alvvayson

I am not convinced it would, TBH.

If people don't want to buy the cars, then the production line will eventually have to stop, permanently. And you get zero compensation for lost revenue.

If a production line is hit and has to close, then insurance will compensate part of the damage and after a few days or weeks you can be up and running again.

It is definitely here to stay, but the hype of AGI being just around the corner is definitely not believable. And a lot of the billions being invested in AI will never return a profit.

AI is already a commodity. People will be paying $10/month at max for general AI. Whether Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Llama, ChatGPT, copilot or Deepseek. People will just have one cheap plan that covers anything an ordinary person would need. Most people might even limit themselves to free plans supported by advertisements.

These companies aren't going to be able to extract revenues in the $20-$100/month from the general population, which is what they need to recoup their investments.

Specialized implementations for law firms, medical field, etc will be able to charge more per seat, but their user base will be small. And even they will face stiff competition.

I do believe AI can mostly solve quite a few of the problems of an aging society, by making the smaller pool of workers significantly more productive. But it will not be able to fully replace humans any time soon.

It's kinda like email or the web. You can make money using these technologies, but by itself it's not a big money maker.

The other guy already said that we do, but to elaborate.

For your reading pleasure:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_the_Roman_Empire#European_Union

And my take is that the age of empires ended with the British empire, or the Soviet Union if you consider that a continuation of the Russian empire.

The US empire, China and the EU operate differently from the olden day Empires. And I consider the EU model to be the template that will eventually dominate in our future.

Being a single country all alone like Ukraine or Taiwan or even the UK just isn't going to be sustainable. Nations will need to form unions to achieve critical mass against big countries and other unions.

Few countries will want to go fully towards a USA style federal union, so EU style is probably the model that will eventually dominate the world.

Agreed. Algorithms, bots and fake news work together to create and perpetuate harmful narratives.

I think the DMA has the right idea and it should be extended. Any platform with a large user base should be heavily regulated and controlled.

We can still have mostly unregulated and uncensored free speech on small platforms, since those aren't harmful for our democracy.

I'm talking about long-term non-US centric policy.

I don't mean to imply that this is a priority for the short term in the US.

A commenter on the site made the same comment, but I find it difficult to believe that insurance companies won't adapt more quickly to marked increases in vandalism.

If they don't immediately raise rates, then they will make less profit.

If their competitors do raise rates, then the Tesla owners will flock to the ones that didn't raise rates and those companies will end up with reduced profits due to having more Tesla's and thus more claims to cover.

If vandalism continues, then this will easily be the death of Tesla.

Nobody will want to buy a Tesla when an equivalent Mercedes has half the insurance rate.

Boycotts also hurt Tesla, but vandalism will be their death.

Nothing in this world is free. The US tax rate isn't high. The issue is, you don't get a good value back.

You can't have strong unions without money for unions.

Organizing people costs money.

Union dues tend to be in the $10-50 per month range, while unions easily increase wages by hundreds a month through collective bargaining.

Most of the unions costs are fixed, so if everyone is a member the average due can easily be on the lower end ($10-20).

If you have a problem with that, then that's exactly why you don't have strong unions.

Yep, Project 2025 wasn't exaggerated at all. We all knew this would happen.

But I'm gonna blame Biden, Harris and AIPAC for blowing up the liberal-progressive coalition and alienating working class Americans with high inflation.

How do you lose 6 million voters from 2020 to 2024. That's just insane.

Half of them went to Trump, the other half stayed home.

Madness

Also, a lot of people, myself included, make it a point to go to the bathroom before swimming.

And I don't usually consume food or drinks until I am (almost) done with swimming. A four hour stretch of just recreational swimming and chilling is easy without food or drink.

I fully agree.

Also, one thing that Unions always have trouble with is that there is no individual benefit to joining a union, only a cost, so you get a prisoners dilemma type situation.

Even in Scandinavian countries, union membership is on the decline.

Personally, I think the solution should be that union dues are paid by a small tax, making it 'free' to join a union. And the unions can provide free benefits to their members, such as legal advice and representation. This will make it attractive to join a union.

Ahhh, I thought I was missing something. Thanks for the reference. K love that song.