r/economy • u/windemotions • 12h ago
Bernie Sanders: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/opinion/artificial-intelligence-bernie-sanders.html10
u/SupremelyUneducated 11h ago
Bernie practically always nails the problem and fumbles the solution. The local county or state should own and operate most data centers as the utilities they are. Weights need to be transparent, not a commodity of corps to manipulate the public.
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u/128-NotePolyVA 10h ago
The federal government is actively subsidizing and accelerating the U.S. AI build‑out across R&D, data centers, chips, cloud infrastructure, workforce, and federal AI adoption. The support is large, multi‑agency, and growing every year.
While Washington has stopped short of owning shares in the AI software developers, the federal government owns significant shares in the hardware and infrastructure.
In this regard, the US tax payer should expect to see a return in investment. How can profits from this AI venture benefit the very working class people it aspires to leave unemployed?
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u/windemotions 11h ago
I worry about a race to the bottom. That's already happening in the US.
Under your system, counties compete for data centers by reducing their standards and offering companies tax breaks or even subsidies.
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u/SupremelyUneducated 11h ago
I think you missed the 'own and operated' part. Seems like you're describing the status quo. Imo a lot, maybe most, of the current super scaler hardware should be forfeit, either for profiting off of monopoly practices, or for profitting from illegally acquired governement data.
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u/NOLA-Bronco 10h ago
Who is forcing every county and every state to own any and all data centers built within their borders?
And why is this a more effective and efficient path than just having a controlling stake in these companies to make sure you have veto power when company decisions don't align with larger national social goals?
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u/windemotions 9h ago
Ah ok, you're saying you want to outlaw the private ownership of data centers.
I guess? I don't really see that as my goal. But that might beat the status quo? I'm not sure.
I will say, I do want to outlaw a few things in the US, like private health insurance.
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u/SupremelyUneducated 8h ago
I don't want to outlaw private ownership of data centers. I want some state owned data centers, especially when they are competing for and occupying local resources or causing local hardships. And having transparent weights. The modern corp model often compartmentalizes who actually knows what the weights are, often with the CEO being the only real decision maker, to protect shareholders from responsibility. I don't want to end private development of models, the market is very good for that.
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u/windemotions 8h ago
Ok, then I don't follow the mechanism. Do you want the county to decide what gets built? And if a state wants to build data centers they can. Is that the status quo? I guess currently states are not allowed to compete with private businesses so that would be a good change.
In the original piece, I can understand Bernie's plan to get from here to a better system. A one-time 50% tax on shares.
It doesn't affect profits or anything, so markets can continue to develop models.
Why is your approach better?
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u/Unusual_Specialist 7h ago edited 2h ago
I actually agree with this. My belief is AI access should be a public utility not a private luxury.
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u/acousticentropy 4h ago
Literally this. It’s been built off the cognitive labor of the public going back since writing has been invented practically… now it’s time we democratize it.
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u/numba1cyberwarrior 1h ago
It's literally an emerging technology with massive competition. On what planet would it make economic sense to make it a utility?
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u/MossyMollusc 6h ago
The fuck bernie?! How about we dont support data centers that are built off of STOLEN DATA and HURTS THE TOWNS THEY'RE BUILT IN
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u/windemotions 6h ago
Well the problem with democracy is some people want the data centers.
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u/MossyMollusc 6h ago
Yeah and people are still racist and want to take away rights from people. Doesnt make it right
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u/windemotions 6h ago
You're saying using AI to code faster is equivalent to racism?
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u/MossyMollusc 6h ago
No. Im saying democratic voices that are in favor of extrapolating oppression will always be present.
Llm software isnt the issue. The issue is LLM software built by specific people and them doing so was done by hurting innocent people from stealing their art or information, to spreading propaganda, to erroding the market for computer parts and hurting the mining and exploitation on other nations like Africa for those parts, to hurting water and ecosystems.
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u/windemotions 6h ago
How does LLM use compare to eating beef, in your view?
Obviously eating beef destroys the environment and requires massive amounts of resources. But people like it.
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u/MossyMollusc 3h ago
Im against industrialization, especially in food and meat. Im not against meat, just how we maintain our destructive market of it
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u/windemotions 2h ago
Would you feel better about the meat industry if there was social ownership and social governance and more democracy?
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u/DanimalPlays 2h ago
No no, 100% of them. They are entirely built off our tax dollars. AI sounds belong to us.
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u/MDWST-RBLL 7h ago
Just a quick search:
The free float, the percentage of shares traded freely on the market rather than being held by insiders, founders, or governments, for these technology companies is as follows:
Intel: approx. 99.5% Nvidia: approx. 96% Amazon: approx. 91% Alphabet (Google): approx. 89% Meta Platforms (Facebook): approx. 86% Tesla: approx. 75%
So what does Bernie want?!
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u/windemotions 6h ago
Public in this context means owned by all people equally, as opposed to shares owned by private individuals.
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u/MDWST-RBLL 6h ago
Oh got it. That means socialism?
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u/windemotions 6h ago
No, socialism is usually defined as over 60%. So it's still capitalism. Just with more democracy.
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u/MDWST-RBLL 6h ago
Wtf?! Where did you get this number from? starting at 25.1% the government would have a blocking minority and with 50.1% it would have majority stake, which would be considered absolute power. What are the 60% you’re talking about?
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u/windemotions 6h ago edited 6h ago
Well the US is over 25% already...
Cuba is only 64%.
If you're saying the threshold should be 50.1% that means Norway and a bunch of other countries are socialist.
With the 60% threshold it's Cuba, China, Vietnam, North Korea.
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u/MDWST-RBLL 6h ago
Don’t mean to offend you, but where did you get those numbers from? That would be very interesting to research for me.
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u/windemotions 5h ago
No problem. I'm just using government revenue as a share of GDP in this case. That represents state control of the economy (nationalization of income).
But you can also use the percent of the assets owned by the government. For example, Norway's government owns 75% of the national non-housing wealth. So Norway is perhaps socialist under that definition.
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u/SympatheticThriller 12h ago
The binary code on that flag is just random ones and zeros, which feels appropriate for a proposal that hasn't thought through how you'd actually implement public ownership of companies that need to move fast and iterate constantly. Public boards are notoriously slow at making decisions, and AI development is the opposite of that environment.
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u/windemotions 12h ago
Which sovereign wealth fund do you think would be the best fit for AI investment?
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u/SympatheticThriller 11h ago
Sovereign wealth funds are structured for long-term returns on existing assets, not for making rapid technical decisions about model architecture or hiring engineering talent, which is the actual bottleneck in AI right now.
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u/windemotions 11h ago
I think we are talking past each other. Are governance and ownership the same thing? Typically in the US, there's shareholders, a board, and executives. And they each play different roles.
Do you think the public should be shareholders?
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u/NOLA-Bronco 10h ago
This is literally a scaled down, more hands off version of what China does.....
Do you think China has lacked innovation?
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u/SympatheticThriller 9h ago
China innovates plenty, but mostly through state direction and long timelines on strategic bets, which works when you're building infrastructure or semiconductors but falls apart when you need rapid experimentation and failure cycles like AI requires.
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u/NOLA-Bronco 8h ago
They are the leading nation by quite a lot in terms of EV's, solar, wind, GPS, and actually leveraging AI in ways beyond inflating a LLM bubble on the hopes of deskilling workers and rent seeking, instead creating things like the most sophisticated and efficient supply chain in the world to the point they are opening up dark factories with near perfect quality control.
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u/jh937hfiu3hrhv9 11h ago
If there were not such a massive disparity of wealth the public could own shares of actual stock that could give them a voice.