameleon too, and he's just doing what the party wants him to do.

So...can we stop this weird idea that Romney is somehow a "moderate"? This is just a weird thing made up by a bunch of democratic "moderates" who are basically half conservative anyway, who think Romney has more in common with them than they do with, say, me. And I'm not kidding on that. I cant express how much I think the weird third way faction are traitors and sellouts to the liberal cause. Hell, that's why I'm banned from the sub I found the above question on. Because I ended up getting in fights with members because I wasnt a real liberal because I was a bit more moderate/less woke socially, but really like economic progressivism. But these guys are the weird socially super woke, but then fiscally moderate craplibs who think it's perfectly fine to negotiate with romney types on tax rates and cutting safety nets, but that being a bit moderate on immigration and race is a bit too far. Screw them.

But yeah, even the idea that Romney is "moderate" is offensive to my own sensibilities. Wanna know who else is "moderate" in today's GOP? Liz Cheney. Hell, even Mike Pence who is basically a 2000s era Christian nationalist is considered "moderate."

But make no mistake, that's not because the republicans are actually moderate. It's because we've let Trump and the GOP pull the overton window so far right suddenly 2010s era tea party republicans are "moderate" when they were extremist nutcases at the time. Screw Mitt Romney. All my friends hate Mitt Romney.  

Discussing RAM prices

 So.....RAM is expensive. Like, REALLY expensive. Like 3x the price it used to be expensive. The RAM I got part of my microcenter bundle a year ago generally costed around $100 then. Now it costs $330. It's insane. And now Micron, one of the only three western RAM manufacturers is shuttering its customer division to maximize milking that AI hype train, baby! People are saying that the peasants' money isn't good enough any more, and now the consumer market is shrinking because, well, these companies have decided they can only produce so much, and AI data centers pay better. Screw us I guess. 

...*sigh*

Did I ever tell you how much I hate AI? Again, I dont hate the technology itself. I mean, I think it's heavily overrated given it is just a glorified chinese room experiment, but I actually ain't opposed to it itself. I know a lot of lefties are. DEY TUK R JERBS! Yeah, that's why we should have a UBI, dumb###es. But "pure ideology" keeps getting in the way for those guys so they just act like luddites and crap on the tech instead. There, I said it.

But at the same time, I do hate what AI is doing to various industries. Again, jobs apocalypse? I mean, here's how I see it, it took the great depression to get the New Deal, so if it takes mass technological unemployment to get to a UBI and break people out of this insufferable jobist hugbox, so be it. I don't care any more. I welcome it, because as long as the system hobbles along just good enough that it works, people will just cling to the old paradigms, while crapping on my ideas. I wish we could get UBI without introducing such a chaotic element to the economy that screws over so many people employment wise, but again, in a sane world, we'd welcome our AI overlords doing the work for us (assuming they're weak AI), and what really sucks is our social systems that reinforce a paradigm of work an employment to the point we literally beg for more enslavement because the only thing worse than having a job is not having one. Again, my ideas would fix that, or at least attempt to. So again, I'm fine with that stuff.

But with, say, the computing industry? I'm REALLY tired of this AI bubble. Nvidia doesn't give a crap about gamers any more and now low end GPUs are $250-300, which used to be the reasonable midrange models. Now RAM and SSDs are going haywire and Micron is leaving the consumer market. And people are starting to suggest this is the death of affordable computing. All because a bunch of rich people with WAAAY too much money have so much market sway the rest of us don't matter. Why care about consumers buying more RAM when businesses will buy up literally the entire supply of it, and pay better? It's disgusting. 

Honestly, this is where I get into my unified theory of everything about why the economy sucks, but it's income inequality. Fordism was designed with the idea that if you pay your employees decently, they'll buy your products. And that consumerist model is what drove the middle class through the 20th century. but decades of trickle down, with the working and middle classes being hammered from both ends both by rising costs and stagnating wages, have led to a situation where that once central middle class doesn't matter. They're peasants. They don't have money any more. The rich people have the money. So the rich people are all selling everything to each other while more and more people are being shut out from the market. And that's what's happening here.

How do we solve this? Tax the everloving crap out of the rich. My UBI would raise the top marginal tax rate in effect on those guys from 47% (including state and federal taxes) to 67%, and then with other ways of hitting them like wealth taxes, financial transaction taxes, corporate taxes, we fricking invest in UBI and other social safety net programs. You spread the money out, and the profit seeking companies will have to pursue a strategy of not just appealing to the top, but everyone else too. That's how you have a healthy economy. Because this isn't it.

Some people have also been talking IP laws. Like, apparently there are other manufacturers in China but OMG WE CAN'T LET THEM IN THE MARKET BECAUSE THEY STEAL IP. I'm sick and tired of hearing this argument. This might be a controversial opinion, but I think it's popular, but screw IP laws. I ain't saying we shouldn't have some, but most of them are just written in favor of the corporations. And we always have this weird derangement syndrome with China because ERMAHGERD OUR IP LAWS. 

Remember the trans pacific partnership. "IF WE DONT MAKE THE RULES CHINA WILL MAKE THE RULES!" Okay, so what rules do we suggest? Basically taking the American DMCA and enshrining it as the copyright law for the entire pacific rim. That's it, that's what our stake was in this as Americans. How does this benefit us? Blah blah blah job creation when businesses do good we do good. Except we don't. And now AI is doing a lot of the work artists used to do, another reason why people hate AI. But yeah, the entire mentality is if we give all of this money to corporations, it'll trickle down and it never does. IT NEVER DOES. Even before AI. If anything, those laws are anti consumer. They're basically government granted monopolies over certain ideas, concepts, or technologies that stop competition from copying those ideas and competing against the original creators. The argument is that they exist to encourage innovation, and that's the one thing I'll agree with pro IP people on. SOME level of IP is needed to reward companies for innovating, but wasn't the original copyright law like, 7 years or something? Like, okay, here's an exclusive monopoly over this idea for a few years, go, make your money. And then it expires, and then it opens up to everyone. Except then businesses lobbied to expand the laws to like life + 75 years or some crap and now they have a guaranteed monopoly forever. I guess you could argue that if creativity or invention is one's work, it's good to have financial security, but again, I literally want a UBI which gives ironclad financial protection for everyone for life. So...yeah. Some level of legal monopoly, but not exceeding say, 20 years, and then crap should just go open source. And in technology, that can be a LONG time. Even 7 years is probably sufficient given that's the average lifespan of a rather high end computer these days. 

But yeah. We need more competition in this space. That's one of the problems. As Gamernexus pointed out, in the past the memory industry acts like a cartel, and I know from history a lot of the time, they like to keep the supply low to keep prices high. And because no companies can legally enter the market to compete with them because of IP laws, well, that means consumers get screwed. That's the real nature of IP, it's pro business, but really, REALLY anti consumer, and as someone pro consumer, I understand IP laws only exist to reward innovation, and shouldn't exist on such a long time scale as it just causes market stagnation and anti consumer practices. 

So yeah, basically, what I'm saying is that the industry could benefit from competition. AMD and Intel are legally the only two companies that can make X86 chips. Why can't others do it? Copyright law! It's stupid! We got 3 RAM manufacturers with one now refusing to sell to mainstream consumers now. Why? Copyright law! Why does Nvidia have 90%+ market share? Again, IP laws. It's all this stupid intellectual property nonsense. So I say we loosen the laws like A LOT. Again, I'm not entirely ANTI IP. Like, okay, we need SOME level of IP, but I think depending on the industry and the medium those laws should top out at like 20 years and in some cases be less than that. If you can't make your money in that time frame, then that's YOUR problem. The system should reward INNOVATION, not stagnation. Today's innovations are tomorrow's staples that people rely on. Eventually, stuff that is for profit should enter the commons, and it should happen a lot sooner than life+75 years. Otherwise you got these companies sitting on tons of IP, having legal monopolies, and screwing consumers. 

So yeah...imagine if we had more than 3 RAM companies. Maybe new companies could only do DDR4 or something. That's fine for now. Some older respectable systems (like zen 3, alder lake, etc.) can run on DDR4. And new consumers who need more RAM could invest in DDR4 as a stopgap. And if the IP laws are like 7 years, well, DDR5 has been in the consumer space for 4 years? 3 years from now it would be fair game, baby! I mean, it would give us something, you know? 

But yeah, that's how we fix the computing industry and make it less anti consumer. Tax the rich, redistribute the proceeds, and then loosen IP laws.  Problems should sort themselves out from there. Bottom 80% has more money to spend, the top 20% has less, and there's more competition because we don't give people dynasty length IP protections. 

Why I think AI is overrated and why the bubble will eventually burst

 So...with all the overhype of AI, I wanna give some quick thoughts before going to bed to round out the night. People have been speculating, is AI here to stay? or will the bubble burst? yes, and yes. 

AI IS here to stay. It's a useful tool. I mean we have these language models that can bring up all human knowledge in an instant and give semi informed summaries to people. We have robots that can write essays in seconds. We can see people who code being put out of work because of AI. AI IS revolutionizing employment in the 2020s, leading to a lot of technological unemployment.

However, it IS overrated. These models arent perfect. They lie. They hallucinate. Their usefulness is immense, but they cant replace all human labor. They're "weak AI" as I said, chinese room experiment type AI. They're not strong, generalized AI. This isn't the singularity. People are acting like it is.

I also feel like we're massively OVERINVESTING in AI as a society. I mean, that's one of the real reasons I despise it. It's not the tech itself, it's what the corporations are doing. They think this is gonna be this thing that's gonna revolutionize society, and they're trying to ram it down peoples' throats. And I just don't think people are that interested. I know I'm not super interested. I use chatgpt sometimes, but I'm not like a regular every day user. I feel like we try to put AI in everything, and for most things, it just feels forced. Like these companies are trying to force us to adapt AI, and people aren't anywhere as interested as its being sold. The big people interested are other companies, who use it to automate labor. And it can automate some labor, but not all of it. 

Honestly. There is a usefulness to AI. I'm not gonna lie, but people are comparing it to the dotcom bubble of the 90s and I would agree with that. I do think there is aggressive speculation and our society is gripped by this crazy delusion of what AI is, and what it means, and we're WAAAAY overselling it. And I think that the corporations making it buying up all the computing power in the world and sucking up tons of electricity is unsustainable. I think at the end of the day, when the limits of the tech is more apparent and we get past the whole "this isn't strong AI, this is weak AI" distinction, we will eventually get to a point where this bubble is gonna burst. Profit margins of the tech won't be as healthy as indicated. And it will be like the crypto boom when that went bust. Suddenly there's all this RAM and GPUs that no one wants and needs and HOPEFULLY computer prices will go back to normal. 

It will be painful. Between AI actually taking a decent amount of jobs, and the bust causing basically great depression 2.0, we're gonna be in for some hard economic times. I really do think we will be seeing some major economic pain by the end of the trump term. We're seeing it now to some degree, but I dont think we'll REALLY see it until 2026 or 2027, maybe 2028, when we just get to a point of the bubble bursting in a HUGE way. 

And then....boom. Great recession 2.0. I think it'll happen. This AI stuff is the only thing driving our economy right now, otherwise it's kinda dead in the water with trump's tariffs and crap. Jobs are disappearing, consumer spending is down, AI is literally the only thing driving us right now and when that pops, we're gonna see a MAJOR economic contraction. Again, I think it'll be another 2008, honestly. That big. And yeah. I just wanted to give my thoughts on that, and to conclude my train of thought on AI for now. Again, it's a cool tech, but it's MASSIVELY oversold and eventually I think that that bubble is gonna pop as people don't find it anywhere near as useful as its hyped up to be. Like, really, it seems like we're having AI distort the PC hardware markets, and then tech companies try putting AI in everything, but consumers arent as interested in it as they think, and its usefulness is oversold, and I think, as a result, something will pop somewhere eventually. Like, I dont think this is sustainable. This trend seems to be pushed by all these rich guys trying to build a product that no one actually wants to the degree that it's valued. Overinvestment combined with underwhelming return means that eventually we will see a market correction. It's just a matter of time. I say by the end of trump's term.  

Strong AI and human nature (4/10/2007)

 So I decided to post this one after all, as it represents a continuation of thought after the last one. It's a bit cringey given I go off in a direction of focusing on love, hate, and human nature, but it does represent the potential problems of creating a strong AI.

Strong Artificial Intelligence and Human Nature 

The idea of artificial intelligence killing its creators is a prevalent theme in science fiction. If humanity builds strong A.I., which is a model of artificial intelligence with human characteristics like self-awareness, sentience, and emotions, then the possibility of robots rebelling against humans is likely. This is because it will acquire human nature, which has many negative characteristics like hate. If humans build strong A.I., it would be a good idea to treat it with love, which is a positive human characteristic, because a possible reason A.I. would fight humans is because humans mistreat it and show it how to hate.

Building strong A.I. may be dangerous because it might rebel against humans. This is a common scenario in the realm of science fiction. In R.U.R., Dr. Gall and Helena Glory changed the Robots from emotionless automatons into something more “human” (Capek, 40-42). Governments also gave them guns because they used the Robots to fight wars (Capek, 23-24). These two events, along with the robots’ treatment as slaves (Capek, iv), caused them to rebel and destroy humanity (Capek, 24-49). In The Terminator, a military computer defense system named Skynet gained self-awareness and tried to destroy humanity with the weapons that humans gave it (Cameron). Millions of people were killed by nuclear weapons and many more were killed in the war with the machines after the nuclear attack (Cameron). In The Matrix, another war was waged against artificial intelligence (Wachowski). As a result, the humans lost and the robots used them as batteries (Wachowski).

Since A.I. can turn on its creators, it might be a good idea for humans to make sure that they can control the A.I. that they make or even avoid making it altogether. Installing fail-safes into A.I.s’ systems is one way of control and so are laws programmed into their systems like Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics.” It would also be a good idea to use multiple levels of control in case one fails. However, regardless of precautions that humans take, there is always the possibility of A.I. fighting back. It might be better to continue using weak A.I., which is artificial intelligence with no mind of its own. This way, A.I. cannot fight humanity because it cannot think. It would also be more humane for the A.I. itself because an A.I. that cannot think cannot feel mistreated.

One of the main reasons strong A.I. would turn on its creators is human nature. If robots were given “human” characteristics, they may also acquire human flaws in the process. One of these flaws is hate for others who are different. In R.U.R., Domin stated, “nobody can hate man more than man” (Capek, 42). This has been a common problem throughout human history and is still a problem today. White people have enslaved black people in the past, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party killed millions of Jews, and Islamic terrorists currently hate the West. This hate is also one of the primary negative human characteristics that the Robots acquired in R.U.R. (Capek, 27,33). One of the reasons Radius hated humans was because they “are not as strong as the Robots” (Capek, 27). They “are not as skillful as the Robots (Capek, 27). The Robots can do anything (Capek, 27). Humans only give orders” (Capek, 27). Radius believed that Robots were superior to humans (Capek, 27). The only human that the Robots spared was Alquist (Capek, 49). This is because he really was not much different than the Robots because “he works with his hands like the Robots” (Capek, 49). Domin even wanted to take advantage of the Robots’ hate by making national robots so that the Robots resent each other and begin to fight each other instead of the humans (Capek, 33).

Robots also had the human flaw of rebelling against authority and wanting to be in charge. Some rebellion is good and healthy for society, like the Thirteen Colonies rebelling against Great Britain. However, rebellion is also destructive and not always done for the right reasons. R.U.R.’s Robots rebelled not just for freedom, but so that they could be the ones in charge (Capek, 27). When Radius went crazy, he stated that he didn’t “want a master” but that he wanted “to be master” instead (Capek, 27).

Human nature can even pervert good ideas. Domin made the Robots to free everyone from work so that people would “live only to perfect” themselves (Capek, 15). He wanted to eliminate poverty and toil (Capek, 15). While this is a very good idea fundamentally, it didn’t unfold that way (Capek, 23-58). Instead of using Robots to solve the problems of humanity, humans perverted this plan by giving the Robots guns using them as soldiers to fight wars (Capek, 23-24). Then they killed all of the humans except for Alquist because they hated the humans and they had all of the guns (Capek 23-58).

Despite all of these negative characteristics of human nature, it is still is not completely evil. Love is one of the characteristics of human nature that is positive. Love keeps the human race going. It is what saved the Robot’s “species” in R.U.R. (Capek, 55-58). The secret of how to make Robots was destroyed by the humans (Capek, 45), and the humans who knew how to make the Robots from memory were killed (Capek, 54). The Robots’ hate for humanity actually doomed them to extinction (Capek, 54). Love is what saved them (Capek, 55-58). Love not only saved Primus and Helena from being dissected in Alquist’s attempt to rediscover the secret of how the Robots were made, but it also allowed the Robots to reproduce themselves in a similar way humans reproduce themselves (Capek, 55-58). In a world where there is a lot of hate and violence, love saves the world from destroying itself (Capek, 55-58).

Love might be the solution to the problem of strong A.I. rebelling against humans. Part of the reason why strong A.I. rebels in movies and books is because humanity provokes it to rebel and sometimes even teaches A.I. to hate. In R.U.R., humans used the robots as slaves (Capek, iv). Like many slaves, the Robots did not feel like working for humans and wanted to be free (Capek, 24, 27). One of the major reasons the robots rebelled was because of their enslavement (Capek, 24, 27). The scenario is similar in Blade Runner, where humans used the replicants as slaves and also gave them limited lifespans (Scott). As a result, the replicants rebelled and were subsequently made illegal on earth (Scott). Later on, a replicant named Roy killed Dr. Tyrell, his creator, for not being able to give him more life (Scott). Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein makes the theme of provoking humanity’s creation to despise humans even clearer. Frankenstein’s monster originally did love humans (Shelley, 114). It wanted to be friends with humanity (Shelly, 114). However, everyone, including Dr. Frankenstein himself, rejected him (Shelly, 55-171). As a result, the monster became homicidal (Shelly, 74-255). Skynet from The Terminator was built to destroy humans (Cameron). It learned to be evil because it was programmed to destroy (Cameron). Robots, replicants, Skynet, and the monster learned to be evil from humans themselves. If humans treat their creations better than they did in these movies, they might treat humans better in return. Likewise, if humans treat each other better than they currently do, they might not eventually destroy themselves because wars and A.I. like Skynet would be unnecessary (Cameron). It is still possible that strong A.I. can turn on humanity no matter how it is treated, but treating it well would lessen the risk of rebellion.

If humanity builds strong A.I., it may acquire human nature, which has many negative characteristics like hate, rebellion, and perversion of good. If it is built, humanity should be careful so that it does not destroy the human race. Love, a positive human characteristic, is probably one of them best ways to keep A.I. from rebelling. Love saved the Robots of R.U.R. from extinction (Capek, 55-58), and it can also save humanity. Perhaps if humans create robots with human nature, loving and respecting them will stop them from hurting and killing others. If humanity treated its creation well in R.U.R., Frankenstein, and Blade Runner, maybe they would not harm their creators. If humans treated each other well, Skynet from The Terminator would have never been built and there would not have been a nuclear war (Cameron).

 Reaction now

 So...I'm gonna ignore a lot of the love and hate and human nature stuff as that clearly seems to be me trying to shoehorn my Christian worldview into this, but uh...yeah. I'm leery of the idea of creating an actual STRONG AI, ie, an AI that actually is intelligent in the way humans are, has independent thought, and experiences things. Again, for all the hype around chatGPT and generative AI in the 2020s, that's just weak AI. It's a language model, as I discussed in the previous article. 

As for strong AI, I'd generally be opposed to create it, for a few reasons. 

First of all, I think a common thread here with RUR, frankenstein, etc., is in a lot of these situations, we create these beings for bad reasons, like RUR was basically robots doing a marxist revolution. They kinda gained class consciousness and saw us as oppressors, as did the blade runner replicants in some situations. Like...creating machines to do work for us is great, creating conscious beings to do work for us is not, and machines might come to resent us mainly because they realize they're enslaving them and wanna be free. So we gotta keep THAT in mind. 

Beyond that, such an AI would need to be kept on a leash. I thought I had another essay about how to regulate such AI where I used a modified version of asimov's three laws, but I can't find that. Either way, not all content I wrote in this class is here, this is mostly papers I turned in for a grade, so that's the stuff that appears here, and it's very well possible that I had more content that I just can't find. 

But yeah, i think with that I even recognized, given I robot (2004) that even those laws are flawed. Look what happened when the AI decided to basically save us from ourselves and used some twisted logic to basically force authoritarianism on us for our own good. You know? Like, even "love" can't save us if the logic becomes twisted.

Honestly, I dont think we should open pandora's box of strong AI. Weak AI like we have, have at it. As we established chatGPT and similar models arent ACTUALLY conscious. They don't experience things, they cant think for themselves. They're just really advanced autocomplete. They're useful, don't get me wrong, and I do think they'll take over SOME human labor, but people acting like these things are gonna be the death of us is off. 

The fact is, we do not have the capabilities to create strong AI to my knowledge at this time. Generative AI is just weak AI. And I do wanna reinforce that, as the reason I'm posting these is to really reevaluate these topics in the context of current events and my 2020 ways of thinking.  

Either way, we can kinda see where I've come up with some of these ideas that I have now. Automation of labor, stuff like that. I'm ALL for that. And I recognize that as of now, we're not talking about like some singularity type strong AI here, we're just having weak AIs do stuff. And that falls well within the parameters of what I find acceptable. And you know what? I DO think the automation of labor is a good thing, and that creating an army of robots to do work for us is an admirable goal. RUR for example, despite it going horribly wrong, is one of those works that does influence me even now, because I love that early-mid 20th century attitude toward abolishing work and feel like we lost something and now live in a dystopia. It IS a good goal. We just don't want sentient robots rebelling against us, that's bad. But again, we dont have to worry about that any time soon, so, BRING ON THE AI JOB APOCALYPSE BABY!