From Pine View Farm

Mammon category archive

Courting Disaster 0

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Gene Collier finds himself doubting (Clarence) Thomas.

Learn why.

Share

This New Gilded Age 0

Mike and Farron discuss the exploitation economy (plus a little Tik-Tok).

Share

The Fee Hand of the Market 0

CEO and executives in a staff meeting at

Click to view the original image.

Share

How Stuff Works 0

B. c.:  Who wins the war between the middle class and the poor?  Thor:  The rich.

Click to view the original image.

Share

This New Gilded Age, the Snaring Economy Dept. 0

When you run the numbers, it sure begins to look as if the “gig economy” is a rigged economy.

Share

Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

Indiana University law professor Michael Mattioli, reacting to the recent kerfuffle of OpenAI’s attempt to steal mimic Scarlett Johansson’s voice, raises an interesting question:

    Why are Silicon Valley Tech Bros expending so much energy trying to create AI bots that sound human, when other more efficient ways of interacting with computers have worked very nicely for decades?

Here’s a tiny bit of his answer (emphasis added):

Why the fixation on digital companions amid such more meaningful promise and opportunity? The answer is as ancient as the pyramids. Just as the pharaohs poured untold resources into monuments that mirrored their power and beliefs, some within Silicon Valley are pursuing lifelike AI as a grand symbolic achievement.

There’s also an echo of the ancient quest to commune with eternity, to grasp immortality, woven into AI chatbots like Sky. The pyramids served as eternal vessels for a pharaoh’s spirit; what is lifelike AI if not an attempt to capture and channel a human being’s essential nature?

(Or could it be that they just want to make their fantasies of being Captain Kirk sitting the captain’s chair saying, “Computer . . . .” come to life?)

Aside:

Speaking of AI, security maven Bruce Schneier thinks that AI will make phishing attempts even less fishy and even harder to detect.

Share

So, Who Killed Dead Lobster? 0

Cartoon depicting how a private equity firm looted that assets of Red Lobster, leading to its declaring bankruptcy.

Click for the original image.

I blame the Chicago School, whose theories fed the notion that “return to shareholders” is the ultimate responsibility of a business, greater than maintaining the health and integrity of the business itself. This, in turn, provided a rationalization for looters to claim that, if looting a business increased return to shareholders, then, well, looting a business is a righteous act in the interest of the greater good.

Or, to put it another way, the Chicago School provided Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes for the Gordon Gekkos of the world, who proclaim that “Greed is good.”

Share

This New Gilded Age 0

Robert Reich argues that (some of) today’s generation of robber barons are looking to turn back the clock. An excerpt:

Musk, Thiel, Murdoch, and other billionaires now backing the anti-democracy movement don’t want to conserve much of anything — at least not anything that occurred after the 1920s, including Social Security, civil rights, and even women’s right to vote.

Follow the link for his evidence.

Share

First, There Was Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal.
Next, There Was Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Now, There Is Donald Trump’s Raw Deal.
0

Robert Reich explains “Trumponomics.”

Or you can read the transcript.

Share

Dead Lobster 0

PoliticalProf.

I blame the Chicago School and the notion it birthed that the first duty of a company is to provide returns to shareholders.

Share

Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

Watching and recording your every move? Let’s see.

Bruce Schneier takes a look at Microsoft’s new effort to create an “AI” digital assistant. He–how shall I put this?–has some qualms. Here’s a tiny bit from his post:

And you will want to trust it. It will use your mannerisms and cultural references. It will have a convincing voice, a confident tone, and an authoritative manner. Its personality will be optimized to exactly what you like and respond to.

It will act trustworthy, but it will not be trustworthy. We won’t know how they are trained. We won’t know their secret instructions. We won’t know their biases, either accidental or deliberate.

We do know that they are built at enormous expense, mostly in secret, by profit-maximizing corporations for their own benefit.

Share

This New Gilded Age 0

Or you can read the transcript.

Share

Cry Babies 0

Paul Krugman warn us “to beware the pettiness of the powerful,” observing that

. . . what men who can afford anything tend to want, more than money per se, is adulation. And when they don’t get it, they all too often go politically crazy.

Follow the link for his evidence.

Share

He’s All about the Benjamins 0

How is this not begging for a bribe?

Share

Lead Poisoned 0

Anna Clark, reporter at ProPublica covering issues in the MidWest, discusses her recent reporting on the Flint water crisis, 10 years later.

Learn more here.

Share

It’s All about the Benjamins 0

PoliticalProf follows the money.

Share

What’s in a Name? 0

At Above the Law, Joe Patrice considers a Reuters report that Tesla is under investigation for inflating the “self-driving” capabilities of its vehicles. A snippet:

But just how far is too far when it comes to puffery? Tesla has advertised its system as an “autopilot” despite being little more than a driver assistance program.

Share

This New Gilded Age 0

Title:  Growing Hypocrisy.  Frame One:  Two men stand in front of a chart with a line going Up.  Man one says,

Click to view the original image.

Share

It’s All about the Benjamins 0

At The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel looks at what went wrong at Boeing. A snippet (emphasis added):

In 1997, Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas, one of their largest competitors, in a $13.3 billion merger, which at the time was the 10th biggest in US history. In so doing, it also adopted the company’s CEO, Harry Stonecipher, into executive leadership—a man who, as Wise points out, subscribed to the Jack Welch philosophy of maximizing short-term shareholder value at all costs.

That view quickly took hold at the new Boeing. One CEO after another drove up Boeing’s stock value by skimping on its greatest assets: its world-leading engineering and the experts who made it possible. In the last decade alone, the company spent over half a billion dollars on executive pay and $40 billion on stock buybacks instead of reinvesting those profits in operations. Cracks in this approach started showing in 2018 and 2019, when two faulty 737 Max planes crashed, leaving 346 people dead.

Share

Non-Compete Non-Compensate Agreements 0

Sam talks with David Dayen about the FTC’s recent ruling on “non-compete” agreements and how those agreements became weaponized to suppress wages.

Share