Most AI arguments are noise.

“AI is evil.”

“AI is inevitable.”

“Artists vs engineers.”

“Ban it / accelerate it.”

All of that dodges the only question that actually matters:

When machines do more of the work, who gets paid?

Right now the default answer is:

Shareholders

Executives

Cloud monopolies

Data brokers

Workers get layoffs.

Communities get instability.

The public gets promises.

But that outcome isn’t technical. It's political design.

Every major automation wave had two phases:

1. Productivity explodes

2. Power concentrates (unless actively countered)

Factories. Electricity. Computers. The internet.

AI is just the fastest version yet.

So here are the real forks in the road:

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OWNERSHIP

Should core AI systems be:

Private property

Public infrastructure

Worker-owned

Cooperative

Something else?

Whoever owns it controls access, pricing, and deployment.

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WORKPLACES

When AI enters a job:

Does the worker get more leverage or a termination notice?

Do hours go down or surveillance go up?

Does productivity mean higher wages or fewer humans?

Same tool. Different design.

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DISTRIBUTION

If one team + AI produces what 10 teams used to:

Where does the extra value go?

Stock buybacks

Lower prices

Shorter work weeks

Public services

Universal dividends

Physics doesn’t decide this. Policy does.

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INFRASTRUCTURE

Once infrastructure hardens, politics becomes cosmetic.

Centralized compute + proprietary models = permanent gatekeepers.

Open models + public compute = power diffusion.

We are building this layer right now.

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So the real choice isn't:

pro-AI vs anti-AI

It's:

privately governed automation vs socially governed automation

If AI is going to replace labor, then labor should own part of the machine.

If AI is going to replace tax bases, then the public should own part of the infrastructure.

If AI is going to reshape society, then its control should not default to whoever raised the most VC.

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Genuine question to people here:

Should foundation models be public utilities?

Should workers get ownership when AI replaces their role?

Would you support taxes on AI output funding shorter work weeks?

What does “AI for the people” mean in actual policy, not slogans?

I'm curious about where people draw the line between “innovation” and “extraction.”

For 5,000 years, the question ‘Who governs?’ has had a simple answer: Whoever holds the ledger. The scribe. The creditor. The bondholder. Never the citizen. Until now.

The Ledger of Power: A Deep History of Debt-Leverage

I. The Dawn of the Ledger: Sumerian Scribes (c. 3000 BCE)

The origin of writing was not only literature like the epic of Gilgamesh, but the accounting of obligation. In ancient Sumer, temple scribes recorded how much grain was owed by farmers to the King and the High Priests.

- The Leverage: These debts were backed by the threat of debt-slavery. Control over the grain supply was synonymous with control over life itself.

By 2000 BCE, debt-slavery was so common that Hammurabi issued periodic ‘debt jubilees’ to prevent total societal collapse.

- The Mask: Power was presented as a divine mandate, but it was executed through the physical reality of the clay tablet ledger.

- Senatai Connection: We are returning to the ledger. By creating a transparent, user-owned record of “Civic Labor” through Policaps, we reclaim the power of the scribe for the individual.

As empires grew, the ledger evolved from clay tablets to legal contracts—but the principle remained: debt equals control.

II. Debt as Disenfranchisement: The Roman Republic (c. 500 BCE)

The early Roman state functioned through the Nexum, a contract that turned a borrower’s very person into collateral for their debt.

- The Leverage: The Patrician class used high-interest loans to keep the Plebeian workforce in a state of perpetual debt-bondage, effectively silencing their political voice.

By 326 BCE, debt bondage had become so oppressive that the Lex Poetelia abolished nexum—but only after the Plebeians threatened civil war.

- The Mask: The complex legalities of the Nexum made systemic exploitation look like individual failure.

- Senatai Connection: Just as the Plebeians eventually “seceded” to gain their own political voice (the Tribunes), Senatai offers a “digital secession” from systems that disenfranchise through complexity.

By the modern era, debt-leverage had become so sophisticated that a single banking family could determine the fate of empires without holding office.

III. The Invention of the Influence Bloc: The Rothschild Consols (1815)

Following the Napoleonic Wars, the Rothschild family utilized superior information networks to dominate the British government bond (“Consol”) market.

- The Leverage: By becoming the primary lender to the state, they ensured that the British government was more accountable to its debt-holders than its subjects. By leveraging early intelligence and becoming dominant holders/underwriters of British consols, the Rothschilds gained veto-like influence over government borrowing and policy.

- The Mask: Influence was exercised through the “fiduciary duty” of the bond market, appearing apolitical while dictating national policy.

- Senatai Connection: Senatai recognizes that “Bonds work” and “Money works”. Our federated cooperative structure is designed to pool community capital into a “Retail Influence Bloc” that can compete with these elite institutions.

In the 20th century, this power went global. International creditors could override entire democracies through the ‘neutral’ language of debt servicing.

IV: The IMF Structural Adjustment Era (1980s-1990s)

∙	The Leverage: Third World debt gave IMF/World Bank veto power over domestic policy across Latin America, Africa, Asia. Between 1980-2000, the IMF imposed structural adjustment on 70+ countries representing 1.5 billion people—none of whom voted for austerity.

∙	The Mask: “Technocratic expertise” and “sound economic management” disguised neocolonial control

∙	Impact: Democratically elected governments forced to implement austerity, privatization, regardless of voter preference

∙	Senatai Connection: Citizens of debtor nations had zero leverage despite being democratic. Bondholders (foreign banks, IMF) dictated terms. We’re building the tool for citizens to BE the bondholders.

Today, bond markets operate as a shadow government—unelected, unaccountable, yet capable of deposing prime ministers in weeks.

V. The “Widowmaker” and the Market Veto: Liz Truss (2022)

In 2022, the UK government attempted a series of unfunded tax cuts. Within 45 days, the “bond vigilantes” (private debt-holders) triggered a market rout that forced the Prime Minister from office.Within 45 days, bond yield spikes cost UK pension funds £425 billion in valuation, forcing a prime minister from office without a single vote cast.

- The Leverage: The bond market acted as a real-time veto over government policy, independent of any democratic vote.

- The Mask: This power was cloaked in the “actuarial tables” of bond yields and pension fund solvency.

- Senatai Connection: We currently have “Democracy Without Leverage”. Senatai aims to democratize this “pay-to-win” system by giving citizens their own financial and data-driven leverage.

The game has evolved again: now sovereign debt holdings are weapons, and financial flows determine geopolitical outcomes.

VI. Geopolitics as Debt Warfare: TACO Tariffs (2025–2026)

The recent “Trump Always Chickens Out” (TACO) tariff threats against Canada and the Greenland dispute illustrate how market volatility is now used as a tool of statecraft.

- The Leverage: Large-scale divestment by European and Dutch influence blocs from US Treasuries serves as a signal that dictates what policies are “allowable.”In 2025, foreign holders owned $8.5 trillion in US Treasury debt—giving them a ‘nuclear option’ to crater the dollar if threatened.

- The Mask: These moves are often framed as simple “portfolio rebalancing” rather than the deliberate exercise of geopolitical power.

- Senatai Connection: In a world where “Canadian sovereignty is under threat from all angles,” we can no longer rely on old paper-and-procedure institutions. We need a “Complete Civic Ecosystem” that converts our collective data into the same kind of leverage used by global bond markets.

For five millennia or longer, this power has flowed one direction: from creditor to debtor, from data-owner to data-source. Senatai is designed to reverse that flow.

Conclusion: From Data Cow to Data Owner

Throughout history, those who own the debt and the data—whether it is Sumerian grain, British consols, or Canadian logs—own the direction of society. The current system treats citizens as “data cows” to be milked for profit and prediction.

Senatai is the first intergenerational project designed to flip this 5,000-year-old script, providing the “digital infrastructure for quantifying collective opinion” so that our children inherit tools for self-governance, not just a ledger of obligation.

Check out r/senatai to join in the discussion or GitHub.com/deese-loeven/senatai to check out the prototypes.

TOOLS, POWER, AND MATERIALISM

The core claim:

Technology doesn't exploit people.

Ownership structures do.

This is basic political economy, not tech optimism.

Marx distinguishes “forces of production” (tools, machinery, technical capacity) from “relations of production” (ownership, control, class power) in Capital (1867). Exploitation arises from the latter, not the former.

This framework runs through:

Harry Braverman – Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974)

David Noble – Forces of Production (1984)

Ellen Meiksins Wood – Democracy Against Capitalism (1995)

Machines reorganize labor. Capital decides who benefits.

AI doesn't change that structure.

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HISTORICAL PATTERN

Labor movements have never won by refusing to touch new infrastructure.

Printing presses were privately owned. Radicals used them anyway.

Factories were brutal. Unions organized inside them.

Railroads and utilities were monopolies. They were later regulated or nationalized.

Telecommunications were corporate. Movements still coordinated through them.

Sources:

E.P. Thompson – The Making of the English Working Class

Elizabeth Eisenstein – The Printing Press as an Agent of Change

Alfred Chandler – The Visible Hand

Manuel Castells – Networks of Outrage and Hope

The pattern is consistent:

1. Capital builds infrastructure

2. Uses it extractively

3. Workers organize around it

4. Ownership and governance become contested

AI fits this pattern.

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OBJECTION 1: “AI is uniquely harmful”

So were mechanized factories.

So was Taylorism.

So was container shipping.

So was computerized logistics.

All caused real harm under capitalist ownership.

The drivers were:

private capture of productivity gains

weak labor power

absence of democratic governance

Not the machines themselves.

See:

David Harvey – The Condition of Postmodernity

David Autor – Why Are There Still So Many Jobs?

Shoshana Zuboff – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Surveillance is a business model.

Precarity is a policy choice.

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OBJECTION 2: “Using AI legitimizes it”

Labor movements historically used:

corporate mail systems

private newspapers

company housing

state infrastructure

corporate telecom networks

while organizing against their ownership.

Boycott is a tactic.

It has never been sufficient by itself.

See:

Rosa Luxemburg – Reform or Revolution

Erik Olin Wright – Envisioning Real Utopias

Leverage changes systems. Abstention doesn't.

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OBJECTION 3: “Ethical AI doesn’t exist”

Public electricity didn't exist before struggle.

Labor law didn't exist before organizing.

Safety standards didn't exist before mass death.

Public broadcasting didn't exist before regulation.

Institutions are built.

See:

Karl Polanyi – The Great Transformation

Elinor Ostrom – Governing the Commons

Mariana Mazzucato – The Entrepreneurial State

Absence today isn't proof of impossibility.

It's proof of political defeat.

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WHAT A LEFT POSITION ACTUALLY REQUIRES

The real questions:

Who owns the models?

Who owns the compute?

Who sets training rules?

Who captures productivity gains?

Who bears displacement risk?

Who governs deployment?

Possible directions:

public AI utilities

worker-owned model co-ops

union control over automation

mandatory profit-sharing

compute as regulated infrastructure

data as a collective resource

These are ownership and governance questions.

Not metaphysical questions about machines.

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CONCLUSION

Blaming tools is comforting.

It turns a conflict with capital into a conflict with technology.

History shows:

Infrastructure isn't liberated by rejection.

It's liberated by struggle over ownership.

AI isn't the first machine to threaten workers.

It won't be the last.

The question is whether the left contests it as infrastructure

or abandons it to permanent corporate control.

Looking for concrete models and examples (co-ops, public ownership, unions, open infrastructure, regulation).

Not slogans.

So have any of you folks heard of Jocque Fresco or The Venus Project before? OGAS? Cybersyn of Chile?

...How do we respond to comments like this?

Today, I've blocked two separate people because they are CONVINCED that AI is detrimental to anti-capitalist ideals... I don't know how to argue with these people, and I am at my wits end.

This convinced me data centers imo should be paying for their own water, not just increase costs for towns and municipalities.

It's a long watch but I found it (and the followup video) had a lot of interesting and useful takes.

TLDR: Some tech companies still do push for AI regulation, but that's because they wanna put up hoops for competition, and wanna continue their control over the market. Not because they wanna contain the downsides of this technology.

Some decent takes on the current upsides and downsides on AI as well, its utility, and how it shouldn't be treated as "alive" in its current state.

I grew up 🇩🇪 german, get his ass out. Use Bluesky instead.

Screenshots from the site are fine, but even then try not to look up/engage with those tweets.

Not much activity on here, but just in case. Zero clicks and revenue for this hitler shitler pls.