You know those companies are publicly owned and big % of American public owns shares in them?
Additionally Google employs some 100k people in US and almost as many in Europe.
Those are mostly very good jobs as well.
The whole anti-datacenters sentiments is stupid but "profits go to a handful of Americans" is just pants of fire kind of take.
You reminded me of something. I heard in the Czech Republic when communism ended, the state owned industries became owned by the public. Every citizen received a share.
I wonder if we're going to need something similar when AI nukes the economy.
It worked that way in Russia too. Some people managed to quickly consolidate those shares by exploiting the economic hardship of the people caused by the fall of the USSR by hoovering up those shares for Kopecks on the Rubel, and that's where the current day oligarchy was formed.
The transition from communism to capitalism was hardly as rosy as people in the West like to think.
Of course, how this unfolded varied. For example, unlike the chaotic Russian privatization that created a class of oligarchs, the transition in places like Poland favored a network of well-placed insiders, a highly structured network of intelligence officers (military, civilian), state managers, and flexible communist party elites, who - by controlling information, intelligence networks, and the liquidation apparatus - effectively laundered their authoritarian political privileges into financial dominance.
Yes. Should also cover what happened in East Germany when the wall went down. And people are now somehow surprised when everybody's kind of pissed outside of the few big cities.
There was a West Berlin bunch of real estate tycoons that got wind the wall was about to fall and they went across and started buying property left, right and center. They made billions on that, effectively owning the heart of Berlin post unification.
Funny story: I once got arrested at Checkpoint Charlie :)
Here some pics from those empty skyscrapers that are completely missing all the walls and the scaffolding's been gathering rust for years. And all the court cases for the people who bought the "luxury apartments" that never realized.
I'm always surprised that the topography of terror exhibition in Berlin misses this part of the German history. Nazi's and communists are presented, but the robber barons who bought all the real estate don't get a presentation.
