Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
Yesterday was Halloween and Northern Germany turned it into a holiday, but it’s called Reformation Day. But for my wife and K3 this year’s Halloween was a disappointment. We had carved pumpkins and candy, yet only one group of kids came. I am sure that too many kids found out that these festivities are really about cultural appropriation, at least here in Germany as we do not have too many celtic roots.
The US Midterms are just two days away and I hope that the pendulum finally swings back and the American voters have by now figured out how much Trump has betrayed them. He and his croonies have been shoveling money into their pockets and neglecting the needs of most Americans. I remain hopeful that this amazing country with all its wonderful people comes back to its senses. It’s about time.
Eyes on Iowa
Something is happening in Iowa.
You can see it in the polls, which show Rob Sand, the Democratic state auditor running for governor, consistently ahead of Republican Zack Lahn, in a state where the outgoing incumbent, MAGA Republican Kim Reynolds, was reelected by a 19-point margin four years ago—and where Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by over 13 points.
There is hope.
OK, Zoomer: You’re the First Human Surplus Generation
For Gen Zers, job hunting can feel like a game rigged to waste their time, where the prize is a spectral illusion. One survey found that 81 percent of recruiters admit their companies post “ghost jobs”—positions not intended to be filled, but used to signal growth, harvest applicant data, or, even worse, keep current employees on edge. A few defiant Zoomers—a nickname that stuck after they were forced onto the platform during the pandemic—are ghosting back, but employers hold the cards, and some are refusing to hire this generation at all.
The old promise of entry-level work, where you find a position, learn the ropes, and make your way up, was already fading. Gen Xers and millennials can tell you that. But AI is quickening the unraveling, disrupting how young people find jobs—if they find jobs—and also what they confront when they get there. Gen Z is squinting into a fog, unsure of what’s coming, yet certain that disembodied decision-makers will have a say in it.
I can understand Gen Z being angry and taking to the streets. AI is re-writing the generational contract and the prospects for Gen Z aren’t getting any better. And if we factor in global warming, crumbling infrastructure and too much military spending, then Gen Z really has been dealt bad cards.
Please Let the Internet Die
Wouldn’t it be liberating, then, to actually deny our attention to astroturfed outrage, engineered virality, and influencer sponcon? To let the mainstream digital economies propped up by AI-enabled surveillance finally fall to ruin? If what the titans of the industry have to offer us these days are “pervert glasses” and the suppression of ads for a probably unflattering documentary, why are we helping them stay in business? Leaving their platforms for dead might be the last lever of power available to the masses.
Doing so could free people to explore dormant corners. West notes that some of the most interesting parts of the internet are the ones that nobody sees, like web portals to streams of YouTube videos that have almost no views. “Some of it’s fucking weird and creepy, but a lot of it’s just people singing a song and having a blast,” he says. West also cites the bustling, zero-revenue, circulation of poetry in web journals as proof that “you can find meaning and make meaning online all the time,” provided there is no financial motivation.
One would think we have learned from how social media wrecked the internet and now we are letting this happening yet another time.
AI Is a Choice
Turning AI’s capabilities into broadly shared and enduring prosperity requires more than investing in the technology itself. The central challenge of the AI era is coordination and cooperation across groups responsible for the many complementary investments that promote the adoption of AI, including technological diffusion, worker empowerment, firm reorganization, and infrastructure construction. Because these complementary investments must be made across different institutions and at different times, progress requires market mechanisms to encourage cooperation as well as coalitions among organizations, firms, workers, communities, and governments that can turn AI’s technological gains into widespread economic and social benefits. To borrow a concept from game theory, AI is a “cooperative game” in which the largest gains arise only when many groups coordinate, and those gains persist only when every group expects to do better as part of shared coalitions than outside them.
AI for good sounds like a wonderful and very romantic idea, but it could only happen if policymakers would finally try to understand what the race to AGI is all about and what it means for society.
How to Buy a Winery
It’s the quintessential oenophile fantasy: a beautiful house, vineyard views and bottles bearing your own label. And right now, it’s unusually attainable. Declining alcohol consumption, oversupply and climate change have battered the wine industry, pushing growers to rip out vines and sending estates onto the market. In October, real estate firm Vineyards-Bordeaux, which specializes in properties in France, estimated that between 500 and 1,000 vineyards in the region are for sale, adding that 25% of those may never sell but simply close their doors.
I’m not really a wine-connaisseur, in fact I don’t really drink alcohol at all anymore, but the idea of having my own winery does sound appealing. And if global warming continues, I can maybe start my own winery here in Northern Germany and don’t have to move to France after all.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
Five Things: World War III, Chamberlain, Computer Chips, Genetically Modified Military Dogs, Memes
— Nico