Author Archives: Dave Johnson

The Real AI Question: Who Benefits?

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Here’s a different question about AI. Suppose it does what is promised, and does greatly increase productivity, and does bring all kinds of benefits. Who will gain from that? Will those benefits be shared? Will there be 3-day workweeks of 6 hours a day? 6-week vacations?

How Did Trade Work Out For Us?

Think about how it worked out with trade. Economists will explain that trade brings all kinds of benefits. One huge benefit was supposed to come from moving the worst jobs to places where people really need work, so the labor force is freed up to take on higher-level, higher-paid work, and the people on the other side of the trade border who needed jobs now have jobs. Over time this moves around the world lifting everyone. The same was supposed to be true about other benefits and gains from trade.

Democracies Would Make Sure Benefits Were Shared

But the economists assumed that everyone would benefit because democracies would make sure everyone shared those benefits. Why else would a democracy allow factories to close and imports to replace goods made at home? Why else would a democracy allow jobs to be sent away?

What Really Happened?

What really happened? The democracies were “captured” and instead of protecting the public government power protected the few at the top who had done the capturing. Jobs were moved out, factories were closed, and people were just laid off (too bad so sad here’s some Oxycontin). Unions were broken. Entire “rust belt” regions were utterly devastated. The middle class was forced downwards, while income and wealth shifted upward.

Here Comes AI

So now AI threatens to accelerate those changes. Democracy is gone and we all know the gains from AI won’t be shared. Instead AI will be used to force more and more people out of work, their wages instead going to a top few. This will further increase centralized power and wealth at the very top.

There Can Be Only One

This increasing concentration will accelerate and become a winner-take-all game. The oligarchs all understand this process of concentration, and are racing to be the winner in the AI race — to be the one person who gets it all. Literally all.

Hence the massive investment into AI we are seeing. Hence the bubble. It’s like nothing else matters.

Nothing Else Matters

It doesn’t matter to the massively-wealthy what happens when the bubble bursts. They understand this is about being the ONE person in control of what happens and who won’t be destroyed. They even say it – if AI becomes superintelligent they want to be the ONE person controlling that. And the current “system” is set up – by them – to let that happen.

That’s why they have rigged the system to keep We the People from stopping them.

Chemtrails

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Atrios makes a great point about right-wingers. You can’t appease them because they’re nuts. They’ll always want more.

Florida passed a law banning airplanes from spreading chemtrails (plus 7 other Republican states – so far). But people look up and still see the vapor trails from planes!!!

Lesson to learn: When they get done removing all the “illegals” (crossing the border is a misdemeanor) They will STILL see people who “don’t look like us” and that huge ICE apparatus they’re building will go to work on the rest of the population, until only the “pure” remain.

Chemtrails

The dangers of indulging the fantasies of the crazies.Since the state law went into effect, the Floridians who backed it have grown increasingly angry by seeing the skies just as marked by white trails as they were prior to the state law.

Here’s a smattering of irate posts on X in the two months since the state law went into effect:

— “Yes, the spraying has taken place every single day since the Ban was put in place!”

— “The invasion continues. Florida skies are under constant attack.”

— “DeSantis, why do you lie? Why do you say that you signed a Florida Bill getting rid of these hideous chemtrails, and it is all a fat big LIE?”

— “Welcome to Florida, the chemtrails state. Now we are being sprayed from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., so by 10 a.m. the skies are cleared but you are breathing heavy metals. Thank you DeSantis.”

— “See how the chemicals are spreading out. Trees are dying, crops are barely growing. Why is our government doing this to us?”

By humoring Florida’s free-dumb coalition on chemtrails, state lawmakers have unleashed a tornado of disappointment upon themselves.While not precisely the same, there is a lesson here about trying to give anti-immigration zealots something you can’t give them. They don’t want cuts to illegal immigration or even legal immigration.

They want you to send them all back again, and if you can’t provide that, they won’t be happy. They will vote for the people who they think might.

Stop negotiating with the imaginary Reasonable Republican in your head, imagining that surely this compromise will appeal to them, because it’s very sensible. Reasonable Republicans don’t exist, and they haven’t agreed to your compromise.

Twenty-Third Blog Birthday

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This is the 23rd birthday of Seeing the Forest’s first post.

On July 17, 2002 the post Seeing the Forest explained,

Recent polls show that the public is blaming Clinton for the business scandals, and Bush’s popularity remains astronomical. That’s a tree.

Let’s see if we can see the forest. Look back to the 2000 election. Step back and look at the candidates.

The Democrat’s candidate was a well respected, well liked, extremely experienced, Vietnam vet, former seminary student, character beyond reproach, faithfully married family man, foreign policy expert, with many accomplishments including being the person in the Congress most responsible for advancing the Internet… The Republicans ran a foul-mouthed thoroughly inexperienced scandal-ridden (Harken oil, Rangers stadium, recipient of bribes directed at his father) failed businessman, continuously bailed out of jams by his father’s connections, draft-dodger (worse, he got into the Nat. Guard through connections and then played hooky!), former drunk, probable drug-user, kids constantly in trouble, with a campaign entirely financed by large corporations obviously looking for favors.

But by election time the only issue was “character”, and the character in question was the Democratic candidate’s! That’s the forest.

Issues like the “Love Canal story” and “I invented the Internet” were trees. The forest was how they pulled it off – the smears, the propaganda blitz, the way they spread their message and the way people hear messages these days.

With this weblog I’ll be writing about this issue, seeing the forest for the trees.

American Manufacturing Was Sold Off For Profit

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China didn’t “take” America’s manufacturing jobs, greedy American investors and executives sold America’s farm and ate the seed corn. Same in the UK.

Paul Waldman writes about woodworking tools, in A Trump Tariff Case Study: Can the U.S. Again Be the Power Tool King? at The New Republic.

My DeWalt 20-volt cordless drill/driver combo set is a beaut—powerful, smooth, comfortable in the hand, and not too expensive; I got it on sale for about a hundred bucks. It’s also a tribute to the wonders of the transnational supply chain, its components traversing the earth before they came together and found their way to my door. The drill and driver were made in Mexico, but their batteries were made in China, as were the battery charger and the handy tote bag that came with it. DeWalt, a brand familiar to every woodworker and DIY enthusiast, is a division of Stanley Black & Decker, a global conglomerate headquartered in Connecticut that owns brands including Craftsman, Porter-Cable, Bostitch, and many others.

He writes about how tools once made in the US by American companies are now made elsewhere by international companies, why this is, and what it might take to bring the factories back. He nails it, just spot-on: Manufacturing ecosystems, the cost of bringing it back, the jobs that were good in the past. “(M)any started as American companies but are now part of multinational corporations.” “Unfortunately, there are serious impediments to achieving reindustrialization on a large scale, and Trump’s policies are just about the worst way to go about it.” “We could rebuild those manufacturing ecosystems in the U.S., but we can’t just wish it into existence.” “In fact, this entire debate seems animated by a vision of a bygone time.”

Yep, he nails it. And, as we all know, it’s not just woodworking tools. It’s the same story for … everything.

Same In The UK

It’s the same here in the UK as well. Jaguar/Land Rover are now owned by an Indian company. Trains, water, Royal Mail, British Petroleum (BP), British Telecom (BT) and many other iconic, privatized “British” brands are no longer British-owned. All were sold off to international “investor” conglomerates so a few already-wealthy people could get even more wealthy, under an economic “ideology” (free markets) that was really just a cover story for selling the farm and eating the seed corn. And the public, struggling to get by, now flails around hoping Trump (and here, the Trumpy Reform party) will make good on his promise to “fix it.”

China Did Not “Take” Those Industries

“China” (generic term for “somewhere else”) didn’t “take” those industries. American and British “investors” and executives did that – literally sold out their countries – enabled by US/UK governments run by politicians elected with money that those executives and “investors” took out of their companies to buy the politicians, so they could personally obtain great wealth. They did it because they wanted cheap labor and a way around the pollution and worker safety rules that democracies insist on.

“China” understood what they were seeing and planned and executed a strategy to build their industrial base – as a country. They set up manufacturing zones and put in place everything needed — from local financing, to a modern power grid, to roads, to training centers, to supply chains, to places for workers to come live. Everything.

It was a “public/private partnership” between American executives and the Chinese government. Those exectives also took that ecosystem apart in the US, piece by piece, and it can’t easily be put back together. They sent away the “institutional memory” and “ecosystem” of supply chains and training centers… much like how the Trumpers are now doing the same to the US government itself.

Beyond Neoliberalism

Last week I stepped back into a past life and attended the opening of the “Beyond Neoliberalism” conference (https://beyond-neoliberalism.org/) because it was literally right down the street here in Cambridge UK. Oddly America-centric (and attended by lots of Americans I used to know) it began with a rousing 2.5 hour panel discussion (mostly Americans) on Industrial Policy under Biden. They said a lot of the things you nailed down in your piece.

Biden tried with his IRA to the extent the “system” would let him. Obama tried in tiny ways with his Smart Manufacturing “hub” concept, setting up labs – like a sensor testing lab in Lorain, Ohio around community colleges that would train people to work in the labs, etc. Same with a 3-D printing hub in Youngstown.

They tried. They failed. Now the US has Trump and likely soon the UK will have Farage.

Where Did Everyone’s Money Go? (Hint: We Know)

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At the very end of the 1970s the US economy changed. An economic ideology called “neoliberalism” took hold. That was the idea that markets are a better way to decide things, not voters. The idea that “taxes on the rich hurt the economy” was blasted everywhere. Business does things more efficiently than government. Etc. (Tell me if you haven’t heard these things.)

So big changes were made in the way the US economy worked. Taxes on the rich and corporations were dramatically slashed. Companies were “unleashed” through deregulation. Unions were broken. Pensions disappeared. Etc.

Results appeared quickly. All of a suddent the gains from the economy stopped being shared, and increasingly went to the top few. Over the years I have posted versions of this chart:

Where The Money Went

A study from the Rand Corporation (a research organization) shows were the gains from the economy – as shown in that chart above – went. Rand’s Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 concludes that around $79 TRILLION that would have gone to working people instead went to the top 1%. That was 2018, seven years ago. Worse now.

Trump Isn’t The Collapse, Trump Is A Consequence Of The Collapse

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

People say America and its democracy are being collapsed by Trump. I have come to believe that what we have been calling “late-stage capitalism” was a system that had already collapsed.

Trump isn’t the collapse, Trump is the consequence of the collapse.

The Rule of Law had departed some time ago. The Constitutional system was nonfunctional. The economic system was rigged. The political system benefited only the wealthy and their corporations. That was collapse.

Accountability had long ago disappeared. (A pardon for Nixon? What?) Executives at corporations are never prosecuted. Instead the company itself would be fined – as if companies are sentient entities that can make decisions and do things. White-collar criminals were rarely prosecuted. This is how Trump was able to even be on the scene in the first place to run for office, instead of imprisoned for sex crimes, money laundering, fraud, etc.

The collapse was how Reagan was able to get away with the deal with Iran, and the later Iran/Contra deal.

The collapse was how the Supreme Court was able to make Bush president.

The collapse was how the Iraq War happened.

The collapse was how the climate crisis came about in the first place, how the companies were allowed to continue to put carbon into the air after scientists warned us of the harm it was causing, and how the executives at the companies that caused it got rich instead of being prosecuted.

The collapse was how tax cuts for the rich & corporations, with budget cuts for things government does to make people’s lives better happened.

The collapse was how no bankers were prosecuted for fraud after the financial collapse, and Wall Street but not the public was bailed out.

Rule of Law and accountability had long since disappeared from the United States. That was the collapse.

This wasn’t “late stage capitalism,” it was collapse.

People called these things “late stage capitalism.” This wasn’t late stage capitalism at all. We were already living with the collapse of the Constitutional system, the collapse of Rule of Law, the collapse of accountability. It was corruption taking over. It had been happening for decades.

Trump is just a consequence of that collapse.

In 2017’s Democracy and Corruption I wrote about “democracy off the rails” and democracy “corroded,” not realizing Trump was only possible was because the collapse had already happened.

Trump didn’t just come out of nowhere. The road to Trump goes back a long way. Trump comes out of a steady and intentional undermining of rule of law, norms, equality, civility and democracy.

They say these things happen slowly, then all at once. The collapse was happening for decades, then all at once with Trump.

We’re Underestimating the AI Threat to Democracy and Humanity

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This post originally appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy

The climate crisis is like an asteroid that is heading towards the Earth. AI could be another asteroid coming at us, but much sooner.

I used to think AI was amazing. Then I tried using the stuff they’re putting out there for various things and it was terrible, wrong and annoying. So I started to scoff at it.

I’ve changed my mind again. We shouldn’t disregard it or scoff at it. It is already replacing coders, and it is good at lots and lots of other things. It will get better and it will get better really quickly.

Here’s a prediction: Without regulation AI will be used to manipulate the 2026 elections in ways we don’t see or understand. In other countries the same will happen. The oligarchs are guaranteed to try this, and might well succeed.

The goal of the AI effort is “superintelligence.” This is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that can learn and make itself better. Once it gets to that point it will immediately accelerate its own learning and will very, very quickly surpass anything people can do.

The people running the AI companies are hoping to “get there first” and use it to take over the world, for themselves, personally. For their own benefit, and never mind anyone else. I think that’s obvious.

Imagine a tool that lets dictators anticipate and disrupt anything – anything – that might try to stop them, and that can manipulate the public with a power beyond our comprehension. A tool that is infinitely smarter than us or anything humanity has ever encountered. People have been able to overcome people in these situations, but this will be different – if we let it happen. It is the INTENT of Musk and the others for this to happen.

So here is a warning from someone on the inside who understands what’s going on. I listened to the podcast while walking. Look for “GZERO World with Ian Bremmer”

“OpenAI whistleblower Daniel Kokotajlo on superintelligence and existential risk of AI”

Here it is on YouTube. (The settings “gear” icon lets you increase the playback speed.)

China Didn’t Take American Jobs

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Trump says other countries took advantage of the US. He says they “took” manufacturing and jobs from the US. This is just not what happened.

American Companies Did This

American democracy gave workers good wages and protections. It passed laws restricting the ability of companies to pollute.

“Investors” and executives running Amereican companies wanted more money. They wanted bigger profits, and saw America’s unions and resulting good wages and benefits as obstacles to greater profits – for themselves. They saw democracy’s protections and regulations and pollution controls as obstacles to greater profits – for themselves.

American investors and exeucites found a way around the borders of American democracy. The companies moved manufacturing to lowest-common-denominator places: lowest wages, minimal protection of workers, low regulation, allowing pollution etc. American companies did this, not evil foreign plots to take American jobs and companies.

The weaknesses of American democracy allowed American companies to move jobs out of the US. Those companies used this as a lever to force wages, taxes and regulations down INSIDE the US. This is a lot of what led to the inequality the US has now.

And they used the great profits to buy politicians who moved American democracy out of their way.

Foreigners didn’t do this to the US, American companies were allowed to do this.

THAT is what needs fixing. The weakness of American democracy, allowing government to be controlled by wealthy interests did this. The only way to undo this is to fully restore American democracy.

The Trump Tariffs

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This is the MAGA plan to re-align the world’s economy, of course with the US oligarchs on top. I see it as the product of the same arrogance as this famous quote:

‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.

The US got away with re-aligning the world economy in their favor when the opposition in the world was the USSR. Things are different now. China is strong. The EU is strong. I expect this now-famous quote tells us how this one is going to turn out for the US:

“I’m honestly shocked. I thought we had it in the bag,” said Pam Van Handel, chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s Outagamie County. “I thought [Musk] was going to be an asset for this race. People love Trump, but maybe they don’t love everybody he supports. Maybe I have blinders on.”

Can You Trust American Tech?

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I live in the UK now. The reaction here and in the EU to what Trump is doing to Ukraine from what I’m reading, is intense. That is putting it mildly. Suddenly the US is a hostile client-state of Russia? Wow!

And the reaction is Canada to American threats of annexation is also intense!

Not Just Tesla

Tesla has been an obvious target. Sales are way down. Maybe “over” is a better way to put it. People are throwing things at Tesla dealerships, throwing things at Teslas.

But it’s not just Tesla. People – and governments – are talking about the need to stop using ANY American technology as fast as possible. If America can turn it off if you don’t give in to extortionate demands, you had best protect yourself by finding alternatives.

Will Trump make Apple turn off your iPhone if France doesn’t hand over enough cheese? Will Google turn off the search engine if the UK doesn’t send enough period dramas?

The long-term consequences of this will be felt for a long, long time. US tech dominance is over.

On The Word ‘Genocide’ By ‘The Left’ To Describe Israel’s Actions In Gaza

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My mother’s parents were Orthodox Jews, coming from Ukrainians who emigrated to the US (in a hurry) during prior eras of persecution. I also lost family members (one in the US in the 30s) to that stuff.

There is a human tendency to tribally identify an “us” and a “them,” and to whip people up against an “other” for political gain. Humans do that, not any specific branches/types/races of humans. We have seen this happen throughout human history.

In mid-20th century Europe incredible atrocities occurred. Horrific. It showed what humans can do under certain circumstances. People this happened to vowed, “Never Again!” as a lesson to watch for the signs of those circumstances and that horror recurring elsewhere.

For a while in Gaza there was a debate whether genocide was occurring or “only” ethnic cleansing as the Netanyahu government forced mass migration and then systematically destroyed the homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, government buildings and civil infrastructure left behind. There were very large numbers of civilian casualties. We don’t know the actual extent of what happened because journalists there to report information kept getting killed.

I don’t for a minute think “Jews” are doing what is happening in Gaza. That’s a ridiculous thing that ridiculous people might conclude. I blame the Trumpy Netanyahu right-wing government for using “othering” to create circumstances encouraging what occurred. (Evidence presented to international tribunals is rather conclusive on this.) And the Biden administration for enabling and arming it. The latter – US complicity – is what is driving some of “the left” to pay particular attention to this particular mass atrocity. (There was also lots of anger on “the left” at Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine.)

As you pointed out, “genocide” is a recent term. So its meaning could be limited to only refer to what happened in Europe in the mid-20th century. I don’t know if it has to happen on the scale of events that brought about the invention of the word before using that particular word elsewhere. The point, I think, was to give the world a way to be watchful for those human tendencies to do those kinds of things to each other. Others may disagree.