Labored Daze

In the labored daze of AI hype and GDP "growth," few seem to notice the workforce is tired of being exploited as an uncomplaining resource.

"Great Powers" claim their greatness on prestige technologies and military force, but how do they measure up if we change the metrics to how they treat their workforces. How great are they then? China and the U.S. claim the mantles of "Great Powers" but if we look at how well they treat their workforces, both rate poorly.

What matters in assessing the workforce isn't just wages; what matters is the entire quality of life. In this regard, childcare matters, because 1) without children, the "Great Power" has no future, and 2) the lives and budgets of workers with children revolve around the ease or difficulty of caring for their children. The "Great Power" state can either do a lot, do a little, or do nothing to help working parents.

Now that China's birthrate is plummeting, the state has launched a few modest initiatives to help parents with the high costs of raising children. If we consider the cost of childcare to per capita GDP, the cost of childcare and education in China is high. It's also absurdly burdensome in the U.S., which has also left childcare expenses up the parents and market forces, which unsurprisingly have pushed the costs of having a child and childcare to the stratosphere.

China's total fertility rate was 1.1 children per woman in 2024, far below the replacement level of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. America's rate is around 1.6, also below replacement.

Compared to nations that pay for three years of childcare leave so at least one parent can care for the child at home to age 3, the "Great Powers" aren't even close to "great." Abysmal is a better description.

Let's consider another metric: how well do the "Great Powers" treat their small-scale farmers and the people who raise their food? Once again, both "Great Powers" rate poorly. While the financial media focuses breathless attention on AI and measures of consumption, few pundits bother looking at how well the "Great Powers" treat their small-scale farmers and ag workforce. Pensions for low-earning family farmers? Not "great" by any measure.

After all, who needs children or food when you have AI data centers and robots delivering ultra-processed snacks? In both self-proclaimed "Great Powers," the workforce is viewed as 1) a resource to be exploited (China's infamous "996," the grind of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, and America's equally infamous "on call all weekend if the Boss texts you"), or 2) as consumers driving economic "growth" by purchasing more ultra-processed snacks and commoditized experiences.

If life is so great for the "Great Power" workforces, then where did laying flat, let it rot, the garbage time of history and the Five No's come from? The Five No's: no house, no car, no extraneous consumption, no marriage and no children.

Laying flat (tang ping): rejection of the hyper-competitive rat race and diminishing returns for punishing workloads, the desire for a simpler, more satisfying and enjoyable life; disillusionment with the fast-receding "China Dream / American Dream," and the realization that the promise that material abundance would make everyone blissfully happy is false, as manic consumerism doesn't generate fulfillment, meaning, purpose or happiness.

Let it rot (bai lan) summarizes the realization that the present era is the garbage time of history, and the appropriate response is to "actively embrace a deteriorating situation, rather than trying to turn it around."

The entire AI story boils down to reaping billions in profits by replacing the human workforce en masse, another manifestation of exploitation and disregard. The workforce's "job" is to generate and consume declining-quality products and services to generate "growth" and profits, a resource to be exploited that is more or less divided into debt-serfs (bottom 80%) and tax donkeys (top 10%), with the remaining 10% luxuriating in an illusory "middle class" featuring both debt and taxes.

In both "Great Powers," the billionaire and political classes are doing great, the workforce, not so much, as market forces have jacked up the cost of living and the gains of their labor are siphoned off and sluiced into state excess and capital gains, 90% of which are collected by the ownership / shareholder class.

This chart tells the story of the past 50 years: labor's share of the national income has declined, to the benefit of the top few. The garbage time of history, indeed.



In the labored daze of AI hype and GDP "growth," few seem to notice the workforce is tired of being exploited as an uncomplaining resource. Since outright revolt is quickly crushed by state force, the only option is opting out, via financial nihilism, laying flat, the five No's or let it rot, all expressions of the abandonment of false promises and diminishing returns on following orders.


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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AI: The Good, the Bad and the...Woah

The most pressing need now is for AI tools to protect us from AI tools.

The good news about AI is there will be productive uses. The bad news is it will take 5 to 10 years to sort the wheat from the chaff. According to a recent study by Morgan Stanley, it takes 14 years to reap the productivity gains from a typical New Tech adoption cycle. Morgan Stanley: AI Adoption Rate To Outpace Past Tech Cycles, But Measurable Economic Impact May Not Arrive Until Late Decade.

Richard Bonugli and I discuss the good and the bad in AI in our new podcast/video.

The adoption process isn't as smooth as promoters claim: MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing.

The other bad news is the malicious uses of AI are already in full bloom, so while we're waiting around for AI tools to find use cases that actually increase productivity (as opposed to doing BS Work that has little to no real value), we'll have to deal with an ever-expanding onslaught of malicious uses of AI tools.

The Era of AI-Generated Ransomware Has Arrived (WIRED.com)

AI Is Being Weaponized For Cybercrime In 'Unprecedented' Ways, Researchers Warn (Zero Hedge)

The dark side of AI is not just an institutional issue; AI impacts individuals and families in ways that are difficult to predict, discern or control:

The family of teenager who died by suicide alleges OpenAI's ChatGPT is to blame (NBC News)

It's instructive to compare AI adoption with the Internet's adoption process. The most striking difference is the Internet 1.0 (late 1990s to early 2000s) was visibly beneficial and lacked its current capacity for malicious activity. In the Internet 1.0, we weren't inundated with spam, phishing, etc.--the systems needed for these plagues didn't exist.

In AI, it's the malicious uses that are expanding while the truly productive uses are lagging.

The hype claims AI is already universally productive, but this is more hype than reality. The truly productive use cases are customized and specific to narrow fields. In terms of general uses, AI Slop is the primary output, degrading legitimate content and polluting future AI scraping/training with inaccuracies, as recent research has found that AI scrapers favor AI-generated content: so with AI Slop, it's garbage in, garbage out, stretching to infinity.

As the links below document, AI tools have inherent limits that impact their utility. The hype claims that scaling (adding more processors) will solve all these technical limits, but that isn't the case. The models are intrinsically limited, limits that can't be dissolved with a few coding tricks or more processing power.



So while we wait for truly productive specific applications of generative AI, we're at risk of being overwhelmed by the malicious uses which are already productive for the criminal class. The most pressing need now is for AI tools to protect us from AI tools.

Never mind the good and the bad--watch out for the Woah.



Of related interest:

MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

LLMs + Coding Agents = Security Nightmare

AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event

The potential of generative AI for personalized persuasion at scale

What If A.I. Doesn't Get Much Better Than This?

The Real Demon Inside ChatGPT

ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study

AI Industry Nervous About Small Detail: They're Not Making Any Real Money

Which jobs can be replaced with AI? Jobs that have already be degraded to the point of uselessness.

The Loneliness Epidemic Isn't About Phones, It's About Algorithms.

The Real Threat Isn't AI. It's That Our Jobs Were Never Worth Doing.

I've written 18 essays on AI this year: here are five:

AI: Over-Promise + Under-Perform = Disillusionment and Blowback

Maybe AI Isn't Going to Replace You at Work After All

Good News! AI Can Do More BS Work

Boiled Frogs: AI Slop, Phishing, Deep-Fakes and Spam, Spam, Spam

AI Is a Mirror in Which We See Our Own Reflection


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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AI: False Savior of a Hollowed-Out Economy

What nobody seems to notice is all the incentives for deploying AI are perverse.

The real story of the US economy isn't about AI, it's about an economy that's run out of rope. AI is being hyped not just by promoters reaping billions of dollars in stock market gains, it's being hyped by the entire status quo because it's understood to be the last chance of saving an economy doomed by the consequences of decades of artifice.

The real story of the US economy is that decades of "financial innovations" finally caught up with us in 2008, when the subprime mortgage scam--a classic example of "financial innovations" being the cover story for greed and fraud running amok--pulled a block from the global financial Jenga Tower that nearly collapsed the entire rickety, rotten structure.

Our political leadership had a choice: clean house or save the scam. They chose to save the scam, and that required not just institutionalizing moral hazard (transferring the risks of fraud and leveraged speculation from the gamblers to the public / Federal Reserve) but pursuing policies--zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), quantitative easing, increasing the money supply, and so on--that had only one possible outcome:

An economy permanently dependent on inflating asset-bubbles that enriched the top 10% while the bottom 90% who depend on earned income fell behind.

The desired goal of permanent asset-bubbles is the "wealth effect," the cover story for transferring all the gains into the hands of the top 10%, who can then go on a spending spree which 'trickles down" to the bottom 90%, who are now a neofeudal class of workers serving the top 10% who account for 50% of all consumer spending and collect 90% of the unearned income and capital gains.

This arrangement is inherently unstable, as "financial innovations" suffer from diminishing returns. Eventually the debt-serfs can no longer borrow more or service the debt they already have, and every bubble being bigger than the previous bubble guarantees the next implosion will be larger and more devastating than the previous bubble-pop.

So what does a system that's run out of rope do? Seek a savior. The rope has frayed, and the rocks are far below. The impact is going to be life-changing, and not for the better.

The choice remains: clean house, end the bubble-dependent frauds and scams, or find a way to inflate yet another credit-asset bubble. Clean house and lose all our bubble-wealth? You're joking. The solution is to blow an even bigger bubble. Hey, it's worked great for 17 years.

Never mind that the precarity of the bottom 90% is accelerating as both the state and Corporate America have offloaded risks onto households and workers; they have OnlyFans, 24% interest credit cards, zero-day-expiration options and side hustles to get by. Never mind that for many Americans, basic services are on the same level as impoverished developing-world economies. What matters is maintaining the wealth of the few at the expense of the many, by any means available.

Enter the savior of our asset-bubble-dependent elites: AI. AI is going to change the world, we'll all be watched over by machines of loving grace, profits and capital gains will be in the trillions of dollars, yowza, because we'll fire half of you and give you enough Universal Basic Income (UBI) to scrape by, and some of you can join our security teams protecting us from the impoverished rabble.

There's just one teeny little problem: AI is a false savior. It doesn't work as advertised, it has multiple inherent limits that can't be overcome by scaling up processors, and the dystopian consequences of even this first wave are already uncontrollably destructive:

AI psychosis and addiction to AI chatbots is making users even lonelier and more isolated than they were before embracing AI, AI Slop is overwhelming legitimate content, AI agents are just good enough to degrade already pathetically deficient corporate services, LLM models are Swiss-cheese security risks, and 95% of all corporate AI projects founder.

What nobody seems to notice is all the incentives for deploying AI are perverse. Those seeking nickels from Big Tech platform engagement / views win big by flooding the web with AI slop, scammers and fraudsters now have much more powerful tools to deceive and defraud (deepfake videos and voiceovers), and rather than watch over us with loving grace, the AI systems are scraping their own inaccuracies and hallucinations and deceptively presenting this slop as accurate.

The status quo is counting on AI to be the savior of a hollowed-out economy, but it's a false savior. The frenzy has inflated another credit-asset bubble as planned, but another bubble that enriches the few isn't going to fix what's broken. Rather, unleashing AI tools in a system of perverse incentives is accelerating the decay and collapse of the entire system by replacing authentic value with illusions of value--what I call Ultra-Processed Life.

I hate to be the bearer of unwelcome news, but enriching the few at the expense of the many is the problem, not the solution. So the AI bubble mints more billionaires, well that's swell, but the process of inflating bubbles that enrich the few is what's destabilizing our economy and society.

This chart presents the consequences of 17 years of bubble-inflation "wealth effect": wealth for the few and "effects" for the many:



Asset bubbles have been good to the top .01%:



And it's been good for the top 10%, too: $107 trillion in net worth, and of course, "I earned every penny of it." The bottom 50% with $4 trillion--well, better launch your OnlyFans site, even though there are already millions of other desperate people hoping to scrape up a few bucks by selling themselves online.



Contrary to the hype, AI isn't the savior of the bubble economy--it's the hype-heavy straw that breaks it for good.

Before we bow down and worship a false savior, it's probably a good idea to learn about the limits of our AI savior and the self-serving hype, and the banquet of consequences being laid for true believers.

MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

LLMs + Coding Agents = Security Nightmare

AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event

The potential of generative AI for personalized persuasion at scale

What If A.I. Doesn't Get Much Better Than This?

The Real Demon Inside ChatGPT

ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study

AI Industry Nervous About Small Detail: They're Not Making Any Real Money

Which jobs can be replaced with AI? Jobs that have already be degraded to the point of uselessness.

I've written 17 essays on AI this year: here are four:

AI: Over-Promise + Under-Perform = Disillusionment and Blowback

Maybe AI Isn't Going to Replace You at Work After All

Good News! AI Can Do More BS Work

AI Is a Mirror in Which We See Our Own Reflection


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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Thank you, Kerjanga N. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Mark W. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Nikolai ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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Our Mafioso Economy

Extortion is the keystone of America's Mafioso Economy.

And scene: here are the dons, each the ruthless head of their own vast organization, seated next to their wives in a show of bourgeois respectability, assembled by invitation to kiss the ring of the Godfather. This isn't just fiction, of course; we've all seen the photo of America's Big Tech dons, wives in tow, lined up in a display of billionaire obeisance.

We all know the drill: give the Godfather respect and his cut, and you can return to your extractive monopoly confident that nobody is going to interrupt your grift.

Welcome to America's Mafioso Economy, where monopolies are free to extract vast fortunes via addiction (pharmaceuticals, social media, gaming, pornography, gambling, entertainment, etc.), predatory pricing (oops, I mean dynamic pricing), shoddy goods and services, shakedowns, and of course, extortion: offers you can't refuse.

For example, that software you could buy and use for years until the Mafioso Monopoly obsoleted it? Now you have to rent it. It's called a subscription service, which is like calling the addict's next hit of smack a subscription service. You have a need, and the Mafioso Monopoly will service your need, but monthly. So what once cost $200 now extracts $1,000 from your earnings. Same product (or worse), but now it costs a lot more.

That's America's Mafioso Economy in a nutshell: same product or service, but now it costs more. And since the Mafioso Monopolies bought up all their competitors (an offer you can't refuse), there's no where else to turn, except perhaps another Mafioso member of a cartel.

It's not just pay to play--you have to pay just to enter the auction of political favors. The Clinton Foundation set a new standard of Mafioso malignancy: "donate" to the foundation if you want access, then "donate" more if you want some actual action.

Extortion is the keystone of America's Mafioso Economy. Apply a little pressure, make an offer they can't refuse, and voila. Nice little business / institution you got there, too bad it's about to be gutted by some new regulations or executive actions. There is a way to make it all go away, but it's going to cost you.

Extortion pricing is Corporate America's playbook. Since every corporation Mafia deploys the same algos and extractive exploitation strategies, our choice boils down to which paddock we enter to get sheared.

Our Stasi-style surveillance and AI-powered algos have detected you can pay more than your fellow debt-serfs, so the price of your airline seat, or grocery item, is higher than the other customers. It's not extortion because you could go to another member of the Mafia cartel, but alas, they use the same dynamic pricing, so too bad you passed up that initial price, now it's even higher.

Junk fees abound because we have no choice. Where else can you buy a ticket to that concert you absolutely must attend? How about switching electrical utilities to get a better deal? Monopolies abound because they're the foundation of America's Mafioso Economy.

Darth Vader understood the Empire is also a Mafioso structure. Once you gain power over supply and governance, then you're free to alter the deal at will. I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further.




Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

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My recent books:

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Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Kerjanga N. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Mark W. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Nikolai ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, John G. ($7/month), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

How Great Powers Fall Apart

We're humoring our self-delusion.

How do great powers come undone? We can start with a destructive force without equal: self-delusion.

Emperor Norton comes to mind in this context. In 1859, in the Gold Rush-enriched city of San Francisco, Joshua Norton, a bankrupt businessman, declared himself "Emperor of these United States" in a proclamation that he signed "Norton I, Emperor of the United States."

This grandiosity played well in the rough and tumble "get rich quick, then lose it all" zeitgeist of San Francisco, and rather than be abused or disabused, Norton was "treated deferentially in San Francisco and elsewhere in California, and currency issued in his name was honored in some of the establishments he frequented."

In other words, his self-delusion was humored. On a grand scale, the same can be said of Great Powers: they humor their own self-delusion.

The progression of a Great Power from self-delusion to collapse was insightfully traced out by Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik in the late 1960s, when Amalrik predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lone voice to make such a bold prediction at the apex of Soviet power.

Amalrik's analysis was nuanced, drawing upon the human weaknesses that blind us to our own self-deception and rosy assumptions. Chief among these is the comforting belief that "it will all work out because it's always worked out before," an assumption that blinds us to the extraordinary nature of the crisis and the decay that we avoid recognizing beneath the surface of normal life.

Amalrik noted that the primary motivation of the various classes and interest groups was self-preservation, seeking to maintain whatever each faction currently held in terms of wealth and power. The misguided assumption made by all was that the system was so stable and powerful that they didn't need to concern themselves with anything beyond securing their position in the system.

As the system destabilizes, nobody notices because they're focused solely on the infighting borne of self-preservation.

He was also alert to the government's role in mediating the forces seeking to suppress reforms as dangers to the status quo and those seeking to force reforms on a sclerotic systems, and how seemingly small policy decisions can grease the skids to rapidly unfolding crises few imagined were even possible.

One of Amalrik's analytic techniques is both novel and insightful. This excerpt from How a Great Power Falls Apart: Decline Is Invisible From the Inside explains the concept of working backward from whatever outcome seems unlikely or even impossible:

Amalrik also provided a kind of blueprint for analytic alienation. It is actually possible, he suggested, to think your way through the end of days. The method is to practice living with the most unlikely outcome you can fathom and then to work backward, systematically and carefully, from the what-if to the 'here's-why.' The point isn't to pick one's evidence to fit a particular conclusion. It is rather to jolt oneself out of the assumption of linear change--to consider, for a moment, how some future historian might recast implausible concerns as inevitable ones."

Catastrophic outcomes are considered impossible because the status quo views itself as already having the means to handle any crisis. There's nothing to be learned from others and no reason to even ponder unlikely outcomes, and this creates a toxic blend of hubris and blindness.

"Society was becoming more complicated, more riven with difference, more demanding of the state but less convinced that the state could deliver. What was left was a political system far weaker than anyone--even those committed to its renewal--was able to recognize."

Those in power reckon they have the means to deal with any problem. Suppress dissent, buy off a troublesome constituency, print more money, etc. This confidence reflects the dominant political mythologies of the Great Power and its people. Reformers believe the status quo is capable of systemic reform, those resisting reform believe the system will endure without any reforms, and both are disconnected from reality: the status quo is no longer capable of real reforms, and left on autopilot, it is heading off a cliff.

"Amalrik offered a technique for suspending one's deepest political mythologies and posing questions that might seem, here and now, to lie at the frontier of crankery.

The powerful aren't accustomed to thinking this way. But in the lesser places, among the dissidents and the displaced, people have had to be skilled in the art of self-inquiry. How much longer should we stay? What do we put in the suitcase? Here or there, how can I be of use? In life, as in politics, the antidote to hopelessness isn't hope. It's planning."

I often refer to author Ray Huang's summary of how the mighty Ming Dynasty fell apart:

"The year 1587 may seem to be insignificant; nevertheless, it is evident by that time the limit for the Ming dynasty had already been reached. It no longer mattered whether the ruler was conscientious or irresponsible, whether his chief counselor was enterprising or conformist, whether the generals were resourceful or incompetent, whether the civil officials were honest or corrupt, or whether the leading thinkers were radicals or conservatives--in the end they all failed to reach fulfillment."

Nothing is as it seems. As correspondent Ray W. so presciently observed some years ago, "It is axiomatic that failing systems work the best just before they fail catastrophically."

Put another way, we're humoring our self-delusion.




Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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AI Is a Mirror in Which We See Our Own Reflection

AI is not so much a tool that everyone uses in more or less the same way, but a mirror in which we see our own reflection--if we care to look.

Attention has been riveted on what AI can do for the three years since the unveiling of ChatGPT, but very little attention has been paid to what the human user is bringing to the exchange.

If we pay close attention to what the human brings to the exchange, we find that AI is not so much a tool that everyone uses in more or less the same way, but a mirror in which we see our own reflection--if we care to look, and we might not, for what AI reflects may well be troubling.

What we see in the AI mirror reflects the entirety of our knowledge, our emotional state and our yearnings.

Those who understand generative AI is nothing more than "auto-complete on steroids" (thank you, Simon), a probability-based program, may well be impressed with the illusion of understanding it creates via its mastery of natural language and human-written texts, but it's understood as a magic trick, not actual intelligence or caring.

In other words, to seek friendship in AI demands suspending our awareness that it's been programmed to create a near-perfect illusion of intelligence and caring. As I noted earlier this week, this is the exact same mechanism the con artist uses to gain the trust and emotional bonding of their target (mark).

What we seek from AI reflects our economic sphere and our goals--what we call "work"--but it also reflects the entirety of our emotional state--unresolved conflicts, dissatisfaction with ourselves and life, alienation, loneliness, ennui, and so on, and our intellectual state.

Those obsessed with using AI to improve their "work flows" might see, if they chose to look carefully, an over-scheduled way of life that's less about accomplishment--what we tell ourselves--and more about a hamster-wheel of BS work, symbolic value and signaling to others and ourselves: we're busy, so we're valuable.

Those seeking a wise friend, counselor or romantic partner in AI are reflecting a profound hollowness in their human relationships, and a set of expectations that are unrealistic and lacking in introspection.

Those seeking intellectual stimulation will find wormholes into the entirety of human knowledge, for what's difficult for humans--seeking and applying patterns and connections to complex realms--AI does easily, and so we're astonished and enamored by its facility with complex ideas.

The more astute the human's queries and prompts, the deeper the AI's response, for the AI mirrors the human user's knowledge and state of mind.

So the student who knows virtually nothing about hermeneutics--the art of interpreting texts, symbols, images, film, etc.--might ask for an explanation that summarizes the basic mechanisms of hermeneutics.

Someone with deep knowledge of philosophy and hermeneutics will ask far more specific and more analytically acute questions, for example, prompting AI to compare and contrast Marxist hermeneutics and postmodern hermeneutics. The AI's response may well be a word salad, but because the human has a deep understanding of the field, they may discern something in the AI's response that they find insightful, for it triggered a new connection in their own mind.

This is important to understand: the AI did not generate the insight, though the human reckons it did because the phrase struck the human as insightful. The insight arose in the human mind due to its deep knowledge of the field. The student simply trying to complete a college paper might see the exact same phrase and find it of little relevance or value.

To an objective observer, it may well be a word salad, meaning that the appearance of coherence wasn't real, it was generated by the human with deep knowledge of the field, who automatically skipped over the inconsequential bits and pieced together the bits that were only meaningful because of their own expertise.

What matters isn't what AI auto-completes; what matters is our interpretation of the AI output, what we read into it, and what it sparks in our own mind. (This is the hermeneutics of interacting with AI.)

This explains why the few people I personally know who have taken lengthy, nuanced dives into AI and found real value are in their 50s, meaning that they have a deep well of lived experience and a broad awareness of many fields. They have the knowledge to make sense of whatever AI spits out on a deeper level of interpretation that the neophyte or scattered student.

In other words, the magic isn't in what AI spits out; the magic is in what we piece together in our own minds from what AI generated.

As many are coming to grasp, this is equally true in the emotional realm. To an individual with an identity and sense of self that comes from within, that isn't dependent on status or what others think or value, the idea of engaging a computer programmed to slather us with flattery is not just unappealing, it's disturbing because it's so obviously the same mechanism used by con artists.

To the secure individual, the first question that arises when AI heaps on the praise and artifice of caring is: what's the con?

What the emotionally needy individual sees as empathy and affirmation--because this is what they lack within themselves and therefore what they crave--the emotionally secure individual sees as fake, inauthentic and potentially manipulative, a reflection not just of neediness but of a narcissism that reflects a culture of unrealistic expectations and narcissistic involution.

In other words, what we seek from AI reflects our entire culture, a culture stripped of authentic purpose and meaning, emotionally threadbare, pursuing empty obsessions with status and attention-seeking, a culture of social connections so weak and fragile that we turn to auto-complete programs for solace, comfort, connection and insight.

In AI, we're looking at a mirror that reflects ourselves and our ultra-processed culture, a zeitgeist of empty calories and manic distractions that foster a state of mind that is both harried and bored, hyper-aware of superficialities and blind to what the AI mirror is reflecting about us.



What do we see in the AI mirror? Do we see what we seek, what we long for, or what we don't want to see because it's a dis-ease we fear to recognize?

What's insightful isn't AI's responses. It's how we interpret those responses without being self-aware of our own interpretations that's insightful.



Of related interest:

Artificial Intimacy: The Next Giant Social Experiment on Children

Why You Can't Trust a Chatbot to Talk About Itself


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Kerjanga N. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Mark W. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Nikolai ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, John G. ($7/month), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Boiled Frogs: AI Slop, Phishing, Deep-Fakes and Spam, Spam, Spam

We're frogs in a pot that's being heated so gradually that we no longer notice the sewage is extinguishing the utility of the Web.

Let's take "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome" and direct it on the Internet, the digital realm that is now central to modern life The incentives are making money from attention, i.e. clicks, engagement, etc. by any means available, and a burgeoning universe of cons, deception, extortion and fraud.

And with those incentives, the outcome is an ever-expanding river of toxic sewage, a river of AI slop, deep-fakes, phishing, clickbait and spam, spam, spam on every device, every platform, every screen.

This is not inconsequential. A physician-correspondent recently reported that he was researching a cardiovascular condition online and realized the article he was reviewing was AI slop, a conglomeration of inaccurate diagrams and plausible-sounding nonsense slapped together to get whatever meager income would be generated by a modest number of views.

That's the incentive the Big Tech platforms set up: since it's a low-odds gamble that any post will go viral on a large enough scale to make serious income, the incentive is to post 1,000 AI slop posts which each collect 1,000 views. In other words, make it up on volume.

Since the Internet is global, people in low-income nations have an incentive to generate AI slop to earn what is a pittance in developed nations. The barrier to entry is low--anyone can produce veritable mountains of AI slop with free tools and low-cost bandwidth--and the gains, however modest, are welcome if paid work is scarce.

The same "make it up on volume" approach incentivizes churning out millions of phishing and spam SMS, emails and posts on every platform under the sun. If there's only one sucker per 10,000 entreaties, then send out 10 million.

Since views and engagement generate income, the more outrageous the clickbait, the better. And of course, the greater the volume of clickbait, the greater the income stream flowing to platforms hosting the clickbait.

AI tools incentivize creating deep-fakes of celebrities' voices and personas which can then be deployed to con older Internet users who are often credulous enough to believe that yes, Owen Wilson is talking to me, see, it's him.

Every legitimate institution is now a tripwire for phishing and spam. Your USPS package can't be delivered, here's your Social Security Statement, and so on.

AI Search is broken, too. I couldn't find the original PropOrNot "fake-news about fake-news" list from 2016, and AI search concluded it was not available. Then a correspondent sent me a post on Zero Hedge which prominently displayed the entire original PropOrNot list. (oftwominds.com was on the list, thank you very much.)

Washington Post Names Drudge, Zero Hedge, & Ron Paul As Anti-Clinton "Sophisticated Russian Propaganda Tools" (November 25, 2016)

The burden of shadow work required to delete, unsubscribe and purge our lives of all this sewage is growing heavier by the day. This calls to mind the boiled-frog analogy: we're frogs in a pot that's being heated so gradually that we no longer notice the sewage is extinguishing the utility of the Web.

And the reason is--drum roll--that's how everyone makes money: views, engagement, scams, cons, fraud and above all, sheer volume. And who makes money from volume? The Big Tech platforms. So what if it's misleading AI slop, deep-fake scams or clickbait, the more "engagement" we get, the more money we make.

So where's the incentive to staunch the flood of sewage? There isn't one. The incentive is to shrug and let the user sort it out by burning their own time.

If we want a different outcome, we have to change the incentives.




Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

Read more...

Two Charts of Extremely Perverse Incentives

As a thought experiment, consider these changes to our economy's incentive structure.

Warren Buffett's partner Charlie Munger had a maxim: Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome. With that in mind, let's look at two charts.

The first is a chart depicting the use of ChatGPT. (Source: OpenAI Usage Plummets in the Summer, When Students Aren't Cheating on Homework.)

Usage fell by 2/3 once classes ended, and the dips in use during the Spring align with weekends.

There are any number of conclusions we can draw, but let's start with another of Munger's maxims: why? The reason is obvious: students are required to do homework as part of the learning process, and are incentivized to complete their homework so they pass the class.

So they use generative AI tools to either help them complete their homework or do their homework for them. We can't tell which option they selected without testing their knowledge without any digital devices within reach to help them.

Note the incentives are to complete the homework, not to master the material. That's a big difference, and it's the foundation of our entire system of education: pass the class, accumulate credits, and you will be issued a credential / diploma certifying that you passed X number of classes.

This incentive leads to students learning very little despite spending a fortune and four years attending college courses. Consider the study Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses which concluded that "American higher education is characterized by limited or no learning for a large proportion of students."

The institutions of education are incentivized to issue credentials that cost a lot of money and time. The causal link between learning and doing homework is now weak, as generative AI can do their homework for them.

The obvious solution is to issue educational credentials only for passing exams given in real time without any digital devices allowed. In other words, test the students' actual learning / knowledge, rather than tote up homework completed and classes passed.

In other words, accredit the student, not the institution. This was a key suggestion in my book The Nearly Free University.

The testing would have to be lengthy and clever enough to demand real mastery rather than superficial recall / memory, and it would have to be closely guarded and the component exams would have to be issued semi-randomly to each student at the moment the testing began, to minimize gaming the test or cheating.

In this incentive system, if a well-educated 17-year old passed the entire battery of university accreditation tests, they would be issued a university diploma without attending a single class because the system accredits the student, not the institution.

In my book Get a Job and Build a Real Career, I take this one step further, outlining a path to accredit yourself.

What the existing system incentivizes is becoming dependent on generative AI while learning very little because there is little incentive for actual learning. There are also no incentives for those within the institutions to focus on students learning essential skills and knowledge.

Imagine if the wildly unproductive belief that "everyone has to go to college" was replaced with a system that enabled students to choose to learn skills on a broad spectrum, from welding to calculus.

Imagine if every employee in the school / university received minimum-wage paychecks if the students learned very little and received a bonus if the students passed rigorous tests documenting that they'd learned skills and knowledge that are useful in life and in the real economy.

Imagine if every student who passed the tests was given a paid internship in their field of choice.



Instead, we incentivize students in insert typos into their chatbot-composed papers to make it appear that they actually wrote the paper themselves. If we want a more productive outcome, we have to change the incentive structure of the entire education complex.

Next up: stock buybacks, which were only legalized in 1982 at the start of America's great hollow out the real economy to benefit the few experiment, also known as Financialization. (Source: American Companies Are Buying Their Own Stocks at a Record Pace Buybacks are expected to top $1.1 trillion in 2025, led by big banks and tech firms (in other words, the usual suspects.)

The approved narrative seems to be that Corporate America would be investing these trillions in new productivity, except for all this uncertainty about tariffs. But this explanation conveniently ignores the enormous annual buybacks that preceded the present tariff kerfuffle.

The real issue is the incentives favor financialization, not investing in real-world productive assets. As a thought experiment, consider these changes to our economy's incentive structure:



1. Buybacks are taxed at a rate of 50%. If you want to buy back $1 of your company's shares, you pay $1 in tax. So Corporate America's $1.1 trillion in buybacks would generate $550 billion in taxes and a net $550 billion in shares purchased via buybacks.

2. Profits earned from domestic production are tax-free. Given the complexities of global supply chains, there has to be some wiggle room here, so if 80% of all components and labor are domestic, this qualifies for the zero tax rate.

How would changing the incentives change Corporate America's decisions regarding where they invest their profits? If we want to change the outcome, we have to change the incentive structure.

The problem, as we all know, is those with vested interests in maintaining the current perverse incentives hold all the power, and they have zero incentive to relinquish any of that power.


Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films.

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) audiobook     Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $16, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $15, (Kindle $6.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $15 print, $6.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $6.95, print $16, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $6.95, print $15, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $3.95, print $12, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $3.95 Kindle, $12 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Kerjanga N. ($70), for your exceedingly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Mark W. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Nikolai ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, John G. ($7/month), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...