The largest resource use of AI over the next 50 years will be generating entertainment structures for humans. Productivity focused AI will be the most economically useful, however it'll be far less resource intensive than the entertainment generation (generally speaking, AI tasked with driving human pleasure).
World building alone will be at least a magnitude greater in resource use than all productivity-focused AI combined (including robotics + AI). Then throw in traditional media generation (audio, images, video, textual).
AI will be the ultimate sedative for humanity. We're going into the box and never coming back out and absolutely nothing can stop that from happening. For at least 95% of humanity the future value that AI offers in terms of bolstering pleasure-of-existence is far beyond the alternatives it's not really worth considering any other potential outcome, there will be no other outcome. Most of humanity will lose interest in the mundane garbage of dredging through day to day mediocrity (oh I know what you're thinking: but but but life isn't really that mediocre - yes, it definitely is, for the majority of the eight billion it absolutely is).
Out there is nothing, more nothing, some more nothing, a rock, some more nothing, some more of what we already know, nothing, more nothing, and a lot more nothing. In there will be anything you want. It's obvious what the masses will overwhelmingly choose.
That's what people widely claimed about Uber: it was toast once the investor subsidies stopped. Now it's quite profitable.
People will pay more. Claude Opus 4.5 is worth more than $20 per month, as is Gemini 3 Pro. These services keep getting better. Another three years of improvement, why shouldn't that command $30 or $40 instead?
$20 is ~$10 in the year 2000 per the BLS inflation calculator (or $1.25 when priced in gold). Nobody would have thought that was expensive for such utility. These are inexpensive tools at present.
At its worst, Uber had a net margin of -~60%. The AI labs are all running at least negative triple digit net margins, some running negative quadruple digit net margins. This is why AGI has been "forecasted" to death by the labs, because investors need the promise of infinite automation to stomach the losses.
Anyway, in this instance, what you received for $20 in 2025 will run you somewhere in the range of $60-$90 in 2027/2028. In the interim, you will likely see that $30-$40 of service gets you what cost $20 in 2025. The most likely avenue for this will be reduction in subscription user limits, and for API customers premiumization through substitution. The latter being a situation where what would be the next Claude Sonnet model is now sold as Claude Opus, for example.
The only way the math works for the consumer is if the user base has become dependent on the service instead of remaining in a conventional cost/benefit relationship.
I think you're ignoring that most users of AI currently aren't paying anything, nor would they. I believe the value of a Facebook user was $70 per year in 2023, for the US and Canada. Assuming that the AI companies could make twice that from ads, that's still only $10 - $12 per month, and even less in the rest of the world. Obviously there's going to be some business users as well, so they can cover some of the cost, but would also be responsible for a larger portion of the running cost.
The question should be how many free users can the AI companies convert.
The cost of an Uber has also gone way up, and they basically have a monopoly in many areas.
The cost of free users is much lower because they are served lite models, hit quota limits quickly, and can't soak up tokens by using agents. The main capacity usage is from agent loops, which is universally behind a paid tier.
So long as personal information is not collected, consent is not morally necessary.
If I collect information on how often a coin-op Street Fighter II game is played in an arcade, while collecting no personal information, consent is not needed.
You are not entitled to play the game, which is hosted on their server which requires bandwidth and other resources. In the same way that you are free to make demands about how software runs on your machine, the author is free to make demands about the use of their software.
If the data gathered is only on gameplay, and not something that can be used as PII like IP addresses or device information, then it should be fine. Gathering things like the score and time spent completing the level, isn't a problem. This could be used to rank the levels, without gathering any user information.
On the Internet: any movie I want to watch; any song I want to listen to; an endless parade of games to play via Steam et al.; about a zillion games I can play online with friends; numerous app store options, and an entire other world of smartphone games I can play alone or with friends; inexpensive LLMs I can do almost anything I want to with, wherever my imagination takes me; porn, a lot of porn; infinite social media; infinite videos on youtube; any skill I want to learn, there is - what might as well be - unlimited material on how to do it; any book I want to read; communications, email, instant messaging, tele-whatever; just about any kind of get-x-done software I could ask for, and if it doesn't exist an LLM will create it for me tonight; shopping, whatever you want to buy, you can shop for it, research it, look at it; want to start an LLC? Internet. Want to file a trademark? Internet. Want a passport? Internet. Book a flight/hotel/B&B/car rental? Internet. Plot a holiday? Internet. Have a hobby? Communities on one platform or another. And on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
The internet is the scaffolding/structure, the Web is what people are doing in a browser (i.e., over HTTP) in it.
Then there's also the stuff people do on the internet without a browser/HTTP. Nobody opens an IMAP/SSH/BitTorrent/IRC client or whatever and thinks of that as surfing the Web, because those aren't browsers nor are they primarily speaking HTTP.
I'm not sure, but the grand-parent might be drawing from Hakim Bey's distinction between Net and Web. This is from TAZ, The Temporary Autonomous Zone (1991):
We’ve spoken of the Net, which can be defined as the totality of all information and communication transfer. Some of these transfers are privileged and limited to various elites, which gives the Net a hierarchic aspect. Other transactions are open to all — so the Net has a horizontal or non-hierarchic aspect as well. Military and Intelligence data are restricted, as are banking and currency information and the like. But for the most part the telephone, the postal system, public data banks, etc. are accessible to everyone and anyone. Thus within the Net there has begun to emerge a shadowy sort of counter-Net, which we will call the Web (as if the Net were a fishing-net and the Web were spider-webs woven through the interstices and broken sections of the Net). Generally we’ll use the term Web to refer to the alternate horizontal open structure of info-exchange, the non-hierarchic network, and reserve the term counter-Net to indicate clandestine illegal and rebellious use of the Web, including actual data-piracy and other forms of leeching off the Net itself. Net, Web, and counter-Net are all parts of the same whole pattern-complex — they blur into each other at innumerable points. The terms are not meant to define areas but to suggest tendencies.
I appreciate when "Woe is Me" style comments are knocked down a notch when they conveniently ignore half of the world. The activity surrounding the discussion is indeed using networked applications, of which the web is only one.
So I don't think they were being needlessly pedantic, nor do I think they didn't understand what the parent meant by internet in the colloquial.
Lots of different ways one could take this: maybe whom they were responding to is just being lazy, that the good parts of the internet are there for them to explore, but they are beholden to their web browser and their favorite loathed platforms that 'make the internet suck'.
Or maybe whom they were responding to really has gone the rounds and really has considered all the options and bemoans how difficult the non-web internet services are to use, and how inelegant they can be at times and what a pain they are to maintain if it isn't your full time job.
There can be so many ways to take written material on the internet; more often even pedantic comments at least let us ensure we aren't simply reaffirming our own biases.
Russia invades. Ukraine launches nukes. Every major city in Ukraine is ash. Several major cities in Russia are ash. Millions die plausibly.
That scenario is not what would happen from an invasion.
Zelensky would not have used nukes to prompt the death of millions instantly. He would have proceeded with the same defensive war.
The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian occupation. That would overwhelmingly be chosen false by the population in question that is being invaded.
All those people that lived under Soviet Russia occupation, they were better off dead in nuclear fire than living under said occupation? Obviously not what the masses would have chosen (just look at what they did choose to do while living under Russian occupation - how many gave up their lives to fight back?). It's fundamentally why nuclear weapons as deterrant is largely fraudulent. They're solely viable as a last option against total oblivion at the hands of an enemy: it entails everyone dies, which means there has to be a good enough reason for everyone to die to justify use.
This isn’t how nukes would get used. They wouldn’t just fire them at cities to start with. It would most likely be something tactical, but perhaps end up escalating to insanity anyway
You don't leave room to escalate beyond use if nukes anymore. Russia's response to a tactical nuke would be to turn Ukraine into glass. All leaving additional escalation on the table does is make sure that you don't make good on your word to make everyone lose too.
> You don't leave room to escalate beyond use if nukes anymore. Russia's response to a tactical nuke would be to turn Ukraine into glass
Tactical nukes are in ambiguous territory. Russia launching a blizzard of nukes at Ukraine is difficult to distinguish from Russia nuking NATO. To turn Ukraine into glass, Russia would need to gamble that Washington and France trust it.
Sure, but that practically looks like Russia telling NATO what it's going to do, then most of NATO sitting at DEFCON 1 and being ready to respond the instant any Russian missiles look like they're not going towards Ukraine. NATO has no reason to inject themselves into a nuclear exchange more than diplomatically, and has the ability to respond well after they know where Russian missiles are going to land.
> that practically looks like Russia telling NATO what it's going to do
Which is indistinguishable from a Russian first strike. Russia glassing Ukraine is about as rational as it launching a first strike. So serious people would have to weigh–based on incomplete information–whether Putin is still in charge and if tens of millions of lives might be saved if we neutralise their silos first.
Outside nuclear holocaust, Russia, on launching a strategic nuclear strike on Ukraine, would have crossed a red line Beijing, New Delhi and Tehran each value. (The last because Russia's justification for glassing Ukraine is easily copy-pasted by Israel.)
> Which is indistinguishable from a Russian first strike.
It's really not. Once they've launched, it's pretty clear where they're going. All NATO needs is enough time to respond, and they absolutely have that.
> Outside nuclear holocaust, Russia, on launching a strategic nuclear strike on Ukraine, would have crossed a red line Beijing, New Delhi and Tehran each value. (The last because Russia's justification for glassing Ukraine is easily copy-pasted by Israel.)
If you look, their nuclear policy is to respond overwhelmingly to a nuclear strike. India for instance has officially said they "will not be the first to initiate a nuclear first strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail". https://web.archive.org/web/20091205231912/http://www.indian... That's diplomatic speak for 'we reserve the right to glass you after any nuclear strikes in our territory'.
> It's really not. Once they've launched, it's pretty clear where they're going
What are you basing this on? Even back when warheads were strictly ballistic we couldn't do that. Russia's arsenal, today, contains maneuverable warheads.
Flip it around: if we committed to a first strike on Russia and China, is there a world in which we wouldn't say it's to glass North Korea?
> All NATO needs is enough time to respond
This is not how strategic nuclear exchanges are ever modeled. Because it's now how strategic war plans are ever written.
Use it or lose it. Silo-based missiles are sitting ducks. By the time nukes are landing in Ukraine they could be landing across a good chunk of Europe and Turkey.
> If you look, their nuclear policy is to respond overwhelmingly to a nuclear strike
I'm not saying India will nuke Russia. I'm saying India and China would both exact a price from Russia for normalising nuclear war in the modern context. This has been repeatedly messaged by both in respect of the Ukraine invasion.
> What are you basing this on? Even back when warheads were strictly ballistic we couldn't do that. Russia's arsenal, today, contains maneuverable warheads.
> Flip it around: if we committed to a first strike on Russia and China, is there a world in which we wouldn't say it's to glass North Korea?
Because while you can't tell how far a missile is going to go, you can tell how far it has gone. We're more than capable of tracking that a missile has gone past what would make sense for a Russian strike on Ukraine.
And you'd be able to tell if a launch made sense to attack NK from the US or not. Orbital mechanics and the burn patterns of ICBMs don't really let you redirect at the last minute, and the trajectory wouldn't really make sense.
> This is not how strategic nuclear exchanges are ever modeled. Because it's now how strategic war plans are ever written.
> Use it or lose it. Silo-based missiles are sitting ducks. By the time nukes are landing in Ukraine they could be landing across a good chunk of Europe and Turkey.
Europe and Turkey have no silo based weapons left. It's all either airborne or submarine delivery these days.
In this scenario the weapons are all already in the air, or on submarines where they've been as safe as they always are.
> I'm not saying India will nuke Russia. I'm saying India and China would both exact a price from Russia for normalizing nuclear war in the modern context. This has been repeatedly messaged by both in respect of the Ukraine invasion.
Once again, the context here is a Ukrainian nuclear (even if tactical) first strike, and the subsequent Russian retaliation. "Punitive" retaliation is all of their strategy. This has already been normalized. Which is why a "tactical" nuclear strike would never make sense.
> you can tell how far it has gone. We're more than capable of tracking that a missile has gone past what would make sense for a Russian strike on Ukraine
Generally speaking, a bunch of Russian silos lighting up would put us at DEFCON 1. We’re not waiting until it passes Ukraine. It we want to engage any boost-phase ABM, we’re not going to let it. (Which leads to its own issues.)
> you'd be able to tell if a launch made sense to attack NK from the US or not
At some point. But waiting will cost you precious minutes, and you don’t know what else is in position e.g. off your coast.
> Europe and Turkey have no silo based weapons left
I was unclear. I meant conventional forces that would be targets in a first strike.
> "Punitive" retaliation is all of their strategy. This has already been normalized
Strategic retaliation for tactical nukes has not been normalized. This is still entirely ambiguous and hotly debated.
Again, flip it around. If you knew China and Russia would stand down if they thought you were just nuking North Korea, you could use that to gain material advantage in a first strike.
> Generally speaking, a bunch of Russian silos lighting up would put us at DEFCON 1. We’re not waiting until it passes Ukraine. It we want to engage any boost-phase ABM, we’re not going to let it. (Which leads to its own issues.)
I already said they'd be at DEFCON 1.
> At some point. But waiting will cost you precious minutes, and you don’t know what else is in position e.g. off your coast.
Waiting might also keep you out of a nuclear war. They know exactly how long they can wait.
> I was unclear. I meant conventional forces that would be targets in a first strike.
Convential forces are inconsequential wrt a full nuclear strike.
> Strategic retaliation for tactical nukes has not been normalized. This is still entirely ambiguous and hotly debated.
I already quoted you the exact policy from one of your examples.
> Again, flip it around. If you knew China and Russia would stand down if they thought you were just nuking North Korea, you could use that to gain material advantage in a first strike.
If you were retaliating because NK had already set off a tactical nuke in your territory? Once again, the orbital mechanics don't work like that. Looking at it, the only thing you could hit from US silos launched so that they look like they're hitting North Korea would maybe be Hong Kong. Which once those missiles go past North Korea, China is already considering it a first strike and retaliating, so you didn't really gain anything.
Your comment highlights some tensions in deterrence theory, but it also oversimplifies over a few things.
If you notice, most countries with nuclear weapons also have published and publicized nuclear use policies. These documents usually highlight lines and conditions under which they will consider the use of nuclear weapons. This is by design. Ambiguity in nuclear policy invites miscalculation. Of course, you don't want complete certainty, lest you risk your enemy push right up to your line and no further; you want your lines defined, but a little blurry, so that the enemy is afraid to approach, much less cross. This is called strategic ambiguity. This is why Russia has been criticized a lot by policy experts for their repeated nuclear saber-rattling. They're making the line too blurry, and so Ukraine and their allies risk crossing that line accidentally, triggering something nobody truly wants to trigger.
In the case of a nuclear-armed Ukraine, given Russia's tendency to like to take over neighboring countries, they could include "threats to territorial integrity" as a threshold for going nuclear. They could also be a little more 'reasonable' and include "existential threat to the state" - which the initial 2022 invasion very much would fit.
What this looks like in practice is that Russia, in their calculations, would factor in the risk of triggering a nuclear response if they tried to take Ukrainian territory. Now, they may believe, as you seem to, that Ukraine would not risk the annihilation of its people over Crimea/Donbas. At which point, Russia would invade, and then Ukraine would have to decide. If Ukraine does not escalate, then they will lose deterrence and credibility for any future conflicts, assuming they survive as a state. If Ukraine does escalate, announces to Russia they will launch a nuclear attack to establish deterrence (reducing ambiguity that this is a full nuclear exchange), and then launches a single low-yield nuke at Russian invading troops, they place the ball back in Russia's court: Ukraine is clearly willing to employ nukes in this war - do you believe they won't escalate further, or do you believe they will launch their full arsenal if you continue?
This is essentially a simplified version of deterrence theory. The idea is to give the other side all possible opportunities to de-escalate and prevent a full nuclear exchange. If you do not back up your policy with actual teeth - by using nukes when you said you would - you're signalling something very dangerous.
This is also why nuclear-armed states do not tend to rely solely on their nuclear deterrence. They want a solid layer of conventional capabilities before they have to resort to their proverbial nuclear button. A strong conventional force keeps conflicts below the nuclear threshold, where deterrence theory tends to get very dangerous, very fast.
>The false premise rests on: it's better for everyone to die than live under Russian occupation. That would overwhelmingly be chosen false by the population in question that is being invaded.
Well, Russian occupation usually means your town slowly undergoes mass extermination and genocide....
You have to assume everyone is willing to die over every single thing short of obliteration.
So what's the scenario then? Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela launches its nukes, everyone dies on both sides. Please, explain that laughable premise. Everyone in Venezuela dies for Maduro? Go on, explain it, I'll wait.
Back in reality: Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela shakes its fists at the sky, threatens nuclear hell fire. Nothing happens. Why? The remaining leadership of Venezuela does not in fact want to die for Maduro.
> So what's the scenario then? Venezuela has nukes. The US abducts Maduro. Venezuela launches its nukes, everyone dies on both sides.
US attacks, Maduro threatens to launch nuke(s) ... then what? Do you call bluff?
Maduro was capture in a militair base (as he did a Saddam, switching sleeping locations), he almost made it into a safe room. What if he had nukes and made it to the safe room. You know the expression "Cornered rat"... For all he knew, the US was there to kill him. The US killed his 30 Cuban bodyguards so high change Maduro thought its his end.
> "Cornered rat" refers to the idiom that even weak individuals become desperate and dangerous when given no escape, often applied to intense political or military pressure.
The scenario that you called, that nobody wants to die for Maduro, is you gambling that nobody want to die for him or not follow the chain of command! Do you want to risk it? No matter how many precaution you take, are you really sure that not one or more nukes go to Texas or Miami?
This is why Nukes are so powerful, even in the hands of weaker countries. It gives a weaker country a weapon that may inflict untold dead to the more powerful country (let alone the political impact). Its a weapon that influences decision making, even in the most powerful countries.
Are you trying to argue that M.A.D. hasn't been an effective deterrent to violence for decades?
Do you think the US and EU would have hesitated to send enough arms to keep Ukraine comfortably fending off Russia if they weren't afraid of the nuclear threat that Russia kept toying with?
Exactly right. It's like arguing there is only one way to make food for enjoyment. It's pure snobbery to proclaim there's only one proper way to do X thing along these lines. Making art is just the same, there is no right way to do it.
The HN crowd wants everybody sitting at home on UBI suffering trying to be creative. It's like arguing for hand washing clothes to get that full, proper, drawn-out, brain smashing experience.
Now sit at home and be a good boy, take that UBI, create and be productive - but don't make it too easy, don't you dare use AI, bleed for that UBI.
>Now sit at home and be a good boy, take that UBI, create and be productive
Honestly i prefer that listening marketing bro's on linkedin posting about how AI means X is finished and everyone who learned X needs to pay for their webinar on writing prompts.
The US has no use for Venezuelan oil. The US is sitting on a vast reserve of relatively good quality oil and is pumping as much as the global markets can handle. Venezuela is sitting on massive reserves of low quality, difficult to process oil.
The US goal is deprive China of access to Venezuelan oil. China is ~80% of all Venezuelan oil exports (legal or illegal). Venezuela represents a very large potential supply of oil for China, for the next 30-50 years (a time after which oil probably won't matter very much to China).
Note that the US also did not take Iraq's oil. China & India mostly have got that output. The US spent trillions of dollars, used its super power military to fully invade and occupy Iraq, and then did not take its oil. Read that again if anybody still feels brainwashed from the false campaign that endlessly proclaimed the US invasion of Iraq was to Steal The Oil.
Iraq was about the great power conflict with Russia across the Middle East (see: Syria, Libya, etc).
Venezuela is about the great power conflict with China and controlling what the US considers its backyard.
> The US has no use for Venezuelan oil. The US is sitting on a vast reserve of relatively good quality oil and is pumping as much as the global markets can handle.
First, our oil tends to be better for making gasoline but worse did asphalt or diesel, so there is a market for Venezuelan oil replacing Alberta’s.
Second, this is what the man himself has been talking about. He spent weeks going on about the nationalization in the 70s–and note how much of his worldview is stuck half a century ago when he was young—and in the first interview today he said this: “We’re going to have our very large US oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so. So we were prepared to do a second wave.”
There are reasonable arguments about how much this is really worth but one thing we’ve learned is that he doesn’t do subterfuge or misdirection well. If he’s talking about making the world safe for Exxon, I’d bet that he believes it.
Actually it's just the exact opposite. The US might be the biggest oil producer, but it still imports 60% of its oil that it uses from Canada. Why is that? Apparently because US infrastructure was built for heavy oil, not the light version the US produces.
Well, well, well ... It just so happens that Venezuela sits on the worlds largest repository of heavy oil.
The US consumes about 20 mil bbls of oil per day and imports around 4 mil bbls per day from Canada, about 20% of US consumption. Total oil imports is about 6 mil bbls/day, with about 2/3 of imports coming from Canada.
Two fun facts: 1) the US is now the largest producer of crude oil on the planet and 2) the US exports about 4 mil bbs of oil per day. Venezuela is a distant #18 at around 1 mil bbls/day
And lastly, pretty much anything you can distil from heavy crude, you can also distil from light crude, just less of it (by volume). There's a reason tar, asphalt and such is so cheap, it's made from the distillation waste products.
Almost double that of Saudi-Arabia, roughly 20 times that of Venezuela
Imported heavy crude rose from 12% 50 years ago to 70% today.
> pretty much anything you can distil from heavy crude, you can also distil from light crude
You can, but at what cost and where? The largest raffineries are apparently built for heavy crude and you can’t just retrofit them to handle light crude.
> with about 2/3 of imports coming from Canada
There are just two other countries equipped with large enough resources to compete for that market share: Russia and Venezuela
Considering this was one of his first statements on what happened, I think it’s a clear signal for what his priorities are.
We are straight back to the Reagan years of toppling regimes for our own resource interests. There is no way we did this out of the kindness of our hearts or because we believe in open, free elections. We have clear material interests and he’s not even trying to hide it.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy (/s obviously) but let’s not pretend this was some sort of magnanimous gesture or that it shouldn’t be deeply concerning to their neighbors that the US has no problem attacking a sovereign nation’s capital city and making off with a country’s leader + family when we’re not even at war.
Again I am not losing sleep for Maduro specifically but the way this was handled is not something that should be simply glossed over because of who he was and how he came to power, and we should definitely not pretend “the US has no use for Venezuelan oil.”
Before the invasion, influence and control was iraqi state owned. Afterwards, it was controlled by the US government up to ~2011. Then the western oil companies had influence. So sure they didn’t use it but they can dictate where it goes.
Sure: it would be dumb for Washington through inaction to allow China to become secure in its region like the US is secure in its region because then China would be free to intervene all over the world, like the US does and has done for 80 years, which would be bad for the US, so Washington should try to prevent it.
In short, great-power competition is mostly zero-sum, and intuitions derived from relations between individuals in a civilized society mostly do not apply.
The US may have no use for Venezuelan oil, but Venezuela nationalized US investments in 1976, stealing Exxon and Gulf Oil's assets then paying them back a pittance.
Venezuela owes those companies several billion in 1976 dollars, money they have not repaid. The US will now likely use their oil as collateral to force them to pay. No I am not dumb enough to think they will stop only there or do this in a justifiable way, but I would assert, when someone steals something from you, you have the right to use force to get it back, even if the method just used is not the right one.
I'm fairly certain that there's a large segment of the population who would deeply dislike that rationale, especially if it's applied consistently to all past actions (cough slavery)
Why wouldn't apply to the people that keep or have kept slaves? It's probably harder to find anyone alive who has kept slaves or conspired with those who kept slaves, but I'm sure you could find some. Most of them are sex trafficking victims nowadays.
(to be clear here, living person Maduro was in an active conspiracy with the [at the time] living person Chavez who seized those assets* and Maduro knowingly and intentionally used the stolen assets of currently living shareholders of Exxon and and Gulf oil, this isn't even remotely analogous to some nebulous group of white people paying people who look like they might have been slaves but have never been slaves for the sins of other dead people who happened to be the same skin color who kept slaves)
If you mean just grabbing some random person who looks like a former slaveholder and then going after them for reparations to someone who happens to look like they might have been a slave if born in another time, then no that doesn't make sense. In fact most white people that are here probably can trace their lineage to the post civil war pre-WWII mass immigration, they don't even have a family lineage or personal inheritance lineage to slave holders.
>, especially if it's applied consistently to all past actions (cough slavery)
reply
Also of note here, it was applied against slaveholders in a literal civil war where a notable portion of them were killed, although it by no means made up for what happened nor was it even the sole reason for the war. So yes the US government has done far more against slaveholders than they have against the Maduro/Chavez regime.
* Yes it happened before Maduro was in the Chavez regime, but he wittingly and knowingly later entered the conspiracy and used the stolen assets of living people as an ongoing continuation of the theft.
Where do you draw the line in the list of "not the right [method]"? I would assert that this is not justified, (in addition to not being the right method).
Can we send troops down there and just starting kill people until they pay us? Torture them maybe? Start spraying agent orange?
If someone steals something from me, I'm justified in beating them up, threatening their family, maybe even burning their house down until I get what I want, 50 years later?
Where do you draw the line between justified and unjustified when it comes to "not the right [method]"?
You shouldn't. But you are, and taxes ultimately are there to force via violence people to pay to help fund what they won't pay voluntarily. Now we're only left thinking about how we got here. You and I have next to nill say in this, particularly since the guy ordering it is a 'lame duck' with no further vote to worry about and has a nearly unilateral command of the military by congressional deadlock on any funding hiccups until at least midterms.
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Re: taxation is theft argument below regarding taxpayer monies used for justice (my comments throttled so I can't reply in thread)
Didn't say American taxpayers should have to help. I fully agree any self-help should be fully funded by the victim and not the taxpayers. I completely agree with your argument; simultaneously I'd argue they do have the right to fund an operation to seize their assets. I stated the US did this for this reason; I'd also agree if someone say steals my bike it is theft to try and use taxpayer funds to use the police to get it back, but I'd still acknowledge why the police did it and acknowledge the right of the person with the stolen bike to get it back even though I might not acknowledge they've done it in the right way.
>Your previous comment was saying that the US has the right to use force to get back assets that Venezuela seized
I did not. I said the person that has them seized has the right to get them back. You assumed I meant I supported the US doing it via violence of forcing taxpayers to do it.
The general populace is far more agreeable to theft of the general populace for justice of theft than you or I, though, our arguments fall completely flat in the face of that of an argument for a democratic republic. Generally taxation is considered an acceptable for the securement of the most basic tenants of life, liberty, and property under such political ideology.
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>Huh? You commented on an American military operation by saying that If someone steals from you then you have the right to use force to retrieve it.
Yes I commented that because that is the rational used why the US did it; they are wrongly doing proxy by justice under a principle that could be right if done correctly. I agreed with the underlying rational but not the US forces doing it by proxy via taxpayer expense. However under the popular argument that taxation isn't theft I think your argument falls flat.
I did not say the US had the right to retrieve it via violence against innocents, in fact I said exactly what you said, the person that has it done has the right to retrieve it, not that you could force someone else to do it at gunpoint as the US has done to its citizens.
I explicitly said * even if the method just used is not the right one* to reflect my agreement with your argument, but I did not say your argument out loud, because it is deeply unpopular and it would just get my comment ignored/flagged because that has happened everytime I've used your hardcore-libertarian type logic.
>Was that just a total non sequitur? Were you just saying the oil companies have the right to use force, unrelated to the US military, on a comment thread that is specifically about the US using military force?
It is not at all unrelated that the oil companies wanted something (that might be moral, if done correctly) and then the US went on to do something they wanted in an immoral way, have you been paying attention at all to politics in the US for the past 30+ years? It's baffling you could even come up with this conclusion.
Of course even if they limited the mission to getting back Exxon assets, they will be damned either way. Either for using private mercs at their own expense, people will say they're operating outside the law. If they use the sovereign state, then people will argue the taxation is theft argument about using military assets for misplaced justice and argue they should have just used mercs. They really cannot win either way.
I don’t understand. Your previous comment was saying that the US has the right to use force to get back assets that Venezuela seized. Since I’m an American taxpayer, that means the US has the right to force me to help with this. Now you’re saying I shouldn’t be. That seems like the exact opposite of your previous statement.
I completely agree that this is happening regardless of what I think and all we can really do is consider how we got here. But that wasn’t at all the comment I was replying to.
> Didn't say American taxpayers should have to help. I fully agree any self-help should be fully funded by the victim and not the taxpayers. I completely agree with your argument; simultaneously I'd argue they do have the right to fund an operation to seize their assets.
Huh? You commented on an American military operation by saying that if someone steals from you then you have the right to use force to retrieve it.
Was that just a total non sequitur? Were you just saying the oil companies have the right to use force, unrelated to the US military, on a comment thread that is specifically about the US using military force?
Sorry for the wonkiness, I now have an extra comment to reply in-sequence. Thank you for your grace in handling that and the inconvenience there.
I think the crux of your difficulty of understanding is not understanding the difference between a victim being able to fight back, a victim being able to fight back with the assistance of a willing proxy, and the wrongness to force 3rd parties to pay.
It is possible that Exxon has the right to fight back. And that Exxon can use a mercenary force to effect that effort. It is possible that the US military is a mercenary force. The wrong part would be that the mercenary force forced you to pay. Not that Exxon might get justice via proxy.
It can be simultaneously true that a mercenary force could act justly, while also being true they did not act justly, in part because they also used violence against uninvolved 3rd parties (in this case, taxation against you and perhaps also violence against some uninvolved Venezuelans). I think that is the case here.
I’m not sure why you’re talking about hypotheticals where a different act could be just. I thought we were talking about what’s actually happening. In the context of a news story about US military actions that I help pay for, you stated that force is justifiable to recover stolen property. Either this describes what we’re actually discussing i.e. the actual events taking place, or it’s a confusing non sequitur.
Let me be explicitly clear in the context, and take on good faith you're just not understanding.
In this particular, concrete event I believe Exxon had the right as a victim to take back their assets, and I believe that the funding of the US military by taxes is immoral, the very act of the people doing so is moral only so far as it does not affect innocent third parties such as yourself or go beyond compensation for the theft. I think I have been pretty clear about this, that in the concrete I think it's simultaneously true that recovery is justified but the funding method was not.
I do believe the US military actions insofar as they recover stolen property is justified, but not the funding mechanism by which they've done so. I'm not sure why this is hard to understand -- if say the police recover your stolen bicycle I can remark the police had a right to go get it even though the police have done it in the wrong way by using violence to tax 3rd parties to go get it. In this case two results -- the victim by proxy rightly recovered the stolen property but also wrongly used violence against third parties to achieve it, both simultaneously true. You are trying to muddy things by suggesting if I agree with one I must agree with the other.
I think I see the disconnect. I thought you were saying that it’s ok for an entity to recover its own stolen property by force, and conflating the United States with US-based oil companies. But you actually meant that recovering anyone’s stolen property by force is right.
Suffice to say I don’t agree with this expanded version in all cases, especially when it’s the military doing it.
Yes I would argue this is a fundamental aspect of property rights. Stolen property held with intent to deprive the owner of the assets, has no legitimate title to be held by the person holding it. Therefore you definitely do not do anything wrong to the thief by taking it.
Whether you do anything wrong to the real owner very much depends on the intent and actions taken after you take it from the thief. If the owner asked you to take it, then well you have clearly done nothing wrong. If the owner did not ask you, then it depends on your intent and your immediate disposition to the owner. If you did not intend to deprive the owner of the property from enjoying the property for any additional time, and you took all reasonable actions to return it immediately, then it definitely cannot be theft against the thief nor the owner. Therefore it is at the very least not wrong, and probably right.
I do very much doubt though that the US military will simply take the assets, immediately return them to Exxon et al, and that will be that. And the drug and machine gun charges against Maduro, are certainly not defensible in my opinion.
Then why isn't Trump saying this in his speech. Instead he's talking about Venezuela emptying it's prisons into the US and making cities he sent the NG to crime ridden because the Democratic leaders failed or some such rationalization.
Someone should tell Trump that because he’s not been remotely subtle about his thought process.
> Note that the US also did not take Iraq's oil
That doesn’t mean there was no desire to take that oil. And there very transparently was. Looking at the end result and working backwards is faulty thinking. The US disastrously mismanaged Iraq. They certainly didn’t intend to.
It's possible, but we'll probably never know. However, the WTI price is under $60 and going down. The last thing any big oil companies need is more crude supply into the market lowering the benchmark price even lower, especially particularly expensive (to extract) Venezuelan crude
> The last thing any big oil companies need is more crude supply into the market lowering the benchmark price even lower, especially particularly expensive (to extract) Venezuelan crude
Check Chevron's stock on Monday to see if you're right. My prediction: It will be significantly up, showing that the action benefited them.
US controls those supplies anyway because nobody else is going to develop the capabilities to profitably extract Venezuelan crude. Not Venezuela, certainly not China or Russia.
> The roles of a sovereign vary from monarch, ruler or head of state to head of municipal government or head of a chivalric order. As a result, the word sovereignty has more recently also come to mean independence or autonomy.
World building alone will be at least a magnitude greater in resource use than all productivity-focused AI combined (including robotics + AI). Then throw in traditional media generation (audio, images, video, textual).
AI will be the ultimate sedative for humanity. We're going into the box and never coming back out and absolutely nothing can stop that from happening. For at least 95% of humanity the future value that AI offers in terms of bolstering pleasure-of-existence is far beyond the alternatives it's not really worth considering any other potential outcome, there will be no other outcome. Most of humanity will lose interest in the mundane garbage of dredging through day to day mediocrity (oh I know what you're thinking: but but but life isn't really that mediocre - yes, it definitely is, for the majority of the eight billion it absolutely is).
Out there is nothing, more nothing, some more nothing, a rock, some more nothing, some more of what we already know, nothing, more nothing, and a lot more nothing. In there will be anything you want. It's obvious what the masses will overwhelmingly choose.
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