I don’t know why people hate acknowledging the reality that humans are 1st person actors.

The system we have works because it converts this pursuit of personal gain into broader humanity gain, tying those incentives together where possible, even if imperfect.

Refusing to acknowledge this and instead pretending politicians can be selfless has resulted in the worlds worst atrocities like the communist experiments of last century.

Academic studies consistently show that people attracted to a career in politics (regardless of affiliation) score higher on "Dark Triad" personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy).

And even for the non-sociopaths, the problem with humans is instinctively we ARE only in it for ourselves and our family. Anyone claiming otherwise, ironically, is probably attempting to signal virtue for...personal gain...yet again.

Issues with majority support never change in almost all of the biggest democracies in the world right now.

For the US specifically its a representative oligopoly with Madisonian gridlock and a few million non-elected bureaucrats thrown in the middle.

The US gives the smallest amount of say to people to pick either Coke or Pepsi. Don't like sugary soda and think its making you fat? Tough luck, you gotta pick Coke or Pepsi.

/s

Also, as a US citizen Dario is subject to US law regardless of where he lives.

The US loves throwing its weight around via the US treasury and threatening countries with banning their ability to transact in U.S. Dollars, hence how the Obama administration turned every global bank into a dragnet for enforcing its draconian global taxation scheme on non-residents via FATCA.

The US has too much power, period. Doesn’t matter who’s in power, both parties abuse it. China rising to be a real counterbalance is a good thing imo.

It's burning $5 in gas and $20 in time to go to a store further away and save $25 on a sale item. And then proudly bragging "I'm not like those idiots who pay full price!"

OP didn't find a record...he found a $1300 arbitrage, then decided to spend the proceeds on the record by keeping it.

In other words, this is why selling stuff to consumers is a nightmare.

You have to trick them into believing they "won one over" on everybody else, via discounting and promotions, no matter if ultimately they're the ones losing by spending hours of their time jumping through hoops on a product that they legitimately value at full price.

If you think its insane to spend that amount of money on it (essentially: it's not worth that much to you), then you holding onto it instead of having $1300 is pretty much the exact same scenario? By holding onto it you're saying it is worth that much to you.

It sounds like believing you hunted down a 'deal' causes you to wildly change how you perceive value at an emotional level.

I would probably do the same thing. It's just funny to see expressed on HN where everybody complains that advertising and marketing are evil/scams and proclaims loudly how rational they are.

But to loudly proclaim your love for this idea as most have here seems a bit premature given there are potentially massive downsides to applying legal liability to an AI model, if not done extremely carefully.

I'm just trying to move a bit beyond the emotional first order thinking. You might see this as manipulation if you love just swimming in emotional vibes, but I find this website becoming quite boring lately due to the lack of debate beyond this first-order thinking.

As someone living in Europe, watching a bunch of rich American engineers fanboy European over-regulation which they aren't actually being subjected to, is super cringe. It's the epitome of the principal-agent problem.

My point is Germany further rejecting participation in the the next wave of technology (as they have done for 50 years) is going to NOT improve the trajectory they are currently on...which is bad.

The neo-Hitler and re-militarization thing is already happening. AfD leads in the polls, they're opening talking about remigration of immigrants, Germany now produces more ammunition than any country on earth. AI has nothing to do with it.

And, given I'm speaking to one of the the anti-civilization/anti-tech doomers of HN as predicted, do you think Germany rejecting technology again is going to improve the "climate crisis" or hurt it? How is the de-commissioning of Nuclear working out there?

However, I can easily see the slippery slope where in practice this means providing any AI response becomes too risky, and it becomes another money club used to extract wealth from big tech due to the current hysterical anti-AI moral panic.

Which would ultimately kill the ability of the German people to get access to competitive AI models.

I'm sure many anti-tech/anti-civilization doomers on HN will cheer this on. However, in reality it would do nothing to stop Germany falling behind, and continue its economic malaise/low productivity growth and social welfare collapse. When things in Germany get bad, Germans historically have tended to...ummm...cause issues for Europe. I would not take this lightly given the current rise of more polarized political rhetoric and German economy pivoting hard into weapons manufacturing.

We've had endless opportunities to compete during Apple's entire 50 year existence.

As someone living in Europe I feel ashamed to read you openly admitting this. This sentiment would feel at home in the USSR.

Instead of trying to create things the world finds useful by building something better/cheaper/more innovative, we're choosing protectionism so we can screw our customers with inferior products they're forced to buy...and relax.

I think we've done enough relaxing in Europe.

We were the birthplace of the industrial revolution...the technologies of which went on to bring the entire world out of poverty last century.

Do we seriously have nothing valuable to contribute to the world during the entirety of the digital revolution? If not, I think our decline and collapsing social welfare systems are deserved.

About time we revisted this: https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

I've been worried this place has gotten eternal september'd full of redditors, AI bots, and low-IQ emotional mainstream political rants.

But then you swoop in here and remind me that it's still 2007 in Hackernews land: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Never change.

Ultimately, a company like Stripe sits on top of a fragile patchwork of societal/technological abstractions that are a byproduct of generations of compounded wealth.

Humans battling in the marketplace builds this compounded value, humans battling in warfare destroys it and makes you start from zero.

Just as the industrial revolution started decades before humans began leaving the farm en masse, the digital revolution started decades before anyone had a personal computer on their desk.

Europe was busy rebuilding firebombed cities and industrial capacity, while Americans were free to birth the next layer of abstraction post-WW2 (the digital one). This early lead compounded. Moral of story: don't get in wars on your soil.

When Stripe was founded Venture Capital in Europe was even more nonexistent than it is today. Regardless of the regulation, if the EU dumped 2X as much risk capital into payments startups at the same time the U.S. did, Stripe would be a European company.

Talent flows to where the money is. Then once talent starts aggregating in one place it produces network effects (gravity), that gravity pulls in more capital and talent in a virtuous cycle, until fast forward a few decades and suddenly you have almost all the most valuable companies in the world being from Silicon Valley. Hence the present time we live in.

Who’s fault is it Europe is so far behind? Ultimately WW1 and WW2 destroying European wealth, assets, talent and risk tolerance.

If you look at the countries who stayed out of both wars (Sweden, Switzerland)…they are currently the tech hubs of Europe. They both have more unicorns per capita than the US.

Spain also stayed out of both wars but had a domestic Civil War in the 30s, which had the same net effect of destroying their prospects.

If the private company is granted a defacto monopoly, it doesn’t matter that they’re a “private” company, they will have the same incentive and accountability problem.

What we know for certain though: Government taking over something is definitionally a monopoly and 99.99% of government employees are not subject to the accountability mechanism of elections.

Historically, the largest boondoggles of waste have always come from government, given they can legally hold a gun to your head and take 50% of everyones money to fund their “projects.” Private companies can’t take your money by force, unless being given those contracts by government. So again, the the incentive issue fundamentally arises from an entity being entitled to gather assets using violence rather than voluntary exchange.

Every single one invests in government bonds with a large allocation. Aside from the pure ponzi scheme ones with no actual fund where its money in -> money out.

Also, if Europe stopped investing in US equities their pension insolvency problem would get about 2-3X worse given US equities have far exceeded EU equity returns over the past 20 years.

> Brain drain is happening due to bullying and fascism. The extend of longterm danage of current administration is unclear.

Huh? Did you even see the headline of the 1991 article I linked? Brain drain has been happening because of everything I listed which has been true for decades. Europe couldn't come up with a relevant company in PCs, Operating Systems, Internet 1.0, Social media, Mobile, AI, etc. None of it is due to the current administration.

> Bollocks. I have been in Berlin and Munich various times past decades, and people there speak English very well.

Yes, and while you were traveling to tourist capitals occasionally I've been actually living in Europe. Your perception is not the reality the average German person lives.

The problem isn't that the smartest Engineers in Europe don't speak english. The problem is that the average person in the markets they would sell into don't speak a common language.

Kind of hard to cut deals and build a brand among 27 different insular, hyper nationalist markets in a bunch of languages you don't speak with completely different regulations.

The most valuable non-foundation-model AI companies are...legal apps. This means he was right, not wrong.

Explain to me how expanding US single payer healthcare suddenly makes the US a worse place to do business in than Europe?

Companies would love not having to deal with the complexities of 401ks and employer health plans.