It’s almost like that scene in Office Space where the guys are trying to figure out money laundering, looking up the definition in the dictionary. Michel then says “What I don’t understand is how these Neanderthal Mafia guys can be so good at crime and smart guys like us can suck so badly at it.” It’s almost like these tech guys watched that scene and said “yeah!”
I start thinking that the economic growth we have seen in 2025 and this year is mostly due to these kinds of shenanigans. It all gets counted as part of GDP, despite the fact nothing was actually produced.
You’re correct to think that. We’re in a gigantic bubble and when it pops these assholes are going to make it all of our problem.
That’s why measure of GDP is stupid. It counts every transaction. If you do your own lawn, cooked your own food, then you don’t contribute to GDP. But if you hire someone else to do that, then you increase GDP.
Self sufficient communities are bad for the GDP. That’s how they define “developed” country, because you have to pay everyone for everything
Screw the customers! GTFO customers! We’ll just make money up!
Oh it’s so much worse than that…
(I can’t figure out how to get a timestamped link on mobile. Skip to 29:34)
Two economists are at a park, and see an old dog turd. One dares the other to eat half of it for $500 which he does. Then he dares his friend to eat the other half for $500. He does.
After a little while, one says to the other “I feel like those dares were pointless. You gave me money to eat shit, and then I gave it back to you for eating shit”.
The other responds, “nonsense, we just grew the economy by $1000!!”
An economist is at a baseball game when he sees a man outraged that a hotdog costs twelve dollars, and a beer costs 20. “I just wanted to have a fun day with my family, but tickets are suddenly 100 dollars! Now this?!”
What an idiot, the economist thinks. Can’t he see the revenue he’s generating?? The economist pays 64 dollars for two hotdogs and two beers, which he immediately drops on the ground, which makes him very happy.
"CapEx"being laundered to “revenue”.
Very legal and very cool.
It would be so immensely amusing if one of those companies got fined by the EU for something – with the fine calculated from their revenues. That should lead to some interesting fireworks.
Nvidia gave OpenAI $200b… Same thing happened. Sounds like Sam Altman’s gonna LOVE going to jail 🤭
Everything they’re doing is totally legal, afaik, so jail may not be in the cards. The best we might hope for is drawn and quartered
What they have done has not be determined to be breaking the law yet would be more accurate. The government should have already stepped in to smack them down for anti-trust violations, but with the current pay to play admin I won’t be holding my breath.
Yeah they’re not hiding this in shell corps like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobashi_scheme. It’s out in the open for stupid investors to see and hype themselves over it.
The stock market is literally doing for these companies what Enron had to do for itself
They are also helping openAI build a 250 billion dollar datacenter
So is that 450 billion?
No it’s probably the 250b you mentioned and I was misremembering!
Yeah, Ed Zitron has been writing about this for over a year. It’s not exactly Arthur Anderson/Enron, but it sure as hell rhymes.
Good call on mentioning Ed and his thread of keeping tabs on the AI circle jerk. Good stuff there with him.
This seems like money laundering
Tip to tip.
and how much taxes from all those transactions?
Because if normal people does this they won’t have any money anymore at some points
Most countries tax companies on profit or dividends paid out, not revenue. Revenue-based taxation would defeat any industry that depends on another industry that depends on another industry.
Think about it this way: You want to build an electric car. You need to buy a battery pack. Now the company that builds your battery pack, they need refined lithium. The lithium refiner? Well, they need raw lithium.
Say mining the raw lithium costs 1000€ for a battery’s worth. Now say all the companies involved make ZERO profit. Revenue tax is 10%.
Raw lithium mining company needs to charge 1100€ instead of 1000€ because of the tax. Now the lithium refiner needs to charge the battery manufacturer 1210€ because, again, the tax. And you now get to buy the battery for 1331€ because of the tax. Customer has to pay 1461€ for the battery in the car.
Meanwhile another company starts up. They mine raw lithium, process it, build the battery and then build the car. They only ever get paid once, so revenue tax is only on that 1000€. Customer pays 1100€ for the battery in the car.
This is also why companies get VAT back and only the final consumer really pays VAT. Otherwise every company would have to make everything from scratch to stay competitive, because every transaction gets taxed.
TL;DR: We only tax the actual profit. If you pass one dollar back and forth a billion times, you don’t have to pay tax on a billion dollars in revenue, only if it ends up with the person who didn’t have it originally does that person have to pay tax on that one dollar.
Oh, zero. Actually, negative because of all the government money theyre wasting and eating and profitting from (privately, anyways. All of these companies bleed millions daily)
Well the joke is that openai burned that money, but its more complicated than that.
- Microsoft bought into openai, as in money for shares.
- Openai users burned tokens that were bought from Microsoft for money.
- After that deal Microsoft owns shares in openai and has a big customer that made them revenue for the compute that was used.
Don’t forget that there are potential downsides. Openai burns money like the paper it was printed on, so that investment in shares carries a lot of risk for Microsoft and its shareholders.
if both sides can’t “win” the “AI” race without each other, this strategic partnership is a net benefit for both as long as only one of both sides accepts potentially fatal levels of risk. The both have potential upside which is passed on the shareholders, which we can agree that those are mostly rich people. But so are the investors on all ends, so its never really been our money being passed around, but that of rich people.
And if we look at the share of paying customers of ai services on Lemmy, we can conclude that its even less “our” money. ;)
The money being passed around by the rich is 100% our money. We made them those profits.
Accounts it as revenue to who?
And nothing bad ever came of this…ever the end.
