2 Comments

You were right about human capital being the gating resource for tech, just not right about what human capital is. We are the oil in the ground for these monsters, not the means to get the oil. Tech in 2024 is about using people like fuel. Our attentions, our data, our brains. Big tech sucks it all up, doesn’t care if all that is left is husks glued to their product—in fact that is the ideal consumer of the product.

It’s different from the television age in that the money is not made just from our eyeballs glued to the set, it is also made from all of the things we do, our participation in the feedback loop, while we are glued to the set. Like oil from the ground, we are extracted from our lives and then fed back into the machinery to extract even more from our lives, until every last drop is captured. AI is a culmination of this process.

So much has been extracted from us, now we are made into machines whose purpose is to mimic human life without the things that frighten the money, like free will and political views—independence from technology. It is the image that we are being shaped into.

Yes, tech is built human capital, in the worst way possible.

Expand full comment

time for a wealth tax! tax rate the wealthy in the 1950s was 90%. though few paid that because of various loopholes. bring it back!!!

Expand full comment