That's what you get when you run the government "like a business". Whoever pays, gets to play. The only exception are Christian churches who are also being listened to. Everybody else gets ignored.
Nice strawman attacking euphemism when it’s all Soylent Green under the hood.
Everyone is trying to “make a living”. That’s biology.
There’s a George Carlin bit where he doesn’t blame politicians because they are a byproduct of American institutions. Politicians, Wall Street, in a prisoners dilemma too; lots of people with guns. His conclusion is the public sucks for propping up such awful institutions.
The majority absolutely are complicit by acting like rabid animals over change. Too busy making a living to do the political work to improve healthcare, pivot to single payer. But even though Americans too busy to change such to provide healthcare, they still want everyone to try.
Offering nothing but line go up …maybe. A bunch of dying people learned of statistics a few years ago and said hey yeah surely the future will want to prop up Salesforce if not a traditional religion.
Nah Americans are garbage people shipping Newspeak about their concern for others ignoring the externalities of their reliance on overseas sweatshop labor. America is a country of deluded people.
Am excited and happy to see the other 8 billion push back on 300 million statistically useless but incredibly arrogant people.
> Not the tech company executives making billions, with a b.
To be fair, they did include this group. I’m also not sure the number-goes-up investors are “the” problem (perhaps “a” problem) or if they’re just acting rationally in an inflationary economy, which does seem to be a problem with far-reaching consequences.
But I agree that the problem is pretty far removed from the workers working for a paycheck, regardless of what they do; someone is paying them to do it, maybe criticize that first.
Guys like OP have been frothing at the opportunity to scream "nerds" at engineers for decades but, because tech is solidly on the left, have been struggling to find an outlet. Now Elon gave them a chance and they are thrilled.
Solidly on the left?
Last startup (as an SWE) I worked for the SWE’s worshipped the ground Elon and Bezos walked on… and their morality in their practices, even within their own teams, matched their faith.
Whataboutism like this is a rhetorical tactic to deflect uncomfortable or difficult conversations. I'm not sure I agree with OP about software engineers and business executives being the "worst thing for the planet," but it does feel like there is a growing distrust of both groups. It's something to pay attention to, especially if AI begins to really take away people's jobs or cause social upheaval. There is already a lot of anger directed at some business executives right now.
Yeah, it’s weird. Software engineers are mostly just doing whatever gets them paid.
End of the day, they’re laborers and they have no choice on what is being built. It’s not like most people in software are making enough to own a home in SV on their own anyway. It’s still a dual (tech) income (or big windfall) market.
We live in a world (especially in the US) that requires a job to afford basic necessities of life. If you'd like to starve to death, by all means - do it.
You see God, I simply had no choice but to make 500k a year coding an AI weapons system to blow up brown people at incredible efficiency. Was I expected to STARVE?
I’m not in SV so can’t really speak to the housing market. Owned my own home for over 20 years as a software engineer. But right, engineers are just code laborers.
There's a growing, multi-faceted distrust in the tech industry as a whole, not just SWEs. This includes the tech billionaires, coastal elites, big tech companies, AI/automation, wealth disparities, crypto bros, VCs, the DOGE boys, and anyone who may have STEM-lord vibes.
It's not whataboutism. GGP said software engineers were worse than career politicians - without using the words "career politicians". GGP also said software engineers were worse than underwater basket weavers. And orb spiders. GP disagrees with one of these things GGP said.
2025 has shown that there are things much worse than people whose entire career is decided to public service. I'll take 1000 career politician over one "business guy" any day.
The combination of being sure they know how the world works (like a business of course), surrounding themselves with sycophants, and being smart enough to convince themselves of anything which makes them get high off the smell of their own farts, leads to terrible garbage like our current administration.
I’d argue the career politicians’ thoughtless rhetoric reinforces the shortage of critical thinking across the country, which was taken advantage of in 2016 and again in 2024. This lack of critical thinking is nationwide: two-thirds of eligible voters either did not vote or voted for Trump in 2024. The business guy could leave office in 2029 and I’d still have low hopes for the future of the country.
The damage has been caused by media and career politicians’ use of such. You’re right that they’re not overtly dangerous in office (doing crazy things means you don’t get re-elected) but that just makes the negative effects of their actions less obvious, not less severe.
> people whose entire career is [dedicated] to public service
I accept this framing for the career administrators who have (or had) a job to do. A person who makes a career out of repeatedly being elected to public leadership positions might fall under that umbrella but seems to have a higher propensity for dishonest behavior. Put another way: a career politician is not necessarily a career civil servant, there just happens to be some overlap.
It feels like these types of fundamental dynamics are the real underlying playing field here, and it needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Everyone keeps wondering what the Republicans' plan is for midterms, or in four years, for the obvious backlash when Trump's severe damage to our country becomes undeniable. As if we're merely going to have a "blue wave" that restores sanity [0], overcoming straightforward tactics like voter repression.
I think the actual goal is to destroy and sell off as much as possible of the government before then, turning what remains of democratic accountability into a noop - converting much of our society into foreign-owned "private property", making what core government functions remain effectively just hooks into unaccountable corporate services, and effectively cementing the corporate-authoritarian dystopia that we all thought we might have a chance of avoiding. We've been suffering the ratchet dynamic nibbling away at individual liberty for decades (alternating back and forth between corporate and government pushes), but I think "AI", cryptocurrencies, and filter bubbles have finally given these looters the gall to try kicking over the whole apple cart to divide amongst themselves.
[0] putting aside the whole Democrats talk a good game about chasing the corporate Road Runner but somehow never quite get him dynamic
It looks like they will be successful. Democrats in Congress are a bunch of losers who aren't able to deal with this. I am not even sure if they want to.
Let me get this right…
The same people who said that woman’s health should be left to individual states are now saying that AI shouldn’t be left to individual states.
That's because what they actually want is for their policies to be applied everywhere. Sometimes there's a reason they can't just apply the policy everywhere at the highest level. In these cases, what they do is they make sure there's no policy at the highest level, so that as many instances of the lower levels as possible can apply the policies they want.
The reason they said abortion law should be a state issue is they knew they couldn't get a federal abortion ban. By making it a state issue they ensure they get to at least ban abortion in half the country rather than none of the country.
By now they probably can get a federal abortion ban, though, so I expect them to do that sooner or later. Don't expect consistency from their public statements - "abortion should be up to the states" will simply be memory-holed.
In practice, "states’ rights" is sometimes used strategically, not ideologically. AI though is viewed as as a technological and economic issue, requiring national coordination to maintain US competitiveness and adding a patchwork of States laws impedes that goal
"States' rights" has only ever been used as a smokescreen. The original "states' rights" argument was a cover for slavery. More recently, it's been a cover for other far-right reactionary positions specifically during center-left administrations that would otherwise seek to impose regulations preventing them from oppressing people at the state level.
AI is not being "protected" this way because it's Just Too Important To Leave To The States; it's being protected because Musk and other mega-wealthy Silicon Valley types have pushed to exempt it from all regulation. (Notice that this bill does nothing to regulate AI at the federal level, nor is there any particular proposal to do so from the people pushing for this clause!)
Let’s look at it differently though: even if the federal preemption push is cynical, is there still a valid, public-interest reason to avoid fragmented AI regulation?
That’s the only place your argument could be stress-tested: not in exposing the hypocrisy.
But there isn’t an introduction of like AI ethics rules or policy or directing a federal agency to establish any so that’s a valid criticism. What if we take the viewpoint that they are trying to get there?
> What if we take the viewpoint that they are trying to get there?
Because if they were trying to harmonize AI regulations then they would do it federally instead of just banning states from doing anything. (Federal regulations generally trump state regulations, at least wherever the state regulation is weaker or absent.)
I think my point is they are trying to stop the patchwork then step 2 is put the right federal agency in charge to set the standards rather than states.
I didn't think this administration deserves the benefit of the doubt. They're most often doing the most transparently corrupt thing that they think they'll get away with, and let the lawyers sort out the details
I'm going to try to reach out to that Congressman's office to understand the vision for adding that rider to the budget bill for AI. Will report back if they respond
> is there still a valid, public-interest reason to avoid fragmented AI regulation?
I don't see why there would be any more pressing reasons than for other fields, say climate or energy regulation (looking at you, Texas) or of course the classic: personal choices of sexuality and reproduction. Yet no one is trying to ban state laws there, on the contrary.
It depends who you talk to. When Democrats enact policy they certainly think it’s in the public interest and conversely so do Republicans. It goes both ways
> The original "states' rights" argument was a cover for slavery.
Notably, it was a hypocritical dishonest mess from the very beginning. For example, slavers used federal power to force other states to allow violent crimes inside their territory, and later the Confederacy's Constitution forever banned member states' rights to not have slavery.
AI can be a legitimate interstate commerce issue. If my code runs on a data center in Virginia, am I, someone located outside of Virginia now subject to Virginia AI laws? Do I control network routing so that my application requests won’t inadvertently cross some state line? If a state hypothetically made possessing an AI app a felony, but the app weren’t on my phone but instead stored in iCloud — am I guilty of “possession” even though the actual bits and bytes are in some outside data center? If I am a California company and California banned AI, but one of my workers lived in Nevada, could that company still use AI if the work were completed outside of California? It’s a Pandora’s box, luckily that scenario is covered by the Commerce Clause.
On your illustration about abortion: the same people who wanted national vaccine mandates now want AI to be left up to the individual states? The same people that defend the Department of Education’s national influence over public schools are now states rights advocates when it suits their agenda? There is hypocrisy on all sides.
The media and pundits frame budget reconciliation thusly: When Republicans do it, it’s a “threat to Democracy” when Democrats do it, it’s “protecting democracy.” As a practical matter an AI federal law shouldn’t be in a budget bill: it should go through the normal lawmaking process. But there are a lot of things that don’t belong in a budget bill that end up there. The process is rotten.
Democrats and Republicans use federalism as it suits their agenda. Let’s not be surprised anymore. Democrats typically support strong central governments — until they aren’t the majority in Washington. Then they become fervent supporters of the strong states rights used by the Confederacy to justify slavery. When they have power in Washington, they’re now Abraham Lincoln. And vice versa. When Florida wants to strongly enforce immigration law, blue states sue. When California doesn’t want to follow immigration law, that’s somehow heroic? Some states have even passed laws prohibiting law enforcement from following federal laws while simultaneous accepting federal funding for their law enforcement then suing when those funds are withheld.
My basic view is this: there are enumerated powers, the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment. Let’s use those to decide who should be doing what.
We can (and should) disagree on the issues, but it would be delightful if we could at least all follow the same processes.
Drug laws: unless you’re crossing a state line, state.
Immigration: federal (Commerce Clause)
AI: states — until there is an interstate commerce nexus (i.e. data centers, internet)
By the way the author laments the budget reconciliation process for AI laws, but that same process was used to pass Obamacare. Is using reconciliation acceptable when it suits one’s agenda? Again: hypocrisy on all sides.
The Constitution already covers this stuff, if anyone bothers to follow it. The constitution has been bent and beaten to within an inch of its life. We need to push back on that even if it results in outcomes we might not like in the short term.
I think you're inventing a hypocrisy that doesn't really exist.
Abortion protection should exist at a federal level because it's healthcare. If a pregnant woman is traveling and has an emergency that requires an abortion she should be able to receive one regardless of what state she's in.
Vaccine mandates are a federal issue because the virus doesn't give a shit about state lines and right of movement is a thing neither states nor the federal government can restrict.
AI is a state issue because it can be contained within a particular state. It works like pornography bans. If you are in a state that bans pornography you can't distribute it nor consume it regardless of whether it originated on a computer outside the state.
Marijuana should be a state issue for the same reason. Whether you're allowed to import it from outside the country or if you move your marijuana from a legal state to an illegal state is a federal issue. Whether states that ban it should have to respect medical cards is a federal issue.
Education is a federal issue because the state has an interest in children getting a quality public education even if they move.
Nobody is all federal or all states rights. To do so would literally be unamerican.
> AI is a state issue because it can be contained within a particular state. It works like pornography bans. If you are in a state that bans pornography you can't distribute it nor consume it regardless of whether it originated on a computer outside the state.
I think the first amendment preserves the right to read and write, including arbitrary computer programs, dare I even say pornographic ones. I agree the rest of your post though.
I think what they're saying, is that, for there to be logical consistency within the concept of states' rights, that it should be both, or neither, in the context of the original statement:
> that states should be allowed to regulate AI, but should not be allowed to regulate health?
To rephrase this:
States should be allowed to regulate both AI and health, or neither.
This is not my argument, but I do intend it to be a good faith interpretation of what I think OP had in mind.
Either/or is a somewhat confusing phrasing due the way it causes sentences to become hard to follow, and because it can refer to two different concepts. I think most of the time and in this case, either/or refers to exclusive or, but it can also refer to logical disjunction.
However, it's possible that they meant logical disjunction, in the sense that the GOP doesn't think that states' rights to regulate AI and health should be an either/or distinction simply in order to not be hypocritical, because the GOP sees no problem with legislation and lawfare to achieve the goals of the GOP; the GOP will use arguments that may be lacking ideological justification or consistency out of pragmatism.
The ends don't justify the means in this GOP reading, but rather, the means are the ends: states' rights as a concept can be a means to a particular end legally or legislatively, and an end unto itself as a way to preserve bastion states of GOP rule and jurisprudence during periods of non-GOP federal power.
So when you said "I think a lot of other people are hypocritical in the opposite direction" did you mean that Democrats focus too much on ideological justification and consistency instead of being pragmatic, or that their ideological focus on justification and consistency leads them to "play by the rules" against a pragmatic GOP opponent that isn't themselves bound by such notions?
>So when you said "I think a lot of other people are hypocritical in the opposite direction" did you mean that Democrats focus too much on ideological justification and consistency instead of being pragmatic, or that their ideological focus on justification and consistency leads them to "play by the rules" against a pragmatic GOP opponent that isn't themselves bound by such notions?
Neither.
When I said that sentence, I was replying to mixologist. I thought mixologist was saying that it's inconsistent for the GOP to promote states rights for women's regulation health but not for AI regulation. I was saying that if that's an inconsistency, then there's a similar inconsistency (but in the opposite direction) with people who promote states rights for AI regulation but not for women's health regulation, and I thought that was the position mixologist held.
Maybe I misunderstood what mixologist was saying. If mixologist was saying something else, then my comment doesn't make much sense.
> When I said that sentence, I was replying to mixologist. I thought mixologist was saying that it's inconsistent for the GOP to promote states rights for women's regulation health but not for AI regulation.
But if the GOP just wants to win and doesn’t care about hypocrisy or ideological consistency then this doesn’t matter, as I alluded to. Your point might have responded to mixologist but not to me.
"The other people" are however not using the flat "everything should be decided by federal goverment" claim. GOP does hide behind states rights when it suits them.
"The other people" are saying abortion bans harm women physically and are removing their freedom. They are saying AI should be regulated in certain way.
None of that is hypocritical. It is not even opposite direction.
Maybe I misunderstood mixologist's point. I thought mixologist's point was that there's a logical inconsistency if someone wants states to regulate one issue, but not another issue.
You seem to be fine with allowing states to regulate AI, but not abortion. So either you disagree with mixologist, or I misunderstood mixologist. If mixologist wasn't making that point, then my previous comment doesn't make sense.
>GOP does hide behind states rights when it suits them.
It's an interesting situation. Prior to 2024, the GOP's policy was that abortion should be banned at the federal level. Trump disagreed with that, and in 2024, Trump convinced the GOP to change policy, and defer it to the states[1].
AIUI, the previous policy was based on the idea that abortion is morally wrong due to killing a person, and thus should be banned. I think the new policy is based on the idea that abortion is a moral uncertainty: the
GOP doesn't know whether the fetus is a person or not, so it's unclear whether abortion is morally wrong or not, and because it's unclear, there shouldn't be a federal decision one way or the other on it, it should be deferred to the states. You could call that "hiding behind states rights", or you could call it "deferring unclear issues to the local level instead of making sweeping laws on unclear issues".
AIUI, the GOP's policy on AI is different. The GOP doesn't think AI has the same moral uncertainty as abortion does. Instead, the GOP views AI under an economic lens, not a moral lens. And under an economic lens, consistent laws across the states help economically.
The debate in all of this what are national interests and what are local ones? What rights can be universal and what can vary state to state?
But, data and algorithms don’t stop at state lines so national standards would be more effective. We don’t know if a standards or policy setting org is looking at it not. I hope so
Sure. I asked that question to mixologist. I think you have a different opinion from mixologist.
I'm fine with you providing your answer to the question. In my reply I just wanted to make sure that it's clear that your answer is only your answer, not mixologist's answer, because I think you disagree with mixologist.
So if people aren't responsible when AI does things, and AI and the people who make it can't be held accountable to the law, I can build an indiscriminate murder drone right and set it loose to start killing people without fear of consequence. As long as "it's AI" I'm covered
There was an article about "accountability sinks" a few weeks ago, i.e. org chart designs that magically result in no one being accountable for some category of problems. This feels like exactly such a thing.
As established when Phil Zimmerman published PGP, software is speech and any restrictions on that speech must be enacted in a way consistent with the first ammendment.
State governments ignoring the constitution to prevent ai-related speech seems like a problem worth solving.
People, especially here on Hacker News, have been warned for the past two decades that merging the tech sector with the government would eventually have negative consequences for them but most laughed this off because they were sure this combination would forever share their ideology and only do bad things to their ideological foes. The reality is that the monster has its own agenda that doesn't match up with any political party but it is willing to align with them from time to time if it means more power for the monster. Should have smothered it when it first appeared instead of fattening it up. And no amount of emotion mashing on that down arrow will make any of this less true. Maybe knowing it can and will turn on its current partners at some point will be of some consolation.
The Commerce Clause has been abused to control plenty of things that the states should have power over. Wickard v Filburn was one of the worst judicial decisions ever made.
Can you help me understand? If state A decides to ban tobacco product B in their state, would that also fall under this clause, and therefore be subject to federal law on the matter?
For context, the first law to be struck down for overreaching the commerce clause since the 40s was one that prohibited the possession of a firearm within a school zone. All that was necessary to amend the law was to add a rider that it was only illegal if the gun had been bought/sold across state or international lines at some point.
The commerce clause is interpreted extremely broadly. It's basically unfixable though, because so many decades of laws rely on it, and passing a constitutional amendment to just directly grant the federal government a bunch of powers, even ones it already has, is politically impossible. (indeed passing any non-trivial amendment at all is very unlikely for the foreseeable future)
Yes, and you can bet that the current admin is likely to use that to overturn things like California's ban on flavored tobacco products and similar things.
The previous Trump administration sued California for having the audacity to create its own environmental regulations, specifically vehicle smog standards. Not sure how this all ended, but yeah, states rights, except when we don't like what other states are doing.
Can you imagine if we actually had smart people thinking about these issues? I want to read James Madison's essay about how best to preserve individual state autonomy while avoiding the problem of large states being able to effectively write laws across their borders because of the reality of economics and national manufacturing. There's so much nuance of when each side oversteps and since everything is interstate commerce where the federal government should nonetheless be restrained.
It used to be I could read supreme court opinions for this kind of sincere analysis but it seems like the time for discussions like this time is gone.
The source of this article is a seriously anti-tech luddite.
"Silicon Valley" isn't aligned with the GOP on any issue but these guys just love it when a few VCs brains break because it gives them a chance to lump every engineer in with the maga chuds.
The thing is the people backing this proposed rule are not exactly marginal players in SV. You can argue that most software engineers don’t agree with it, but you have to accept that who calls the shots in a big business venture is the leadership, not the software engineers.
Sure he's not a "marginal player" but the recent stream of attacks from publications like this to generalize his actions and beliefs out to the general "Silicon Valley" is straight up disinformation.
The article is a lot more specific, if you read it. I quote who they say is behind the new budget amendment:
“This amendment is the direct result of a campaign by Google, Meta, OpenAI, and venture capitalists like Andreessen Horowitz—and their dozens of trade associations […]”
They are hardly saying that all of SV, or all software engineers, espouse trumpism or are otherwise on the same page politically. They don’t have to make up nebulous accusations if those mentioned by name are indeed behind it.
I do think the article could have been better edited for clarity. I can see how someone could struggle to see exactly what allegations they are leveling, given the amount of quite sweeping criticism of AI firms.
While a a trade organization represents the interests and opinions of its member corporations, a corporation does not represent their employees. A company espouses and represents the opinions of its owners.
I encourage anyone working in tech to do some soul searching here. Are you comfortable putting your effort into a venture that acts the way they allegedly do according to the article? If not, the only sensible way is to look for other employment. As an employee, you will never convince a corporation to act in opposition to the interests of its shareholders. It’s a fool’s errand to try to fix Google’s ethics from within.
This really should be regulated by the Federal Government level (FTC, NIST, etc) to ensure uniformity and some of California’s laws could be used as a model. Since AI represents a strategic economic and security frontier, putting a ban on states laws would allow the technology to innovate freely without having to navigate a patchwork of state laws. Finally, GOP actually favors limited government and deregulation so this doesn’t conflict with States rights concerns brought up in this thread.
One thing to note is that this may also be a way to block progressive policies before they end up in the Federal government. Putting a ten year ban would effectively do that.
> Finally, GOP actually favors limited government and deregulation
This feels like a weak argument these days. It can be trivially played both ways, “GOP actually favors limited government, look at abortion,” vs “GOP actually favors powerful government, look at immigration crackdown”
There isn’t consistency on this one way or the other. I don’t think there needs to be but we shouldn’t pretend that there is for the sake of argument.
That's what you get when you run the government "like a business". Whoever pays, gets to play. The only exception are Christian churches who are also being listened to. Everybody else gets ignored.
Starting to think software engineers and business executives are just about the worst thing to happen to this planet in a long time!
Ah, yes; it's the software engineers who are the problem. The ones making a decent paycheck to actually write the code.
Not the tech company executives making billions, with a b.
Not Wall Street, that demands infinite, ever-increasing growth.
Software engineers.
Right.
Nice strawman attacking euphemism when it’s all Soylent Green under the hood.
Everyone is trying to “make a living”. That’s biology.
There’s a George Carlin bit where he doesn’t blame politicians because they are a byproduct of American institutions. Politicians, Wall Street, in a prisoners dilemma too; lots of people with guns. His conclusion is the public sucks for propping up such awful institutions.
The majority absolutely are complicit by acting like rabid animals over change. Too busy making a living to do the political work to improve healthcare, pivot to single payer. But even though Americans too busy to change such to provide healthcare, they still want everyone to try.
Offering nothing but line go up …maybe. A bunch of dying people learned of statistics a few years ago and said hey yeah surely the future will want to prop up Salesforce if not a traditional religion.
Nah Americans are garbage people shipping Newspeak about their concern for others ignoring the externalities of their reliance on overseas sweatshop labor. America is a country of deluded people.
Am excited and happy to see the other 8 billion push back on 300 million statistically useless but incredibly arrogant people.
> Not the tech company executives making billions, with a b.
To be fair, they did include this group. I’m also not sure the number-goes-up investors are “the” problem (perhaps “a” problem) or if they’re just acting rationally in an inflationary economy, which does seem to be a problem with far-reaching consequences.
But I agree that the problem is pretty far removed from the workers working for a paycheck, regardless of what they do; someone is paying them to do it, maybe criticize that first.
They said "business executives", which is a much broader group.
Guys like OP have been frothing at the opportunity to scream "nerds" at engineers for decades but, because tech is solidly on the left, have been struggling to find an outlet. Now Elon gave them a chance and they are thrilled.
Solidly on the left? Last startup (as an SWE) I worked for the SWE’s worshipped the ground Elon and Bezos walked on… and their morality in their practices, even within their own teams, matched their faith.
It soured me on all of it in a big way.
How could you forget about career politicians?
Whataboutism like this is a rhetorical tactic to deflect uncomfortable or difficult conversations. I'm not sure I agree with OP about software engineers and business executives being the "worst thing for the planet," but it does feel like there is a growing distrust of both groups. It's something to pay attention to, especially if AI begins to really take away people's jobs or cause social upheaval. There is already a lot of anger directed at some business executives right now.
> there is a growing distrust of both groups
I am not sure what circles you operate but I have never heard anyone at the layman level state any sort of distrust of software engineers.
Yeah, it’s weird. Software engineers are mostly just doing whatever gets them paid.
End of the day, they’re laborers and they have no choice on what is being built. It’s not like most people in software are making enough to own a home in SV on their own anyway. It’s still a dual (tech) income (or big windfall) market.
> Yeah, it’s weird. Software engineers are mostly just doing whatever gets them paid.
Which is by itself a moral (immoral?) stance, saying that you don't have problems doing all kinds of evil stuff as long as the money is good.
We live in a world (especially in the US) that requires a job to afford basic necessities of life. If you'd like to starve to death, by all means - do it.
You see God, I simply had no choice but to make 500k a year coding an AI weapons system to blow up brown people at incredible efficiency. Was I expected to STARVE?
Blaming the individual rather than the government is typical capitalist worship.
I’m not in SV so can’t really speak to the housing market. Owned my own home for over 20 years as a software engineer. But right, engineers are just code laborers.
There's a growing, multi-faceted distrust in the tech industry as a whole, not just SWEs. This includes the tech billionaires, coastal elites, big tech companies, AI/automation, wealth disparities, crypto bros, VCs, the DOGE boys, and anyone who may have STEM-lord vibes.
It's not whataboutism. GGP said software engineers were worse than career politicians - without using the words "career politicians". GGP also said software engineers were worse than underwater basket weavers. And orb spiders. GP disagrees with one of these things GGP said.
2025 has shown that there are things much worse than people whose entire career is decided to public service. I'll take 1000 career politician over one "business guy" any day.
The combination of being sure they know how the world works (like a business of course), surrounding themselves with sycophants, and being smart enough to convince themselves of anything which makes them get high off the smell of their own farts, leads to terrible garbage like our current administration.
I’d argue the career politicians’ thoughtless rhetoric reinforces the shortage of critical thinking across the country, which was taken advantage of in 2016 and again in 2024. This lack of critical thinking is nationwide: two-thirds of eligible voters either did not vote or voted for Trump in 2024. The business guy could leave office in 2029 and I’d still have low hopes for the future of the country.
The damage has been caused by media and career politicians’ use of such. You’re right that they’re not overtly dangerous in office (doing crazy things means you don’t get re-elected) but that just makes the negative effects of their actions less obvious, not less severe.
> people whose entire career is [dedicated] to public service
I accept this framing for the career administrators who have (or had) a job to do. A person who makes a career out of repeatedly being elected to public leadership positions might fall under that umbrella but seems to have a higher propensity for dishonest behavior. Put another way: a career politician is not necessarily a career civil servant, there just happens to be some overlap.
What does the article say about engineers?
ai doesnt have to, and is trying to avoid carbon emissions.
the oil companies are still doing the worst, along with the oil burners like car and plane operators.
ai on nuclear or solar isnt doing much bad for the planet
We getting ai on coal though.
We're getting AI on whatever form of energy is cheapest at the largest scales.
All the while trying to harm environmentally friendly energy via new regulations, to own the libs.
Doesn't matter to this administration, only coal and oil.
It feels like these types of fundamental dynamics are the real underlying playing field here, and it needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Everyone keeps wondering what the Republicans' plan is for midterms, or in four years, for the obvious backlash when Trump's severe damage to our country becomes undeniable. As if we're merely going to have a "blue wave" that restores sanity [0], overcoming straightforward tactics like voter repression.
I think the actual goal is to destroy and sell off as much as possible of the government before then, turning what remains of democratic accountability into a noop - converting much of our society into foreign-owned "private property", making what core government functions remain effectively just hooks into unaccountable corporate services, and effectively cementing the corporate-authoritarian dystopia that we all thought we might have a chance of avoiding. We've been suffering the ratchet dynamic nibbling away at individual liberty for decades (alternating back and forth between corporate and government pushes), but I think "AI", cryptocurrencies, and filter bubbles have finally given these looters the gall to try kicking over the whole apple cart to divide amongst themselves.
[0] putting aside the whole Democrats talk a good game about chasing the corporate Road Runner but somehow never quite get him dynamic
It looks like they will be successful. Democrats in Congress are a bunch of losers who aren't able to deal with this. I am not even sure if they want to.
They don't want to, and that's been clear for at least a decade.
They wore pink that one time, so there is that
Hey Hiro...you want to try some Snow Crash?
Let me get this right… The same people who said that woman’s health should be left to individual states are now saying that AI shouldn’t be left to individual states.
Weird priorities.
Paraphrasing - Their one principle is that laws should protect them and bind everyone else, and not bind them, and not protect anyone else.
Everyone else is excuses as paper thin as a kid trying to get a cookie
Follow the money. Once you realize nothing makes sense, everything suddenly makes sense.
Don't worry, they also don't think that women's health should be left to the states. Given the opportunity to ban abortion federally they'll take it.
That's because what they actually want is for their policies to be applied everywhere. Sometimes there's a reason they can't just apply the policy everywhere at the highest level. In these cases, what they do is they make sure there's no policy at the highest level, so that as many instances of the lower levels as possible can apply the policies they want.
The reason they said abortion law should be a state issue is they knew they couldn't get a federal abortion ban. By making it a state issue they ensure they get to at least ban abortion in half the country rather than none of the country.
By now they probably can get a federal abortion ban, though, so I expect them to do that sooner or later. Don't expect consistency from their public statements - "abortion should be up to the states" will simply be memory-holed.
In practice, "states’ rights" is sometimes used strategically, not ideologically. AI though is viewed as as a technological and economic issue, requiring national coordination to maintain US competitiveness and adding a patchwork of States laws impedes that goal
That’s the reason it is different for the GOP
My cynical take is this is regulatory capture on part of the most lucrative tech sector in the next few years, in return for campaign contributions.
Someone might still commit to campaign contributions if it aligns with their philosophy or goals. But I don’t think that’s what is going on here
IMO, you're almost there.
"States' rights" has only ever been used as a smokescreen. The original "states' rights" argument was a cover for slavery. More recently, it's been a cover for other far-right reactionary positions specifically during center-left administrations that would otherwise seek to impose regulations preventing them from oppressing people at the state level.
AI is not being "protected" this way because it's Just Too Important To Leave To The States; it's being protected because Musk and other mega-wealthy Silicon Valley types have pushed to exempt it from all regulation. (Notice that this bill does nothing to regulate AI at the federal level, nor is there any particular proposal to do so from the people pushing for this clause!)
You are probably right.
Let’s look at it differently though: even if the federal preemption push is cynical, is there still a valid, public-interest reason to avoid fragmented AI regulation?
That’s the only place your argument could be stress-tested: not in exposing the hypocrisy.
But there isn’t an introduction of like AI ethics rules or policy or directing a federal agency to establish any so that’s a valid criticism. What if we take the viewpoint that they are trying to get there?
> What if we take the viewpoint that they are trying to get there?
Because if they were trying to harmonize AI regulations then they would do it federally instead of just banning states from doing anything. (Federal regulations generally trump state regulations, at least wherever the state regulation is weaker or absent.)
I think my point is they are trying to stop the patchwork then step 2 is put the right federal agency in charge to set the standards rather than states.
I didn't think this administration deserves the benefit of the doubt. They're most often doing the most transparently corrupt thing that they think they'll get away with, and let the lawyers sort out the details
I'm going to try to reach out to that Congressman's office to understand the vision for adding that rider to the budget bill for AI. Will report back if they respond
> is there still a valid, public-interest reason to avoid fragmented AI regulation?
I don't see why there would be any more pressing reasons than for other fields, say climate or energy regulation (looking at you, Texas) or of course the classic: personal choices of sexuality and reproduction. Yet no one is trying to ban state laws there, on the contrary.
That’s because it’s about preempting progressive governance in places like California, New York, or Illinois
And that's a valid reason?
Sure for the GOP it is just like Democrats do the same to Conservatives. GOP is in power and they are setting the policy now.
OK, that may be a "valid" reason in the realm of power politics and partisan warfare, but it's definitely not "public-interest".
It depends who you talk to. When Democrats enact policy they certainly think it’s in the public interest and conversely so do Republicans. It goes both ways
> The original "states' rights" argument was a cover for slavery.
Notably, it was a hypocritical dishonest mess from the very beginning. For example, slavers used federal power to force other states to allow violent crimes inside their territory, and later the Confederacy's Constitution forever banned member states' rights to not have slavery.
AI can be a legitimate interstate commerce issue. If my code runs on a data center in Virginia, am I, someone located outside of Virginia now subject to Virginia AI laws? Do I control network routing so that my application requests won’t inadvertently cross some state line? If a state hypothetically made possessing an AI app a felony, but the app weren’t on my phone but instead stored in iCloud — am I guilty of “possession” even though the actual bits and bytes are in some outside data center? If I am a California company and California banned AI, but one of my workers lived in Nevada, could that company still use AI if the work were completed outside of California? It’s a Pandora’s box, luckily that scenario is covered by the Commerce Clause.
On your illustration about abortion: the same people who wanted national vaccine mandates now want AI to be left up to the individual states? The same people that defend the Department of Education’s national influence over public schools are now states rights advocates when it suits their agenda? There is hypocrisy on all sides.
The media and pundits frame budget reconciliation thusly: When Republicans do it, it’s a “threat to Democracy” when Democrats do it, it’s “protecting democracy.” As a practical matter an AI federal law shouldn’t be in a budget bill: it should go through the normal lawmaking process. But there are a lot of things that don’t belong in a budget bill that end up there. The process is rotten.
Democrats and Republicans use federalism as it suits their agenda. Let’s not be surprised anymore. Democrats typically support strong central governments — until they aren’t the majority in Washington. Then they become fervent supporters of the strong states rights used by the Confederacy to justify slavery. When they have power in Washington, they’re now Abraham Lincoln. And vice versa. When Florida wants to strongly enforce immigration law, blue states sue. When California doesn’t want to follow immigration law, that’s somehow heroic? Some states have even passed laws prohibiting law enforcement from following federal laws while simultaneous accepting federal funding for their law enforcement then suing when those funds are withheld.
My basic view is this: there are enumerated powers, the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment. Let’s use those to decide who should be doing what.
We can (and should) disagree on the issues, but it would be delightful if we could at least all follow the same processes.
Drug laws: unless you’re crossing a state line, state. Immigration: federal (Commerce Clause) AI: states — until there is an interstate commerce nexus (i.e. data centers, internet)
By the way the author laments the budget reconciliation process for AI laws, but that same process was used to pass Obamacare. Is using reconciliation acceptable when it suits one’s agenda? Again: hypocrisy on all sides.
The Constitution already covers this stuff, if anyone bothers to follow it. The constitution has been bent and beaten to within an inch of its life. We need to push back on that even if it results in outcomes we might not like in the short term.
I think you're inventing a hypocrisy that doesn't really exist.
Abortion protection should exist at a federal level because it's healthcare. If a pregnant woman is traveling and has an emergency that requires an abortion she should be able to receive one regardless of what state she's in.
Vaccine mandates are a federal issue because the virus doesn't give a shit about state lines and right of movement is a thing neither states nor the federal government can restrict.
AI is a state issue because it can be contained within a particular state. It works like pornography bans. If you are in a state that bans pornography you can't distribute it nor consume it regardless of whether it originated on a computer outside the state.
Marijuana should be a state issue for the same reason. Whether you're allowed to import it from outside the country or if you move your marijuana from a legal state to an illegal state is a federal issue. Whether states that ban it should have to respect medical cards is a federal issue.
Education is a federal issue because the state has an interest in children getting a quality public education even if they move.
Nobody is all federal or all states rights. To do so would literally be unamerican.
> AI is a state issue because it can be contained within a particular state. It works like pornography bans. If you are in a state that bans pornography you can't distribute it nor consume it regardless of whether it originated on a computer outside the state.
I think the first amendment preserves the right to read and write, including arbitrary computer programs, dare I even say pornographic ones. I agree the rest of your post though.
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Accurate way of phrasing it. Even Dobbs vs JWHO accepted that this is the point.
Grammatically incorrect way of phrasing it, though I'm not sure if that's the problem the person you are responding to was raising.
"that woman's health" (which woman are we talking about?) is quite different from "that women's health".
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That's not at all what they're saying. By the GOPs logic there shouldn't be an either or decision here.
Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. What do you mean "an either or decision here"?
I think what they're saying, is that, for there to be logical consistency within the concept of states' rights, that it should be both, or neither, in the context of the original statement:
> that states should be allowed to regulate AI, but should not be allowed to regulate health?
To rephrase this:
States should be allowed to regulate both AI and health, or neither.
This is not my argument, but I do intend it to be a good faith interpretation of what I think OP had in mind.
Either/or is a somewhat confusing phrasing due the way it causes sentences to become hard to follow, and because it can refer to two different concepts. I think most of the time and in this case, either/or refers to exclusive or, but it can also refer to logical disjunction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Either%2For
However, it's possible that they meant logical disjunction, in the sense that the GOP doesn't think that states' rights to regulate AI and health should be an either/or distinction simply in order to not be hypocritical, because the GOP sees no problem with legislation and lawfare to achieve the goals of the GOP; the GOP will use arguments that may be lacking ideological justification or consistency out of pragmatism.
The ends don't justify the means in this GOP reading, but rather, the means are the ends: states' rights as a concept can be a means to a particular end legally or legislatively, and an end unto itself as a way to preserve bastion states of GOP rule and jurisprudence during periods of non-GOP federal power.
So when you said "I think a lot of other people are hypocritical in the opposite direction" did you mean that Democrats focus too much on ideological justification and consistency instead of being pragmatic, or that their ideological focus on justification and consistency leads them to "play by the rules" against a pragmatic GOP opponent that isn't themselves bound by such notions?
Wow this thread is confusing lol.
>So when you said "I think a lot of other people are hypocritical in the opposite direction" did you mean that Democrats focus too much on ideological justification and consistency instead of being pragmatic, or that their ideological focus on justification and consistency leads them to "play by the rules" against a pragmatic GOP opponent that isn't themselves bound by such notions?
Neither.
When I said that sentence, I was replying to mixologist. I thought mixologist was saying that it's inconsistent for the GOP to promote states rights for women's regulation health but not for AI regulation. I was saying that if that's an inconsistency, then there's a similar inconsistency (but in the opposite direction) with people who promote states rights for AI regulation but not for women's health regulation, and I thought that was the position mixologist held.
Maybe I misunderstood what mixologist was saying. If mixologist was saying something else, then my comment doesn't make much sense.
> Neither.
> When I said that sentence, I was replying to mixologist. I thought mixologist was saying that it's inconsistent for the GOP to promote states rights for women's regulation health but not for AI regulation.
But if the GOP just wants to win and doesn’t care about hypocrisy or ideological consistency then this doesn’t matter, as I alluded to. Your point might have responded to mixologist but not to me.
Thanks for clarifying your point, though.
"The other people" are however not using the flat "everything should be decided by federal goverment" claim. GOP does hide behind states rights when it suits them.
"The other people" are saying abortion bans harm women physically and are removing their freedom. They are saying AI should be regulated in certain way.
None of that is hypocritical. It is not even opposite direction.
Maybe I misunderstood mixologist's point. I thought mixologist's point was that there's a logical inconsistency if someone wants states to regulate one issue, but not another issue.
You seem to be fine with allowing states to regulate AI, but not abortion. So either you disagree with mixologist, or I misunderstood mixologist. If mixologist wasn't making that point, then my previous comment doesn't make sense.
>GOP does hide behind states rights when it suits them.
It's an interesting situation. Prior to 2024, the GOP's policy was that abortion should be banned at the federal level. Trump disagreed with that, and in 2024, Trump convinced the GOP to change policy, and defer it to the states[1].
AIUI, the previous policy was based on the idea that abortion is morally wrong due to killing a person, and thus should be banned. I think the new policy is based on the idea that abortion is a moral uncertainty: the GOP doesn't know whether the fetus is a person or not, so it's unclear whether abortion is morally wrong or not, and because it's unclear, there shouldn't be a federal decision one way or the other on it, it should be deferred to the states. You could call that "hiding behind states rights", or you could call it "deferring unclear issues to the local level instead of making sweeping laws on unclear issues".
AIUI, the GOP's policy on AI is different. The GOP doesn't think AI has the same moral uncertainty as abortion does. Instead, the GOP views AI under an economic lens, not a moral lens. And under an economic lens, consistent laws across the states help economically.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/republicans-abortion-party-platfo...
The debate in all of this what are national interests and what are local ones? What rights can be universal and what can vary state to state?
But, data and algorithms don’t stop at state lines so national standards would be more effective. We don’t know if a standards or policy setting org is looking at it not. I hope so
So it sounds like you think states should be banned from creating AI laws. I believe that's different from what the person I was replying to thinks.
I was replying to this that you said
“Is it your opinion that states should be allowed to regulate AI, but should not be allowed to regulate health?”
Sure. I asked that question to mixologist. I think you have a different opinion from mixologist.
I'm fine with you providing your answer to the question. In my reply I just wanted to make sure that it's clear that your answer is only your answer, not mixologist's answer, because I think you disagree with mixologist.
Yep thanks for making that clear
So if people aren't responsible when AI does things, and AI and the people who make it can't be held accountable to the law, I can build an indiscriminate murder drone right and set it loose to start killing people without fear of consequence. As long as "it's AI" I'm covered
There was an article about "accountability sinks" a few weeks ago, i.e. org chart designs that magically result in no one being accountable for some category of problems. This feels like exactly such a thing.
Weren't they all about "states' rights" and "federal government overreach" during Biden's turn?
This seems like purely a good thing to me.
As established when Phil Zimmerman published PGP, software is speech and any restrictions on that speech must be enacted in a way consistent with the first ammendment.
State governments ignoring the constitution to prevent ai-related speech seems like a problem worth solving.
People, especially here on Hacker News, have been warned for the past two decades that merging the tech sector with the government would eventually have negative consequences for them but most laughed this off because they were sure this combination would forever share their ideology and only do bad things to their ideological foes. The reality is that the monster has its own agenda that doesn't match up with any political party but it is willing to align with them from time to time if it means more power for the monster. Should have smothered it when it first appeared instead of fattening it up. And no amount of emotion mashing on that down arrow will make any of this less true. Maybe knowing it can and will turn on its current partners at some point will be of some consolation.
Does the federal government have the authority to enforce this?
Yes. This falls within the Constitution's interstate commerce clause.
The Commerce Clause has been abused to control plenty of things that the states should have power over. Wickard v Filburn was one of the worst judicial decisions ever made.
It's worth remembering that when it was written, all land transport involved animal muscle power and interstate stuff was comparatively rare.
Not saying the hacks and patches are ideal, but we've come a long way without changing the underlying Constitutional code.
Can you help me understand? If state A decides to ban tobacco product B in their state, would that also fall under this clause, and therefore be subject to federal law on the matter?
For context, the first law to be struck down for overreaching the commerce clause since the 40s was one that prohibited the possession of a firearm within a school zone. All that was necessary to amend the law was to add a rider that it was only illegal if the gun had been bought/sold across state or international lines at some point.
The commerce clause is interpreted extremely broadly. It's basically unfixable though, because so many decades of laws rely on it, and passing a constitutional amendment to just directly grant the federal government a bunch of powers, even ones it already has, is politically impossible. (indeed passing any non-trivial amendment at all is very unlikely for the foreseeable future)
Yes, and you can bet that the current admin is likely to use that to overturn things like California's ban on flavored tobacco products and similar things.
The previous Trump administration sued California for having the audacity to create its own environmental regulations, specifically vehicle smog standards. Not sure how this all ended, but yeah, states rights, except when we don't like what other states are doing.
Can you imagine if we actually had smart people thinking about these issues? I want to read James Madison's essay about how best to preserve individual state autonomy while avoiding the problem of large states being able to effectively write laws across their borders because of the reality of economics and national manufacturing. There's so much nuance of when each side oversteps and since everything is interstate commerce where the federal government should nonetheless be restrained.
It used to be I could read supreme court opinions for this kind of sincere analysis but it seems like the time for discussions like this time is gone.
The source of this article is a seriously anti-tech luddite.
"Silicon Valley" isn't aligned with the GOP on any issue but these guys just love it when a few VCs brains break because it gives them a chance to lump every engineer in with the maga chuds.
The thing is the people backing this proposed rule are not exactly marginal players in SV. You can argue that most software engineers don’t agree with it, but you have to accept that who calls the shots in a big business venture is the leadership, not the software engineers.
Kind of like that distinction between what journalists vote for versus what their editors and newspaper-owners vote for.
Who? Elon?
Sure he's not a "marginal player" but the recent stream of attacks from publications like this to generalize his actions and beliefs out to the general "Silicon Valley" is straight up disinformation.
The article is a lot more specific, if you read it. I quote who they say is behind the new budget amendment:
“This amendment is the direct result of a campaign by Google, Meta, OpenAI, and venture capitalists like Andreessen Horowitz—and their dozens of trade associations […]”
They are hardly saying that all of SV, or all software engineers, espouse trumpism or are otherwise on the same page politically. They don’t have to make up nebulous accusations if those mentioned by name are indeed behind it.
I do think the article could have been better edited for clarity. I can see how someone could struggle to see exactly what allegations they are leveling, given the amount of quite sweeping criticism of AI firms.
While a a trade organization represents the interests and opinions of its member corporations, a corporation does not represent their employees. A company espouses and represents the opinions of its owners.
I encourage anyone working in tech to do some soul searching here. Are you comfortable putting your effort into a venture that acts the way they allegedly do according to the article? If not, the only sensible way is to look for other employment. As an employee, you will never convince a corporation to act in opposition to the interests of its shareholders. It’s a fool’s errand to try to fix Google’s ethics from within.
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This really should be regulated by the Federal Government level (FTC, NIST, etc) to ensure uniformity and some of California’s laws could be used as a model. Since AI represents a strategic economic and security frontier, putting a ban on states laws would allow the technology to innovate freely without having to navigate a patchwork of state laws. Finally, GOP actually favors limited government and deregulation so this doesn’t conflict with States rights concerns brought up in this thread.
One thing to note is that this may also be a way to block progressive policies before they end up in the Federal government. Putting a ten year ban would effectively do that.
> Finally, GOP actually favors limited government and deregulation
This feels like a weak argument these days. It can be trivially played both ways, “GOP actually favors limited government, look at abortion,” vs “GOP actually favors powerful government, look at immigration crackdown”
There isn’t consistency on this one way or the other. I don’t think there needs to be but we shouldn’t pretend that there is for the sake of argument.
You’re right, limited government is a throwback to a Reaganesque political identity that doesn’t map to real practice.
But both parties are like this - it’s not just Republicans.
It’s all about who gets power? who gets protection? who gets punished?