I don’t think you really understand what “woke” is. Being woke is about critical analysis of traditional, established power hierarchies. Hierarchies like white supremacy, patriarchy or class. Maybe some neoliberals, to their credit, want to abolish traditional racial and gender hierarchies, and that’s good, but they certainly do not want to abolish the hierarchy of rich over poor, or capital over labor.

Is it, though?

Neoliberalism isn’t everything I don’t like, but it is a big one.

Competition is a core part of capitalist theory, that’s true. In practice, however capitalists have always sought to limit, neutralize or eliminate competition. In fact, capitalism has a strong tendency toward market concentration, not in spite of competition but because of it. Competition does not result in all competitors sharing the prize equally. Competition is inherently zero sum.

Think of sports competitions: do all teams take equal share of the trophy at the end of the season? No, one team, the team that outcompetes all the others, wins 100% of the trophy at the end. Market competition is no different. Winning companies take all the market share and losing companies go out of business or get taken over. Companies have always known this and that’s why they have always tried to rig the competition in their favor whenever possible.

The fact is, the only entity capable of keeping competition fair is the state, but the state is so easily captured by capital. But even when the state is able to maintain open competition, oligopolies, duopolies and monopolies still form, because, again, that’s just the nature of competition. Competition is inherently zero sum, winner-take-all. That’s why the state has always had to come in and break up monopolies periodically. But if the monopoly powers are able to capture state power, they can prevent that. It’s like the championship winning team taking over the league.

It’s true that these AI companies are starting to worry about losing. I think OpenAI especially is concerned because they are currently struggling against both Anthropic and some other emerging companies, including some Chinese companies. But I think even Anthropic is worried because while they might be winning, they’re winning a race to the bottom. These companies are not profitable, and there’s no path to profitability for them in the foreseeable future. So not only can OpenAI not compete, they can’t compete in an industry with no clear path to profitability. So, yeah, they’re all colluding to stop the game because right now, no one’s winning. But that kind of collusion does not exist outside the bounds of normal capitalist operations, it’s always been a feature of it.

Slowing the pace of AI development is not pausing capitalism.

Not.

Democracy: Greek, dēmos krátos, ‘people’ ‘rule’ or rule of the people.

The people do not rule in the US so it’s not a democracy.

It’s hard to define what the US is. It has some democratic elements. The people are allowed to elect representatives, both at the state and Federal level, and many people are allowed to vote directly for or against certain measures through ballot initiatives at the state level, although this varies from state to state. However, our Federal representatives in the House each represent well over 700,000 people. That is a very large number of people, especially compared to most other democracies. And because we have a winner-take-all system, people who did not vote for the winning candidate may feel underrepresented or not represented at all.

I think the classification that best fits the US is Plutocracy: ploûtos krátos, ‘wealth’ ‘rule’ or rule of the wealthy. Not only do the wealthiest have a significant amount of money to invest in political causes, lobbying representatives and directly influencing elections, but they also often have significant private corporate ownership interests and control, giving them a great deal of power over the economy and access to critical resources. Even democratically elected representatives tend to be quite wealthy, or at least much wealthier than the average American voter. And even if they don’t start out much wealthier, they often end up much wealthier after their time in office.

History ended sometime around 1990. It was determined at that time that civilization could not substantially change any further, for better or worse. No Mad Max or Terminator dystopias, but also no Star Trek type societies in which both social systems and technology become highly advanced. No, just a Sisyphean nightmare in which nothing meaningfully changes and an infinite, perpetual constant is maintained and managed, forever and ever, until the heat death of the universe. Instead of either dystopia or utopia we have an ever present, oppressive malaise that only the sweet release of death can liberate us from.

The allies? Like the US, who didn’t declare war on Germany until after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, two years after Germany invaded Poland? Like the Soviet Union, who signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, a pact that wasn’t terminated until Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941? Those allies?

It needs to be explicitly stated because there are still people who don’t understand that violent regime change is wrong.

No, I wouldn’t like it. No country should bomb another to force regime change. I don’t care how shitty the leader being replaced is. I want Trump gone, but not like that. I know this is a joke, but I feel like this needs to be explicitly stated.