I have a particular interest in programming language design and, for what it's worth, I have heard of Odin. For someone like me, understanding different design decisions for languages that depart from mainstream languages is valuable. It isn't what academic journals are interested in and there are no notable publications for hobbyists or language design experts (that I know of).

Notability *is* worth questioning for a field like this since there isn't a clear signal outside of blog posts and user community discussion. There's no clear place where general discussions around program languages is happening to a reasonable level of depth and quality.

On that note - @dang I would love it if https://news.ycombinator.com/showlang continued to update. It was a cool resource for finding discussion on new programming language designs here on HN.

Much of the reasoning is about what it opposes and where the error lies in the "other side" (nearly always a strawman) rather than a positive argument. Where there is a positive argument, it's logic doesn't consistently apply to other analogous areas. It's often a justification rather than a commitment to a reasonable principle or idea.

To be fair, wisdom isn't reducible to a set of rules or principles. It's a weighing of values and priorities and accounting for the impacts and implications.

I suspect there is something to the notion that consistent reasoning has a "liberal" bias in its nature. Whether this means there's more wisdom in that reasonableness is another question all together.

Producers make what will sell but without any incentives, subsidies or regulation this would be a mess of profit chasing, unsafe practices and fragile supply chains.

In my view, the value of the public sector is in setting the rule of the game for private actors in exactly this kind of way (rules and incentives) instead of the politics of picking winners and losers directly or making direct decisions about what to build where, etc. Rule makers play the meta-game of designing how the game works and they leave agents free to play as they wish.

Your argument would suggest the EU developing a European model would be a better direction. A heavy-weight competitor would help advance the field after all.

> getting bureaucracy out of the way and encouraging real investment

I don't think this is really about regulation - it's about network effects. The only way to compete with strong network-effects is to create your own.

> This vaguely-nationalist world view around tech

Nationalism breeds nationalism and it is the fundamental reason European states feel the need to build their own expertise. Can you imagine if your country was subject to the whims of an aspiring dictator?

users

The fallacy is assuming intelligence automatically equates to power and influence. University professors and doctors have very little power in their institutions even though they may often be more intelligent than their bosses.

A worse fallacy is assuming intelligence creates better political outcomes (in the broad sense of politics as contested collective decision-making).

I don't know many people who would willingly trade their freedom to make a bad decision for the enforcement of the "right" decision by a superior intelligence.

Advertisers have really shaped the Web right down to it's core specifications.

Isn't there pretty much a consensus that committees and institutions are not all that smart?

I think you're confusing the categories of "intelligence" and power. Institutions are powerful. The smartest AI is still just a tool without the infrastructure to turn that into real world effects and someone to direct it.

It seems you have faith that this is inevitable and unavoidable. I get it, even rationalists succumb to religious thinking eventually. We're only human after all.

It's not ideal in many senses (what age checks are we talking about here) but its worth thinking about some of the positive effects this might have on the young people growing up in the mess we've made of new media.

The idea of becoming rich is as old as society itself but it has not been a static concept. It is an idea shaped entirely by the things mentioned - ideology, culture and history. There is no wealth accumulation without ideology of one sort or another.

It's fair to resist a view of wealth that may seem flawed but it's disingenuous to assume this can be done from a neutral position.

Those who make it work from here are those who've changed their work completely to resemble something more like a hands-off tech lead. There will of course be the lucky few who've made it work as artisans without direct commercial pressures to conform to the new "right way to do it". But the careers many of us have had is not a path available for others to follow anymore.

The irony of automating away "inefficiencies", "drudgery" and the "labour intensive" parts of other professions stings all the more when the sharp end of that shtick is pointed back in our direction.