His argument was literally that
- artists, writers, and programmers are “labor aristocracy” and deserve no respect because they’re sitting around making art and writing code while other people are toiling and laboring,
- genAI is a “free resource” (“it’s free for me to use at work”) that “helps everyone make things” instead of having to rely on skill and expertise and therefore makes everything equal,
- it’s hypocritical of people to be worried about the environmental and societal impact of genAI because “only white people are worried about it now that their hobbies are being threatened and everyone else is catching up”.
Pointing out there there are artists and programmers from every race and economic class, as well as perfectly ordinary people in every walk of life who are all actively being harmed both by the theft of ideas and labor and by the physical effects of gigantic data centers ruining communities, was met with much hand-waving and incredibly impenetrable philosophical jargon.
I’m particularly incensed because I’m as leftist and anticapitalist as they come and this felt like the fuckery some conservative cockwomble would try to come up with to parody socialism, except this guy was completely serious.
This problem wouldn’t exist if the laborer were paid fairly.
Instead, most of the value of their labor was soaked up by their boss.
Not to mention the 30% going to the government…so they can turn around and give it to people like the Waltons. But not directly – instead they just supplement most their employees paychecks, so that the pesky “Payroll” line doesn’t interfere so much with the Walton’s immense wealth. (Plus, the employees will turn around and spend most of those welfare bucks at Walmart! Win/win!)
Even if they were self-employed, still gotta give Uncle Sam his cut so he can give it to his wealthy brethren