Krugman is an economist, so he looks at the economics. When a physician looks at a patient, you probably would not be satisfied if they just said: “The patient is simply very old.” Even if that is objectively correct.

Most importantly, such a big picture answer doesn’t suggest any solution.

Do Americans know the history of Arlington? I was quite amazed to learn how it became a military cemetery. Not hanging Robert Lee and the other high-ranking traitors is perhaps the biggest single mistake in US history. He is still the highest ranking US soldier to ever betray his country, no?

It’s weird. They used to take such great pride in not being like the French.

Then again, they also used to think the Iraq War was a great idea (unlike those filthy French).

Do they even eat chocolate that taste like barf anymore? Man, if old Hershey was still around, he’d set them straight. Or the other thing. Either way, he’d do it decisively.

The President has no power over the interest rate. The interest rate is set by the Federal Reserve.

The first thing the nazis did, was purge the bureaucracy. Taking away guns was no concern, at all.

Privately owned guns played no significant role in the nazis’ rise to or hold on power. Anything else is simply marketing by american gun sellers.

Some of their victims hid, refused to give up their arms, and fought back. They didn’t survive.

About 10-15,000 jewish germans survived the holocaust by going underground in Germany. They were colloquially called U-Boote or Illegale. Of course, that has nothing to do with guns. Guns were, after all, handed out to any able-bodied male.

If guns were the answer to dealing with fascism and authoritarianism, germany never would have had the holocaust.

That is only partly true. Germans are only a small fraction of holocaust victims (<5%). The victims overwhelmingly came from eastern Europe, particularly Poland and the Soviet Union. The holocaust happened in the wake of the advancing Wehrmacht. A more far-sighted response to german war preparations would have made a difference. A lesson one must bear in mind in today’s world.

Unfortunately, the press releases are PR fluff. The EU’s publicity guys don’t work any differently than those of any major corporations.

I know parts of the AI act and may be able to answer questions about particular aspects.

Off the top of my head: 3 general problems.

It is simply a mistake to regulate software based on how it is made, rather than what it is used for. EG They ended up regulating chatbots in the same act as mass surveillance. I don’t think that helped, either. Hard to say for sure.

They ended up doing a lot of bad micromanaging. The training data for “high risk” AI must fulfill certain conditions. This is certainly going to increase costs, but it’s unclear if it will lead to any improvement. The sane thing would have been to define the desired performance. It’s a typical problem. People without technical knowledge demand things to be done a certain way, because they figure it will get them what they want, instead of saying what they want.

Finally, there’s the interference of existing industry. The copyright lobby got some stuff in there, that may or may not enable them to extract some free money. It will certainly harm European citizens by making development much harder than it needs to be.

When routine bites hard and ambitions are low

And resentment rides high but emotions won’t grow

And we’re changing our ways, taking different roads

Then disinformation will tear us apart again