[ArchieScrivener]

The USA showed itself to be a Command Economy that uses 'private enterprise' as a fascade of legitimacy during Covid. Without government spending, employment, and contracts, the USA would be net negative growth.

Now the DoD, who are by far the largest budgetary expense for the tax payer, wants us to believe they don't have a better Ai than current industry? That is a double sword admission; either they are exposing themselves again as economic decision makers, or admitting they spend money on routine BS with zero frontier war fighting capabilities.

Either way, it is beyond time to reform the Military and remove the majority of its leadership as incompetent stewards and strategists. That doesn't even include the massive security vulnerabilities in our supply chains given military needs in various countries. (Taiwan and Thailand)

[aguyonhackern]

The US would not be net negative growth without government spending. Other components of GDP grow a lot, outside of recessions.

Sure if you immediately stopped government spending today we'd have negative growth today but that's not because other things aren't growing, it's because you just removed part of the base that existed last year. That would be true of literally pretty much any economy ever, or anything that's growing and you decided to remove a chunk of the base from.

And yes I absolutely believe the government does not have better generative AI than Anthropic or its competitors.

[conductr]

Covid shutdown should have killed our economy, nothing short of government spending prevented otherwise.

So many people in the US live a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle, that the covid lockdowns without government spending would have likely devolved into zombie apocalypse territory where hungry people were ransacking homes in more affluent neighborhoods (yes, even occupied homes). This is why people also bought lots of guns and ammo during Covid. You may think those people are crackpots, but I feel we actually got very close to it happening.

My local food bank (big city) ran out of supplies just as they announced the first waves of stimulus or whatever they called it (the weekly checks). So I’m pretty sure we were literally only days away from that being a reality.

[Humorist2290]

At some point in the not so distant future, it seems entirely likely for the US to bail out OpenAI / Nvidia / etc using national security as justification. Democrats and Republicans really can get along as long as their donors get what they want. No matter how the regime changes in the coming years, the DoD will keep getting funding, and that funding will increasingly go to vendors who don't mind killing people.

Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, and 60 years later it's eating everyone's lunch.

[duped]

> who are by far the largest budgetary expense for the tax payer

not even top 3

[ArchieScrivener]

You are 100% wrong. You listed entitlements. National Defense is half of all discretionary spending.

Homeland Security is less than 1/6th the budget of DoD alone.

[rustystump]

Let me guess without looking up, debt interest, gov pension, medicare?

[jrflowers]

>or admitting they spend money on routine BS with zero frontier war fighting capabilities.

Trying to imagine somebody that doesn’t know that the military buys dumb stuff and for some reason a human doesn’t come to mind. I keep picturing a horse

[csomar]

> The USA showed itself to be a Command Economy that uses 'private enterprise' as a fascade of legitimacy during Covid.

This is the case for every government/nation in the world. The difference between communism and capitalism, is that the Politburo in capitalism allows the natural selection of elites based on their performance on an open economy. At least that was the case until 2011.