It’s because people are significantly more likely to lie or omit some facts if you don’t guarantee their privacy, which means your census data ends up being worth less than a pile of shit.
The alternative is to water down the census questions, which also leads you down the same path (i.e. manure as data).
So you seem to have at least a surface level of understanding of incentives.
Check this then:
If the census is responsible for allocating federal funds and congressional apportionment, what are the incentives for making census data private and encouraging people that would otherwise hide their identity?
And you seem to not realize that a census has a much wider impact than allocation of federal funds. It’s a nationwide survey done once every 10 years. No other survey compares in scale.
Now think about the data you could collect and the decisions you could make based on this data to ensure a better future for all in this country; in fact, this is a stated goal of the survey that you either didn’t know about or are willfully ignoring.
On the flip side, think about the repercussions of tainting this data and basically wasting such a valuable chance that won’t come around again for another 10 years.
We also know that this premise is simply wrong, Census is statistical survey, no party in the world is legally allowed to inspect the contents of the individual form via Title 13.
Counting illegals is not possible under the Census currently or in any point in the future most likely
First off the census is used for determining how many seats are used for congressional apportionment and allocating federal funds.
So unless you're willing to also say that counted illegals cannot used for either of those, then you're just being obtuse.
But if we can agree that they cannot be used for that then sure, lets identify and count them. If we can't identify (make non-private) and count them then why should we trust that those counts are accurate?
> which eats 1GB+ of RAM. Meanwhile, my editor only consumes 80MB of RAM
And why are you comparing Claude Code to your editor?
> They can't even improve Claude Code
That depends on how you define "improve". They've added a ton of features to it over time. Who said minimizing RAM usage was something they are prioritizing right now?
> why are you comparing Claude Code to your editor?
Because the editor does more. All the compute-intensive parts of the agent are in the cloud. Zero reason for an agent harness to require anything beyond a potato to run.
> before software developers were among those that were on the winning side, now they’re on the losing side.
are you sure about that? i'm a software engineer and i feel like i'm on the wining side now, even more than before. I'm considering quitting my 500K a year job to go compete against the employers. they seem like dinosaurs to me.
You don't understand what I'm saying. I'm saying the 500K comp is not worth it and i want to quit to go compete against all the employers that are offering such comp. I am positioning myself to do it this year.
Even if so, should you want that to be how society is organized going forward? Because I think the evidence is societies are worse off when there is too much economic disparity, even if you personally benefit. And the greater the disparity, the more likely for there to be serious unrest in the future.
This is not clever. A lot of people do not understand what LLMs are capable of now. It can be learning experience to show a product person how they can leverage LLMs rather than acting like you're the know-it-all by obfuscating the fact that you used an LLM to answer a question
If you want to do it occasionally, sure, whatever. I have a coworker who solely communicates in the form of screenshots of him asking Cursor my question, even when they’re questions that are interested in his motivation or plans, not the code base, and that Cursor does a bad job answering. I’ll ask a Slack channel “does anyone have experience with tools A and B, so they can suggest which matches our use case better”, and he’ll respond with a screenshot.
I don’t need him to pass on LLM answers. I can and do ask them myself. I’m asking questions because I’m interested in the experience my coworkers have beyond what AIs have trained on.
Most of us would not prefer to follow the EU into irrelevancy. If they were the model for how we should be running things how come they are not the ones running the show on innovation?
> Most of us would not prefer to follow the EU into irrelevancy. If they were the model for how we should be running things how come they are not the ones running the show on innovation?
I think innovation is a tricky thing to measure, firstly. Certainly the US benefits massively from the world's largest capital markets, sucking in foreign money from all over the world. Is that innovation? is it stock price, or is it the work of all the academics, engineers, tech people etc?
Like, Europe (and the EU at the time) is where Deepmind came from, without which we'd be vanishingly unlikely to have seen Transformers/LLMs etc. Nokia basically made mobile phones a global category. ASML provides something that neither the US nor China can match.
And just to note, property taxes make up a much larger proportion of state revenue in the US than in the EU, if that's how you're measuring things.
And i didn't say anything about how great the EU was, I just noted that the US & the EU make up most of the richest countries in the world, where rich people like to live, so a wealth tax would probably work relatively effectively at that level.
Obviously that's not going to happen, but land and property taxes could get us a lot of the way there, with much less issues with capital flight and tax collection.
It's so funny to me how many people have taken envy up as their core personality. Billionaires happened to have created the most opportunities for everybody. Amazon is amazing for the consumer that seeks convenience, but it's also amazing if you want to dropship and make your living off of that. Independent sellers make up 65% of all sales on Amazon. So somewhere the idea that nobody benefits from the creations of billionaires has to be questioned.
Illegal and legal immigrants are being completely supported by Uber right now in NYC. If you lived here you would know that this is their primary source of income for many of them.
The gate that previously blocked your ability to disseminate your ideas to a wide audience and create a living off of it has been completely torn down by the billionaires that create platforms like Tiktok. There are scores of people that have made a living off of this, which was virtually impossible before. The barrier to entry to start from grass roots and build a following and then monetize it has been erased.
It's completely banal at this point to just point at billionaires and say they are the problem just because of envy. I wish there was a plugin for it so I can erase it from my consumption.
The premise that billionaires are less efficient than the government at deploying capital to serve society is incongruent with reality, but sure, they are a convenient scapegoat if your heart is poisoned by envy and lack. That's really all it is and it needs to be called out more often because it's a mind virus that is easy to infect others with. Your life is not served by being clouded by envy and lack, and spreading it is detrimental to all consciousness.
There is objectively more paths to success than ever before. Being preoccupied with what you don't have currently and pointing the finger to blame at some boogeyman billionaire is not going to change anything for your personal life. The buck is on the person with the finger to improve their life and take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to them. Spending your time being mad that people have created something society deems worthwhile and are being rewarded for it is spending your time being envious about something that has nothing to do with your own problems.
Some 20% of US billionaires grew up poor, or at least without well-off parents. 60+% were upper middle class or below. So, I think we can note that they've created enough value for the rest of us and deserve to keep the fraction of that value that they were able to negotiate.
What is the demographics breakdown on those statistics? How much is old vs new wealth vs generational wealth?
A lot has changed in the U.S. in the last 20-40 years.
Also I'm not really convinced that the existence of individuals with over a billion dollars in wealth is a net positive for society or really anyone except that individual.
Another comment that's clearly coming from a place of envy, entirely framed about what billionaires deserve rather than having any sort of introspection.
You know nothing about me, yet you assume everything. I think having that much money is egregious and I am certainly not envious of people who have an endless void to fill, let alone those who aspire to be like such people. My life is quite full, thank you very much.
I think it's a bit ridiculous that these individuals feel the compulsion to min-max their capital at the expense of pursuits that could better be fueled by it, specifically for the collective good. I think it is shameful behavior and not something we should be promoting in society.
The irony of saying that I know nothing about you while saying that you know that billionaires have an endless void to fill, and think that billionaires are simply running on the compulsion of min-maxing capital instead of min-maxing the results of their capital.
Shameful and obvious envy. You're not fooling anybody because your comments betray you
I've met a few and they have all been solely focused on maximizing their wealth with little consideration for the second+ order effects. It's anecdotal, but I'll take first hand information over self-serving comms-fodder.
Speaking of comments, I've seen yours on here. So much hate; so much toxicity. What exactly are you contributing here beyond discord? Maybe get your own demons in check and stop projecting.
> What exactly are you contributing here beyond discord?
Well I'm not on here very much and don't comment very much but sure I'll give this a shot:
The rejection of populist ideas that have pushed many into celebrating political violence and death. Want examples?
The rejection of the vicious cycle of envy that has been brewing in these comments and other platforms like this one that is the path that directly leads to above.
Is this a Peter Thiel smurf account or something? I'm going to disengage from you and whatever brand of twisted sychophantic (re: "envious") proselytism this is, now. It's boring and certainly not engendering any support for your cause. Quite the opposite. Maybe you should try to post even less, as it would do more for your cause.
Please disengage if you're not getting anything out of it. I'm sure letting random billionaires live rent-free in your head is deriving much more value for your life. It's not a rocket launch, you don't need to announce that you're disengaging.
> the idea that nobody benefits from the creations of billionaires has to be questioned
Who said that? Not in the post that prompted your reply, nor in the parent post.
> Illegal and legal immigrants are being completely supported by Uber right now in NYC.
Can you prove that taxis wouldn't have been able to do that, if Uber didn't exist? That wealth taxes wouldn't have been able to support them?
> The gate that previously blocked your ability to disseminate your ideas to a wide audience and create a living off of it has been completely torn down by the billionaires that create platforms
Musk is also erecting new gates, to promote himself and his ideas. I have to admit, I'm surprised what he lets stay up there, but I still don't believe it's an actual free platform.
> I wish there was a plugin for it so I can erase it from my consumption.
Vibecode it; the billionaires tore down the gates that previously blocked your ability to have any software you want -- as long as the billionaires accede to your use of their AI and running your own software against their platforms, of course.
You complain about open platforms filled with people giving you their ideas for free, and you just don't like what they're saying, but you just cited exactly that openness as one of the valuable things that billionaires deserve to have billions for.
> The premise that billionaires are less efficient than the government at deploying capital to serve society is incongruent with reality
Nobody said that, explicitly. Maybe the people arguing against billionaires don't believe capital efficiency is paramount, so you'd have to persuade them of that first, otherwise you're just saying "But capitalism is the right way, of course!"
> Can you prove that taxis wouldn't have been able to do that, if Uber didn't exist?
Yes, because we only have to go back a few decades to see that the cab industry in NYC were being gatekept by medallions that people were paying 800k+ for just to have the opportunity to drive cab. That was not a system made by billionaires. That was a system made by the government and unions, which is exactly the system that you're fighting for.
> Musk is also erecting new gates, to promote himself and his ideas. I have to admit, I'm surprised what he lets stay up there, but I still don't believe it's an actual free platform.
It's more free and less friction than what we had before. The fact that you can't accept it despite the evidence in front of you and your own observations about being surprised is highlighting that you are failing to be objective.
> Vibecode it; the billionaires tore down the gates that previously blocked your ability to have any software you want -- as long as the billionaires accede to your use of their AI and running your own software against their platforms, of course.
Sure, another capability that billionaires unironically gave me. I do have other more interesting things to work towards.
> ou complain about open platforms filled with people giving you their ideas for free, and you just don't like what they're saying, but you just cited exactly that openness as one of the valuable things that billionaires deserve to have billions for.
Yes, and notice that I didn't say that they should be banned from the platform and their speech oppressed. I turned it around to make it about my own consumption. I have the free will. You're not arguing against me, you're proving my point.
> Maybe the people arguing against billionaires don't believe capital efficiency is paramount, so you'd have to persuade them of that first
Maybe we shouldn't assume the people without capital know what is paramount and what isn't when it comes to capital. It's hilarious to think there's some poor chap out there saying these people are being too efficient with capital and accumulating it while also believing that capital efficiency is not paramount. Hello? The problem you're pointing out is directly related to capital efficiency, yet you think the solution is to be capital inefficient. That has clearly not worked out for you or for anybody else in this society. We have countless examples where capital inefficiency has hurt us badly in this society.
... you read an awful lot into that comment, I think you are being a bit uncharitable.
Though I agree with many of your points, what I think the OP was gesturing at was the idea that billionaires are more avaricious than the average person; hence we shouldn't be surprised that Paul Graham is wary about paying an effective tax rate that would put him on par with majority of tax payers in this country.
This isn't an new or particularly controversial observation:
e.g.
"Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one." Benjamin Franklin
"The love of money grows as the money itself grows." Juvenal
Having worked for several billionaires and seen them in their day-to-day, those quotes resonate with me.
I don't think anyone is simply envious. People mean to point out that allowing individual accumulation of wealth to extreme degrees lead to runaway structural problems. Billionaires and companies existing and providing wages are not inextricably intertwined. It's entirely possible to have one while preventing the other. The idea that the only way you can incentivize individuals to start companies is to allow them to accumulate so much wealth that they become tiny kings is patently absurd. The world has thousands of companies and founders who happily sustain their businesses without ever reaching this ungodly and idiotic level of uber wealth.
> The idea that the only way you can incentivize individuals to start companies is to allow them to accumulate so much wealth that they become tiny kings is patently absurd. The world has thousands of companies and founders who happily sustain their businesses without ever reaching this ungodly and idiotic level of uber wealth.
And how many of those companies and founders have given back to society at the scale that these uber wealthy people have? Entire new economies have been built up.
> ungodly and idiotic level of uber wealth.
This is still just envy. You should try to prove that you're being oppressed by the systems these billionaires have created because we don't have to go very far back to observe when these systems and economies did not exist. I'll remind you that for example, in NYC before Uber, taxi medallions were being sold for over a million dollars and people were going into debt just for the opportunity to drive a cab. If you go far back enough creating a virtual store front to sell your ideas and goods was a gate that was actually very high. Thanks to the systems that are in place now you have the opportunity to spin this up for very little risk and prove out your idea. Structural problems such as what? The idea that wealth is power? That's the same structural problem that has always existed, except that there are more players than ever before. You can launch an entire grass roots political campaign on social media for free. Does that sound like a system that oppresses or is that a system that has given you opportunity to enact change?
Even the barrier to invest in companies and participate directly in the profits and value creation has been erased or lowered. Hundreds of millions of people are directly benefitting from this everyday. It is now a few simple clicks of a button and you're in. Who lowered that barrier? It was the billionaires. And yes, because they did that they will get an asymmetrical reward because their impact and value creation for society is asymmetrical to yours.
You're not doing this, but when you try to have this conversation amongst the general population what is the response? Once you start poking holes at the concept it always reverts to "you're a bootlicker", "why are you defending billionaires, they don't care about you". These responses highlight envy, not reality or the desire to be objective.
Deep down a lot people either don't realize how much free will and agency they now have in this society or they are just living with contempt because everywhere they look they see people that are using that free will to accomplish more than them. It's lack and envy all the way through.
I wouldn't necessarily categorize giving people opportunity to do underpaid, tenuous, non-career, zero-mobility gig work as "giving back to society" nor would I classify the unregulated harms of social media, phone additions, etc. as social good either. That's not to say some of these things aren't also good in many ways, but I also still don't understand why you think this somehow leads to a moral or social justification for unbounded levels of amassed wealth to a single individual.
> Structural problems such as what? The idea that wealth is power? That's the same structural problem that has always existed, except that there are more players than ever before.
So your response to issues such as most people being unable to have a single living wage, rising homelessness, unaffordable housing, is "shrug wealth is power". This is not some kind of inviolable law of nature. We as human beings defining the terms of the game, can set up some legislation.
Learn history. America specifically has combated very similar issues in the past and curbing unimpeded accumulation and breaking up monopolies led to more innovation more diversity in the market and a better distribution of wealth. America has taxed the wealthiest classes more in the past and it wasn't a disaster. Look up the new deal.
> You're not doing this, but when you try to have this conversation amongst the general population what is the response?
Who are you conversing with, me, or the general population? What do you mean when you try to ascribe a belief to the general population? Have you done polling on this? Or are you basing this on media? What are you actually talking about? Why are you so confident in arguing against some perceived hypothetical belief you think "the general population" holds? How do you know there aren't more people who actually agree with your perspective?
> Who lowered that barrier? It was the billionaires
No. Scores of laborers employed by the billionaires lowered the barrier. Yes, many of the billionaires begin with a great idea, but there's no reason having an idea justifies having unbounded wealth. All enterprises depend on legions of people to actually materialize production. There is nothing written in nature that states that the person risking upfront capital should always be compensated more than the people who make production a reality, nor is there any corollary that states that the accumulation permitted should be completely unbounded.
You have convinced yourself that anyone not agreeing with your own belief is ruled by nothing but an emotional or psychological state rather than rational, but different, perspective. This is a perfect way to be a stubborn ass and ensure that no one will ever change your mind. It is anti-intellectualism at its finest. I hope one day you realize how foolish you are being about this.
Since you seem to be into super-reductive arguments, here's mine: we are all clearly hyper-dependent on one another on this planet. There is no reason people who make lots of money shouldn't have to give a reasonable portion of it back to the government and country that they draw labor, customers, and much more from daily. There is no reason that accumulation should be permitted without bound. It is pointless and leads to problems. We can and should argue for reasonable limits or at the very least taxation on massive wealth.
As for me, no envy here. I live comfortably and I am happy with what means I have, something most billionaires don't ever seem to experience. However, I also have eyes and functioning neurons so when I clearly see other human beings unable to afford basic necessities without feeling tremendous stress and pressure and then I see certain high-profile billionaires blowing money on dumb shit, underpaying and abusing workers (piss bottles) and more, I can understand why people want better guardrails in place, and no, wanting to limit the degree to which random people who got lucky in the market can exploit you is not envy.
If they were saying that kings shouldn't have the unchecked right to execute people, this response would be akin to "Oh, you just wish you could kill anyone. Your argument is invalid."
Not really. The person saying that billionaires shouldn't exist is just failing to describe why that number is so mystical or interesting to them. If billionaires don't exist are we saying that people worth 500 million won't have power? you can keep doing this but the end result is the same. Power is asymmetrical and the system is self balancing. Those that have more wealth have more power. It's that simple. If you want to make wealth irrelevant then at least come up with a real system where wealth does not exist, because power is an intrinsic property of wealth.
The idea that you can distribute wealth is actually the tell for envy. You want to distribute power because you want power. And you won't be satisfied until that power reaches you, therefore you need to eliminate not just the billionaires, but after it trickles to centimillionaires and decamillionaires after that. If your premise is based on billionaires not existing because they have outsized power you're not going to be satisfied until that power eventually reaches where you are stationed in society.
It has nothing to do with billionaires and it has everything to do with people with more wealth than you having more power. That's envy. How far do you have to distribute before power is meaningless?
The truth is that there are more billionaires than ever before and that number is growing. It would seem that having power is becoming more democratized over time too. If we go back 500 years the number of people that had this level of power were limited to actual Kings. You are closer to a billionaire in your capabilities and agency in this society than a peasant was under an actual King. 500 years ago if you made a tiktok video about your King's private affairs and his properties while trying to tell everybody that the king doesn't deserve their power and the king should be taxed, you'd be executed in the town square. Yet somehow people that have the mindset that "billionaires should not exist" fail to convey how we've suddenly reached some tipping point where there's no going back.
Like saying, "There have never been more opportunities for commoners to become kings!" Okay, most of the people who say kings shouldn't exist will still feel that way, even if they could become king.
> You are closer to a billionaire in your capabilities and agency in this society than a peasant was under an actual King.
How much of that is because I live in a democratic republic, and not because billionaires exist? I guess you might say they're the same thing, but I believe there are free-enough societies with less wealth/power inequality than the US. I think I care more about the gap between top and bottom than about my own personal level of power, but of course it's hard to be objective.
It is harder to draw the line with money than with literal kingship, but I don't accept that we should change nothing and let unbounded power disparities exist.
Edit: More to the point of the original article, maybe I can accept their existence if we plugged all the holes they use to pay a very low percentage, as discussed in other comments. They may remain billionaires, but the tax law would treat them more like the rest of us than like kings.
I think there is a massive difference between wanting power and wanting freedom and security from undue exploitation and/or economic hardship.
Most people I know don't "want power". They just want to be able to afford basic necessities (food, housing, clothing) without feeling like they are on the brink of survival every day.
Billionaires are starting to take the heat because people are starting to recognize that the wealth created for these billionaires is 100% dependent on their labor, time, and sweat, yet many of them see fractions of fractions of what the billionaires make. If it's somehow unfair for the billionaires to have to pay the government a wealth tax it is equally unfair for said billionaires to withhold so much of the capital generated by their workforces for themselves.
:yawn: When in your lifetime were politicians not "run by an oligarchy"? It's so boring when people just hang onto the latest buzzwords and say nothing of substance. You think they need aliens to distract us from this?
So I'll just go ahead and ask, give me good reasons why this data should be private?
My guess is that most of you think we should be counting illegals because they should have representation. And I reject that
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