Indeed; sorry for leaving that out, it was a judgement call triggered by HN limits. However, whilst very relevant, it doesn't in fact change the point that much.
A long, boring read written with AI and pandering to a dystopian future. Somehow these people are often applauded for their insights on Linkedin and "entrepreneur" forums. I say that we can do a lot better.
Author here - yes I use AI to help me draft and research, but it's still my writing, and I spent many hours thinking through the arguments and what I am saying.
The "written with AI" charge is used so indiscriminately on HN now that it mostly functions as a way to dismiss an argument without engaging with it.
If there's a substantive point you disagree with, I'd genuinely like to hear it.
Thanks for replying, Felix. That's a fair-ish point, I concur, and apologies for the dismissive tone.
On point, the article is too long for what it attempts to say, in my view, and the reliance on AI phrasing is so obvious and annoying that it would in fact put off most people who would like to engage with it meaningfully. To paraphrase someone on HN, it's a bit insulting to read texts from authors that don't bother to produce their own mistakes, let alone long texts produced by/with bots.
I am also aware that many people these days will quickly dismiss things for being "written with Ai", which of course I don't believe is automatically a good thing. But I think that in many cases the reasoning should go this way: no one owes us any time and attention for - or engagement with - the stuff we put out there. No one asked or expected us to produce that. On the contrary, the fact that we do put our thoughts out there means that it is on us to make it worthwhile for the readers; it is us who appear to ask for time and attention. We better make sure that once we receive them we treat our audience properly. If they dismiss it, perhaps sometimes it's not them, it's us.
Imagine that rather than spending any time to read through the article myself, I run it through some AI tool, ask it to rip it apart and paste a similarly long worded reply (only 5.3k words, or 40 minutes of your time) to say what I already said, which is that the article basically normalises and optimises for a labour-displacing, techno-capitalist reality that many people would reasonably call dystopian.
More to the point, you seem to imply that there is an argument worth engaging with. I beg to differ. The text is too long, too winding, written with AI (which I find somewhat insulting and unserious), and accommodating or legitimising a dystopian labour-reduction trajectory whereby some people enrich themselves to the detriment of the entire society. I dislike the fact that I've spent this much time to read through it so that I arrived at this conclusion (and I've skipped many lines).
It could be argued that both of my comments are actually engaging with the substance of the article despite the fact that it does not seem to deserve that effort.
Thank you for your subsequent reply, I appreciate it and don't disagree with what you're saying - no one owes me any of their precious time nor attention.
I'm writing publically for a few reasons - one being to help arrange my own thoughts (which this capital without labour piece did), another being so that people (or bots) who do want to understand my thought process - perhaps because they're thinking about working with me - have a chance to see into my thinking on a particular subject. I accept that's going to be a pretty small audience!
I'm not suggesting the future isn't dystopian, where capital is further enriched, in fact it's pretty clear it does look that way. For me though, I'm figuring out what's my place in that. I don't honestly think I could affect the course of history here.
But, just to say, your feedback did resonate with me, and I've already taken it on board, and will endeavour to produce (more of) my own mistakes in the writing I publish.
I think that that's the wrong way to go about creating economic entities and services and products. The aim should be to create something genuinely useful rather than a quick way to make money, an entity that then gets sold (I find this ridiculous), or a method to monopolise or "discover" something in order to generate profit.
People and other businesses buy services and products for a myriad of reasons; sure, cost and convenience will weigh significantly more than others, but the decision-making is never down to the idea or cost alone. In fact, after cost and convenience, trust plays a very important role; and this is translated in a number of ways, from the ability of an entity to deliver on its promises, to safety and security (where applicable), potential for growth alongside the buyer's needs, penchant and budget allocation for innovation, how it treats its workers or behaves in other respects (brand value stuff: environment, stakeholder engagement etc.), easiness of collaboration and communication, the quality of support, whether they're willing to risk losing some money in the short run for the sake of long run success (i.e. being ready to reimburse some costs for a client beyond what's legally required when it fucked up), whether the provider speaks the same language, whether it's based in a jurisdiction where the buyer can trust that the seller is not green- or white-washing on its commitments, and so, so many other factors.
It's not uniqueness of the service or product that drives success or keeps a business afloat, but a combination of factors.
Wow, Microsoft is really pushing the wrong boundaries in every direction, isn't it? Executives must be thinking, like many before them, that Microsoft is too big to fail.
Executives only react to share price movements. If share prices are high because whatever investors think, then execs will just open another champagne bottle.
Steve Jobs was the last tech CEO who didn't care about wall street and only care about quality products and consumers saying that if customers are happy, then the share price will take care of itself. But most companies are share price first, customer later.
With the risk of sounding like I'm brushing off what you're saying (I am not) and breaking one or two rules on this forum, please read the article because it addresses your question to some degree.
For example (my emphasis in the quoted texts):
> Together they urged policymakers in 14 countries that straddle the Atlantic to take action against enshittification, arguing that it was not an inevitable process but rather the result of policy decisions.
> Policymakers were urged to double down on the enforcement of existing laws, such as those designed to protect consumers and their data, as well as work to foster greater competition in digital markets, for example through the use of public procurement processes to favour alternatives to big tech.
From the report (my emphasis in the quoted texts):
> The path we are on can be challenged and reversed – we can have a better digital world. This requires rebalancing the power between consumers, big tech companies and alternative service providers.
> The fight to disenshittify the internet is also a fight for innovation: Big Tech is able to enshittify their services after they have become dominant and restricted competition. By pruning back the excesses of big tech, alternative services can get the nourishment they need to grow and flourish. However, this requires active policy choices and vigorous enforcement of existing laws.
As you can see, it's not merely a case of building better alternatives, although that plays a role. The biggest issues stem from market dominance, preventing the emergence of new players and innovators, using existing (huge) leverage to pass preferential laws etc. This is a systemic problem, not one that "the market" should solve.
I think that normally that may be the approach (and I'm not singling out Italy for this, it probably applies to most countries).
On this occasion, however:
> In all previous cases involving other international groups, once a settlement was reached and payment made, prosecutors closed related criminal investigations, either through plea deals or by dropping the cases.
> This time, however, Milan prosecutors did not share the tax authority's approach and decided to press ahead with their probe, leading to a request that the suspects be sent to trial.
Damn, is anyone an expert that can speak to the criminal law involved here?
It’s crazy that executives can jump around the law and not face any criminal charges, then the company picks up the bill (although I’m not ignorant thinking this isn’t usual)
I’m just curious to learn more about how often this is the case and you usually what happens with people afterward
I don't know about Italian law, but in the US tax evasion is pretty difficult in many cases to prove. It is illegal in the US to deliberately defraud the IRS to evade paying taxes, it is not illegal to make a mistake, or claim a deduction you think you can claim when the IRS decides you can't, etc. So prosecutors must prove you had an intent to evade taxes you knew you owed. Because they can rarely meet that bar, criminal charges are rarely brought.
it's for the civil part. (so you need to show the tax office some paper trail that you based your filings on. invoices, bills, contracts, emails, receipts. and if they are formally okay, then the tax agency has to show that they are just fake papers.)
as far as I understand the criminal part still considers intent and so on (and has a higher standard for burden of proof), but if you file for VAT return and then you have zero invoices (and so the numbers simply don't add up) the court can easily find that there was intent to defraud the state. (and then sentencing is based on the amount of damages.)
This very much reads like that Economist hit piece that was complaining about how worker protections are but an abomination that needs doing away with, because what's the point in protecting anything at all if wealth is not generated? Naïve, if we're being generous.
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