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On the Political Economy of Language Models
The political impact of the acceleration of a language model seems oddly under-discussed to me. Read →
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Over the last decade, the economic interests of capital and labor on the right have run together. Both sides want re-shored production, both sides want tariffs on foreign competition, both sides want cheap energy and reduced regulation. Even if the employer captures these margins, the employee captures increased wages. Their interests are not identical, but they are pointed in the same direction and they share hostility towards a common adversary: the credentialed professional managerial class, the regulatory state, and the cultural establishment.
I agree with the last point but it's hard to say the maga right was voting for some kind of coherent industrial strategy, which trump has not really been keen on doing regardless. really what's happening is...
Thatcher’s coalition was built from capital plus an aspirational middle class — industrial labor opposed her. The BJP’s is capital plus Hindu majoritarian politics mediated through a complex caste regime. In none of these cases did the capital class and the labor class sit at the same table and argue for the same candidates.
...an actual parallel example for the usa is pheu thai, a model I'm sure has seen success elsewhere in seasia and latam. top/bottom alliance where the upper takes from state coffers and from the middle to redistribute to the lower. thaksin's redevelopment scheme, yingluck's rice subsidies, and their latest run's (rest in peace) digital wallet scheme were all basically structured like this
I'm sure a lot trump's lower class support came from positive memories of covid stimmies, and his red meat this round has been tip deduction, overtime deduction, senior income deduction, car loan interest deduction, and teasing tariff rebates. a top/bottom coalition is based very simply on extracting and distributing spoils
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So many insights here, thanks Will. An observation I’ve made that could be myopic is that there appear to be several tech leaders on the right (Elon, Andreeson, etc) that are very bullish on AI being a savior to our society. These same tech leaders seem to be the influencers of many young men without college degrees. Andreeson, who was on Lenny’s podcast recently outlined this utopian view of AI. His core thesis I took away was: productivity growth has been slowing for years. Birth rates are declining meaning fewer workers. Economies are heading toward stagnation or contraction. AI arrives “just in time” to reverse this trend by boosting output per person. We need AI to save us from our collapse. Im curious how you might refute that, seems like you’ve done your leg work on digging into some data.
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"These are young men, urban, concentrated in countries with limited social safety nets and histories of political instability when economic expectations are violated " - this is huge and underexplored and scary. The Arab Spring had a clear target in governments/capital class; one of the core rage targets for disenfranchised fellas has always been women.
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🔥
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