Richard Stern writes wisely about AI. Two slices:
There is an intelligence loose in the world that has no respect for humanity. It seeks to manipulate us, pit us against one another, and harness us to its own purposes, and it is certain it can run your life better than you can.
It’s not what you’re thinking: The intelligence is that of every socialist and collectivist who has ever lived, from Karl Marx to Bernie Sanders. Whether or not misaligned artificial intelligence truly poses a threat, misaligned human intelligence, seeking to concentrate unlimited power in the hands of government bureaucrats, remains the greatest threat we face.
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Government-enforced monopolies don’t just threaten liberty; they stifle innovation. When AI leaders beg the government to regulate away competition, it’s the oldest trick in the book, and we shouldn’t be fooled by it. The central holding of technological power — in this case, of AI — is never a good solution. Perhaps these tech leaders and politicians fear AI will replace exactly one job: their own, as self-anointed high priests of central planning and moral arbiters of society. Many of them have spent decades preaching climate alarmism and a de-growth agenda, while portraying humanity as a parasite feeding off the Earth.
Are these the people you want to speak for all of us and control our future? If the world’s most gifted mathematicians and programmers couldn’t build a perfect AI sandbox, do you think the regulators who gave us Covid lockdowns and cars that shut off at red lights will do better?
Meanwhile, the private sector is already harnessing AI to solve our greatest problems. Hospitals adopting AI have cut mortality rates, and the first AI-designed medicines are already in human trials.
The risk of a rogue AI agent doing serious damage is far higher if we turn over control of the technology to bureaucrats and a few favored business executives. To outsource the right to develop AI is to leave the rest of us beholden to the imperfect foresight and murky motives of the few.
Eric Boehm explains “how regulation, immigration policy, and tariffs made your BLT more expensive.”
Colin Grabow makes clear that “the Jones Act delivers high costs but little maritime security.” A slice:
The national security case for the Jones Act, which restricts domestic waterborne cargo shipments to vessels that are US-flagged, US-built, and US-owned, is fairly straightforward. Theoretically, such measures provide the United States with ships in wartime to transport equipment and supplies for the military, the trained mariners to crew them, and shipyards that can both build new vessels and repair existing ones. The problem is that the law delivers only a fraction of its advertised benefits, at a wildly disproportionate cost.
Start with the fleet. Under decades of Jones Act protection, the number of US-built and US-flagged oceangoing cargo ships has declined from 257 in 1980 to 119 in 2000 to just 92 today. Of those, only 74 are deemed militarily useful, and it’s uncertain how many might actually be available in times of conflict. In 2020, for example, a DoD-directed study warned that accessing a significant portion of the Jones Act tanker fleet could unacceptably disrupt the US economy. A year later, the head of the US Transportation Command testified before Congress that wargaming suggested economic considerations might preclude the military from relying on Jones Act vessels.
