The Socialist Temptation of Sam Altman(www.wsj.com)
6 pointsby thm4 hours ago1 comment
  • Refreeze52242 hours ago
    For the billionth time already, socialism is not "when the government does it." Using the government to increase your capital and become even richer is standard capitalism.

    Altman is not now and will not ever relinquish any means of production he own to the workers.

    • pyerian hour ago
      Altman may not be an altruist but the overall direction the organization takes is what matters in the end. And as long as that organization retains even a semblance of a non-profit (despite having a revenue centric approach to tackle competition in the field), it is still a preferable organization to Anthropic and Amodei.
    • satvikpendem2 hours ago
      Well, OpenAI workers do own shares. Tech companies are significantly more socialist than any other large scale enterprises in modern history (I don't know enough about pre-modern history to say).
      • geysersam2 hours ago
        Why do you say that?
      • watwut2 hours ago
        That is not socialism.
        • satvikpendem2 hours ago
          Workers owning the means of production, and shares are ownership. So yes it is (one form of) socialism.
          • Refreeze52242 hours ago
            Shares are not the means of production. They are a mutually agreed upon fiction and sit firmly within the realm of capitalism.
            • satvikpendem2 hours ago
              Leaving aside that market socialism also exists, in which shares do as well, not just Marxist Leninist, what do you define as ownership then? Especially in today's age where value is in software not only hardware. How would a worker own a means of production?
          • watwut2 hours ago
            Not at all. They maybe get portion of future valie, but have no decision power and no power at all.
            • satvikpendem2 hours ago
              Voting shares exist. In fact, worker cooperatives are the end result by this method, where every worker does indeed have a vote and therefore decision power.
          • KingMob2 hours ago
            [dead]