Is it at all plausible that for-profit prisons are lobbying to make more people starve? This explanation seems motivated by partisanship.

Why isn’t there a government program providing extremely easy access to basic food? (US)

I imagine that it would be incredibly cheap to provide easy, no-questions-asked access to food that is somewhat nutritious yet low status and not desirable (old bread, red delicious apples, etc.)

SNAP has a large admin overhead, and this could easily supplement it.

Interesting, but it seems like this has been "a thing" for a month? I do wish I could be a bit further ahead for things like this.

True. I've heard statistics that billionaires drive F-150s the most. Mass-market cars will have better software, reliability, etc. than sport brands, and I imagine that phones work the same. Of course, that still doesn't address the fact that sport brands exist at all, which isn't the case for phones. I do think, however, that I would have trouble thinking of a >5% improvement over owning the latest Pro/Pro Max/Air/Fold/Flip/Ultra/Mini phone with backups/regular replacement. My best guess is status via an artistic design?

I would note that the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 is ~2.5k (1TB edition). A S25 Edge + S25 Ultra + Z Flip + Z Fold + 17 Pro + 17 Pro Max + Air + iPad Mini (cellular), all at highest specs, without losing your phone or buying Applecare, is $11,966/yr. Obviously, few people actually buy all of these, but I have met tons of people who have 3 or more of the above.

If a fully-aligned ASI exists, then whatever happens will be strictly better than what currently exists, because it is easy to have what currently exists keep existing. ASI is very, very good at what it does, by definition. If what it would build would be bad because it is 'fake', etc. it would not build it, and instead build something that is not bad for this reason.

I have heard some about Wireless Application Protocol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol) having some similar features and people not liking them. The ringtone industry used this essentially to charge people high fees on products that consumers were not aware of (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamba!#Controversy). Carriers getting a commission on services sold this way likely caused a lot of the problem, so this could be important to avoid in a similar implementation. Great post!

I do 

You didn’t address replacing creatives. Was that relevant to your point?

 u/Ignislason is banned here on LW for AI use.