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418
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • I agree with you. I'm not saying we should leave it to the market and I'm sorry if I didn't express myself clearly enough.
    My point was that not being an asshole and working towards a society where we treat each other like decent human beings should be a valuable goal and even if it wasn't the profitable thing to do, we should be prepared to give up something in exchange for it. If it turns out it is ALSO the profitable thing to do, even better, because at that point even the Musks of the world will get around to it eventually, but I mean for us regular and hopefully decent human beings....

    The thing is that a lot of people who advocate for it don't seem to be willing to accept even minor inconveniences like getting off Facebook or X, let alone losing some actual potential money.

  • I get your point and you're right, thanks, I used "regulated" wrong. I meant that the expectation, if the market worked as advertised, is that companies that do keep DEI policies in place would have a competitive advantage over others. Then, clearly, sucking up to whoever's in power has a much larger effect on these companies' profits, so the market is probably not working as advertised....

  • That part I don't know. I'm not saying it's not true, I certainly see the reasoning for why it should be good for business. But the classic conservative counter-argument is that you shouldn't need to regulate it, because The Mythical Free Market should ensure that companies with a more diverse workforce out-compete the others.

    So I prefer to think that sometimes you do things that are right just because you think they are right and even if they cost you. And as part of that, you vote with your wallet and maybe use products that are slightly less shiny and convenient than others because the companies behind them treat people more nicely. And then the Mythical Free Market does also start taking care of things and allowing these nicer companies to survive and even out-compete the Metas of this world. (But we're all here discussing on Lemmy, so probably I'm already preaching to the choir on this one)

  • Accepting diversity as part of life and not making life more miserable for people just because they don't look like you or have your same taste, gender or religious beliefs shouldn't be far left or far anything. It's just the decent thing to do. It's ironic how in the US the political side that aligns themselves more closely with radical Christian beliefs is so against that view

  • He wasn't. Mark used to be a sweet kid, but he's been radicalised by all the shit he reads on Facebook. It's not too late, Mark, delete your social media profiles, stay away from that poisonous hellhole!

  • Trump might be just a conman and he is 78; his main goal now might be just to live comfortably and stay out of jail for the few remaining minutes, days or years he will statistically survive his age and unhealthy lifestyle But Musk is a person with Big Goals, he's selling actual stuff; and the type of stuff he sells happens to be very sensitive to the political climate.

    Some of Musk's products are so big and expensive that his target customers are whole Countries: Space rockets, Satellite communication systems, Giga factories. Here's Musk peddling his stuff to Italy's far-right government. Other Musk products, like Tesla EVs, are sensitive to governments' policies on green transition, incentives, protectionism from China's cheaper (and by now better) EVs.

    So far, billionaire businessman were mostly keeping a friendly, progressive mask and were leaving it to their lobbyists to do the dirty work of convincing or bribing politicians. Musk is by all accounts a prima donna and certified megalomaniac and likes to take these matters into his own hands. He decided that a little push here and there to whoever is in power right now takes too long and that it's more effective to just control the whole thing directly. He had a spectacular success with the far right and Trump, so he's now repeating the same playbook in other countries (and other billionaire pals, like Zuckerberg, are starting to follow suit too, so they can finally stop pretending they are real human beings).

    The UK example of Musk pushing Brexiter Farage and then dumping him because not far-right enough for his taste is almost comical. And here's Musk endorsing far-right AfD in Germany.

  • I suspect all these declarations of annexing Canada or renaming the Gulf of Mexico are more part of Musk's strategy to export their new brand of Fascism worldwide. Be in the news cycle everyday, court (and probably fund) the most far-right political parties in every market country, all the shit we attributed to Putin all these years.

  • Goldman Sachs, quote from the article:

    “AI technology is exceptionally expensive, and to justify those costs, the technology must be able to solve complex problems, which it isn’t designed to do.”

    Generative AI can indeed do impressive things from a technical standpoint, but not enough revenue has been generated so far to offset the enormous costs. Like for other technologies, It might just take time (remember how many billions Amazon burned before turning into a cash-generating machine? And Uber has also just started turning some profit) + a great deal of enshittification once more people and companies are dependent. Or it might just be a bubble.

    As humans we're not great at predicting these things including of course me. My personal prediction? A few companies will make money, especially the ones that start selling AI as a service at increasingly high costs, many others will fail and both AI enthusiasts and detractors will claim they were right all along.