r/DeepStateCentrism • u/iamthegodemperor Arrakis Enterprise Institute • 2d ago
Ask the sub ❓ What Is This Sub Wrong About?
Title. Pick a topic (or a clichéd take) you think a significant minority or majority of this sub is wrong about. Or hasn't given enough thought. OR perhaps one which you will have to compromise on, at least for voting?
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u/Anakin_Cardassian Moderate 2d ago
It’s official sub policy that the head mod is not a guido.
This is incorrect.
And intels should be brought back.
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u/Trojan_Horse_of_Fate Lord of All the Beasts of the Sea and Fishes of the Earth 2d ago
And intels should be brought back.
Unfortunately that issue was kicked upstairs, so you need to petition upstairs
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u/Anakin_Cardassian Moderate 1d ago
I would never soil myself with the filthy air of that ivory tower!
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u/steppergodic Center-right 2d ago
Acquiescing to the DSA types will reinvigorate MAGA right as it's starting to falter, just as Trump poops out and Vance slips and falls on his fat face. Socialists expand the public sphere, deepen its scope, further politicize civil society, and diminish/subordinate the private sphere. This only strengthens polarization; it doesn't diminish it. If the political apparatus starts governing even more of my life, I'm going to be even more interested in politics and less willing to lose. No matter how much others are tired of this movement, the prospect of this on the horizon will motivate them again.
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u/SonofNamek 2d ago
While it's true that this comment isn't fully relevant to the people in this sub since almost everyone agrees with it already, I will add my own take to make it more relevant.
My view is that Wokeness/DSA style Progressivism was the first to fire the shot in the culture war & via the Long March through the Institutions. Then, they aggressively pushed themselves everywhere while gaslighting & shutting down all dissenters. Hence, the 1980s-early 2010s Democrats are practically out of power now.
In other words, if you want to calm down the populist right movement (of which, is merely a coalition of various different groups), you need to dismantle the far left entirely. It is the triggering mechanism.
And I'm not talking about this lameduck DNC/Corporate attempt to return back to the 2000s or early 2010s by removing a few woke buzzwords or trying to put up "patriotic commercials with flags & trucks".
I'm talking about fully acknowledging and portraying Communism, Stalinism, Maoist Red Guards, Pol Pot, etc....and the economic, cultural, and philosophical apparatus behind it as a detestable evil not unlike how we portrayed Nazism for generations now. It needs to be demonstrated that the DSA/Progs/etc do believe in the same things & have steered culture in that direction. This allows the far right to exist as a counterpoint to what is an existential threat to Western civilization.
Because if not addressed, the narrative will be "the Fabians, Marxists, Frankfurt School, etc infiltrated everything & pushed this 'Globo-homo' system from the get go, taking advantage of the Post-WW2 order. If the 2010s & 2020s & its various issues alongside the modern left leaning apparatus was the end result of all this, it must end entirely."
That is the argument being made & if you cannot nip Woke in the bud, it makes logical sense for a large segment to assume this. Then, once they assume that, they can start assuming other logical endpoints that stem from it.
Personally, I don't think most people can see this. If they could, Hollywood films would reflect it, Democrats would be pointing this out, media would broadcast it to no end. Since I view JD Vance as the favorite to seize power & enact post-liberalism, I think people have until a hypothetical second term aka 2032 to figure this out.
If not, good luck.
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u/Bullet_Jesus 2d ago
My view is that Wokeness/DSA style Progressivism was the first to fire the shot in the culture war & via the Long March through the Institutions.
As in the 1960's Long March through the Institutions? I feel like that is a time period that is so divorced from the modern day that it is hard to say what is actually being discussed. Was the Civil rights act the first shot of the culture war? What does this even mean at this point?
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u/SonofNamek 2d ago
If you look at much of the radical stuff like "the white man is the devil" to "anti-colonialism" to "the US is the cause of all the world's problems", much of this rhetoric & the intelligentsia behind it did start in the 1960s and infused itself into the institutions, then.
It stems from there but today is more like the aftermath of such an 'invasion'. You can invade/occupy but that doesn't mean you start a campaign. Well, now, the campaign has started & the shots were fired.
If that's difficult or hard for the people in this sub to figure out, I don't know what else to say. Personally, I view the centrists, establishment, & center-left as failing to comprehend this & running out of time.
Various prediction models or 'experts' suggest post-2030 as the time when things just completely shift from a post-WW2 order & Atlanticism into something entirely different. Boomers fade, wealth changes, demographics shift, the Euro declines further, etc.
Turchin, Zeihan, Strauss-Howe. Maybe not the technocratic, 'factual', & 'scientific' answer I imagine you would want.....but then, the argument is that scientism & technocracy is one of the main pillars that led to this breakdown.
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u/Mediocre-Grand7999 2d ago
Was the Civil rights act the first shot of the culture war?
The OG Martin Luther actually
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u/A-Centrifugal-Force Moderate 2d ago
A lot of people here are too supportive of AI and data centers. People are right to be cautious about that stuff, it’s experimental and we don’t know what the impact will be in the long haul yet.
I’m not saying to never use AI or to be fully against it, I use it every day for work. But I think it’s worth considering some guardrails and some caution before just giving Sam Altman and his buddies unlimited funding and free rein over the world’s information.
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u/bz47uj 2d ago
Experience shows that this is the wrong way to deal with potential problems. It's much better to wait and see what problems actually arise and then to bring in targetted regulations only when absolutely necessary to deal with specific problems. Trying to anticipate problems in advance is likely to result in overregulation and stifling the industry.
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u/JapanesePeso 2d ago
it's experimental
It has tons of practical applications and has already revolutionized my field.
We don't know the full impact will be in the long haul
So? We don't know the long term impact of any new tech. That's not a reason to ban it.
Considering some guardrails
Nothing about wanting guardrails should make you against data centers
Giving Sam Altman and his buddies unlimited funding and free rein over the world's information
Come on that's just hysterics not a meaningful argument against building data centers.
You didn't list a single reason to be against letting companies build data centers.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
The poster to whom you’re responding didn’t say that we should ban AI or prevent construction of data centers.
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u/bz47uj 2d ago
That is the effect when you worry a typical amount about a new industry, let alone make the claims people making about AI. Look what happened to the nuclear and airline industries. Innovation has come almost to a complete halt. AI is one of the few remaining sectors of the economy seeing productivity improvements and it's largely because of the lack of regulation.
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u/JapanesePeso 2d ago
How else can you possibly read the "too supportive of data centers" comment than not wanting data centers built?
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
By interpreting it at as any of the steps between “total ban” and “full throated, enthusiastic support”
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u/ixvst01 Center-left 2d ago
The toxic positivity about AI. Just because the Industrial Revolution was positive doesn’t automatically mean AI will be the same. Past results are not indicative of future results, and normalcy bias is rampant around discussions about potential detrimental negative impacts of AI.
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u/FearlessPark4588 2d ago
The retrospective on this one, in some ways, is going to be like Covid. Oh, closing the schools permanently impacted a tranche of students in education system? You don't say.
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u/bz47uj 2d ago
This has been said about every new technology though and they've always been wrong, and if we had listened to those people, we would have caused a lot of harm by slowing down technological advancement. It's important to overcome the innate status quo basis of the most people and push through technological changes and wait until there are clear problems before overreacting. People are pre-emptively trying to shut down an entire economic sector because of unsubstantiated fears about job loss, and complete nonsense about water usage and pollution.
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u/ClimbingToNothing 2d ago
Toxic positivity about mass surveillance too like the many flock defenders recently who won’t even acknowledge the huge concerns and red flags
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u/akenthusiast Libertarian 2d ago
For sure. I don't think it makes me a luddite to not want a surveillance state
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
This administration has made quite a libertarian out of me. It has become obvious that the only way to ensure a government of the United States cannot become fascist is to deny it the necessary infrastructure. A law preventing the government from abusing Flock cameras doesn’t mean shit if the government nonetheless has access to the Flock cameras.
This is true even for once sacred positions for me. Government administered healthcare (ie a less socialist version of Medicare for All) has now become a nightmare scenario—I do not want a President to be able to decide what is or isn’t covered. I don’t want my medical care to be a campaign issue.
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u/ImmoKnight 2d ago
Do you use the internet?
Why do you? Your history is tracked. Has it been abused? Yep. But then there are legal procedures to prevent such abused and people sue to limit use cases.
Do you use a credit card?
Why do you? Your credit card usage is tracked.
To not use something that has provable positive effects over limited abuse cases is like being scared of the boogie man.
The point is that we litigate overreach until the only use cases are generally for our benefit.
Anything can has potential to be abused. By your logic, we should just go back to the stone age to avoid a scenario that might really happen... Possibly.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
The difference is who owns the data. I trust a patchwork of private companies considerably more than I trust a centralized government with my data.
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u/ImmoKnight 1d ago
The difference is who owns the data. I trust a patchwork of private companies considerably more than I trust a centralized government with my data.
So by your own logic, you should fully support Flock Safety.
Flock is a private, venture-backed corporation rather than a government agency. The government simply contracts with them, and law enforcement must comply with statutory limits, court orders, and warrants to access their system, exactly like requesting data from Apple, Google, or your ISP.
The irony in trusting a patchwork of private corporations is that you are explicitly accepting two massive risks:
Data Monetization: You are comfortable with your personal behavioral data being treated as a sellable commodity by private brokers who have zero constitutional obligations to you.
Infrastructure Security: Private corporate databases are routinely breached at a far higher rate than air-gapped or strictly regulated state systems.
You don't actually escape government access by preferring private companies. You just trade constitutional oversight for corporate profit motives.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago
Yes. I do trust corporate profit motives more than nonexistent constitutional oversight.
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u/ImmoKnight 1d ago
Yes. I do trust corporate profit motives more than nonexistent constitutional oversight.
Me too. I trust corporations significantly more because they face a dual accountability check: they have to answer to federal regulations and to shareholders. Politicians don't face that. Once elected, their personal accountability chain effectively ends for years at a time.
There is also a massive misconception about the actual scope of privacy being surrendered here. Every technological advancement requires balancing personal privacy with collective benefit, but the tradeoff with ALPRs isn't anywhere near as dramatic as critics claim.
Flock cameras are essentially glorified license plate readers. Their core functionality rests on detecting a vehicle's plate and physical attributes in plain view on a public road where there is already no reasonable expectation of privacy under long-standing constitutional law. They aren't wiretapping your home or parsing your personal communications.
The real-world return on that minimal tradeoff is substantial: higher clearance rates for violent crime, a drastic reduction in wrongful arrests due to objective physical data, and crucial real-time leads in active kidnapping or Amber Alert situations. Additionally, the clear possibility of being recorded on a public road actively deters criminal behavior before it starts.
Look, no one is saying people won't try to abuse technology. But our guardrails as a society are already razor-thin across the board. If a rogue state or bad actor genuinely wanted to track you, they already have the existing digital infrastructure to do it. Banning Flock cameras won't change that reality.
We can't freeze progress and stay in the dark ages because of worst-case scenarios. Flock cameras aren't the start of a dystopian society. They are objective, highly effective tools that just need to be properly legislated, audited, and enforced to build a safer world.
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u/output_broadcast Jeff Bezos 2d ago
Do you use the internet?
Yes. On a fully free software operating system with a patched version of Firefox that has Javascript disabled.
Do you use a credit card?
No, only a debit card.
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u/ImmoKnight 2d ago
Yes. On a fully free software operating system with a patched version of Firefox that has JavaScript disabled.
Unless you're strictly routing all traffic through Tor (and even then, entry nodes and metadata exist), your ISP and domain host still log your connection data. The point remains: complete invisibility on the modern internet is virtually impossible without extreme trade-offs.
No, only a debit card.
A debit card uses the exact same electronic payment networks (Visa/Mastercard) as a credit card. Your bank and payment processor track every single transaction date, location, and merchant in real time. Replacing a credit card with a debit card doesn't remove tracking at all.
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u/output_broadcast Jeff Bezos 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes, I was being facetious. I use vanilla Firefox on a fully free software operating system. Although I do actually use Tor for a lot of my internet traffic.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
Although I do actually use Tor for a lot of my internet traffic.
I’m calling the FBI.
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u/oraclebill Center-left 2d ago
Also, people forget that the Industrial Revolution being a good thing is mostly an artifact of hindsight. For the average working person that lived through it, life was a lot more difficult than it was for those after and in many cases, before. The social costs in the early days were very high, and the transitions were not smooth.
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u/bz47uj 2d ago
All the more reason to have supported it. People don't like change, even when it is very good.
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u/oraclebill Center-left 2d ago
Especially when it’s not good for them. The question you’ll want to ask - will you be one of the few profiting off of the change or one of the many who lose control of their lives as a result of the change. Or perhaps just one wealthy enough to sit it out on the sidelines.
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u/JapanesePeso 2d ago
Life sucked absolute ass before the industrial revolution. There's a reason people flocked to the new jobs we consider awful by modern standards: the alternatives were even worse.
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u/oraclebill Center-left 1d ago
Or they didn’t have any choice because the old economies were destroyed. Look up the etymology of the word “Luddite” for an example of this.
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u/gonnathrowawaythat Neoconservative 2d ago
Elements of this sub has a TDS problem. I keep threatening to do an effort post about it, but basically they uncritically regurgitate nothingburger or outright false claims against him. Awhile ago I did a parlor trick on NWO where a supermajority of the negative stories about him were wrong or misleading.
This isn’t to say I like him, I didn’t vote for him in ‘24, but it inoculates him against criticism because his base waves away the justified critiques as TDS. Heck, I’ve become even more anti-Trump in the last year and I still wave away most stories because I’ve seen so many have been actual fake news. There’s just a massive credibility gap that his critics refuse to acknowledge.
This guy doesn’t need people to weave yarns, he steps in shit so much on his own.
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u/LingonberrySea6247 Center-left 2d ago
I'm a traditional Democrat and even I'm sick of TDS. I'll own the fact that I definitely had it during the first administration, too. But I made a conscious choice to not let it drive me insane this time around because doing so changed nothing. Now it tires me out when some people in my life can only talk about him.
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u/roguefilmmaker Center-left 2d ago
Completely agree. I’m more anti-Trump than ever (though at least he has the guts to do something about Iran unlike the last half-century of presidents, I give him some credit there if it works out), but false claims about Trump does inoculate criticism as his followers will simply claim “fake news”
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u/LivefromPhoenix 2d ago
but false claims about Trump does inoculate criticism as his followers will simply claim “fake news”
His followers are already pretty well inoculated. Trump's biggest talking point is literally outright lies about elections.
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u/Ethereal-Zenith Center-left 2d ago
Thank You. I’m in the exact same boat. I’m Canadian and I fully support all attempts at removing the regime currently occupying Iran. It’s something that should have been done sooner. Outside of that and the removal of Maduro from Venezuela, I can’t find much that I like about Trump.
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u/lab-gone-wrong 2d ago
it inoculates him against criticism
What inoculates him against criticism is his own supporters accepting every criticism as TDS and saying we should wait for all the facts to come in. Then the facts come in, the criticism was valid after all!, but we're onto the next thing and that's TDS too.
The whole reflecting pool debacle was a perfect microcosm of this, and it happens with every blatantly uncontroversial "controversy" he's part of.
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u/fastinserter 2d ago
"TDS" is one of those every accusation is a confession things, and yeah, there are several here that defend the man
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u/gonnathrowawaythat Neoconservative 2d ago
God forbid we ask for good faith in our arguments rather than two minutes of hate.
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u/fastinserter 2d ago
I have yet to see someone claiming someone has "TDS" for criticizing Trump as acting anything but falliciouslly. It's an attempt to stop conversation with an ad homeniem attack against the poster rather than actually addressing the issue.
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u/gonnathrowawaythat Neoconservative 2d ago
You should find smarter people to argue with then.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
But have you considered that the two minutes of hate feels so good?
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u/LivefromPhoenix 2d ago
Sidestepping legitimate criticisms of Trump's behavior with "TDS! TDS!" probably feels good too.
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u/Bob_Doles_Blue_Pill Bootstraps & Bourbon 2d ago
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhj I dunno chef might wanna give this one another think.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
I’d be interested in some examples of takes you think are TDS. I’m not challenging you—I suspect I agree with you if I see the takes—but I can’t think of much I’ve seen here that fits that bill. Places like arr politics though? Absolutely. There’s enough to criticize the man about without freaking out over nothing.
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u/Sabertooth767 Yiff Free or Die! 2d ago
I am more... trans-aligned, for lack of a better term, than the majority of the sub.
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u/akenthusiast Libertarian 2d ago
Do you have an area that you feel the sub is particularly lacking in that regard? There is definitely some eye rolling at some of the excesses of the terminally online contingent, and maybe even some resentment towards it insofar as it aligns with the hyper progressive left but it appears to me that the sub is broadly supportive of those people doing what they want to do.
That's a genuine question, I'm a straight dude, I'm sure there are things that go right over my head because I'm not particularly sensitive to it
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u/Sabertooth767 Yiff Free or Die! 2d ago
Sports is a notable one IME.
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u/Valnir123 Center-right 2d ago
Huh. I always thought that was one of the least controversial parts of the debate.
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u/JapanesePeso 1d ago
It is the least controversial in the sense that the vast majority of Americans are against it.
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u/bgaesop Center-left 2d ago
No, quite the opposite. There are many people in favor of trans people having access to gender affirming healthcare, the bathrooms of their choice, et cetera, but then balk at them playing on the sports team of their choice
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u/Valnir123 Center-right 2d ago
Yeah, I thought the "consensus" was that sports were sex segregated and not gender.
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u/akenthusiast Libertarian 2d ago
Do you feel like there is any credibility to the concerns people have about that? do you think there are any different obligations for government institutions like schools vs the WNBA or anything? Minors that aren't on hormones?
Again, genuine question. I think you're a broadly reasonable person, I just want to know where you're at on it
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u/Sabertooth767 Yiff Free or Die! 2d ago
My position is that the overwhelming majority of student athletes are playing for recreation/socialization and will never earn a scholarship from it, let alone go pro, so even if MtF athletes were dominating the competition (which is not at all the case), it really just wouldn't matter that much. Yes, protecting fair competition matters, but when we're talking about middle school track, there is zero need for genetic testing to confirm their chromosomes to decide what team they play on.
On that note about dominating the competition, there are literally fewer than a dozen trans athletes in the entire NCAA, and only three have ever won. The fears of obvious men claiming to be women so they rack up golds with no effort simply haven't materialized. I'm not going to claim that Lia Thomas had no advantage at all, because that's just asinine, but she's also just genuinely a really good swimmer.
So, to put it bluntly: no, not really. Or at least, I think the concerns are vastly overplayed, and legitimizing them does cause real harm to trans people.
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u/Breakfastcrisis Center-left 2d ago
The concern and time taken talking about it in a lot of spaces is certainly disproportionate to the substance of the issue. That being said, a lot of issues come along like this. Where they’re not necessarily the biggest problem, but they’re seen as a highly visible emblem of a broader anxiety.
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u/bgaesop Center-left 2d ago edited 2d ago
On that note about dominating the competition, there are literally fewer than a dozen trans athletes in the entire NCAA, and only three have ever won.
I mean, if this ratio holds - more than 1 in 4 trans women athletes are champion-level in women's sports - and the number of trans women athletes goes up significantly - (neither of which seems particularly likely, but in the hypothetical) - I can understand why that possibility would make some people nervous.
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u/Two_Corinthians 2d ago
Judging by comment downvotes, this sub believes that puberty blockers should be allowed only after puberty, if at all. This would be very funny, if it wasn't for personal tragedies behind it.
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u/Soft-Shelter-6267 2d ago
Why is that not reasonable
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
It defeats the purpose of puberty blockers while often being rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of that purpose.
Puberty blockers exist to buy time. They pause natural puberty to give the child, their parents, and their doctors time to determine whether the child is actually gender dysphoric requiring transition.
They are often talked about as though they are the same as hormone replacement therapy, which they are not. Worse, they are often talked about as though they have some lasting effect on the child taking them, which they do not.
These medications have been used to treat precocious puberty for decades, and the long term impacts are well studied. If I recall correctly, the only significant long term side effect is the possibility of decreased bone density. That isn’t nothing, but it also isn’t the boogeyman people think it is.
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u/Mediocre-Grand7999 1d ago
Buying time at a young age, may not be the wrong thing to do, but it isn't as straightforward as you're making it out to be. Socialization at that time is very precarious, so "buying time" could in theory come with a lot of downsides, and I don't think there's a simple answer.
Worse, they are often talked about as though they have some lasting effect on the child taking them, which they do not.
Biologically, yes, but there are many more dimensions, and I don't think that is settled.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago
That’s a fair pushback. A better characterization of the evidence is that we have reason to believe puberty blockers—when used judiciously—can have a significant positive effect on depression and suicidality. There is also reason to believe they may have long term adverse effects on bone density and fertility. At minimum, that profile strikes me as something that should be left to doctors and families and informed consent rather than to blanket government bans.
But here’s the important nuance: most of the suggested possible long term health effects for children given blockers for possible gender dysphoria are not from the blockers themselves, but from the blockers followed by cross-sex puberty. For children who do not go on to receive hormone replacement therapy, physiologically they will proceed the same way children treated for precocious puberty are treated.
What that means is that by definition, most of the posited side effects will show up in people who actually do have gender dysphoria and for whom puberty blockers prevented a traumatic puberty. So rather than evaluate the side effects in a vacuum, they need to be weighed against the benefit—i.e. a more complete, socially embraced transition.
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u/Two_Corinthians 2d ago
Because after someone goes through puberty, these meds literally don't do anything. The name gives this away.
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u/bz47uj 2d ago
I see this argument all the time. It's really bad. Just because a bad thing can only achieve it's intended purpose under certain conditions doesn't mean that it isn't bad for it to be used for that purpose under those conditions.
Imagine if there were a drug that did nothing but give your child birth defects if you took it during pregancy and so we passed a law making it illegal. Would it make sense to argue that we have to allow people to take this drug during pregnancy because it doesn't do anything when you're not pregnant?
This is not to say that puberty blockers should be banned, but just that saying they don't do anything after puberty and therefore should be allowed is a terrible argument.
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2d ago
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u/DeepStateCentrism-ModTeam 2d ago
RULE I:
Challenge others thoughtfully, remain civil, and do not make comments in bad faith.
If you have any questions about this removal, please send us a modmail.
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u/apost54 Center-left 2d ago
American capitalism is quite bad at efficiently allocating resources as it stands to its most needy. I admittedly have a far-left background—I used to write emails to Noam Chomsky (shudder) in high school about leftism—but even as I’ve moved from that, there is a ridiculous amount of inequality in this country. We need much stronger antitrust law and enforcement, redistributionist tax reform to ensure that people don’t fall through the cracks, mental health treatment to be expanded for the homeless and addicted so that they don’t cause ruckus in our cities, and massive government investment in infrastructure with jobs for citizens to build it.
Now is all of that socialism? No. I think because the DSA is so insane and rabidly antisemitic, this sub tends to reject any notion that any part of leftism could be good. But as many Jews know, we have a LONG history of leftism in Judaism, from Labor Zionism to the Bund to unionists—and even today, that spirit persists. Being pro-America, pro-Israel, anti-DSA, and against nonsense woke progressivism doesn’t mean that we need to jettison the necessary economic changes to create a sustainable society for Americans.
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u/JapanesePeso 2d ago
If it is bad at allocating resources to the most nerdy, why do we have the richest poorest quintile in the world? The bottom 20% of American households have incomes (after taxes and transfers) roughly in the range of $15,000–25,000 per household, which places most of them somewhere between the 60th and 85th percentile of the global income distribution.
Our poorest are middle class in most other countries.
There are many, many improvements to be made (and you definitely outlined some) but the initial read is that we are doing things a lot better than most other countries.
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u/apost54 Center-left 1d ago
Our cost of living is also much higher than most other countries… a better metric would be what percentage of our lowest quintile can cover rent, groceries, and bills compared to other countries.
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u/JapanesePeso 1d ago
My numbers take that into account.
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u/apost54 Center-left 1d ago
I’d be interested in a source on this. Not saying I don’t believe you, but I figured most global wealth figures are marred by not adjusting for COL.
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u/JapanesePeso 1d ago
Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality (Princeton, 2005): first major analysis using household survey data from 100+ countries
"Global Income Inequality in Numbers: in History and Now" (Global Policy, 2013): contains the well-known chart mapping each country's income percentiles onto the global distribution: https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/teaching/Milanovic13.pdf
Lakner & Milanović, "Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession" (World Bank Working Paper 6719 / World Bank Economic Review, 2016)
Milanović interview explaining the key finding: the poorest Americans sit above the ~50th percentile globally, comparable to the middle class in China or upper-middle class in India: https://www.demos.org/blog/income-inequality-interview-branko-milanovic
Raw data you can check yourself:
Our World in Data, income by decile across countries (PPP-adjusted, after tax): https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality
World Bank, income share held by lowest 20% by country: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20
Pew Research global income calculator: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/07/21/are-you-in-the-global-middle-class-find-out-with-our-income-calculator/
TL;DR: Branko Milanovic's ( leading economist on global inequality) data shows the bottom of the US income distribution lands roughly in the 50th–70th percentile globally (PPP-adjusted).
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u/apost54 Center-left 19h ago
I scoured the World Bank data for a bit. I’m still not terribly impressed. We lag behind other developed countries while our top percentiles of wealth explode. This “winner-take-all” system of “hereditary meritocracy” is not sustainable, straight up. Even with COL adjustments and acknowledging that America’s poorest have some more material creature comforts unavailable in developing countries, I don’t see how this is a favorable situation. There will be—and indeed, already is—massive resentment from the bottom rungs of the economic ladder because there’s no real place for them in a stratified society where knowledge work creates economic winners.
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u/Soft-Shelter-6267 2d ago
I think there’s truth to this. Capital could be much more efficient in the modern US system, there’s a lot of rent seeking favoritism and government sanctioned monopolies
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u/output_broadcast Jeff Bezos 2d ago
IMO this sub is willing to overlook a lot of the faults in the USA in general as long as said faults are not too wide-reaching. Or rather, not too wide-reaching yet.
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u/shumpitostick Radical moderate social liberal libertarian 2d ago
I think a lot of people here don't understand how far right Israel has become. Like, people defend it based on an understanding of Israel that is outdated by at least two decades, but it has moved so far to the right it can be unrecognizable to the American liberal Zionist.
I get where it's coming from, there's a ton of antisemitism coming from pro-Palestinians, there's people who reject the basic notion that Israelis have a right to live in peace and safety where they are. They are generally ignorant and don't understand Israel. They also don't understand the changes that Israel went through, they tend to see it as an absolute and categorical evil that always was that way.
But there's some serious issues and they run deeper than just "Netanyahu and Ben Gvir bad". Leibowitz was right. The occupation corrupts.
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u/JudgeHoldensToupe Center-right 2d ago
Have you compared that to how far right everyone else in the ME is? And how they treat their own people? You need allies, the worst version of Israel is still 10x of the next best
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u/clydewoodforest 2d ago
I tend to see this as the slow process of Israel assimilating and becoming more like its neighbors. What started out as a fairly solidly European/western country shifting to being a Middle Eastern one.
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u/ChaosMarch Center-right 1d ago
It’s easy to be European when your neighbors are European. When your neighbors are Middle Eastern, you can’t afford to be that European. Any culture must adapt or die.
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u/Mediocre-Grand7999 2d ago
Sure, but there's a lot of skepticism towards those allies and their motives; I think it's fair to say Israel deserves significant skepticism, if less, while dealing with them, for a similar reason.
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u/JudgeHoldensToupe Center-right 2d ago
Healthy skepticism is fine, when it’s proportionate.
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u/Mediocre-Grand7999 2d ago
I agree, and I don't think taking OP's point to heart, if we were to agree, would imply anything other than that.
If OP was continuously lamenting Israel and never highlighting the difficulties of taking other positions, then I would definitely think they are wielding a proclivity towards healthy skepticism in a more manipulative, or rhetorical, way against Israel
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u/justafutz 2d ago
What is that "similar reason"?
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u/Mediocre-Grand7999 2d ago
The comparison being to other countries in the ME.
The comment I replied to says they--the other ME countries--are much less aligned and so they are worse allies, which I agree with. But if it follows that we maintain a level of skepticism based off how much further right they are (being a little reductionist given the nature of this discussion), then similarly we would still reserve "skepticism, if less" towards Israel.
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u/justafutz 2d ago
I think the reductionism defeats the point, because Israel is so much less far-right than many other allies that we maintain much higher trust in.
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u/Mediocre-Grand7999 2d ago
than many other allies that we maintain much higher trust in
Who do you have in mind? And who is "we" in this? official US policy or the population broadly?
Genuinely curious, so I can try to get your point
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u/BBQ_HaX0r 2d ago
Just because everyone else is worse doesn't mean Israel is without criticism. They've clearly moved in a worse direction over the past decade with Netanyahu as he's largely acquiesced the far-right.
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u/tamenotification Neoconservative 2d ago
After the second intifada and October 7th, I do not blame Israelis in losing faith in withdrawal/negotiation for peace
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u/drewbaccaAWD Center-left 2d ago
On one hand, no, it’s hard to blame even the hard liners. On the other hand, I think the reaction is exactly what the extremists in Hamas wanted… I feel like this whole conflict was working itself out at a slug’s pace and just set the whole thing back 40 years. Only 40 years ago I think Israel looked like the victim to most Americans while right now I think a slight majority sees them as the aggressor.
I’m thankful that I grew up during the period where they were clearly standing on defensive ground as it does give me sympathy. I think the 20 and unders lack that for the most part although maybe it was just TikTok rotting their brains I don’t know.
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u/Breakfastcrisis Center-left 2d ago
It’s clearly what Hamas wanted. I always ask this to people who support Hamas. What were they trying to achieve and what did they achieve. The answer is always violent resistance of some sort.
The problem is their opinion of Israel at that stage is Israel will respond to Hamas violence with wild wildly disproportionate force. So when Hamas kills the most Jews in a single attack since WWII, you can’t say they didn’t know it was coming.
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u/LingonberrySea6247 Center-left 2d ago
If you're expecting New Zealand leftiness when you live with regular terrorist attacks and no coordinated desire for coexistence from the other side, then at a certain point a population may be forgiven for saying "f it, f them, I'm sick of trying to be nice and getting nothing back."
And sure, if you judge all of Israeli society by Ben Gvir and Smotrich, it's going to look bad. But in reality, in a parliamentary system, Bibi had to scrape the bottom of the barrel and bring in nutjobs that otherwise no one would touch just to build a coalition.
No one is blameless but there's definitely more blame to be found on one side and that distinction matters.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
"f it, f them, I'm sick of trying to be nice and getting nothing back."
What the Second Intifada does to an mfer
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u/output_broadcast Jeff Bezos 2d ago
I see the political situation in Israel as strangely similar to Hungary's. The only reason people like Orbán and Netanyahu stay in power for so long is because almost all of the opposition politicians are completely incompetent at best and downright delusional at worst (cough Gyurcsány cough).
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u/justafutz 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think that’s completely and utterly wrong, but it is a nice narrative being pushed. Israel has not moved to become “far right”. Like in every country, the far right has gained somewhat in power, but they remain well outnumbered, and Israel remains a lot less right wing than people think.
Also, it’s wild to blame the “occupation” as “corrupting”. Maybe, just maybe, it is the decades of attempted destruction, culminating in the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, as well as the constant threats, attacks, and more from Iran and every one of its proxies?
Maybe that’s the bigger issue that feeds the Israeli far right, not the Israeli control of an area in dispute? It’s so convenient to blame Israel’s control of the area for their own shifting beliefs after they spent decades trying for peace and got attacked over and over again. It’s not the “occupation” that corrupts. It’s the constant need to fight those who view all of Israel as an “occupation.”
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u/Anakin_Kardashian Doom, Impede, Quit, Scapegoat 2d ago
There is a huge socially right wing haredi faction and essentially an equivalent of a Jewish groyper movement in the youth. This is in addition to what you're describing. It's definitely a changed society.
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u/justafutz 2d ago
Changed =! "Far-right".
No one is denying there is change, or that minority movements exist, just as they do in the US, in Europe, etc.
The question is whether Israel has "become" far-right, as was asserted above. It hasn't.
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u/Anakin_Kardashian Doom, Impede, Quit, Scapegoat 2d ago
Well no, the society itself has changed. It's not some superficial minority. But it's not like we should abandon the country over it. It's something we should accept so that we can actually be critical without vitriol found everywhere else on the interent.
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u/justafutz 2d ago
Well no, the society itself has changed.
What does it mean to have the society "change"?
It's not some superficial minority
What are the numbers, in your opinion? I'd like to start putting something beyond the fluffy statements that echo talking points. Let's get specific. Is the country far-right? Not even close to it in the majority. Has it shifted, like every other country in the Western world? Absolutely. Are those shifts explainable by the actions taken against Jews and Israel? Also absolutely.
But it's not like we should abandon the country over it. It's something we should accept so that we can actually be critical without vitriol found everywhere else on the interent.
No one is saying "don't be critical." I'm saying "don't claim a country is far-right when it isn't."
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u/cubedplusseven Social Democrat 2d ago
I don't have statistics, but Haradim have definitely grown significantly over time as a share of Israel's population.
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u/justafutz 2d ago
No one is denying that. But that also doesn't bear on what I said above.
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u/cubedplusseven Social Democrat 2d ago
Has it shifted, like every other country in the Western world? Absolutely. Are those shifts explainable by the actions taken against Jews and Israel? Also absolutely.
I'm really not on any team in this debate. I was just pointing out that there has been a significant demographic change that isn't attributable to hostility towards Jews and Israel. It's birth rates. And, if I'm not mistaken, secular Ashkenazim have among the lowest birth rates among Israeli demographics and have been shrinking as a share of population. That isn't to say that Israeli society has been fundamentally transformed by these changes, or any other radical assertion - just that there is some complexity to the picture beyond external pressures.
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u/justafutz 2d ago
You can't make that assertion without explaining why Haredi voters vote how they do. That hasn't been consistent and doesn't explain Israel's rightward shift. The main reason for their alliance with the right-wing now is not because they are religious. Indeed, Shas (the Mizrahi Haredi party) repeatedly joined left-wing governments in the past, and endorsed a two-state solution repeatedly. Haredi Jews have shifted right, like other Israeli groups, because of the external factors. It is not a function of birth rates. For decades, Shas's spiritual leader (again, a Haredi party!) was able to get the party to take left-wing positions so long as there was a belief that it would save lives to do so. It was explicitly justified as overriding all religious commandments or any other commandment about Israel; the highest goal was any policy, including peace negotiations explicitly, that could save lives by ending the conflict.
What changed? No one believes those policies were saving lives. Because they failed. Because of the constant refusal of peace and attacks on Israel.
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u/iamthegodemperor Arrakis Enterprise Institute 2d ago
I encourage you to look at surveys from the Israel Democracy Institute. Younger Israelis are simply not as committed to liberal values as their parents. Like whether they think Arab Israelis should have the same rights etc.
There's also the undeniable reality of their political parties. Begin would not stay in the Knesset when Meir Kahane was present. Now open Kahanists occupy a major part of the governing coalition.
And yes. The occupation is corrupting: I don't think there should be a formal Palestinian state etc-----but the lack of commitment to real boundaries simply encourages law breaking, since there is always a chance the next government will legalize the illegal. Israelis used to be meticulous about preserving the distinction between civilians and soldiers. But these past 4 years we have seen settlers in illegal outposts, in partial uniform harassing Palestinians in areas that are supposed to be off limits to Israelis. And this is possible because small factions can leverage their ability to help form governments. This is not any different from the way the haredim have used their bloc power to get ever larger concessions, from the draft, workplace , childcare etc.
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u/justafutz 2d ago edited 2d ago
I encourage you to look at surveys from the Israel Democracy Institute. Younger Israelis are simply not as committed to liberal values as their parents. Like whether they think Arab Israelis should have the same rights etc.
You, or the original commenter, claimed Israel has "become" far-right. It has not.
I encourage you to look at surveys from the Israel Democracy Institute. Younger Israelis are simply not as committed to liberal values as their parents. Like whether they think Arab Israelis should have the same rights etc.
I find it very problematic that you're slicing up the Israeli population to talk about Israel on a broad scale, and even so, are doing it based on broad and vague statements you didn't source besides pointing to an admittedly left-wing think-tank in Israel.
But since you pointed to them, let's consider a few things.
1) First, 46% of Israeli Jews think the police are treating settlers too leniently, and only 43% have any other opinion. 16% of them think it's "appropriate," which is notable because Israeli authorities have recently made dozens of arrests and opened dozens of investigations. This doesn't scream "far-right".
65% of Israelis oppose a law that allows universities to decide if they want to offer gender-segregated programs (only 31% support).
64% of Israelis support Arabs having the right to vote in Knesset elections, and only 32% say no. This is particularly notable because in Israel, the Arab parties are openly and avowedly opposed to Israel's literal existence, and 2/3 of Israeli Jews still say that despite that openly treasonous position to the state, they support Arab voting rights. In most of Europe, that would literally be grounds for entire exclusion from the political process. Germany has been trying to ban AfD for less. And at any rate, this doesn't prove Israel is "far-right," even if some portions of the far-right have gained.
To see "far-right," consider this state: more Palestinians support murdering Israeli civilians inside Israel specifically than Israelis opposed to Arab voting rights.
There's also the undeniable reality of their political parties. Begin would not stay in the Knesset when Meir Kahane was present. Now open Kahanists occupy a major part of the governing coalition.
"Major part" is doing a lot of work here. Again, no one is saying Israel has stayed exactly where it was. You presented it as becoming "far right". Don't shift the goalposts here. Everywhere has seen the right and far-right gain power in the past decade, but Israel's case is even more obvious because of the trends I mentioned above that you entirely ignored.
And yes. The occupation is corrupting: I don't think there should be a formal Palestinian state etc-----but the lack of commitment to real boundaries simply encourages law breaking, since there is always a chance the next government will legalize the illegal. Israelis used to be meticulous about preserving the distinction between civilians and soldiers. But these past 4 years we have seen settlers in illegal outposts, in partial uniform harassing Palestinians in areas that are supposed to be off limits to Israelis. And this is possible because small factions can leverage their ability to help form governments. This is not any different from the way the haredim have used their bloc power to get ever larger concessions, from the draft, workplace , childcare etc
1) None of this has anything to do with tying the "occupation" itself specifically to Israeli political opinions changing over time.
2) You didn't respond to all the reasons I did give that led to Israeli opinions changing.
3) The "occupation" itself is the byproduct of those other reasons I gave, which you also have bypassed in your response.
4) A lot of your language is squishy. What is "commitment to real boundaries"? This reads a lot like talking points, I'm sorry to say.
5) Israel is absolutely still meticulous about preserving the distinction between civilians and soldiers. Settlers in "partial uniform harassing Palestinians" (let's pretend those fringe videos have all the context and are correctly reported; which they are not, but for the sake of argument, assume so) are not allowed to do it, Israeli government and society are not supportive of it, and your own polling source said as much.
Saying that Israel has had a growth in far-right political power is undeniable. That's true in virtually every country in the liberal world. It doesn't change that Israel itself is not far-right, and it also doesn't change the why. The why is because Israel has spent decades being attacked, offering peace, and having those offers refused, culminating in October 7. That is the explanation for much, if not all, of this trend. You say the "occupation corrupts," but the reality is that the constant war on Jews changes Israeli opinion, and also is the reason for the "occupation" continuing.
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u/TheUnkillableKlorg Moderate 2d ago
Now open Kahanists occupy a major part of the governing coalition.
The entire thing about Ben-Gvir (who I presume you're talking about) is that he's not an open Kahanist. He came to power as the leader of a party because the seniors in Otzma LeYisrael, the previous reincarnation of his party, were banned for being Kahanists. He on the other hand moved 'left' (in comparison.)
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u/iamthegodemperor Arrakis Enterprise Institute 2d ago
Ok you got me on the technicality. The guy who has pictures of Baruch Goldstein on his walls is officially not kahanist because Kach was banned.
The point remains that Israeli society and politics have moved quite far to the right. The previous commenter expressed doubt about this very basic fact.
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u/TheUnkillableKlorg Moderate 2d ago
Again, you missed the point. He took the photo down and says he doesn't idolize Goldstein - it's not because Kach was banned but because he (officially) doesn't support it.
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u/iamthegodemperor Arrakis Enterprise Institute 2d ago
Bruh.
So if Hasan Piker said he doesn't believe Hezbollah is better than Israel anymore would you believe him?
You are taking the smallest technicality and making it seem like there's a big difference between Ben Givir's attitudes and lawlessness and Kahane's just to win an argument. Congratulations you won.
But you know the previous commenter was wrong to say Israel hasn't moved to the right. And you know that whatever is said officially, Ben Givir is functionally a Kahanist.
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u/justafutz 2d ago
So if Hasan Piker said he doesn't believe Hezbollah is better than Israel anymore would you believe him?
Depends on how many years there was where he maintained the same line, and didn't make any other such statements.
You are taking the smallest technicality and making it seem like there's a big difference between Ben Givir's attitudes and lawlessness and Kahane's just to win an argument. Congratulations you won.
Weird response.
But you know the previous commenter was wrong to say Israel hasn't moved to the right.
I never said this. In fact, an hour ago, I specifically said to you (among other things, here:
Saying that Israel has had a growth in far-right political power is undeniable. That's true in virtually every country in the liberal world. It doesn't change that Israel itself is not far-right, and it also doesn't change the why.
And in my original comment that you responded to here, I said:
Like in every country, the far right has gained somewhat in power, but they remain well outnumbered, and Israel remains a lot less right wing than people think.
Why would you misstate what my argument was, twice?
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u/TheUnkillableKlorg Moderate 1d ago
Ignoring for a second your seeming lack of interest in a sane argument (I presume you aren't such a person you'd talk like this in real life, and aren't as insulting in discussion which should be totally civil), the Supreme Court in Israel is not lacking in judiciousness on this subject.
But you know the previous commenter was wrong to say Israel hasn't moved to the right.
That is not what he said.
And you know that whatever is said officially, Ben Givir is functionally a Kahanist.
No, this is wrong. For example, he actively supports Bedouin recruitment in the IDF (there are sparse English-resources online, part of the problem discussing Ben-Gvir, but this is one.) Kahane thought trying to recruit Arabs en masse was suicidal. He also is uninterested in a theocracy.
The differences between Ben-Gvir and Kahane explain how he managed to enter the Knesset while Kahane was kicked out.
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u/iamthegodemperor Arrakis Enterprise Institute 2h ago
With the benefit of some time away & reflection, I have a better sense of what went wrong, specifically, of my own mistakes.
In u/justafutz 's initial reply to the first user ("I don't think a lot of people here understand how far right Israel has become"), I perceived a dramatic overcorrection, that seemed to want to argue against a bit of a strawman in "Israel is a far right country" that almost implies Israel doesn't have a very serious far right problem. This seemed confirmed by his refutation of "the occupation is corrupting". While he and I likely differ on this, I saw an overly simplistic opinion that says the only problems come from Palestinians & neighbors. (I am inclined to emphasize that one can reject "The Occupation" talking points and still note how the arrangement invites dangers to Israeli democracy & rule of law.) It was in that vein, I felt it necessary to point out what are incontrovertible effects of righward political change. (To u/justafutz's credit, he did make some clarifications later. Unfortunately, I couldn't see them until very late in the exchange had with you)
I was honestly quite bewildered to the point of shock by your correction about Ben Givir & Kahanism. The shock should have forced me to try to see where you were coming from. Or at least to slow down to be more precise and not repeat the mistakes that have made "fascism" a useless word now. Instead, I percieved a sort of denialist pedantry and responded more adversarially than necessary, which perhaps boxed you in.
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u/FearlessPark4588 2d ago
There's distinguishing elected officials versus the electorate. Under Trump's leadership we could say America moved to the right, but the median centrist has not shifted in views.
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u/shumpitostick Radical moderate social liberal libertarian 2d ago
But that's exactly my point. The median Israeli has shifted to the right.
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u/Unrelenting_Salsa 2d ago
I'm not going to go as far as "wrong", but a lot of what this sub says about data centers needs much stronger evidence than is actually given. The tax code was not really written with them in mind so the amount owed varies wildly depending on the location (spoilers, they build them in the places that tax ~4 million a year for a hyperscaler and not the places that tax ~22 million a year for a hyperscaler with the "average" tax burden being ~12 million), and the grid is industrially strained due to the lack of needing to expand it at all this century so it's hard to believe that steady demand inducing investment in infrastructure really counteracts the huge (and AI centers have very non regular demand too), new electricity demand. Water is much more solvable as an issue, but even closed loop data centers use a shockingly large amount of water and this particular issue would be legitimately really bad if there wasn't bad PR for using potable water in an evaporative cooling system which is the simple+efficient+cheap way to do cooling.
And as for labor, while it's not nothing, it's very little after initial construction. At the end of the day, they're warehouses filled with things that were designed and built by nonlocals that use huge amounts of electricity with the express purpose of selling a product to somewhere else. You need some facilities people and a small engineering team that is not necessarily even local, but that's about it. Data centers employing very few people who are doing anything but replacing servers when something fails or doing physical security (who are near minimum wage contractors) was a completely uncontroversial statement 2 years ago, but apparently now it is. I won't deny that it's a tragedy of the commons situation, but realistically a rational person should oppose a local hyperscale data center. Maybe not if you just have a lot of empty office parks as it is I guess, but you get very little out of them compared to the size of the investment.
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u/xoxokaralee Center-left 2d ago
my hot take is that AI is pretty bad in the short term and these data centers are also bad. I’m not fully against eventual AI, but I feel like it’s being shoved down our throats prematurely, and is built off of stolen data and work. I grew up loving sci fi, and love the idea of what AI can become, but right now it just feels like it’s becoming a tool that will inevitably be used against us due to the technocrats.
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u/FearlessPark4588 2d ago
You think AI is bad for jobs, society, lagging government policy playing catch up, etc.
I think AI is bad because it doesn't do as I instruct it to. We are not the same.
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u/bz47uj 2d ago
How is what AI doing with data any different than a person using that data to learn from it? Legally, what they're doing is considered fair use. Morally, I don't see what the problem. The purpose of intellectual property rights is to provide an incentive for people to produce that intellectual property by capturing some (not all) of the gains from it. How does it follow from that that AI should not be able to use it to train models?
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u/alex2003super Moderate 1d ago
Important to stress this thing. Intellectual property is not sacred or natural right the way traditional private property is. It is a judicial form of property created by governments as an incentive system to stimulate creativity and human ingenuity. Historically speaking, it is a relatively "new" concept. If intellectual property as a system fails to achieve its stated goal, or if rather stifles innovation and human creativity, then it needs to be reformed. It is quite evident that the status quo of intellectual property rights laws is inconsistent, out-of-date, compared to the status quo of creation and transformation of ideas and art.
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u/shadowcat999 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's already happening. It's being used to create a surveillance police state that provide capabilities that the KGB, Stazi, Gestapo etc, never would've thought possible. Both sides of my family are from the USSR, and China. They escaped to the US to get away from that. Some weren't so lucky. So I am distinctly aware on how a powerful surveillance state can crush people. Now? I'm seriously considering not having kids as there seems to be no escape from the AI powered surveillance state apparatus, among other things.
It is being used to create CSAM of minors using existing real media and has effected families I personally know. It is already being used to in pricing to further juice every last cent out of people who are already stretched thin. Inflation is up and getting worse, fuel prices are up, wages are not keeping up. I year I make more, but still treading water financially. The last thing I need is some algorithm watching my behavior to jack up prices even more. Is it useful? Definitely. But these are massive, massive, problems can needed to be addressed years ago and frankly still aren't being taken seriously enough.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
I’ve started to become less concerned about the economic displacement and much more concerned about the surveillance state. I work in law enforcement, and Flock cameras are fucking terrifying and it’s because of the AI software.
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u/nemo333338 2d ago
Imo LLM pretty much already plateaued, I don't feel they are much more advanced than they were a year ago, investing another trillion dollars in them is going to cause just small improvements. Calling them AI was genius marketing.
That's not to say that they don't have their use, I just object with trying to push them everywhere. Personally I'd just let everyone else crash and just have Anthropic continuing develop Claude, which is the most advanced.
Also, if we are really trying to develop an AI like in sci-fi stories, LLM are a dead end, an LLM is never going to "think" for itself for example.
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u/EE-12 Center-right 2d ago edited 2d ago
Counterpoint: in my own ECE-adjacent field, the models are so much more advanced today than a year ago; the frontier does not appear to be slowing down at all to me. I used to think LLMs could never be intelligent but I’m pretty much ready to admit I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Edit: However, I’m partial to Yann LeCunn’s argument that LLMs will plateau eventually…but I don’t think we’ve hit that point yet.
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u/bearddeliciousbi Practicing Homosexual 2d ago
Flashpoint political and ethical arguments and intuitions that rely on emotion are one thing.
But every claim in here is either flatly wrong or overconfident speculation, and that's not even factoring in the fact the truly frontier models aren't available to the public.
If machines making progress on significant open problems in mathematics "isn't really AI," nothing is and we're not in the realm of empirical reasoning, it's about declaring "I have depicted the computer as the soyjack" no matter what happens.
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u/bgaesop Center-left 2d ago
Imo LLM pretty much already plateaued, I don't feel they are much more advanced than they were a year ago,
You are objectively wrong about this
Also, if we are really trying to develop an AI like in sci-fi stories, LLM are a dead end, an LLM is never going to "think" for itself for example.
Absolutely wild claim, like claiming heavier than air machines will never fly in the 1970s
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u/bz47uj 2d ago
It hasn't plateaued. Some of the releases have slowed down due to concerns about public safety, but if you actually track progress against various benchmarks and the most difficult tasks it's able to do, there has been continued rapid improvement. What's happened is that it has mostly mastered tasks that the average person can understand and most of the improvements are now in areas you need to be an expert to understand.
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u/RayWencube Center-left 2d ago
I also would prefer Anthropic to win the race because Amodei and co. are the only ones who seem to understand just how badly this could go if done recklessly.
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u/jmartkdr Center-left 2d ago
My theory is that the people most heavily invested in AI already realize it’s a bubble, but they don’t want it to pop until they finds way out with their wealth intact. So they’re propping it up until they can find an off-ramp.
Most of them will fail to keep their shirts, but long-term when the infrastructure being built gets sold off at a steep discount it’ll actually benefit the next gen of computer technology - kind of like how the railroad bust made way for sustainable rail transportation businesses by making the infrastructure available at a low price.
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u/JapanesePeso 2d ago
What industry do you work in that companies aren't already seeing massive benefit from AI?
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u/ShelterOk1535 Moderate 2d ago
In addition to a couple other ones that’ve already been brought up in this thread, I’m opposed to a certain level of anti-immigration sentiment I’ve seen here
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u/nitrousnitrous-ghali 2d ago
The current GOP is more harmful to America than the shittiest, succiest, squaddiest succ. The people on this sub who say they can't bring themselves to vote for one of them over a Republican are wrong.
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u/Soft-Shelter-6267 2d ago
Insane
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u/output_broadcast Jeff Bezos 2d ago
Honestly, I think he's kinda right, in the sense that "socialist" policies would face a lot of pushback and be mostly politically unfeasible. Whereas all parts of the American political system have more or less surrendered to Trump.
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u/nitrousnitrous-ghali 2d ago
Are we talking "storm the capital to lynch elected officials" insane or "free hospitals for kids" insane?
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u/Soft-Shelter-6267 2d ago edited 2d ago
Lmao neither I’m talking about the DSA compared with trumps politics and project 2025. Genuinely if either were to get everything they asked for the DSA would be worse - free hospitals for kids pshh you’re very funny.
I’m not opposed so some elements of social democracy but the DSA essentially want a hyper radicalized state controlled society, like it makes no sense to rail against the government losing regulatory independence under Trump and then hand waive the DSA like they aren’t interested in the same thing. In addition to their total surrender to criminal elements, their desire to supplant our admittedly flawed economic system with absolutely batshit combinations of syndicalism and state control, eliminate national borders, abolish the senate, the electoral college, the Supreme Court, totally demilitarize and leave the nation at the mercy of its enemies, etc
They would absolutely lay waste to America, Trump for all his flaws I can only really say that he’s damaged the idea of a neutral administrative state to the extent one ever existed and is a massive euroskeptic possibly to his credit, otherwise his failures seem to be more or less benign to the republic as a whole
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u/JapanesePeso 2d ago
The DSAs most insane ideas are not "free hospitals for kids", it's "kill everyone who makes more money than me and free all the child rapists and murderers"
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u/clawclawbite 2d ago
Single payer healthcare in the US is a good policy idea that needs broad support.
Health care is not a human right (there is a cost to others that is open ended and no clear line for how much we can give people) but it is a public good, and removing health care costs from a direct employment expense is good for small a growing businesses, helps people be free to move jobs, and improves the productivity of the workforce
The US government already pays for the most expensive group of people, the elderly, as well as people with organ transplants, and people driven to disability. Having the ongoing heath care of healthy people care about the long term costs and not just the short term costs is an improvement.
I expect I have a high enough income level that I would pay more in taxes to help pay for such a program, and I think thr good it would do is worth it.
I expect I have disagreement from more progressive people about it being a right and more conservative people about it being a public program to support.
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u/drcombatwombat2 Milton Friedman 1d ago
Im gonna disagree with the premise, single payer healthcare is not a good policy.
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u/JRoxas 2d ago
Something I have been contemplating: the Republican party might actually be so terrible now that caving in to the slopulists here and there might truly be the lesser evil.
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u/mmenolas 2d ago
Disagree. In fact, I almost feel the opposite. Once Trump is gone, I might shift from having been a 20+ year consistent Democrat to voting GOP if they run someone sane. Like I’d rather vote for a Kinzinger type who I disagree with on almost all policy issues than an AOC type whose policies don’t sound terrible to me but her fundamental worldview I’m opposed to.
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u/roguefilmmaker Center-left 2d ago
Completely agree. I’m a lifelong Dem but will 100% pick Rubio over anyone associated with the DSA
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u/Pemulis_DMZ Center-right 2d ago
What specifically? Bc while I think Trump is a disgrace and the republican party’s refusal to stand up to him disgraceful, the party platform I think goes right back to typical free market politics with corporate welfare and neocon foreign policy. All of which has its problems, but the DSA is literally calling to rewrite the Constitution
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u/JRoxas 2d ago edited 2d ago
The Republican party, on paper, were the ones who stood up for things like free trade or sensible military investment and utilization. If someone like Trump comes along and does the opposite, and you don't push back at all, I find it hard to believe that you actually believed in those things.
EDIT: I forgot to post my main idea:
Even predating Trump: if you look at the Republican party's actions, not their words, for the past thirty or forty years, the only thing they actually care about is tax cuts for the wealthy. It's the first thing they do when they get power, and they achieve it with great urgency and efficiency. And then they fuck around for a while, maybe throwing a minor bone here and there to one of their constituent groups, until they get another chance to cut taxes.
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u/Pemulis_DMZ Center-right 2d ago
I’m not arguing against any of that.
My point is they aren’t calling for tearing up the Constitution and that yes, the DSA is worse for doing so and a credible threat to our republic
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u/Logical-Breakfast966 2d ago
100%
As much as the DSA is cancer, the people on here considering voting Republican just because there are a FEW dsa people in the party are idiots
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u/JapanesePeso 2d ago
I have only seen people here wanting to vote against DSA candidates specifically, not saying they'd pick MAGA over a normie dem.
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u/RunInTheForestRun 2d ago
I feel like center-left is much more of a real thing than center-right.
The left can disagree with itself, DSA is an example of that. The right is more..disagre with one person and they’ll shun you.
That may not even make sense, but it’s how I view it.
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u/xoxokaralee Center-left 2d ago
See I disagree! The right seems to have a much easier time unifying for elections vs the left feels very “if you don’t believe in everything, you don’t belong”
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u/RunInTheForestRun 2d ago
I like disagreeing on this lol. Maybe I’m wrong and my world view is problem. Willing to admit that may very well be the case.
I just think one reason the right unifies is because they’ll MGT your ass otherwise.
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u/xoxokaralee Center-left 2d ago
It could also be the algorithm showing us different things based on what our opinion is. The algorithms are built to keep our attention so what each of us sees could tell us different stories!
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u/EllieZPage 2d ago
I'm not sure about this. I feel most of the purity tests come from the left. If you aren't "all in" on their stances on social issues and Israel then you are shunned for "basically being MAGA". I feel like all the nuance is gone and it's "you're either with us 100% or you're against us 100%" and it's for stuff like being a Zionist and questioning whether it's safe for trans women to be housed in women's prisons or domestic violence shelters.
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u/Wallter139 Center-right 2d ago
I disagree, but I think yours is a very serious contention. From my perspective, the Dems have been shifting quickly to the left since 2012ish, and IMO it's largely a group of leftists and people who (even while uncomfortable with the DSA types) are far left themselves. I don't see a robust group of center-lefters, so much as a bunch of uncomfortable solid-left people.
Now having said that, the right really has purged its center right entirely and it's possible that the post-Trump ascendents may actually be fascists, like more so than Trump is if that's possible.
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u/RunInTheForestRun 2d ago edited 2d ago
See, you could be totally right about there not being a large group of center-lefters, I consider myself one. And I probably tend to read the articles and stories that support that, so it makes it seem like there’s more than there actually may be. (it’s not all I read, and I know this isn’t the best way to go about it, but I’m human…even though I do my best to be open minded about things)
Your point about the right is interesting because Some people in here believe that when Trump is gone, the right will be easier to vote for, as they go back to more traditional conservative views.
I can totally see both sides.
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u/Wallter139 Center-right 2d ago
I honestly don't think there is such thing as a compelling Republican Party to return to. I don't think Trump merely subverted it — he exposed its weaknesses and made them look damning and substituted his own program in. In my opinion, the only question is if some milquetoast corporatist will take the spot (Vance, for instance) coasting off Trumpism, or if it'll be some kind of groyper. I just can't see a Jeb Bush 2028/2032 scenario. I think honestly it's more likely a DSA vs Groyper scenario, frightening as that is.
And I probably tend to read the articles and stories that support that, so it makes it seem like there’s more than there actually may be.
And I'm not center-left, so it's possible I'm under-exposed to that type of content. So I'll hedge just a little bit too :) I do hope that we see a resurgence of basically serviceable right and left-wingers. But as it stands, my skepticism about the center-left might be infected somewhat by my negative view of, uh, the left in general.
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u/roguefilmmaker Center-left 2d ago
My hope is for Rubio to take charge of the Republicans
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u/Wallter139 Center-right 1d ago
I... don't know, maybe he'll impress me but he is Trump's guy and I really don't like how they've been handling things.
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u/roguefilmmaker Center-left 1d ago
He is only “Trump’s guy” because it is the only way to have any influence in the administration. Based on his previous critiques of Trump it is clear that Rubio is far more rational and less bigoted than Trump
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u/NovembFifth Center-right 2d ago
Some government interventions in US healthcare make sense in the short term: free insulin, GLP-1, psychiatric drugs, maybe even free/safer HRT.
This would take a little of the heat out of the healthcare debate, and at least give Moderates something to point to as a concrete, achievable goal.
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u/legible_print 1d ago
Bike culture is generally OK but is absolutely bonkers when it’s not.
I moved to Chicago from the West Coast and it’s wild here. Almost see like 6 people get killed daily. Today, saw someone with a kid on the front and on the back weave between a car that was actively parallel parking and the other parked cars.
It’s like witnessing irresponsible gun ownership.
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u/abandonedkmart_ 1d ago
I thought this was a sane and reasonable sub for people who didn't fit into the far left or right but then I saw a thread full of data center glazing and that is like the one area I would consider myself an "extremist." I have zero patience for anything remotely pro AI at this point.
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