This is pretty terrible news.
The SAVE plan has always been a bigger deal than forgiveness of past loans. (As a policy matter. Forgiveness of past loans is a BFD if you are among the indebted!)
I hope it survives via appeals, but I expect it will take Congressional action. It’s pretty gross states got standing because they’d get less money from servicing loans not even owed to them.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4737997-courts-block-biden-student-loan-repayment-plan/
"innovation should be rewarded enough to preserve incentives, but the skew of the wealth distribution has become increasingly bizarre… corporate profits + extreme wealth, particularly among mega-cap companies, have become a sort of “capture” or “rent” that reflects network effects, social dynamics, and general technological efficiencies that were no part of that entrepreneur’s invention, and might be better characterized as public goods." #JohnHussman https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc240623/
if i were the mayor of Athens, every Halloween would be the Zombie Acropolis.
@Jonathanglick i’d say purpose. i think states misunderstand this + do too little of it. method suggests that it’s something they’d know to do to achieve other state objectives. even tho it obviously would help achieve other state objectives, states do too little. if it helps to frame it as method, for national security or higher-trust prosperity or whatever, i’m for it. it’s definitely a method to achieve human flourishing at scale. i see states’ purpose as to pursue that method.
@LesterB99 no, but they will seek to become oligopolistic if they are not prevented.
economists like to imagine Cournot competition under which firms compete themselves to penury is normal, sustainable. but of course firms do not like this, and human institutions are good at coordinating, so in fact maintaining anything like Cournot competition requires continual state activism.
@LesterB99 the status quo of law is not just what's on the books, but degree of enforcement. 1/
@LesterB99 changes in degree of enforcement provoke strategic responses by those affected. right now, Democrats are mobilizing against threats to abortion in stronger enforcement of the Comstack Act. 2/
@LesterB99 if, as you say, a bottleneck to consumer protection enforcement is correspondence burden, and ChatGPT reduces that, firms will act strategically to try to counter the change. 3/
@LesterB99 that may take the form of lobbying to change the letter of the law, but that can be hard if the public is paying attention. 4/
@LesterB99 it can take the form of personnel changes at relevant agencies, how NLRB, FTC, and FCC have typically been made nonenforcers of the laws they are charged to enforce. 5/
@LesterB99 in the current space, it can also take the form of the AI providers weakening the text their products are willing to generate in these domains. 6/
@LesterB99 overall, so long as the architecture of contemporary AI remains "concentrated wealth owns the firms that shape the models", I think expecting liberation from the afflictions of concentrated wealth through them is betting on technological affordances that would have to be extremely strong, for the technology not to immune from shaping to protect its owners' interests. /fin
@river don't worry. you only rented it.
@LesterB99 i think that depends what we do. i certainly think if there's any kind of automatic or default tendency, "benefiting consumers" is unlikely to be it, so i guess we kind of disagree. but this is about outcomes to create, not predict.
@LesterB99 who themselves will be automated. a strange game of pinball that occasionally hits some automated court of law and mails giant checks to some random human.
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org @Hyolobrika Individual journalists choose whether to be employable.
Under plutocracy, what those overarching structures define as employable, who they hire and promote, who they slough off as unprofessional and unreasonable, is shaped by the plutocrats who ultimately own them.
Sure, we should hold the plutocrats morally culpable, more than the individual journalists who have to eat. But plutocracy shapes choices and outcomes at every level.
@Hyolobrika Depends how much the humans like food, shelter, health, and education for their children?
"Like money" sounds like luxury, like you can just choose not to be greedy. I think that's not a great characterization of the situation.
"Emotion canceling", a new miracle of AI. via #RobHorning https://robhorning.substack.com/p/o-flesh-how-art-thou-fishified
the more plutocratic a society — the greater its degree of wealth concentration — the less likely journalists are to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable".
it becomes ever more uncomfortable to be the comfortable's affliction, and ever more comfortable to cheerlead, rationalize, and deflect from all that the comfortable afflict.
the vivaldi browser has a built-in RSS reader. cf #openrss https://openrss.org/blog/vivaldi-web-browser-improves-customization-for-rss-subscriptions
the very purpose of a state
is to integrate.
if it is true there is power in a name, penicillin is like the opposite of bushes.
oh my god this is the most nonsequitur of my autocomplete mishaps ever. (really ios slide typing mishap rather than autocomplete.)
[tech notebook] Condensing updates that appear in digests https://tech.interfluidity.com/2024/06/22/condensing-updates-that-appear-in-digests/index.html
"When you rely…on social media algorithms to determine what appears in your feed, you are giving up control and relinquishing your attention to platforms designed to monopolize as much of your time and consciousness as they can get away with. RSS readers put you in the driver's seat. You decide [what is] worth your time and attention… rather than having it pushed on you based on what some company has determined is likely to keep you scrolling." @Daojoan https://www.joanwestenberg.com/rss-the-forgotten-protocol-that-still-matters%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B ht @kstewart
"If you have two segments of the economy with different approaches, and one of them has a higher exponential growth rate then in the long run it will come to dominate, even if it starts out as a very small enclave… if you want to transition from a dominant, fast-growing economic model to something else, you either need that something else to grow even faster, or you need to kneecap the dominant, fast-growing segment." @ZaneSelvans https://amateurearthling.org/2023/11/04/the-math-of-ethical-growth/
@steve_zeke there's a lot of amazing stuff!
