When the Going Gets Weird
Trust in institutions has come to displace trust in contracts and social arrangements.
WEIRD Reactions to Privacy Regulation
This is an interesting argument. Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries have shifted their trust away from commercial and interpersonal contracts and understandings to institutions. AI is so disruptive that skepticism about AI’s implications is greater than in less developed countries where institutions are not perceived to be as strong.
‘In democratic societies, calls for legislation arguably come from the governed when it becomes clear that commercial and interpersonal social arrangements are insufficient to provide the necessary confidence to engage and exchange. Yet if WEIRD psychology has engendered a shift in trust from social and commercial to legislative instruments, then it would seem that—in a feedback effect—regulations would eventually be needed before the adoption of new technologies. The lower levels of trust in AI in WEIRD countries could stem from the fact that, at the time the survey was conducted, no regulations governing AI had been enacted in any of the developed economies. Though none had been enacted in non-Weird countries either—their citizens would not have been looking for such assurances before engaging with AI.’
OpenAI urges Trump administration to remove guardrails for the industry
Altman is nothing if not aggressive.
‘On Thursday, OpenAI submitted its proposal to the U.S. government, emphasizing the need for speed in AI advancement and a light hand from regulators while highlighting its take on the dangers of AI technology coming out of China.
‘The proposal underscores OpenAI’s direct effort to influence the government’s coming “AI Action Plan,” a tech strategy report to be drafted by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and submitted to President Trump by July.’
‘The Jungle’ Is a Cautionary Tale for DOGE
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Upton Sinclair was an American socialist. He also had impact.
The unintended consequence of exposing things (in the case of his novel, The Jungle, this was mistreatment of workers by a brutal capitalism) can be a reaction to another effect: brutal capitalism’s willingness to butcher and sell meat in the most unhygienic way possible. The American people didn’t want to eat this crap. So regulation came.
There can be, in regulation, what I call “reputation hijacking:” pretending to be good (or in pursuit of publicly desirable outcomes) while actually pursuing one’s self-interest. This comes from the kind of conflation and coincidence that Noonan highlights.
‘It is also true that the size and scope of government is always growing and requires sharp oversight. The arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward mischief. In our time the political left has grown adept at finding ways to support, employ and give standing to its political allies. They use government to buy off constituencies within their coalitions. That’s how you get the absurdist U.S. Agency for International Development programs Donald Trump and Elon Musk speak of so often. Their existence makes you mad. Which keeps the base stoked. And as all but children know, you can’t do nuthin’ without a stoked base.
‘But we have to keep our heads straight about what’s important and what’s not. And we can’t demonize government work. Some public servants really are servants.’
You Need Regulators to Deregulate
Nobody complained when previous Presidents exercised prosecutorial discretion. For example, the federal government does not enforce still binding laws against the use of marijuana, a controlled substance. When Jeff Sessions told Congress to amend the law (something the politics would not permit), he was practically run out of town.
The Trump administration is going on an enforcement holiday for laws it doesn’t like.
When the other party gets into power, these laws will be enforced (in all likelihood).
How do you plan for this uncertainty?
‘But in the Trump administration, an important law against paying bribes — the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — has not been repealed, but it is no longer being enforced. President Donald Trump doesn’t like the FCPA, so he issued an executive order “pausing” its enforcement. What does that mean? If you are a compliance officer at a bank, and a banker comes to you and says “hey I’d like to pay bribes, is that cool now,” what should you say? Well! I am not going to give you legal advice, but my anecdotal impression is that actual compliance officers who get this question these days still say “absolutely not, no bribes.” (Here is a Wall Street Journal story reporting that this is mostly the case.) And then if the bankers say “but I thought the FCPA was paused, what’s the problem with paying bribes,” the compliance officers might give answers like:
The law is still the law: Enforcement is paused, but it is still a violation of a US statute to pay bribes, and it is bank policy not to break the law.
Sure enforcement is paused, but it could come back. There’ll be a new president in four years, probably, and the new administration might enforce the FCPA, including for old cases. If you pay a bribe now, you might go to prison in five years.
For that matter, there’s nothing to stop the Trump administration from un-pausing enforcement and bringing a case against us this year. Trump might change his mind about enforcing the FCPA. Or he might want to punish just our bank, for unrelated reasons — maybe we expressed support for Democrats — so he will go after us for FCPA violations. The fact that the law is no longer enforced generally doesn’t mean it can’t be enforced against you.
State regulators and even private plaintiffs might sue us for violating the law, even if the Trump Department of Justice does not.
If we just manifestly go around breaking the law, that seems bad for public relations, even if the law is no longer enforced.’
Make the U.S. Civil Service Effective Again
DOGE could learn a thing or two from some states.
‘But several states have experience with deregulating the civil service, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. In the past few decades states such as Georgia, Kansas and Arizona have moved most or almost all of their public employees to at-will employment and given individual agencies discretion to hire in the manner they think best. These reforms have been bipartisan and effective, and there’s little evidence they’ve led to political favoritism. It’s time for the federal government to learn from these successful state experiments.’