Guymon Adams

Ten years ago today, I sat at a conference table finalizing the sale of my company. We had just wrapped up a 30 day transition period: transferring vendor lines, signing over leases, settling outstanding payables; all the grueling operational details that come with a small business acquisition. My CPA and lawyer sat beside me. Their counterparts sat across from us. Then came the moment: a check slid across the table. It was the largest amount of money I had ever seen in my life. Over a decade of work culminated in that single piece of paper. It represented 7 day workweeks and bell to bell shifts. Sleepless nights during the financial crisis. Countless hours pacing the floor, brainstorming solutions to every minor and major disaster that hits a growing business. It represented the thrill of huge wins and the crushing weight of hard losses. The months of celebration when business was booming, and the lean times spent writing hundreds of paychecks to everyone but myself. It was the arguments with bankers when we needed capital, and the courting from those same bankers when we succeeded. It was dealing with insurance claims from theft and vandalism and natural causes. It was watching with a smile as our team enjoyed the annual Christmas party and opened their year end bonuses. It was having to deliver bad news - like health insurance premiums skyrocketing under the now implemented "Affordable" Care Act - and then delivering the good news that the company was going to cover nearly all of the price hike out of its own pocket (even if we had no power over the now higher deductibles). It was watching employees buy their first homes, get married, and start families on the back of something we all built from scratch. And it was the quiet tears when our best laid plans fell apart. That is the life of a real entrepreneur. That is what it means to actually contribute to the economy and create real jobs. Thirty minutes later, the attorneys left. It was just me and my CPA, making final tax preparations. He swung his laptop around to show me the final ledger. I looked at the number. Nearly half of that record breaking check wasn't going to a church, a charity, or the family of an employee we had lost. It wasn't going to support team members welcoming new children into the world, or to any cause of measure or merit. It was going to a cold government. A government I had watched launch forever wars built on lies. A government that bailed out Wall Street while local creditors slashed my credit lines - even though we had never missed a single payment. A government that repeatedly tried to crush my industry with regulations written by massive corporations to keep small, independent operators from climbing the ladder to the tops of the towers they occupied and planned on occupying alone. That government never offered me advice. It never hired an employee. It never took a call on vacation because a store got broken into. It never had to sit at a little brother's graduation and answer a phone to hear that an employee had just been killed in a tragic accident. Nearly half. Taken. Gone. Income taxes are immoral. They also... happen to be the worst way to fund any government... if you want it ACTUALLY answerable to "we the people". In Liberty, -Michael

This is cool

When passion meets skill! The C64 is 44 years old, yet it still has one of the most dedicated and skilled user bases, even decades later. It never ceases to amaze me what they get out of that machine. Jack Tramiel would be smiling if he saw this.

There are intelligent defenses of AI but this is just not one of them. This is nothing like the invention of the printing press or the automobile or the airplane or anything else. AI is not merely a faster and more efficient tool for humans to use (as was the case with the printing press and cars etc). The whole point of AI is that it takes human out of the equation entirely. Horse and buggy drivers had to get used to driving cars instead. AI at scale means nobody drives at all. That category of job is not simply changed. It’s eliminated. Now repeat that process across the entire economy. Now add in RSI and humans don’t even make or train AI anymore. AI just does everything. Thats the concern and it’s obviously, at the very least, legitimate and rational. The pro-AI side relentlessly strawmanning and pretending not to understand the very basic point being made is, to say the least, frustrating.

An important message from Current Affairs editorial - on why our new union contract comprehensively bans the use of AI writing and art:

Adding piano solos to songs that don’t need them