this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 118 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Better idea: drive a stake 50% through AI CEO's chest. Better, faster results, not just economically, but ecologically too!

[–] heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

They’ll just elect another.

[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 29 points 1 month ago

Stakes are reusable.

[–] arrow74@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As the French showed if enough heads roll you may end your monarchy. Might flirt with a dictator in the process, but that can also be taken care of

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[–] homes@piefed.world 76 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Keep your eye on the ball: 100% of the profits must pay for universal healthcare.

[–] felsiq@piefed.zip 65 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I love this idea, but I’m not sure if any AI company has made any profit to date lmao

[–] homes@piefed.world 29 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (14 children)

No AI company will ever make a profit.

That’s no excuse for you to forget that human rights is our ultimate goal.

Never take your eye off the ball. Vote for humans. Fight for human equality. 🏳️‍🌈

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 month ago

The thing is, their values are overstated. It's a bubble economy. AI companies are racing for IPO specifically because they want to leave the public holding the bag when it finally crashes.

I don't want any stake in AI companies.

Government sponsored public investment funds should focus on stable, long-term investments and basic essentials like utilities, telecom, housing, agriculture, etc.

I would include healthcare and education in that list but I believe those things shouldn't be monetized at all and should be entirely non-profit.

But AI though is not a good investment. It only looks like one now because it's a pump and dump. A ponzi scheme, even.

I expected Bernie to be better than this...

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[–] blattrules@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They need to be funding UBI with it too. Every time a company kills a job because of AI they need to be taxed and that should go to UBI.

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[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 66 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (9 children)

Almost everyone in this thread seems to be assuming the US would pay for half the shares/equity of these companies.

That is not what is being proposed.

What is being proposed is that the US Govt simply seize half the shares/equity/board voting powers in these companies, without paying a cent for them.

It is a half-nationalization.

Not a half-bailout.

EDIT

I go into more detail and explain in this comment in this same thread:

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/26357349

[–] banshee@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Good clarification. I'm convinced we will end up bailing them out anyway. We should nationalize and operate as a public good if generative AI is that important to society.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I genuienly struggle to think of a kind of economic thing that better qualifies as a public utility.

Completely agree that this kind of technology, with such broad and immense ongoing, as well as potential implications, cannot be allowed to be directed by the whims of wealthy capitalist conmen rent seekers.

[–] vane@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Nationalization doesn't change the fact that for example OpenAI plans to burn $100B in 2026 without any profit so taxpayers will inherit $50B debt just from 2026. Moreover it doesn't stop those companies for raising more debt from for example corporate bonds emission just by saying 50% of their capital is government owned. That would allow them to literally raise trillions.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/12/30/openais-cash-burn-will-be-one-of-the-big-bubble-questions-of-2026
https://archive.ph/8Ej9z

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (10 children)

If OpenAI fails, and the government owns half of it...

The assets and power the government acquired for no monetary cost simply becomes zero.

The other part of simply seizing half the shares is that the government (presumably a number of ministers/officials in charge of the new sovereign wealth fund) now has half the voting power of the entire board.

That is a pretty direct way to wield influence as to the decisions the company can make, how the CEO can behave.

You want maybe the accounting to actually deprecate the GPUs they have or lease over a realistic timeframe, instead of a totally bullshit one?

Half of your shareholders now demand this.

C Suite refuse to comply?

Begin the process of firing them.

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[–] Zizzy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 60 points 1 month ago (7 children)

First of all, fuck no. Remove all of the AI companies. Now. Secondly, this will guarantee they become "too big to fail". Like, it feels as if they're purposefully doing this to make it palatable to bail them out.

[–] positiveWHAT@lemmy.world 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think the intention is to get the profits of automation to the people when more jobs are inevitably automated.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago (4 children)

It is, but unintended consequences.

With this, then we couldn't afford Sam Altman to experience failure because he will drag folks down with him. So the companies invested become too big to fall, and the still private leadership gets to run things however they wish knowing the government will cover for any mistakes.

It's bad enough as the government will panic about retirement accounts when they falter, this exacerbates it.

It's a risky form of private-public partnership, with a lot of ways the company can privatize rewards but socialize the risk.

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[–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago (8 children)

This feels like a setup to the biggest rug-pull in history. The whole thing is going to shit and the taxpayers will be holding the bags.

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[–] isekaihero@ani.social 14 points 1 month ago

I agree. No public funds should go to AI. No taxpayer money should be used to construct AI or datacenters. When the AI companies start to collapse, they should receive no bailouts.

Bailouts are corruption. Why do the rich get socialism and the rest of us get crushing capitalism? When we fail, we get stepped on. When the rich fail, they get billion dollar bailouts? But they claim they deserve to keep all their riches because they worked hard for it?

I could be a billionaire oligarch too if all of my failures were compensated for with billion dollar bailouts. It's not hard to succeed when you are elevated to the heights of the gods every time you face a little adversity.

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[–] BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip 51 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Does this mean we'll all be bag holders when the AI bubble bursts?

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 25 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

We are already holding the bag.

They are "too big to fail"

It is the de way

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[–] gravitywell@sh.itjust.works 40 points 1 month ago

50% might have been a fair cut if they actually asked for permission up front,but they didn't. Everything made by AI is fruit if the poison tree and should be something equal to public domain.

[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 33 points 1 month ago (1 children)

When I found out what it meant when other countries have sovereign wealth funds...

I have no idea how most people in America keep convincing themselves they've somehow got a good deal.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 32 points 1 month ago

It's mostly oil countries that have a sovereign wealth fund and it comes out of the oil money. Norway, Saudi Arabia. Idea being that oil is a limited resource with a lot of value and the proceeds should be used to ensure everyone's future.

Of course the US IS an oil country...

[–] HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub 28 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You know they will agree and give everyone stakes exactly when bubble is about to pop

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Public stake isn't for profits (especially not short term capital gains), it's about concentration & not getting controlled.

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[–] Archr@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago

50% seems very low. They created these companies by scraping and pirating information.

50% means that they just need to fool a few people to get what they want. Imo it should be more like 90% public with a requirement that all services must be provided for free.

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago (11 children)

How about a 50% stake in all companies valued over 5 billionaire dollars.

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[–] Footer1998@crazypeople.online 17 points 1 month ago (10 children)

rare bernie L

just do socialism. stop this wishy washy bullshit. capitalism must die.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)
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[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Pretty horseshit to act like they trained AI on only American data so only Americans should benefit.

What about the literal entire rest of the world? They get nothing right?

Just another example of America exploiting the world for their own benefit. Even the good ones are so corrupted by their system that they do it without realizing.

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[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

Not the right move dawg

[–] atcorebcor@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Wouldn’t this make everyone interested in the bad business practices that would increase the profits?

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[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If this ever passed, I bet we’d see a pretty quick devaluation in these things.

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[–] deliriousdreams@fedia.io 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It would be a good idea if the entirety of the current industry for it wasn't built entirely on smoke and mirrors type promises.

The general idea (so far as I can parse) is that if these companies are expecting a government bailout when it all goes south, then the tax payers who would be bailing them out should get paid back. But in practice, what will happen is we'll be saddled with the debt and these companies will weasel out of it.

The fact is I don't want to own a stake in any of these companies. I would rather they make it illegal for these companies to ask for a bailout from the government and close loopholes they will use to file for bankruptcy.

If they're going to fail the government should buy their assets (data centers, infrastructure, etc) if the people agree that's okay. Instead of what will likely happen (the companies left standing when it all goes under will buy up all the assets dirt cheap).

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[–] megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 month ago

I don’t think these companies are worth the value of the paper that their charters are written on. I don’t think many of them are going to last much longer, but he might actually be on to something here in terms of diffusing a massive financial fraud that’s about to happen in broad daylight.

The common wisdom right now is to just “put your money in an index fund, it’s safer and outperforms actively managed portfolios.” Which is to say, a fund that just buys a little bit of everything from a given list, rather than trying to pick stocks that someone thinks will do well, it creates a very diversified portfolio that is protected from anyone company fucking up by having the value spread over as many things as possible. Because many people just put their money in index funds now, getting listed in an index kind of guarantees that lots of people will be buying the shares consistently and thus consistently causing the price to rise over time.

To get in to these lists, normally, a company has to have been public for a while, generally about a year, and show profitability for a prolonged time. These rules have recently been changed though.

A bunch of the AI companies are doing initial public offerings (IPO meaning putting their shares on the public markets for the first time) in the next few months. And stating absolutely insane valuations. Because of the rule changes, they’re basically all getting immediately listed in index funds. And since they’re all targeting insane valuations, they’re going to automatically suck up a bunch of retirement money by default.

I’m not sure about anthropic and openAI on this next part, but SpaceX (which just “bought” Xai), is only going public with about 5% of it’s shares, so theoretically they can just trickle more shares on to the market to get bought up by index funds, and because supply of actual shares is artificially constrained, it will lead to massive overvaluation of those shares, taking up a disproportionate amount of money going in to index funds.

It’s actually fucking criminal that this is being allowed to happen, but because the rules for index funds and IPOs are set by financial institutions and stock exchanges, with very limited oversight by the government, they can just do this.

If the government were to take these 50% shares, it would kind of throw a wrench in the plans, since it would give the government the ability to sell those shares on to the market and stop the over valuation that allows them to take disproportionately from the index funds.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What happens when they go bust?

[–] Bakkoda@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Maybe we all get to enjoy a massive tax write off like a big business

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[–] jsnfwlr@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's great for the US, but these companies are fucking the whole planet. What will the US do when other countries hold them responsible?

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[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I forget how pro state people are on here sometimes. Is no one concerned what the fascist government will do with that stake?

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[–] chunes@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

50% too low.

[–] notannpc@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

The biggest flaw, aside from it having to succeed in our corporate owned Congress, is that it would require these companies to actually make money, and based on the technology we have today, that seems unlikely to happen anytime in the next decade. At least not without some major technological breakthrough. But it’s better than nothing I suppose.

[–] Smaile@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

ai doesn't make money so this is a bailout for a piece of junk. the amount of people here that think this will work out is fuckin incredible.

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