Block, the company behind Square, Cash App and Afterpay

Never heard of block but those names i recognize.

"more profit" they say. But where will the people they lay off go? Are we supposed to stop working in IT and become farmers or something? I guess all that matters is more profit!

Block used to just be called Square, and was the company that made Square and Cash App, but changed its name to Block after Jack Dorsey left Twitter (he was also one of the co-founders of Block). iirc, Jack got really into blockchain and all that kind of stuff

Yeah, not because it’s actually useful mind you. But because execs think they can cut costs of employing humans and pocket the difference.

No, the layoffs are because we're in a recession. They gesture at AI to stop investors from panicking.

That’s what they expect you to do, because most companies are run by nepotistic morally bankrupt idiots who believe AI can part the Red Sea.

Yeah he's a big crypto bro, or specifically a "bitcoin maximalist," meaning he basically just thinks Bitcoin is the only real, good crypto, and any other crypto no matter how it operates is always worse.

It's why Cash App has the option to buy Bitcoin right next to buying stocks, but ONLY allows you to buy Bitcoin, and why Twitter originally got the custom Bitcoin emoji added.

If most companies jump off a cliff would you do that too?

What a way to run a business.

In a properly managed economy, the owners of the means of this new type of production would be forced to share the wealth it's creating (if, indeed, it is creating wealth).

It's not even complicated to think about. Imagine if one single company invented scalable, renewable, virtually free energy generation that had none of the downsides of existing technology (like variability, use of land, etc) and patented it so that no other company could use it. All of a sudden, millions of people working in fossil fuels, in renewables, in climate change mitigation, would be out of a job. But the same stuff - in fact more stuff is being produced, so this shouldn't have any negative impact on humanity!

Suppose those people represent 1% of the total work that humanity is doing. What should ideally happen is that those people should be redistributed into the remaining 99% of work, but that everyone works 1% less. Obviously you can't achieve that level of perfection in practice, but an approximation is fine. To prevent everyone getting 1% poorer, the profits of the now insanely wealthy company need to be redistributed somehow. Since this new method of power production will result in us being able to make more stuff more cheaply and more quickly, the people responsible for the invention will still be able to become fantastically wealthy while no-one else becomes poorer. Remember, money is just a medium of exchange; what it buys you is the goods and services people create with their labour. If more stuff is being produced, then it is possible for everyone to be better off.

"Crypto bro" then the firings and blind trust in AI makes much more sense.