<< When I reached my teens, I finally understood it was a callout by the writers trying to remind viewers that the Simpsons wasn't reality.
Interesting. This is not how I interpreted it at all in my initial viewing ( or subsequent ones for that matter ). If Grimes criticized anything, it was Homer and people like Homer. If it was a meta-commentary, it was certainly not drawing a distinction between reality of Grime's life and the imaginary one income head of the household doing surprisingly well given the circumstances. Grimes story was a story of a guy, who just had a bad luck.. over and over again, but even when the good luck did show, he failed the test and focused not on what he gained, but others have despite being, in his eyes, lesser than him.
That is the moral of the story. Don't be Grimes. He may wish he can be Homer Simpson, but he sure can't touch those high voltage signs.
Agreed. The funny thing about this is that, when I mentioned it to wife's family, they did not think it was particularly representative and was dismissed as faux Americana. I still think about it, because as I re-watched older episodes recently, I can't help, but think that they did not want to acknowledge it being true, while it was just that.
Historically speaking, I am not sure if humans argued that they have created the land and therefore they should be allowed to use it. Ownership of the land and its use is, rather, simply tied to one's ability to retain it ( possession being 9/10ths of the law and all that ).
Yes, you are correctly identifying that all land rights stem from one's ability to claim nature's productive power as his own and monopolize all output from it.
This was self-evident in the feudal era, when landlords (Lords) had to at least raise their own militaries to assert this monopoly right. But the modern State and the landlords reached a compromise: the State will provide security to protect the lords' monopoly on nature so long as the landlords don't raise armed forces.
It may be absurd, but do you have a workable framework that can replace it? If not, it makes zero to no difference whether it is absurd or not. It works for the society in place.
Yes. A high land value tax prevents the capture of unearned wealth by owners of land without introducing market inefficiencies or price distortions.
The current arrangement demonstrably does not work for society in place, and as AI (whether in this wave of innovation or the next) increases productivity further, it will work less and less by virtue of further increasing land rents, thereby pricing out larger and larger swaths of society from a place to live, work, or otherwise exist.
Huh? Last time I checked, municipalities big and small fight for every bit of investments they can get and they typically get it by offering a swath of incentives at the cost of the actual taxpayer. That high value land ends up being tax free for the actually wealthy while a schmuck like me get his bill increased and argues with otherwise well-meaning people that akshually high taxes are good for me.
I think that what I am saying is that, in practice, the well-intended solutions like the one that was listed above are effectively nullified as they do not seem to anticipate real world human reactions. What ends up happening is that it is only a subset of the people, who own land that pay higher taxes. The solution is to remove any and all subsidies. Governments of all levels have not exactly proven to be a reliable steward over the past few centuries..
Well it's pretty easy to have a useless conversation if you're going to act as if the words your interlocutor are saying are "effectively nullified."
My solution does anticipate real-world human interactions: don't give rich landowners tax breaks. This is baked into the premise of having a high tax. A tax that is effectively not-high is by definition not a high tax, ergo is not the solution I am proposing. If I proposed a solution of "have a tax that is claimed to be high but actually is not," then your response would be valid. But my solution was: have a high land value tax.
Your solution is dismissible by your same logic. "While removing any and all subsidies is well-intended, in practice real-world human interactions dictate that will not occur."
Isn't it up to the user how they want to use the tool? Why are people so hell bent on telling others how to press their buttons in a word processor ( or anywhere else for that matter ). The only thing that it does, is raising a new batch of Florida men further detached from reality and consequences.
Users can use tools how they want. However, some of those uses are hazards. If I am trying to scare birds away from my house with fireworks and burn my neighbors' house down, that's kind of a problem for me. If these fireworks are marketed as practical bird repellent, that's a problem for me and the manufacturer.
I'm not sure if it's official marketing or just breathless hype men or an astroturf campaign.
As arguments go, this is not bad, as we tend to have some expectations about 'truth in advertising' ( however watered-down it may be at this point ). Still, I am not sure I ever saw openAI, Claude or other providers claim something akin to:
- it will find you a new mate
- it will improve your sex life
- it will pay your taxes
- it will accurately diagnose you
That is, unless I somehow missed some targeted advertising material. If it helps, I am somewhere in the middle myself. I use llms ( both at work and privately ). Where I might slightly deviate from the norm is that I use both unpaid versions ( gemini ) and paid ones ( chatgpt ) apart from my local inference machine. I still think there is more value in letting people touch the hot stove. It is the only way to learn.
In a sense, it seems Accellerando got a lot more right than not ( reputation markets in this particular case ). We may be arguing over the best way to do it, but it seems that the conclusion was already drawn.
To be fair, it was something of a marketing master stroke to adopt claw as a symbol. Admittedly, it does make me uneasy the same way Kamala's writers dressed her up in Lisa Simpson's clothes ( episode when she is a president ), but... you have a point. We are a weird mix of pop culture memes becoming so intertwined it is hard to separate them at times.
Someone here recommended Accelerando about a month ago - I’m sitting in an airport now reading it. It’s… deep. Probably one of the two deepest sci-fi novels I’ve ever read, beat only by Blindsight.
I’m not finished yet though, so that order could change :)
I read it after Prime Intellect during my AI binge. I think the initial feeling I got from it was the same as I did during first read of Snow Crash. Familiar world, and yet everything is very, very different so you feel more like an explorer than anything else.
This. I will offer a small anecdote from way back. In one post-soviet bloc countries, people were demanding that something is done about the corruption, which, up until that moment, has been very much daily bread and butter. So what did the government do? Implement anti corruption law that was hailed as the best thing ever. Only problem was, the law in question punished both corruptor and corruptee effectively making it a show.
I am both pro and against this at the same time. I love the idea of tracking it as an aggregate, but I hate the idea that the kid may end up being stuck on some vibe coded idiocy and unable to move on, because of it ( I still shudder at some of the ridiculous math tests in college that could not account for the right answer, but not in the exactly right format that was not disclosed as expected ).
I am not even suggesting in person teaching is the only solution either. I am currently dealing with, apparently, my kids teacher, who, well, kinda checked out, but as much I am happy for her being able to retire soon, I am not sure why my kid has to suffer academically.
What I am saying is, there is room for AI. What I worry about is, people are idiots and anything half-useful will be neutered and kids will have all the drawbacks of heavy surveillance and zero to show for it.
I had a similar thought way back when. It goes back to what is important to the person reviewing it be it the style, form or just whether it works for their use case. In the case of organic food, I did not even know I was living living a healthy lifestyle until I came to US. But now organic is just another label, played by marketing people just like anything else.
As I may have noted before, humans are the problem.
~6 months here. In my case, it became almost a full daily driver ( putting corporate spyware on it would kinda defeat the purpose ). It is by no means perfect, but I can recommend it ( and I could not do the same with other phones that should have been better on paper -- linux phones like pinephone or purism ).
Interesting. This is not how I interpreted it at all in my initial viewing ( or subsequent ones for that matter ). If Grimes criticized anything, it was Homer and people like Homer. If it was a meta-commentary, it was certainly not drawing a distinction between reality of Grime's life and the imaginary one income head of the household doing surprisingly well given the circumstances. Grimes story was a story of a guy, who just had a bad luck.. over and over again, but even when the good luck did show, he failed the test and focused not on what he gained, but others have despite being, in his eyes, lesser than him.
That is the moral of the story. Don't be Grimes. He may wish he can be Homer Simpson, but he sure can't touch those high voltage signs.
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