>With proper constraints, there is a major positive externality in aggregating public and private information through market mechanisms. Robin Hanson wrote about this subject extensively. Dismissing it outright as a zero-sum game is a bit naive.
It's only gambling when you are betting of completely random events. If you know what the odds are of something happening, even with some approximation, then it is not gambling.
Of course, over 99% people placing bets on Polymarket are gamblers, but some aren't.
>I often find myself thinking about the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who argued in the introduction of After Virtue that modernity had destroyed the shared moral language once supplied by traditions and religion, leaving us with only the language of individual preference. Virtue did not disappear, I think, so much as it died and was reincarnated as the market. It is now the market that tells us what things are worth, what events matter, whose predictions are correct, who is winning, who counts. Money has, in a strange way, become the last moral arbiter standing—the final universal language that a pluralistic, distrustful, post-institutional society can use to communicate with itself.
After traditions and religion become less important, virtue wasn't replaced by money and market but by status seeking. We are all now comparatively rich to how we were 50 years ago or to people from third world countries. So money doesn't make a big difference, but status does. Followers, approvals, being highly viewed in a particular niche is much more valuable for many people than money.
And even money, when they are important, they aren't important because one can buy good and service, money are important because they can confer status.
So my conjecture is that it's status seeking what might be the end goal for many people in the West and what is provoking big issues for societies, like severely declining birth rates.
>A 2023 Wall Street Journal poll found that Americans are pulling away from practically every value that once defined national life—patriotism, religion, community, family. Young people care less than their parents about marriage, children, or faith. But nature, abhorring a vacuum, is filling the moral void left by retreating institutions with the market. Money has become our final virtue.
That does not only explain gambling but explains many things. And it's not just about the US, it's about the whole West.
Yes, but the hardware they use for inference like Huawei Ascend 910C is less efficient than Nvidia H100 used in US due to the difference in the process node.
That won’t work for the home hobbyist 2.4KW of GPU alone plus a 350W threadripper pro with enough PCIe lanes to feed them. You’re looking at close to twice the average US household electricity circuit’s capacity just to run the machine under load.
A cluster of 4 Apple’s M3 ultra Mac studios by comparisons will consume near 1100W under load.
>Why has your approach not been toward passing active legislation that protects these rights going forward?
Maybe because the Commission holds the true power and the commissioners aren't directly elected by the people so you don't have any leverage against the commissioners. You can't just say "behave nicely or we won't support you at the next elections".
That's not true. The commission do the bidding of the Council or other elected national ministers. Re-posting my comment:
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They're just like the civil service in the UK, or any other country. They do the bidding of our nationally elected governments. Nearly all proposals coming from the commission originate from the national governments.
So a law:
Starts with member states directly elected ministers pushing and agenda or the council (again elected) agreeing to push an agenda -> Commissioners take this agenda and work with it to propose law (using EU civil service like any other country does) -> The law then gets voted on by the EU directly elected ministers, who are meant to (and do) represent the people of the states more directly.
Everything in that step is as democratic as any other nation (or nearly).
Most people really don't understand the EU - and yes, it is confusing. This unfortunately makes it easy for certain interests to weaponise this misunderstanding. I've spent years (and years) explaining these concepts, but ultimately like any other argument, this is not a debate from logic, everyone has already made up their minds on emotion or ideology and nothing will make a difference.
It is true though. He said "directly elected by the people" and they are obviously not. If we are being honest, the system where privileged few select other privileged few among themselves is called oligarchy.
What is true? There are many true statements that are meaningless in the context. The commission isn't elected is true. But understanding how they start working on laws is the context, and key to understanding why that doesn't really matter.
People don't want you to look deeper. They want you only have the most shallow understanding, because that allows them to manipulate more easily.
You kind of can, but you get to only vote for the full package i.e. the party which wins the national elections will get to appoint its own commissioner. Most people obviously only care about the domestic issues and likely will not change their vote regardless of what the appointed commissioner thinks or does.
The commissioners are a few but the people who make the actual bills and policies are clerks and bureaucrats who were never elected neither directly nor indirectly. And while the commissioners do change, the EU bureaucrats never change.
They're just like the civil service in the UK, or any other country. They do the bidding of our nationally elected governments. Nearly all proposals coming from the commission originate from the national governments.
So a law:
Starts with member states directly elected ministers pushing and agenda or the council (again elected) agreeing to push an agenda
->
Commissioners take this agenda and work with it to propose law (using EU civil service like any other country does)
->
The law then gets voted on by the EU directly elected ministers, who are meant to (and do) represent the people of the states more directly.
Everything in that step is as democratic as any other nation (or nearly).
Most people really don't understand the EU - and yes, it is confusing. This unfortunately makes it easy for certain interests to weaponise this misunderstanding. I've spent years (and years) explaining these concepts, but ultimately like any other argument, this is not a debate from logic, everyone has already made up their minds on emotion or ideology and nothing will make a difference.
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