US government takes $2 billion equity stake in nine quantum computing firms
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ComeAndGetMeTheSupremeCourtIBoughtSaidAnythingIDoIsLegalSoItCannotBeCorruption
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China hasn’t been communist in decades. It’s a single-party authoritarian political system unified with corporate capital. This Italian guy last century had a name for it, starts with an f I think. US capitalists are just mad that China’s better at it than they are because those pesky remnants of democracy haven’t been completely swept away yet.
If you to cling to the “communist China” myth still, go look up what happens to labor organizers and literal Marxists in China these days. Here’s a freebie:
https://www.ft.com/content/fd087484-2f23-11e9-8744-e7016697f225
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Giving money to specific companies isn't the issue; subsidies and grants are important tools for all governments. Taking a stake in the company in return is the problem. They're setting things up so that the government benefits not from the success of the industry, but from the success of the company -- regardless of the success of the overall industry. From now on, all investors are going to believe its much less likely for those specific companies to really struggle, and much more likely for those companies to get lucrative government contracts and tax breaks. This gives them a huge advantage and stifles competition, promoting monopolies. This magnifies the problem, since the likelihood of the government breaking apart a monopoly it directly profits from is rather slim.
Also, it's essentially taxing the same company twice (directly through the owned shares and indirectly through taxes), meaning the companies are paying the government for the privileges noted above.
Again, this is a problem because of the capitalist framework. If we allow ourselves to flex into other approaches where appropriate, that allows for added oversight of both the company and the government's role and action directed toward national interests which ameliorate the downsides substantially. But we aren't doing that. We're taking a financial stake and then trying to pretend that nothing has changed. It's bonkers, it gooses markets in the short term, and it adds considerable liability and instability to our economic system in the longer term.
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It used to be that government invested in universities to do basic research which once considered a public good. But now universities are not that different than start-ups and patent trolls and professors are just as likely to walk out the door and get VC funding for any really good ideas.
Ooh, it's that long game again, that's why Orange man is attacking universities. More likely to get the really good ideas to be funded by private businesses that just so happened to be backed by his sons.
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a company doing business with the government isn't necessarily corruption.
a company doing business with the government when the President's son is involved with the investment (and when there's a history of similar investments) is probably corruption.
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That is all quite fair. Well put.
I was talking to people about the absurd CEO compensation that is effectively untaxable, as it is almost entirely in company stock with unrealized spot-price value that they they borrow against to live off of. One idea was basically the government "taxes" the stock and gets some ratio, say say 50% of the shares...Which in short order, given how management of publicly listed companies always works, would result in government holding a very diversified set of assets.
Caveat being that doesn't address the insane management compensation--it just puts the government in bed with it. It also doesn't address the extreme short-term myopia of corporate board rooms.
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(Emphasis added.)
That's probably because the existing political/economic power structure is set up so that innovation isn't being used to improve people's lives, but instead primarily used to more efficiently funnel money to the privileged few who already have far too much of it. (And who, as a result, wield far too much power and so can influence lawmakers and investment and outright buy big chunks of mainstream media and, and, and... )
It's hard to get excited when innovations seem most likely to lead to (1) increased surveillance / decreased privacy, (2) deteriorating employment prospects, and (3) somehow yet another subscription-model service and/or advertising vector squeezed into everyone's lives.
That's a big part of my issue with gen AI/LLM development, in fact. This could have been exciting. This could have been incredible. Instead it was developed and is being implemented in a way that's depressing and infuriating by turns.
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It's going to be used to break encryption. That's what it's going to be used for. Sure as shit won't be used by this administration for anything beneficial and you've got your head in the sand if you think it might.
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True. I only use it in the colloquial sense like gets applied to the Soviet Union. That died with Mao.
It started with Deng’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” but, yes, it’s really accelerated into statist corporatism in the last 15 years or so.
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Yes, let's look at what you quoted about PsiQuantum and your aspersions about Joe Biden being corrupt with the help of The Internet:
- According to Wikipedia, PsiQuantum founded in 2016 by Jeremy O'Brien, Terry Rudolph, Peter Shadbolt, and Mark Thompson
- Joe Biden not a founder in any way
- In 2021, company raises $665 million from a list of investors like BlackRock, Baillie Gifford, and Microsoft
- Joe Biden does not own or operate BlackRock, Baillie Gifford, or Microsoft
- In 2022, company receives XXX in deal with the U.S. Department of Energy to "use facilities at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory" (Reuters), and to "incorporate commercial assets into ongoing research" (thequantuminsider.com) at the Air Force Research Laboratory
- Joe Biden does not own or operate either the U.S. Department of Energy or the Air Force Research Laboratory
- In 2023, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) selected Microsoft and PsiQuantum to 'develop and defend a system design for a fault-tolerant [quantum computer] prototype' (DARPA.mil)
- Joe Biden does not own or operate the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- In 2024, company partners with Illinois to "anchor" a business park
- Joe Biden does not own or operate the State of Illinois
What is not anywhere in here is a statement like this:
"Among the recipients was also PsiQuantum, which last year raised money from a group of investors including 1789 Capital, the venture capital firm at which Joe Biden is a partner."
Because, instead, it says that Donald Trump, Jr., is a partner in the venture capital firm, 1789 Capital.
- Joe Biden does not own or operate 1789 Capital or Donald Trump, Jr.
Please do better than handwave-y 'oh they're all corrupt' nonsense when faced with the overwhelming corruption of the trump regime.
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That’s not all it will be used for and there’s fixes for that issue with new cyphers. You might as well get mad about all the GPU and CPU advancements the last 30 years because it led to breaking older encryption schemes and LLMs which might destroy some job sectors.
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Of every bit of encrypted web and email traffic that’s been sent in the past 20 years that they’ve been snooping and hoarding off all the backbones.
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I’m sure we’ll be hearing about Burisma and Hunter’s laptop soon enough.
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You ignore the biggest use case...theft.
The irony of this administration being all in on cryptocurrency, while at the same time funding quantum computing which will probably put cryptocurrency out of business, isn't lost on me.
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Do we have a name for a "Quantum AI" government? One that sucks all money out of stuff for People, and redistributes it to silicon and sub-atomic particles?
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The window is closing. It must be that, from the inside, too few people notice just how batshit crazy bad the situation and plotted course is.
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Am I the only person in the room tired of hearing that everything is billions or ten of billons of dollars now. I mean everything coming out of this administration cost billions upon billions. I cannot be the only sane person that realizes all of us are paying for it. I honestly feel as though every time I think I am witnessing something that is next level crazy, I just need to wait a day. Someone usually redefines what crazy is on nearly a daily basis now.
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Capitalism means only an ideology (ism), typically implemented as economic policy, that values only property (capital). Socialism at its core is when the government controls the means of production, typically by directly paying its labor and/or owning its property. Socialist capitalism (or capitalist socialism) is in no way a contradiction, when the government pays the labor and/or owns the property, while valuing only the property made by the labor. That is what the Trump regime is practicing here as in many other areas.
The contradiction is where Trump and his MAGA cult demonize "socialism", whether actual government ownership/control or often otherwise, while practicing pure socialism as in this reported news. And where they rationalize it as "creating jobs" which pretends to value labor while they actively oppress and destroy it. Of course they're hypocrites, liars and thieving gangsters, so the contradiction exists only if their words are trusted, which everyone should have learned long ago not to be tricked into.
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Every major industry innovation in the USA, from agriculture, energy, technology, medicine to any other you know about, has been instigated, supported and/or scaled by government investment. So there are many, many examples of ways to carefully invest government money in private industry in a fair, stable equitable way. Even though there are also plenty of counterexamples to guide us.
This corrupt Trump market intervention is one of the counterexamples.
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Well said. I'd wager the situation of Chinese factory workers isn't all that better than that of their counterparts in the 19th century Europe whose plight helped inspire the original communist and socialist ideas.
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Capitalism - rich assholes own the businesses and pay themselves ungodly sums of cash/hoard power
Socialism - business ownership is distributed between the workers of the business
Communism (what you're talking about) - the government owns everything and pays everyone however they see fit
Capitalism - government protects the rich and gives the under classes just enough to keep them from rioting (usually...some times the rich forget the agreement and try to use force instead and we go back to rioting)
Socialism - government incentivizes and protects the distribution of wealth and power amongst workers in businesses but doesn't get so involved as to choose winners and losers
Communism - government plans and executes everything... They decide who gets rich, who stays poor, if you can have a job at all...
You are correct that you can have blended systems, they tend to be more stable than their pure market system counter parts.
We're verging dangerously towards (possibly entirely already there) corporate owned government. That's going to look a lot like a weird mix of capitalism and communism. Government is going to prioritize protecting the rich and, instead of the government picking the winners and losers, corps will continue picking the political candidates we're allowed to toil under (AIPAC, anyone?).
Socialism is a boogeyman for the rich because it'd strip them of all their power immediately and potentially make it quite difficult to get it back. So they demonize the shit out of it, hoping the rubes won't bother to educate themselves of the differences.
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Nope.
No Grift here.
Nothing to see move along.
I guess when 'so much winning' was thrown around, he meant winning just for himself.
What will happen to all these investments in 2029? Will they remain with the US Gov't or just be let go to another interested party?
No Grift here.
Nothing to see move along.
I guess when 'so much winning' was thrown around, he meant winning just for himself.
What will happen to all these investments in 2029? Will they remain with the US Gov't or just be let go to another interested party?
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One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong.
Trump's administration obtains an ownership stake in a private corporation without Congressional authorization by abusing CHIPS Act funds.
Biden's administration was in charge when DARPA made a research project award according to their usual processes.
Explain the equivalence to me, in small words that my toddler-like brain can understand, please.
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China was never communist. No country has ever been communist. Communism has no government, no money, no private property, no social classes, no religions, and other familiar institutions replaced by pure equality among people who produce and consume according only to their abilities and needs. It's a theoretical eventual end state of societies predicted by Marx as societies develop with those familiar institutions gradually contributing to their collapse, evolving to eventually reach the only stable kind of society as Marx predicted and described it.
All countries are more or less socialist, depending on how much of its production is directly controlled by the government. Every country has a government that produces governance, the core socialism that is extended when governments directly control more. Militaries are socialist, treasuries, postal services, police and fire departments, public schools, highway departments all directly socialist when part of a government. Government pensions and health insurance are socialist. Even government loans and grants are socialist, as they less directly control production they fund but do practically always come with government rules for spending them with is direct. The less direct the government control of production the less socialist is the country (or any jurisdiction, down to a one room public schoolhouse whose teacher is paid by the government), arguably to the extent of a minimally but nozero socialism that only makes laws governing any production, even aside from that government itself.
China is a socialist country with a ruling party that calls itself "Communist", which in any country is always an aspirational marketing name. Its government has direct control over most of its society, as the tech moguls it's cut down in the past decade would tell you despite their $billions in wealth and their apparent power. As everyone subject to its police and courts, including its many secret ones, including ones operating overseas among Chinese communities would also tell you. If they could tell you without serious reprisal, as there are no rights in Chinese socialism that the government can't ignore by citing some threat to its power. China is less socialist now than it has been since its nominal Communists overthrew its previous imperial autocracy, as it has scaled its private enterprise and associated non government activity even faster than its rapid growth in government and what the government directly owns and controls. But it is still very socialist.
Even though China is also very capitalist. Capitalism is just an ideology (ism) that values only property (capital, not nature, labor or anything else), typically implemented in economic policy whether public or private. It's no contradiction to socialism (though it is antithetical to actual communism, which excludes private property and so no valuing it). A socialist capitalism has government directly controlling production, while valuing only the property its society produces and consumes. That is China, though not an ideal form because it values power over and in addition to property while encouraging the growth of non government property (largely in service to that power). It is also the USA, France, Japan, Russia, Honduras and every other country, with the arguable exceptions of theocracies like Iran, Afghanistan, the Vatican City and increasingly Israel which are also still more or less capitalist socialisms.
These terms have actual clear meanings that are necessary to understand and discuss them and how they actually exist in the world. The canard "capitalism vs socialism", especially when calling anything that has ever existed "communist", is a propaganda framing created by countries and their spokespeople to manufacture a false dichotomy distracting from the actual nature of the societies and their actual conflicts.
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I don't want the government funding any private sector endeavors, whether they are democrat or republican. Funding is not "doing business" - it is simply funding a private business with our tax dollars, of which we all already pay a lot as a country.
And the DOJ needs to stop it. But it won't happen.
Maybe that helps clear up my point. 100% Donald Trump JR. is up to shady stuff. He is about as trustworthy as the guy offering to 'watch your car' when you park it in a public lot.
But my initial point was that it seems to be happening on both sides. And I don't want that from our government at all, full stop.
The government can definitely PURCHASE the end product from a private sector company, but they should not, or ever, invest in companies as if they are a venture capitalist firm. Because we have MANY other uses for those funds like, I don't know, those pesky funding bills Congress never passes and causing 4 hour TSA lines. And it makes corruption so much easier to implement. On both sides of the aisle.
That's all I was trying to convey.
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GOP just say anything to undermine their opponents and benefit themselves. Truly, if they’re speaking then they’re lying. Many dems too, of course. We’re here now for reasons.
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No family more corrupt than the Trump family. We will throw the book at them and expose this corruption in the next administration.
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You're fairly accurate in describing one form of capitalism, that it tends to develop into (monopoly capitalism in oligarchy) when capitalism isn't mitigated by other values like labor (which is not necessarily socialist, as government can control labor without valuing it). Which can become fascism, where a leader's personality cult governs through a private privileged oligarchy (and has other properties like prioritizing propaganda, demonizing scapegoated minorities it typically mass executes, etc). That's where Trump has taken the USA with MAGA, radicalizing the already protofascist Republican Party, though it's only partly there yet but blatantly hurtling into full fascism according to its rhetoric that it actually (sometimes literally) executes when it can exercise its power to do so.
You're wrong about socialism as limited to government only incentivizing and protecting the distribution of wealth and power. Those are often consequences of the socialist government directly controlling production. You're wrong about communism, which is projected by communist theorists to develop after socialist governments eliminate class, money, property, religion and government itself into a stable society that doesn't require or use any of those. Communism has never been achieved, and only in trivial small instances ever even actually undertaken as the goal; it has only ever been used as political marketing just as fascist Nazism named itself (national, which it was as extreme nationalism) "socialism" which it was largely and extremely aggressively opposed to (it mass murdered socialists and those who aspirationally called themselves "communists").
Socialism is hated by entitled rich people who can't maintain their unjust power (and the wealth that comes with it in a reinforcing cycle) when socialism operates actually democratically. It's a boogeyman under their propaganda because the Cold War propagandized Americans to hate whatever was labeled "socialism" in the USSR and Communist China, and because their advertising works better than ever now thanks to technology and generations of diseducating Americans.
The people educating ourselves is hard because the disinfo is so pervasive and longlasting, while the education necessary for critical thinking is so malignly neglected. Even you and I who substantially agree on the political socioeconomics aren't agreeing on the few fundamental terms. Nevertheless the truth is more powerful than the lies because truth leverages the entire existing universe, proof by evidence is the bottom line for most, and humans evolved to dominate the Earth mostly by cooperation and empathy rather than by sociopathic narcissism. We can leverage our remaining freedom and the reach of critical thinking in common sense to claw our way out of the fascist ditch, which is where enemies of enlightened democracy have steered the USA and much of the developed democracies that took power through the Industrial Age. That is what we're doing here in this public debate sidebar to the fascists expanding a selfserving socialism designed to soon enough convert to more fascism instead.
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To be more precise, the government should not buy equity in a private corporation that gives it any direct control, including assigning directors on its board or even voting or otherwise communicating as the private entities with any ownership. The government's power over private corps is legitimately only by laws and regulations set by its democratic republic under a constitution protecting people's rights, and conditions of loans or grants also set that way, not as a purchase giving it direct corporate governance power. Government can own corporations but it must be the sole owner, governed solely by law and regulation not policies set by the corporation's owners through their director proxies or its executive/management employees or contractors. Except as temporarily as actually possible in extreme, extraordinary catastrophes where such direct control is a necessary last resort, as opposed to letting the catastrophe becoming much worse.
Jr Trump's preferential boon is not that. It is blatant corruption, its blatancy key to its agenda of converting the US government entirely to a tool for the exclusive benefit of the oligarchy and no longer a just institution with power over the people.
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You say Innovation-averse, I say anti-subsidized human workforce replacement. It ain't potato/potahto.
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thelongdarkteatimeof
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Eh... Yanks have always ignored IP law when it was convenient for them. They've never played by the rules, they always stole, and they always will steal, forever.
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It’s gonna take years, and maybe d cafes to unwind ALL the corruption from this administration. And I sure hope there are states paying attention, ready to arrest the crooks after the orange idiot grants them federal pardons.
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