My biggest issue with AI is that I think it’s going to allow a massive wealth transfer from laborers to capital owners.

I think AI will allow many jobs to become easier and more productive, and even eliminate some jobs. I don’t think this is a bad thing - that’s what technology is. It should be a good thing, in fact, because it will increase the overall productivity of society. The problem is generally when you have a situation where new technology increases worker productivity, most of the benefits of that go to capital owners rather than said workers, even when their work contributed to the technological improvements either directly or indirectly.

What’s worse, in the case of AI specifically it’s functionality relies on it being trained on enormous amounts of content that was not produced by the owners of the AI. AI companies are in a sense harvesting society’s collective knowledge for free to sell it back to us.

IMO AI development should continue, but be owned collectively and developed in a way that genuinely benefits society. Not sure exactly what that would look like. Maybe a sort of light universal basic income where all citizens own stock in publicly run companies that provide AI and receive dividends. Or profits are used for social services. Or maybe it provides AI services for free but is publicly run and fulfills prosocial goals. But I definitely don’t think it’s something that should be primarily driven by private, for-profit companies.

A person can make a mistake, realize they were wrong, and change their mind. This is the basis of personal growth. Insults are not an appropriate response. This only promotes division when you should be looking for allies.

I kind of agree with both you and the person you’re responding to.

Trump has quite a lot of supporters and they don’t all support him for the same reasons.

There definitely are hardline, cultish supporters who essentially worship Trump and will accept any sort of behaviour from him. And he definitely has supporters who are motivated more by hate than any personal need.

But on the other hand, I think that many Trump voters genuinely believe that he’s the best option to advance their own interests.

Many of Trump’s voters are people who are desperately poor and in dire need. They are - often through no fault of their own - un or underemployed (and thus in poverty), undernourished, and underserviced in many other ways (healthcare, education, etc.). It’s a huge problem in rural areas, largely ignored by the Democrats. And - while they’re undereducated - they aren’t necessarily stupid. They know they’re getting fucked over. And they know the government isn’t doing much of anything to help them. Both of these things are true, not lies told by Trump. They are very angry, and justifiably so.

And so along comes Trump and he offers them simple - and at first glance intuitively reasonable - solutions to their problems.

Take for example tariffs to make out-of-country goods more expensive to incentivize creating goods in the US. This solution makes intuitive sense. If companies are moving manufacturing out of the country because it’s cheaper, why not make it more expensive to import goods? It probably will even increase certain types of jobs. In truth, there are a couple problems with this. For one thing, manufacturing job losses aren’t exclusively due to outsourcing - automation is a bigger factor. For another, the economy is complicated and the tariffs will also have negative effects that will likely far outweigh any positive ones. But the average Trump supporter isn’t equipped to understand that, and frankly neither is the average non-Trump supporter (I’m just repeating what I’ve heard from sources I trust, but really I don’t know shit). Arguably even the average economist is just making an educated guess. Again, the economy is complicated.

Even for the more hateful aspects of his message, when people are angry and desperate (as many Trump supporters very justifiably are) they’re more inclined to seek out destructive change (like tearing down the government) and look for scapegoats (so racist, anti-LGBT etc. messages become more appealing). That undertone of hate was always there, it wasn’t caused by capitalism, but it’s definitely exacerbated by anger and need. Happy people don’t have as much need for scapegoats.