Did they reject data centers? Or did they represent the current ownership model behind data centers?
Tech “ownership models” have accelerated the separation of haves and have nots. I’ve wondered if datacenters were regulated such that they become public goods (libraries, power and water infra, etc), if the public would invest more agreeably in them.
"No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright’s scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used."
— Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Part IV, Ch. 15, Section 5: “The Strife Between Workman and Machine”
And agreed, when people have a problem with data centers, it isn't because of new technology, it's because the data centers represent taking resources (water, electricity, RAM) and power away (work as social leverage) from the people.
Because tech has all the money and all the power these days. They do whatever they want with basically unlimited funds. Big tech has reshaped everything the internet used to be just because they can. Our entire workspace is getting reshaped and who is going to benefit the most? Large tech companies.
Most people feel like they have no say in anything that is going on because a handful of insanely large tech companies are just deciding the future for everyone, and it's in their own best interest- not the best interest of the poeple.
With more nuance, the oligarchs, shell companies, and wealth inequality that flourishes in less restricted capitalism. The hubris the winners demonstrate, and the belittling of economic losers, are also a significant factor.
Weird place for a lefty to come in. Top comment thread are center-left, you're deep in the euro right/libertarian end of a American centrist comment thread?
(Sorry, I compulsively read the comment history of the right/libertarians. The way their beliefs are glued together fascinate me in a way, it's fun to try to figure out where they are living to the municipal level .. the more one values privacy, the less one should have it, privacy is my "anti-right" of the month, I disagree violently with Acemoglu on free speech as well with somewhat parallel justifications )
> Weird place for a lefty to come in. Top comment thread are center-left, you're deep in the right/libertarian end of a centrist comment thread?
Weird place to come in and dissuade discussions between differing view points. This is at the root of our difficulty in finding compromise and ending the hyperbolic extremes on the left and right.
> I disagree violently with Acemoglu on free speech
In what sense? What is your perspective on his perspective and why it is wrong?
My gaps with Acemoglu et al re: "Building Pro-Worker Ai" is that there is handwaving at how we incentivize augmentation over full automation, and how new jobs and tasks are created.
You're right to try to bridge. But here I think it's too far.
Given that plenty of people voting Republican are also against datacenters, the first libertarians to try to reach for might be the self-funded low TAM business owners or local solopreneurs who actually value their privacy/independence (datacenters being an arm of the surveillance-industry complex)
Acemoglu, later. I need to distill my own thoughts on this, but it's roughly that speech channels should be regulated as a public good like datacenters
Are you familiar with Michael Sandel? The talks between him and Acemoglu are quite good.
> speech channels should be regulated as a public good like datacenters
Who decides what channels and what speech? My understanding is that Acemoglu believes algorithmic driving of speech (up or down) should be regulated, but not speech generally.
I'm playing around with an idea for "tickle up government" whereby local jurisdictions are free to do more experimentation and ideas that work out in practice get lifted up - as opposed to the top-down, domination based ideas coming from the far left and hard right.
No. Cursory questioning of Gemini seems to suggest that Sandel has thought more about the "economics of free speech as a public good". Cool.
>Who decides what channels and what speech?
I didn't phrase that properly. OP of this thread put that thought in my head. Example. Speech is "better" regulated here in HN than on X, Mastodon, Reddit what have you. The who are the mods of course. We have a more effective meritocracy here than USG, meaning tomhow is not too shabby either. But it is topdown
So. Trickle up version of meritocratic mod-selection? Seems like thats what some parts of Reddit do, know any specifics/subs?
Tech “ownership models” have accelerated the separation of haves and have nots. I’ve wondered if datacenters were regulated such that they become public goods (libraries, power and water infra, etc), if the public would invest more agreeably in them.
Just policy thinking out loud.