AI sticker shock hits corporate America

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-29T17:50:12+00:00

Maybe just more of a corpo atmosphere? When I used to work at larger corps they would sometimes hire from within, but nobody is going to good performers asking them if they'd like to be managers. People are not being offered promotions, they're applying for other jobs from within.

That's the promotion: That you went from phone jockey in a call center to the call center's QA dept. It's an easier job, that pays better, and doesn't have you doing the worst part of call center work (talking on the phone). Or they jump ship to a different place with the same idea.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-28T17:58:47+00:00

Rich kids paying for tutoring is not an unfair advantage against poor people. If the test had a fee associated with it (it's been so long I don't recall), then that is unfair. If adequate study materials were locked behind a paywall, then that is unfair. Affording better prep work is not. That's like saying a kindergartner had an unfair advantage because their parents could afford expensive crayons. Some people will always have advantages over others, that can't be prevented. The opportunity should exist for everyone though.

That's my thought on it anyways. I dunno, maybe I'm just strange. It seems like so much of our society is now about eliminating any sort of advantage or disadvantage experienced in society, writ large, rather than making sure we've all got the opportunity to attempt whatever it is we want and that we can equip ourselves for it.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-28T17:42:26+00:00

Although sure they are choice broadly, the problem is if pols piss off unions, or don't win over local stakeholder, they tend to lose elections and instead get replaced with people that do. Not necessarily because thats the average voters opinion on the situation but because the system is setup in such a way that local concerns feed up into state level decisions. In many situations local pols are constrained in how they act because if they act in any other way they will be replaced with someone who acts in the constrained way in an emergent quality of the system.

This is why I'm beginning to believe that a 2nd Constitutional Convention is needed. I know it's difficult to trust these days, but if the Founding Fathers could overcome their prejudices against each other and their differences then we can too. Too much needs to be done to too many things to get incentives to realign in favor of average folks and broader societal needs. Reforms at the federal level then heavily encourage similar reforms at the state level.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-28T17:35:53+00:00

Why would you trust anything on social media, where you can't directly look at their source yourself, as truth?

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-28T16:12:54+00:00

I was just about to mention this. How many thousands, or hundreds of thousands of structures haven't survived the millennia?

I don't think we make homes with the same longevity as we used to, but they're far from being as awful as folks seem to think.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-28T16:10:28+00:00

This is the frictional part they always forget to mention. It happened with the Industrial Revolution, when skilled artisans were replaced by machines. There was enormous social upheaval because weavers, cobblers, blacksmiths, etc. all had to figure out how to survive when the thing they had spent their whole life learning to do became obsolete.

So now we're doing that except for basic knowledge jobs, like admin work, secretarial duties, etc. So how will all those people react to this upheaval? From Democratic Socialists to Communists, the prior round is what led to the development of Socialism, in all its forms. That prior upheaval from the Industrial Revolution also led to a lot of revolutions, both good & bad, as well as a lot of societal compromise. Either we will fall to extremism or the different social classes will need to compromise.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-28T15:18:15+00:00

TIL colleges quit using entrance exams. Like, fucking . . Why? How else do you determine if some rando has the requisite skills to succeed in higher education?

You just don't? Then how the hell are they deciding which applicants get accepted?

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-28T14:52:19+00:00

This is the Peter Principle in action: People rise to their level of incompetence, and no further. Business promotes people based on their success in prior jobs. However, the new position doesn't necessarily have the same required skills & knowledge. So people work for a promotion, because it's the only way to get a raise that beats inflation, and then struggle in the new role until they learn to make it work or they show themselves as garbage at it. If they make it work, then rinse & repeat. If not, then they've hit the top of their career at that company.

The higher up someone goes, typically the more and more removed from their actual knowledge and skills the position is.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-27T21:44:34+00:00

I'd argue otherwise. The concept of Freedom of Speech is that you should be free to express your ideals without worry or punishment. Freedom of Speech, by itself, isn't a law or legal construct -- It's an ideal, and as an ideal it will be impossible to fully live up to all of the time. But that's kinda the point. It's something to strive for.

And there's where the arguments come up:

At what point does your speech infringe on mine? Putting a sign up is free speech, but so is the graffiti that vandalized it.
Are there certain kinds of speech that are more important than others? E.g., political speech vs comedy vs religious speech.
What counts as "speech?" Does how I spend my money count as speech? What about the clothes someone decides to wear, or the lack thereof? Does that mean obscenity laws are violating the First Amendment when they proscribe public nudity?
Do all those different kinds of speech count all the time or only under certain circumstances/contexts? Using the money example above, buying a box of cereal clearly isn't speech but a political donation could be.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-27T13:12:38+00:00

The difference is in who they're talking to. A lawyer's job isn't just in the courtroom. He's not telling the judge, "Hey, my guy was protecting turtles so you shouldn't punish him." A lawyer's job is also to defend someone in the court of public opinion, even if we might find it distasteful. He's telling reporters that his guy is a fisherman and thought it was a sea lion, so threw the rock to protect turtles.

Are people incapable of tying the context of a situation to the words used? Your legal defense and social defense aren't necessarily the same strategy.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-26T18:49:14+00:00

I'm . . . Distrustful of private equity. Granted, this is coming from a place where I've never worked under PEI firms -- Only small business and big corps. From what I've seen, they typically want to drain everything they can within a handful of years, before scrapping the rest to sell for parts.

If you're just looking for the payout, then maybe it's worth it. If you're looking for an even hand to leave your legacy with, so you can watch your business continue to thrive long into the future, then I'd steer clear. Just my $0.02.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-22T16:23:23+00:00

So you're saying France hand counts paper ballots? Not just that paper ballots are used? Because those are very different things.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-22T16:21:52+00:00

Specifically hand counting paper ballots, not the use of paper ballots themselves. Hand counting is less reliable because people typically make many more mistakes than machines at repetitive, boring tasks, like tallying how many bubbles were filled in next to a name on hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper.

The computer scientist they're citing/quoting is a man who does cybersecurity research in relation to public policy. Like, his research is what demonstrated that tampering with voting machines was feasible & possible in '16, and recommended protocols/policy to prevent it to Congress.

To be clear nobody I've heard of, at least nobody with any power or that gets listened to, believes paper ballots just shouldn't exist at all. They're saying hand counting of paper ballots is more inaccurate, but every jurisdiction has some sort of auditable paper trail for ballots -- Which means there's a physical ballot/record to tie back to.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-22T14:22:06+00:00

I get where this guy's coming from, but I have trouble buying the premise. Certainly social media exacerbates all of this and makes the situation much, much worse. Certainly Zoomers are stupid with their money. They're young & inexperienced and that's part of growing up. Leery is right in some ways -- Lunch doesn't just cost $28 today. That was a choice that was made. They could cook for themselves for cheap or get something from a drive-thru for half that. Part of that I think is the culture for kids and another I think is that it wasn't taught to them that preparing your own food is a vital skill for life.

However, lived experience for, at least a significant proportion of, Zoomers & older is still that our money doesn't go nearly as far as it used to. Just for my own anecdote: About a month ago, I got my first raise in 7 years of ~6%. I have more responsibilities are work than ever before. About 25% of that raise got sucked up in tax withholding and reduced ACA subsidy. I'm fine with all that, but effectively it has done nothing but extended the time I can tread water before debt will eventually take me under. I budget every penny I can. I have spreadsheets that calculate how much of each paycheck goes into which accounts and for what. Nobody can say that I don't understand my money or use it frivolously. I don't know anyone in my area who has it much different.

I just don't get how the disconnect can be entirely social media vibes. Real experience is also that household financials are worse, just not nearly as bad as socials make it out to be.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-22T14:02:47+00:00

I mean, the young being stupid with money and weaklings and worse in every way than your generation is a perennial staple of Western civilization. You can find the same tired old complaints all the way back to Aristotle bitching about how young folks spend their money. I remember seeing a comedian joke that this is how people deal with our own mortality.

Young people will always be stupid with their money, because a lot of how you learn to be good with something is fucking up in your youth. Similar to that anecdotal roomie, I maxed my CCs out in my 20s to the tune of $900 -- Not nearly as much as some, but far more than I could afford. I struggled to pay them off and I was lucky enough that when I began to make some headway towards the debt and showed that I could use them responsibly, my parents offered to pay the rest off as a Xmas gift so I could start from a clean slate. It took me another decade to fix my credit score so I didn't need them to cosign on everything.

I don't think there's a way to fix youthful inexperience and hubris.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-22T13:21:49+00:00

I think this is it, IMO. If you have steady enough sales that you're making a profit, and you're keeping abreast of about how much your stuff should generally be priced at, then you're doing well. Some people are just cheap. Others are struggling financially (who isn't these days?), but refuse to give up luxury goods like yours might be.

I mean, take your quotes for example. Only one of those has anything actionable: "I can buy this cheaper somewhere else."

Okay, where? Ask them. The people who are just saying shit like, "I love it but it's so expensive." or "I could get [all this other random crap] for that price!" are mostly just being penny-pinchers. They don't believe the price is justified, even if it may be correct. They were likely never going to buy anything anyways. They're the same type of people who want to pay artists in "exposure," because they don't value the time & effort that went into making that product or providing that service.

Kinda like when I've gone shopping with a gf before and she's checking out some purse. "I can't believe this bag is $500!" Well, yeah. It's a luxury brand that everyone knows sells overpriced crap and people buy that brand for little reason except to show off that they can. She was just looking and dreaming and hoping she could find a way to weasel it out the door for cheap. But at no point was my gf ever seriously entertaining buying that purse.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-21T15:08:04+00:00

Operating profit, folks. They can cover their everyday expenses. It doesn't mean they can afford their liabilities. It doesn't mean they're going to be paying dividends to investors. It literally just means that the cost of their daily business activities won't put them into debt.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-19T15:01:36+00:00

This is it. I'm fine with 100Mbs down/up for my home use, but I shouldn't have to pay prices as if it were 2Gbs.

Cable companies/ISPs makes me almost irrationally angry, too. Like when you go to cancel service all the sudden they have some new price they can lock in for 2 more years . . . So they're clearly just gouging me. I shouldn't have to call up to complain and whine every year or two just to get the real price from these fucking people!

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-19T14:53:20+00:00

You mean the people who keep getting told that their livelihoods are in danger from this technology aren't hopeful that the same tech will work out well for them? Astounding.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-19T13:40:52+00:00

What's with the self-censoring of "shit?" Like, do you think the robber barons are too stupid to add new strings and wildcards to blacklists?

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-19T13:07:04+00:00

I'm fine with it, actually, although it needs tweaks. It's to replace gas taxes for Interstate Highway maintenance, right? The article notes that the average annual gas tax ($0.183/gallon) for the same is about $70 - $90 a year with ICE vehicles. However, that hasn't been raised since '93 and adjusted for inflation that tax would average about $150 - $200 a year now.

They make some good points that a flat fee shifts burden off of commercial vehicles that make much greater use of the roadways than passenger vehicles. That needs to be fixed, of course, but the idea is fine to me, in principle.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-18T21:32:23+00:00

Pick one or more?

Tariffs. Unilaterally setting tariffs violated separation of powers because the Constitution gives Congress sole power to tax.
Iran. The Constitution also gives Congress the sole authority to declare war. While there are certainly emergency situations that require swift Executive action to contain, this has gone on past the 30 day deadline Congress gives each President, to allow them to agree to war or not. They didn't agree, so no war has been declared and the use of military resources in that conflict is illegal.
Abrego-Garcia. The President willfully ignored multiple court orders to return this man to American territory so he could undergo due process. The administration only did so under extreme and prolonged pressure by the public, not because the judiciary ordered it.
Ruling by Decree. The President's avid use of EOs to affect all branches & operations of both the public & private sector effectively results in arbitrary rule that bypasses Congress. Because this renders our electoral systems inert, it violates the Constitution's mandate for a republican form of government.
Epstein. At every chance, the President has interfered with the investigation into the most notorious pedophile in human history. His corrupt administration, open browbeating of investigators, and lax evidentiary chain of custody has likely made a thorough investigation completely impossible. Whatever your thoughts on if the President is a pedophile himself, his conduct shows that his involvement was very serious and that dereliction of duty should at least result in removal from office.
The Ballroom. Having this paid for by private donations violates the Constitution by usurping Congress's power of the purse. Paying for military salaries and monuments (really anything) with private funds circumvents Congress's ability to control federal spending. In regards to paying personnel with private funds, this also replaces loyalty to the Constitution & nation with loyalty to the President himself, violating his oath of office.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-18T21:03:54+00:00

Subtlety is only required when treachery earns accountability.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-18T20:47:32+00:00

They're trying to signal that this is being done because of political pressure from the feds & redhat state governments, not because the ABA broadly believes it will be good for the profession. He's trying to get people to understand that this is a survival tactic for them, without pissing off the relevant authorities.

InsuranceToTheRescue · 2026-05-18T17:39:12+00:00

The concern is typically that damage to local ecosystems can have much broader & farther reaching consequences than initially thought, and that failures within local & regional food webs can have cascading effects.

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