Five Things: Techno-Fascism, Private Mountain Clubs, Neoliberalism in the Sky, AI Readiness, Media Ecosystem
It's Sunday, again.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
Last week something very remarkable happened in Germany. Three political parties acknowledged that they needed each other to find a compromise to drastically improve Germany’s military, to invest more into infrastructure, to provide more money to the German states and to invest more into climate change. Two of the three parties will likely form a coalition government, whereas the third party was heavily attacked by the Conservatives (CDU/CSU) and large parts of the media. Still, the Greens decided to negotiate with the Social Democrats (SPD) and CDU/CSU about how our basic law could be amended to increase spending for defense and infrastructure. Just days before the election, the leader of CDU/CSU and presumably the next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, refused to acknowledge that we need to reform our debt ceiling statutes and that we need much more money to get Germany ready for an uncertain future in which the USA might not be a reliable partner anymore. And then, just a few days after the election, he did a 180 degree turn and basically took over the position of the leader of the Greens, Robert Habeck. Merz argued, that suddenly everything changed due to Trump’s handling of the Russian war in Ukraine. Well, it’s not that anyone could be surprised by that anymore. Anyhow, as the old parliament in Germany is still in place until the newly elected member convene for the first time, CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens are using their two-thirds majority to quickly change the basic law before the new parliament gets going, in which the far-left and the far-right together have more than 1/3 of the seats and can thereby block such measures. I think it is extraordinary that the Greens do this instead of just telling Merz to figure out how to deal with the problem himself. Politics has become so selfish that we are amazed when parties actually put the fate of the country first. And nobody will thank them as the mudslinging will continue since people with money want to cling to fossile fuels for as long as possible and have the phantasy that we need more nuclear power plants instead of solar and wind, which will be ready much faster and at a larger scale.
I am not really happy that we will have yet another coalition between CDU/CSU and SPD, because we had that for 12 out of 16 years under Merkel and it largely meant a standstill. Right now, Friedrich Merz tries to look like a strongman and basically proposes things he has to take back the next day, which is a really weird way of signaling that he knows how to run a government. He never ever had any executive role and I am sure this will be interesting to watch how he alienates people on a daily basis. I sure hope that we finally get over the standstill here in Germany and kickstart the economy by just having a new government in place by Easter. It’s about time.
Techno-Fascism Comes to America
“Silicon Valley is premised on the idea that its founders and engineers know better than anyone else: they can do better at disseminating information, at designing an office, at developing satellites and advancing space travel. By the same logic, they must be able to govern better than politicians and federal employees.” - people outside Silicon Valley will soon understand what this means for them and then a messy backlash will happen, methinks.
Inside the New Private Mountain Clubs Where Billionaires Ski
“Some extremely fit and self-reliant skiers are escaping the crowds by strapping on touring skis and trekking into the backcountry, with its attendant avalanche risks. But another subset of truly blessed souls have simply vanished from the lift line as though divinely raptured by the invisible hand of Adam Smith himself. Where have they gone, exactly? Heaven?
Close. They have gone to private ski clubs. Much like how private aviation captured ultra-high-net-worth fliers and left the merely prosperous to grovel for frequent-flier status, these clubs are enabling the richest sliver of Americans to opt out of traditional resorts and preserve not only their sanity but their anonymity.” - a fenced community for really rich skiers. That’s just another level of crazy.
Who Gave Away the Skies to the Airlines?
“There is a name for the discomfort, delays, overcrowding, and price gouging we all experience when we fly. That name is “neoliberalism.” If neoliberalism were a feeling, it would be that feeling when the person in front of you reclines their seat into your lap: that feeling that somebody else’s free market choice has encroached so far into the shared public space that now there’s not enough room left over for you. If neoliberalism were a place, that place would be a departure gate, right after a flight has been summarily canceled and the airline disavows responsibility for the travelers they’ve stranded. Every time I’m marooned in an airport for hours, waiting for my flight to be inevitably canceled, I know that my suffering is not due to Delta or a snowstorm or some random act of God. I know that neoliberals have decided that wasting my time is the most efficient use of market resources.” - I am too young to have been on planes in the often mentioned good old days, but I do remember that my first flight was with TWA and that people could go directly to the gate at Des Moines International Airport to drop off or pick up passengers. And while I assume that the prices for air travel have gone down tremendously due to deregulation, I also do not think it makes sense to fly to Barcelona for less than a train ticket to Frankfurt, not factoring in the environmental costs at all.
Powerful A.I. Is Coming. We’re Not Ready.
“I believe that the right time to start preparing for A.G.I. is now.
This may all sound crazy. But I didn’t arrive at these views as a starry-eyed futurist, an investor hyping my A.I. portfolio or a guy who took too many magic mushrooms and watched “Terminator 2.”
I arrived at them as a journalist who has spent a lot of time talking to the engineers building powerful A.I. systems, the investors funding it and the researchers studying its effects. And I’ve come to believe that what’s happening in A.I. right now is bigger than most people understand.” - I believe that too. That’s why I am writing a weekly newsletter called Five Things AI. I first invested in AI startups 10 years ago, so I have watched the space a bit and I have seen how AI developed, especially in the last three years, when the development accelerated like crazy. So start preparing!
The right dominates the online media ecosystem, seeping into sports, comedy, and other supposedly nonpolitical space
This is truly sickening. And in Germany, where we have lots of publicly financed broadcast, we see too much false balancing and get right-wing idiots in front of the camera all the time, normalizing fascist political views. We need to counterbalance all this. I propose that you start subscribing to
, and to begin with.That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico