Kind of funny you say it is capital concentration that blocks innovation then praise anthropic, when we are in a thread about them concentrating capital. And not only have these companies concentrated capital, and mindshare in the mass media, they have concentrated talent.
You have to wonder how often they hire talent just to keep them out of the market for other upstart companies to potentially use, like with no actual objective just to keep them off market. With half trillion valuation there's plenty of money for that, and given how few people actually know the really deep stuff competently, it would be so stupid of them not to be doing that right now.
No need to be pedantic about it, obviously you need capital concentration to do stuff. The difference is what this stuff is, in Apple and Google's case its even more from the same but for Anthropic its this new thing.
The gist is, world beating(in profit and market cap terms) tech giants who made their money with innovation are now just the roadblocks to innovation. If succeeds, Anthropic will eventually be like that but until then Anthropic is the innovator. The contemporary US is able to concentrate wealth but not able to turn it into innovation or life quality improvements as efficiently as EU or China, since they are getting better outcomes with less. So it is a systematic issue.
>The contemporary US is able to concentrate wealth but not able to turn it into innovation or life quality improvements as efficiently as EU or China, since they are getting better outcomes with less.
This is a really interesting thought. I wonder why this is, fundamentally? You'd think people are people and the elite here would be much like the elite in europe or china. Maybe in china there is some sense of pride or competition among the elite for uplifting the populace these days? Kind of like when vanderbilt, carnegie, and rockefeller felt compelled to invest into things like colleges and other civic institutions to build up their personal clout. Seems here the main drive is to squeeze our population for what little it has left in its pocket vs actually improve standards of living or anything like that. Standard of living when you remove the internet (which arguably doesn't even contribute to standard of living as it is used for mindless leisure by most), is basically the same as it has been in the US since about the 70s or even a little earlier. Arguably worse considering the bog standard two kid, two car, four bed nuclear home setup is increasingly unaffordable in more places across the country.
My guess is that US KPI's are about concentrating even more wealth when in China and EU they aim to improve other measures on societal level.
Obviously a US individual with control over large wealth concentration can choose to do something else with it, i.e. Elon Musk choose to fight trans people or Peter Thiel choose to fight nations states. In China and EU, wealth is more communal therefore those who have control over it can buy a yacht and a mansion but can't choose to dismantle nation states to start new forms of government therefore the regime change is separate thing from use of the resources therefore resources are used to in a more communal mindset which itself can be slow on innovation when no obvious pressing needs or can be inefficient when the communities can't agree on a vision.
In Europe you do the regime change through political means and violence, check out how many regime changes occurred in Europe in the last 100 years and how many politicians were toppled/imprisoned or killed.
It just that life flows differently, not necessarily one is superior to another IMHO. They all have strong sides and weaknesses and US is currently facing its weaknesses after a long period of strength and this is happening because some people won the game and its very hard to restart the game in the American system since the winners can be colossal and as a result immovable.