its mostly because the global economy is dollarized so there's a number of benefits store your wealth in dollars as a hedge or point of stability. If the dollar's dominance wanes, so too will be the appetite for US treasuries.

Meta saw the grave premonitions from ai firms as a means of edging out legacy firms through regulatory capture.

Meta is by far the worst at doing regulatory capture of the big companies: they're the one big tech company it's OK to hate and want to die even if you're a politician.

Not saying they're not trying.

I saw a report recently that they are behind 80% of the lobbying for age gate laws in the US. Obviously for their benefit.

Social media bans are obviously not to Meta's benefit. Meta has to spend a ton of lobbying money on at least avoiding them being held responsible for kids circumventing them (which, let's be real, they inevitably will).

The only reason they might succeed is that the surveillance industry would love to put it on edge devices instead.

I don't think this undermines what I wrote.

tell me more? I used to live in Albuquerque and always wondered what happened.

On general magic and their 90s smartphone efforts and the constraints they worked within.

Own a significant chunk of a rapidly growing large company, or be LeBron james.

Stalin's demographic researchers kept disappearing until they came up with the numbers he wanted.

The only thing that doesn't make sense: these companies are more profitable than ever. Google stock rocketed up last year. AI spend per employee is also up, many companies with a strictly enforced minimum AI spend. Surely that cost could have gone to entry levels?

A family member at a large tech has stated that their has been an effective hiring freeze for the last three-ish years in their department. To the point that they're letting major business lines rot on the vine.

There are extractive and inclusive economic institutions. democracies tend to guarantee the latter, we are rapidly pursuing the former.

The mistake you're making here is in the assumption that voters have any meaningful input on policy. Given the overwhelming majority of policy at both the state and federal level is drafted by lobbyists this assumption seems questionable at best.

I think the designation of the US as a flawed democracy is fair. We have free elections, yet (particularly at higher levels of government) rarely see popular mandates translate to governance.

But that's a feature of oligarchies more than it is of democracies.

Evidence suggests the US has been a de facto oligarchy since at least 2014:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

I definitely struggled with feeling hyper engaged in the classroom setting, and then the jarring transition to the next class. By the time I switched between three and four subjects that day and on to do assignments, I was completely fried.