Great writeup, thanks! Really helped in connecting the fragmented concepts in my head.
So that tracks with my general understanding of finance capitalism, but I wasn’t able to mesh the bag-holding grift with the rent-seeking mechanism until you explained it.
The SpaceX thing is a blatant example of value transfer from retirement accounts to capitalists, another step in the decoupling of imperialist-worker/PMC interests from capitalist interests. It seems like the whole stock market has become primed to do that as the biggest companies shift to rent-seeking over production.
So on a surface level the AI money burn might be a temporary value transfer from monopoly-seeking capitalist to consumers, but that transfer is heavily subsidized on so many levels that it might be more of a transfer from public funds/infrastructure/resources to, eventually, the company that wins the monopoly race. But whether AI can even get to that point (of either enforceable monopoly or profitability even with monopoly) seems questionable to me.
Right, it’s all about profit maximization within the rules of the system, and it’s much easier to maximize profit doing a scam than building something real. So everything becomes a Potemkin village because that’s how you make money. The AI grift is kind of genius because they managed to tie the narrative to national security now. Since China is developing AI as well, this has become an industry that can’t be allowed to fail. My expectation is what’s gonna happen in the end is that we’ll see the bubble pop, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are just going to get bailouts and then live off government contracts similarly to the military industry.
Great writeup, thanks! Really helped in connecting the fragmented concepts in my head.
So that tracks with my general understanding of finance capitalism, but I wasn’t able to mesh the bag-holding grift with the rent-seeking mechanism until you explained it.
The SpaceX thing is a blatant example of value transfer from retirement accounts to capitalists, another step in the decoupling of imperialist-worker/PMC interests from capitalist interests. It seems like the whole stock market has become primed to do that as the biggest companies shift to rent-seeking over production.
So on a surface level the AI money burn might be a temporary value transfer from monopoly-seeking capitalist to consumers, but that transfer is heavily subsidized on so many levels that it might be more of a transfer from public funds/infrastructure/resources to, eventually, the company that wins the monopoly race. But whether AI can even get to that point (of either enforceable monopoly or profitability even with monopoly) seems questionable to me.
Right, it’s all about profit maximization within the rules of the system, and it’s much easier to maximize profit doing a scam than building something real. So everything becomes a Potemkin village because that’s how you make money. The AI grift is kind of genius because they managed to tie the narrative to national security now. Since China is developing AI as well, this has become an industry that can’t be allowed to fail. My expectation is what’s gonna happen in the end is that we’ll see the bubble pop, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are just going to get bailouts and then live off government contracts similarly to the military industry.