Post by @celesteh@hachyderm.io

2026-10-02 09:30 UTC

@farseen@fedi.nptr.xyz @reformed_content_marketer@mastodon.social What you're describing with mechanisation is capitalism, not a feature of the machine. A machine like a loom gets more valuable output for less labour. LLMs cost much more to run than the value of their output. This is why I've described them as a financial scam. We could certainly imagine that a communist dictator might have dumped a ton of resource into one of these as a pet project, but it would be killed by his successor. If Stalin had gone in big for LLMs, the project would be protected as long as he was around to protect it and then it would have ended. However, whatever looms he bought were very unlikely to be scrapped.

Replies (1)

@farseen@fedi.nptr.xyz 2026-10-02 09:51

@celesteh@hachyderm.io If that's the case, then do LLMs become okay to use once they become more efficient and the value equation shifts to more output per unit of value input? (please ignore the ecological, and plagiarism effects for now) I'm trying to discover when is it okay/not okay for a machine to replace humans, ignoring the energy supply chain. I think this is worthwhile to consider because we could have a future where energy is very cheap and green. In that future, are all machines allowed? The capital class could then enjoy a fleet of robots who never complain, never protest and only requires very cheap fuel, to satisfy all their labour needs. This is an extreme example, I'm painting this picture here to understand whether more machines is always better for the capital class and not the labour class. I've also had this thought for a while: the wealth of the capital class is a myth. Imagine a rich billionaire sitting on a giant gold mine. The gold mine is useless, unless all of the following conditions are met: - there is labour available to extract the gold - there is demand for the gold, which is proportional to the size and the purchasing power of the global labour force This holds for everything: real estate, houses, cars, aeroplanes, oil, food. Wealth is realised when there is a large amount of people available to exchange capital for services. Capital by itself is inert. So my argument is that anything that disempowers labour is a bad thing. I'm not sure about this, but when I think about it, it feels correct. Maybe we should have tried to empower the labour class instead of doing the industrial revolution. Maybe the productivity gains from all kinds of machines could be realised instead by making the existing labour force more empowered (better skill, healthcare), and by harnessing our exponentially growing population. @reformed_content_marketer@mastodon.social

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