this is quite normal all over the world because the left has always been objectively "weak" in this fight. they're fighting giants after all. its tools are ideals, reason and goodwill and those tend to not fare well against ruthless power long consolidated in media, administration and executive. i'm from a country with a very rich left tradition and it has endured everything in history from mockery to outright mass killings, and the debate is still the same: the left has to reinvent itself! tactics are ofc important but are not the issue. the old ideals still stand for themselves: equity, progress, justice. as simple as that, and i would throw in brotherhood, but what else? it's just that it is an incredibly uphill and asymetric battle and the opponent always has all the cards. the only power source the left has is the people and mobilizing the people to that extent rarely (if ever) ends well. but let's say you get a win somehow. how long until you get bought out, entramped, corrupted, either from the outside or from within? it just doesn't work. "my" current government is led by a party that has literally "socialist worker party" in its name. it's not "lefty" by any stretch, it systematically bows to the local (and foreign) oligarchs just the same. it is marginally better that when the "right" is in office, but it's still marginal. and they will be back.

new tactics? that's what all that gender/identity/green stuff is all about. to appeal to the people with new slogans. does it work? my country was pioneer in europe in recognizing same sex marriages. it's still a pretty "right wing" government, because that's what power and money mandate. now even the "right" has been appropriating these slogans. they are very good at that and have immense resources. the "right" has always more power, connections and money to adapt to anything. they don't really need to make sense, in the end they can overwhelm any situation. even when the left is in office the right is pulling the strings. it's just how it works.

what i was saying (tongue quite defiantly in cheek, as usual) is that america (and i'm generalizing) doesn't even have a notion of what "left" means. it's not even up to debate, "left" is simply anathema, it doesn't seem to have any meaning, it's just like religious zealots obsessed with (what they consider) sin. that doesn't mean there aren't any admirable and great lefties, even straight out marxists. they're an oddity.

It's not hard to 'trip' over a business model in the 21st Century when your business involves harvesting the shit out of human data.

From sonic-based imaging helping detect cancerous tumors to military use involving next-gen 'brown sound' weapons. There's always a buyer for a data whore.

Be careful of this kind of rhetoric.

Billionaire trickle-down-fuck-YOU-pay-for-it-pleb economics will ensure retired homeowners on a fixed income end up losing their homes, because tax the shit out of those 'urealized gains' called home equity..

To be fair it's not a game. It's thousands of dollars.

I'm also not opposed to the idea. Not because of a supposed concentration of wealth. Musk does not have a trillion dollars, taken from elsewhere, sitting in a giant warehouse somewhere; it's all stock in a massively overvalued company that he built. His riches do not make us poorer. And I don't envy him his wealth, he's welcome to it.

What I do have an issue with, is the concentration of power this represents. Wealth, whether in actual dollars, publicly traded stock or private stock, represents an undue amount of influence in politics. If we're doing a tax on large companies, or a wealth cap, this would be the reason I'd agree with it. Not a sense of "fairness".

"OpenAI hasn't had their IPO yet, so couldn't they just find some kind of workaround to avoid this?"
Not necessarily. The tax could be paid in stock, in fact that would not be a bad idea. So that the control of important companies does not remain in the hands of a handful of individuals. Again, the only justification of this would be to prevent a concentration of power.

it's a teeny bit too early for that but ... don't give them (more) ideas!

i have news for you: there is no left in america, let alone radical. there is only right, extreme right and fanatical right.

bernie knows prefectly well this is doa, he's just trying to get some attention.

yeah someone has to keep the wheel spinning!

I'd like to see corporations able to be tried as people. 5 year jail sentence = 5 year government ownership.

Tie it to GDP and use it to make sure no companies get too big to fail so we don't need to socialize the risk. It'll also assure that there's competition.

I think we're both somewhat sarcastic, but there is a certain beauty to using it as a way to foster competition and reduce the need for bail outs.

I'm not into socialism, but I'm not convinced it's worse than 1 company having control of what's today's entire GDP in the relatively short term. And that's what SpaceX is claiming they'll have in the case for their valuation.

Are you sure? They look like they're just pads in the pic. But more importantly, the pic also shows exhaust cones on the underside that I failed to notice the other times I looked. Something for which I, without any cause or reason, blame you.

I don't know why or how you prevented me from seeing those cones, but I'll never forgive it! Until I forget.

Remember the curse, "may you live in interesting times". I'm not looking forward to it. The US and China are co-dependent competitors, verging on existential threats to each other. A situation that is unlikely to go anywhere but wrong. My hope is that the inherent instability of Communist dictatorships will leave China to fall first, and the US will be able to help keep it from complete collapse and a violent Balkanization. But, if China moves on Taiwan first, things could go poorly.

Many things in history turned out to not have a functioning business model when all costs were included. You just don't remember them because they died out. That doesn't change the foundation of the business strategy. The AI strategy was banking on scaleup not just of their customer base, but the product itself.

For all the shit we heap on AI, in a year it's come an insanely long way, maybe not long enough, but that doesn't change the viability of their expansion strategy. In AI especially economies of scale are a thing. It takes a fuckton of money to create a model compare to using it.

I cannot name one single American Slashdotter who doesn't default to blaming everything wrong in the world on India and China either, even when there's precisely zero evidence that outsourcing either exists in this case (it probably does) or has anything to do with this case.

Guess what, fuckups exist the world over.