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Aboutplants 1 days ago [-]
Oh no, they are going to learn that remote work is just as productive as in person work!
Valodim 23 hours ago [-]
Speak for yourself. It certainly isn't for me.
bel8 21 hours ago [-]
As long as you don't force everyone else to do the same, whatever works for you.
unified101 11 hours ago [-]
Being an employee is an exercize in force of all kinds (do the work, join the call, do this do that) . By it's very nature, in-office workspace is what people want, not butt in office. Somehow people believe the same force for work location is suddenly too much?
RTO is an expression of that. Best workers can do is vote with their employment.
red-iron-pine 22 hours ago [-]
"anecdotes are not data" bla bla bla
AuthAuth 19 hours ago [-]
Most of the stats show it being less productive for the company. But in my opinion its more efficient because the company prod takes a slight hit while the workers life productivity also goes up quite significantly.
doughnutstracks 1 days ago [-]
At first I read the title as a possible missile strike on Anthropic's office by a hostile actor.
ModernMech 24 hours ago [-]
At this point if news broke Anthropic’s office was bombed my first thought would be the US government. Didn’t they label the company a national security threat?
actsasbuffoon 22 hours ago [-]
The president, when asked about bond yields, said that the US military is “the ultimate intervention.”
We’re invading spreadsheets now. Anything is possible.
19 hours ago [-]
staticman2 23 hours ago [-]
The U.S. government wouldn't need to use bombs they could just send in the police.
throwa356262 22 hours ago [-]
Or ICE.
Half of the employees deported and a few shot dead just for good measures should be enough to bring Dario to the negotiations table.
red-iron-pine 22 hours ago [-]
inshallah
coredog64 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
wrash-qwtr 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
jamwil 12 hours ago [-]
Health insurance in America is—quite uniquely—the deep end of the pool in the whole capitalism v humanity conundrum. I think a lot of Americans feel that viscerally and the widespread support for Luigi was symbolic of how truly fucked up that country is in general.
geori 1 days ago [-]
Lol at "On secondary markets, investors have propelled the company to a $1.5 billion valuation."
jasonjmcghee 1 days ago [-]
typo? or did an editor see the original and say "trillion must be a typo"
busyant 7 hours ago [-]
For my amusement, I recently asked ChatGPT whether OpenAI and Anthropic were worth their proposed valuations or whether they'd be "kneecapped" by the Chinese models etc.
It gave me a long, detailed explanation which boiled down to, "Maybe Anthropic will be worth the 1T market cap if xyz happen, but unless something fundamentally changes w/ OpenAI, they are NOT worth anywhere near 1T"
Here's a quote from ChatGPT:
"And if I had $1 million that had to be invested today in either OpenAI at $852B or Anthropic at $965B, with a 5–7 year lockup: I'd put the entire $1 million into Anthropic. Not 60/40. 100/0 Anthropic."
irthomasthomas 1 days ago [-]
I imagine the logprob of b is much greater than t in this context for most models. So 'trillion' gets corrected to the more likely 'billion'.
mimischi 1 days ago [-]
Maybe the editor is from Germany DACH, or similar?). A trillion is a billion in that language.
womitt 1 days ago [-]
It's for the second grade htf algos
zarzavat 1 days ago [-]
Freudian slip.
BoingBoomTschak 20 hours ago [-]
Cue the Dr. Evil.
flohofwoe 1 days ago [-]
Most likely a typo (fixed by now), but in some (most?) non-English languages billion is the correct word for 10^12 instead of 10^9, usually the error happens when translating from English though, not into English.
cassianoleal 1 days ago [-]
> billion is the correct word for 10^12 instead of 10^9
Is it? In Portuguese it's thousand, million, billion, trillion... (Milhar, milhão, bilhão, trilhão, ...)
Same in Greek. It's "ekatommyrio" with a prefix of the order of magnitude "dis" from two for billions, "tris" from three for trillions, "tetrakis" from four for quadrillions and so on.
flohofwoe 1 days ago [-]
Apparently it's different between Portugal and Brazil? (e.g. Portugal => long-scale, Brazil => short-scale - but that's just what ChatGPT is telling me). E.g. maybe it's more of a 'Europe-except-UK vs Americas' thing?
Hardwired8976 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, in German for example.
francisofascii 24 hours ago [-]
The Social Network quote also needs an update. "a billion dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool.... A Trillion Dollars."
HeavyStorm 1 days ago [-]
Never heard of this... Any examples?
flohofwoe 1 days ago [-]
In German, 10^9 is a 'Milliarde', and a 'Billion' is 10^12.
The Wikipedia article has a nice map what countries use which convention (search for "Current Usage"):
> [...] giga- is always 10^9, which is 'billion' in short scale but 'milliard' in long scale.
kelvinjps10 1 days ago [-]
In Spanish it is that way
lukan 1 days ago [-]
Fixed it seems.
throwa356262 22 hours ago [-]
"The union representing those workers said that was news to them."
Smells like IRL hallucination...
tantalor 22 hours ago [-]
You're right! The union did not actually threaten to go on strike.
goryramsy 22 hours ago [-]
And that quiet failure was totally on me— and here’s why:
mawadev 1 days ago [-]
Bold moves and take from a company that values itself at $30T, maybe they should let claude do the security
jambalaya8 1 days ago [-]
sorta trenchant problem for big AI
zeafoamrun 1 days ago [-]
They should just give engineers PDWs and call it a day.
red-iron-pine 22 hours ago [-]
this is america. give them AR-15s.
you can trust them with AI code, you can trust them with a full-on rifle
vintermann 24 hours ago [-]
Pretty crazy. The security team denies there ever was a threat of a strike? And generally you do announce strike threats, it's kind of the whole point with strikes that your employer knows of the possibility.
Did Anthropic get "warned" about this strike by its own AI models?
ratelimitsteve 22 hours ago [-]
It's possible that they just took the state of contract negotiations as an implicit threat of a strike without waiting for the union to explicitly announce the threat.
red-iron-pine 22 hours ago [-]
I'm assuming something along the lines of:
"based upon the intercepted emails and language used in discussions with the union, we predict with 63% accuracy that they will strike within ~3 months"
vintermann 21 hours ago [-]
Well isn't that a damn terrible idea? Who convinced them that was a good idea? "We have a heard faint rumors of a whiff that you may one day threaten a strike, so we're gonna try insane overreaction as a tactic"
ratelimitsteve 21 hours ago [-]
a week of wfh from a company that's equipped to support remote work anyway and only wants in-office 25% of the time hardly qualifies as "insane overreaction". I'd says it's probably more along the lines of "a single email".
delduca 1 days ago [-]
They are going to work from home? now we will see AGI in next months!
bediger4000 1 days ago [-]
Wow, this is bad news. Without in-office collaboration, company culture will collapse. The organic moments of spontaneous synergy won't take place. Perhaps OpenAI or even xAI will take over as leading company. Grim.
ratelimitsteve 22 hours ago [-]
IDK what I would do if I was working and couldn't hear my coworker loudly "spontaneously collaborating" on the phone with the contractor installing his kitchen floor. At least I have an hour commute each way, $25/day in parking costs and another $20/day in food costs to comfort me.
red-iron-pine 22 hours ago [-]
$20? brah they're in San Fran. 20 covers their coffee.
ratelimitsteve 2 hours ago [-]
well, coffee seems to be the only thing left that isn't riddled with parasites and broken glass so it works out about even
chihuahua 22 hours ago [-]
Without the watercooler conversations, we are nothing. All is lost.
fluxusars 1 days ago [-]
"Claude, was this sarcasm?"
- You're absolutely right!
ReptileMan 1 days ago [-]
It is not as if they can't write encouraging prompts to mythos from everywhere.
dgellow 1 days ago [-]
Imagine a world where 20% of the world compute is allocated to cheerleader-agents encouraging the other agents, and that’s the actual secret recipe to build an AGI
24 hours ago [-]
bastard_op 1 days ago [-]
Claude, I need a strategy for defeating unions trying to up their rates, please research union defeating settlements done in the past 50 years and build a case against them to keep our rates at the lowest possible.
lbreakjai 1 days ago [-]
"You're a world class Pinkerton agent .."
Freedom2 1 days ago [-]
Make no mistakes.
ihsw 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
bbor 1 days ago [-]
The idea of Anthropic allowing a contractor to squeeze such a tiny cost center at such a massive PR cost right before their IPO is just an objective blunder, IMHO. They should've replied to that email with a quick "No, you will be negotiating with the union tomorrow morning. You maybe eventually saving millions right now could cost us literally billions."
kennywinker 1 days ago [-]
Strikes only happen when management has refused to negotiate in good faith already. Usually many times refused.
forestrywat 1 days ago [-]
I think the parent poster is saying, "management, get your fucking head on straight and negotiate properly".
alephnerd 1 days ago [-]
Ik the building intimately - it's not Anthroptic but the building's security company (which Anthropic does not own and is subleasing). SEIU is working to organize Allied Universal in California.
Support SEIU organizing them (their fighting the good fight in this case), but this specific article is clickbait.
forestrywat 1 days ago [-]
So you go to the building owner and say, "give them what they want or we walk." Security team probably doesn't want outrageous changes. Building owner probably just being greedy.
t098i3 1 days ago [-]
As I understand it, this union negotiation isn't with a single building, it's with multiple large staffing firms across California
alephnerd 1 days ago [-]
You can't in most cases. These buildings are owned by larger conglomerates and are out of scope of landlord-leasee negotiations especially as it's a sublease.
Allied United is one of the larger security augmentation firms in the nation, which makes is harder. For example, my Alma mater was secured by Allied Universal as well as a dedicated PD because the dedicated PD didn't want to be bag check for a library when they have been dealing with real crime (eg. A comrade in their sister PD across town's was shot by the Boston marathon bombers).
zmgsabst 1 days ago [-]
You absolutely can call them and make it clear that their playing games is causing you reputation damage ahead of an IPO — so you need that fixed.
A large conglomerate isn’t interested in pissing off a client because their subcontractor has a middle-manager playing fuck-fuck games with a union. That’s exactly the sort of business situation that executive communication can fix.
alephnerd 1 days ago [-]
The only relation Allied Universial employees and Anthropic has is that Anthropic is temporarily subleasing this specific office in Rincon Hill from another F500 before moving to nicer digs a couple blocks down, and that F500 has a contract with Allied Universal.
Like HOW HARD is this to get for everyone on here?!? When you take out a temporary sublease, what the management company's vendors do completely outside your negotiating scope.
All this is showing is further proof that almost no one on HN is from the Bay anymore.
forestrywat 12 hours ago [-]
There is a human who is negotiating against the union. Anthropic can find that human and apply leverage.
t098i3 29 minutes ago [-]
This isn't a Cyberpunk campaign book, their emails wouldn't be answered.
AnimalMuppet 1 days ago [-]
So Anthropic, because they don't own the building, is unable to solve this by throwing money at it? I find that amusing.
Except they can. Anthropic could just hire their own security for when the other guys go on strike.
mh- 1 days ago [-]
When I worked at a building in SF (where we leased, exactly like this situation) and SEIU demonstrated in front of the building, we were told to consider staying home just because we'd have to walk through the picket line.
It wasn't anything to do with whether we could have gotten our own (e.g.) security.
alephnerd 23 hours ago [-]
Exactly. And honestly, most of us in white collar industries and managerial roles are aligned with SEIU organizing Allied Universal - their "security guards" are undertrained, underpaid, and are basically left to fend for themselves by AU. They absolutely need to be unionized.
alephnerd 1 days ago [-]
Contractually, you cannot depending on the sublease, which is between the original owner (a F500) and I think JLL or CBRE, and even then is specifically veteeen JLL and Allied Universal.
Anthropic is anyhow leaving this specific building.
wonderwonder 1 days ago [-]
And there goes every single rational for having a security team at the disaster bunkers the billionaires are building
malfist 1 days ago [-]
Congratulations! Your head of security has been elected president of the bunker. For your protection, no further votes will be taken
derwiki 1 days ago [-]
They’ll be armed Boston Dynamics robots soon
jacquesm 23 hours ago [-]
The key is to look and act innocent and to throw them some batteries, then when they are concentrating on their food you skip right past. They can smell fear so that's the one thing you shouldn't feel while you're doing all this.
toomuchtodo 1 days ago [-]
Bunker busters are not picky, and can be safely delivered from altitude autonomously.
wrash-qwtr 1 days ago [-]
That is why you need The Boring Company to drill your private bunker beneath a granite mountain. No bunker buster is going to reach the middle of a Swiss tunnel.
jcranmer 1 days ago [-]
They'll thank you for digging your own grave and complete it for you by collapsing the entrance.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
Would be nice if this kind of hate energy was directed at politicians, the military-industrial complex, and faceless oil barons once in a while.
kridsdale1 1 days ago [-]
It has been for 120 years.
fragmede 24 hours ago [-]
Has it worked?
nathan_compton 1 days ago [-]
Why not all of them, you know?
GPerson 1 days ago [-]
You don’t think Anthropic belongs on that list? They’re working as hard as possible to plunder most of human creation and disturb all human life so that they can enrich themselves.
phoghed 1 days ago [-]
Personally I don’t really care where larpers direct their non action
GPerson 1 days ago [-]
Sees obvious capitalist revolution unfolding in society.
Ha! Look as these useless non-acting larpers!
phoghed 22 hours ago [-]
We have different definitions of obvious. They've yet to do a single thing of note. In fact, as of yet they have less balls and conviction than the Jan 6th retards.
1 days ago [-]
red-iron-pine 22 hours ago [-]
but not by the average citizen trying to desperately retain what shreds of democracy and control they have
toomuchtodo 22 hours ago [-]
Ukraine and Iran demonstrate what a shoe string budget can accomplish.
philipallstar 1 days ago [-]
Presumably they'll have stuff there the security team wants.
zbentley 1 days ago [-]
Like security guards' families.
Awful, but not without historical precedent.
somenameforme 1 days ago [-]
Which precedent?
Grunts under coercion has a rich history that's still ongoing, but these sort of guards are those that would have both weapons and the guarded in their direct vicinity. I can't think of any historic example where this wasn't the loyalest of the loyal types.
jcranmer 1 days ago [-]
There are plenty of people who have been killed by their own bodyguards, e.g., Indira Gandhi.
somenameforme 13 hours ago [-]
Yes, but in those cases - the assassinated generally trusted those who were assassinating them. If you're holding somebody's family hostage or otherwise coercing them, there's no trust and you're gonna get killed.
Grunts are regularly mistreated and coerced. You can kidnap people off the streets, throw them in a trench and make sure they don't run away by the presence of "motivational troops" in the rear (who kill their own side for fleeing) but you don't let those sort of troops anywhere remotely near the people responsible for their predicament for very obvious reasons, let alone when armed.
Tade0 1 days ago [-]
Fear the security guard who has nothing to lose.
philipallstar 1 days ago [-]
I did almost write that! But if disaster really strikes, then just resources will be useful.
stymaar 1 days ago [-]
And who guards the guards family?
These billionaires who have always relied on the power of the state for their security and asserting their property are absolutely delusional if they think they can keep it without it.
When states collapse, the one who emerge victorious aren't the well-mannered business people, it's the warlords (a.k.a. the heads of organized crime).
stronglikedan 1 days ago [-]
I mean, if you were already a security guard before the apocalypse, it would kind of make sense to find a billionaire bunker for you and your family, and just continue being a security guard in order to stay there. Whatever that entails, the alternative is probably so much worse.
deadbunny 1 days ago [-]
The security team have guns and aren't given a 2nd thought, kinda invisible even. They don't need to negotiate.
There have been plenty of times in history (almost all times) that physically weaker men have secured the loyalty of soldiers with wealth and influence during periods where strong centralized civic authorities did not exist.
js8 1 days ago [-]
But the soldiers didn't have the mobile phones then. This was possible by manipulation the information about reality those soldiers had.
For example, how Mallory can gain power over Alice and Bob who don't directly communicate.
First, Mallory tells Alice: "I am stronger than you. If you don't do what I say I'll kill you." So Alice decides to submit.
Then, Mallory takes Alice to Bob and says to him: "Together with Alice we are stronger than you, and kill you if you don't do what I want." So Bob submits.
This only works if Bob doesn't talk to Alice, otherwise they would together see the empty threat.
With more people, it becomes a bit trickier but hopefully you see how blocking communication helps to gain power over people. Often the blocking of communication is done through propaganda, e.g. Mallory might entice Alice and Bob to hate each other, so they wouldn't get together and figure he's the manipulator. Or Mallory might just kill someone randomly to motivate people not to talk to each other.
Anyway, this shows the importance of free speech (which is really a misnomer; it should be called a right to listen). If you can freely talk (and listen) to other people, you reduce your chances to being subjugated by someone.
(This is also why in a war, people are incentivized to dehumanize the other party and not to listen what they say, because together they could figure out that the real enemy are the war profiteers on both sides, colluding. And besides, killing is the most reliable way of silencing someone. That's why people should also universally reject killing - based on someone else's word - unless they are directly threatened themselves.)
applfanboysbgon 1 days ago [-]
Sorry, but I think you've kind of just dug yourself into some concept you think is neat but which doesn't really hold up. Like, this just doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all.
First, general power dynamics are in no way inherently predicated on misinforming people. That can help, but it's really quite a lot simpler than that: A commands B and C. A approaches D and says get in line or we'll kill you. D says OK or dies. ABCD approach E and repeat this process. The person with the most connections, actual real connections, wins. The challenge to building more connections than A is not having a cell phone, but rather attempting to find connections who aren't truly loyal to A, because anyone who is loyal will out you and have you killed for treason. Indeed cell phones make this harder, not easier, because they leave a paper trail of evidence that you were attempting to betray the existing group.
Second, mobile phones do nothing to change this dynamic in favor of the weak, and in fact, are one of the most powerful tools for cementing existing power structures ever created. They are both the ultimate channel to propagate misinformation, and are also 24/7 surveillance devices that will betray any attempt to conspire against those in power. If you want to foster rebellion against your evil overlords, your organization absolutely cannot use phones without giving themselves away, which puts you at a massive technical disadvantage. And even if you try to forbid members from using phones, they're so deeply ingrained into daily life that somebody will inevitably slip up and give the surveillance state info on your planned rebellion. I would go so far as to say we can expect to never see a successful rebellion against anybody with the level of surveillance as the US, in our lifetimes.
bladeacidic 24 hours ago [-]
The end of Covid in China is interesting. Even the CCP, and their level of surveillance and control, were unable to maintain control of an entire population fed up with sheltering in place. If there aren't fair and open elections in 2028, it will no longer be the United States of America.
jltsiren 23 hours ago [-]
And there have been plenty of times when the armed thugs have staged a coup and overthrown their masters.
In the absence of civic order, personal relationships between the elites are what matters. Your thugs can easily take everything you own, but they don't inherit your relationships. A billionaire in an isolated self-sufficient bunker has nothing to offer to thugs who are already inside. A billionaire in a bunker that relies on trade with other nearby bunkers is in a much stronger position.
sailfast 1 days ago [-]
Don’t think those folks are union…
bpodgursky 1 days ago [-]
If civilization collapses, the billionaires are correctly assuming the security team will stop following SEIU strike authorization protocol.
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
They are perhaps incorrectly assuming the security team with all the weaponry will remain loyal to them.
john_strinlai 1 days ago [-]
that's probably dependent on the specific genre of collapse we get to enjoy
bpodgursky 1 days ago [-]
Sure. Who knows.
But, historically, strongmen/chieftains have not had incredible trouble keeping their goons under control. Most threats from from palace coups not popular revolt. Most normal people in uncertain times like order and aren't going to flip the table on a system that gives them stability, food and shelter.
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
> But, historically, strongmen/chieftains have not had incredible trouble keeping their goons under control.
Sure. But some of them seize power from others on their way up via force.
nemomarx 1 days ago [-]
Would "one of you promises the security team better conditions if they kill a rival" not be how palace coups usually work?
GolfPopper 1 days ago [-]
My recollection from Roman history is that was certainly a part of it, but that 'I command the palace guard, so I should command the empire' also played a large role.
stymaar 1 days ago [-]
> historically, strongmen/chieftains have
Yup, but those aren't the same people as the one who get to become tech billionaires.
sensanaty 18 hours ago [-]
And these meek little SV nerds are strongmen?
dayvid 1 days ago [-]
Just pay them well enough. Or pay the people at the top a good amount of money to keep the people below in check and have some hope you can rise to the top for a small portion of the people.
inigyou 1 days ago [-]
If civilization collapses, money is useless
fullshark 1 days ago [-]
Pay them with chocolate rations or higher status bunk beds.
ihsw 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
creatune 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
mandarinclips 1 days ago [-]
Everyone should boycott Anthropic and stop using Claude. I'm starting with myself.
kridsdale1 1 days ago [-]
That isn’t very load-bearing of you.
vizzier 1 days ago [-]
Careful, he might have a blast radius.
abrenuntio 1 days ago [-]
Belt and suspenders protection it is.
rfgplk 1 days ago [-]
You're wasting more of their money by using it. I've personally siphoned probably a few million in electricity costs alone from them while giving them pennies.
RTO is an expression of that. Best workers can do is vote with their employment.
We’re invading spreadsheets now. Anything is possible.
Half of the employees deported and a few shot dead just for good measures should be enough to bring Dario to the negotiations table.
It gave me a long, detailed explanation which boiled down to, "Maybe Anthropic will be worth the 1T market cap if xyz happen, but unless something fundamentally changes w/ OpenAI, they are NOT worth anywhere near 1T"
Here's a quote from ChatGPT:
"And if I had $1 million that had to be invested today in either OpenAI at $852B or Anthropic at $965B, with a 5–7 year lockup: I'd put the entire $1 million into Anthropic. Not 60/40. 100/0 Anthropic."
Is it? In Portuguese it's thousand, million, billion, trillion... (Milhar, milhão, bilhão, trilhão, ...)
The Wikipedia article has a nice map what countries use which convention (search for "Current Usage"):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Specifically:
> [...] giga- is always 10^9, which is 'billion' in short scale but 'milliard' in long scale.
you can trust them with AI code, you can trust them with a full-on rifle
Did Anthropic get "warned" about this strike by its own AI models?
"based upon the intercepted emails and language used in discussions with the union, we predict with 63% accuracy that they will strike within ~3 months"
- You're absolutely right!
Support SEIU organizing them (their fighting the good fight in this case), but this specific article is clickbait.
Allied United is one of the larger security augmentation firms in the nation, which makes is harder. For example, my Alma mater was secured by Allied Universal as well as a dedicated PD because the dedicated PD didn't want to be bag check for a library when they have been dealing with real crime (eg. A comrade in their sister PD across town's was shot by the Boston marathon bombers).
A large conglomerate isn’t interested in pissing off a client because their subcontractor has a middle-manager playing fuck-fuck games with a union. That’s exactly the sort of business situation that executive communication can fix.
Like HOW HARD is this to get for everyone on here?!? When you take out a temporary sublease, what the management company's vendors do completely outside your negotiating scope.
All this is showing is further proof that almost no one on HN is from the Bay anymore.
Except they can. Anthropic could just hire their own security for when the other guys go on strike.
It wasn't anything to do with whether we could have gotten our own (e.g.) security.
Anthropic is anyhow leaving this specific building.
Ha! Look as these useless non-acting larpers!
Awful, but not without historical precedent.
Grunts under coercion has a rich history that's still ongoing, but these sort of guards are those that would have both weapons and the guarded in their direct vicinity. I can't think of any historic example where this wasn't the loyalest of the loyal types.
Grunts are regularly mistreated and coerced. You can kidnap people off the streets, throw them in a trench and make sure they don't run away by the presence of "motivational troops" in the rear (who kill their own side for fleeing) but you don't let those sort of troops anywhere remotely near the people responsible for their predicament for very obvious reasons, let alone when armed.
These billionaires who have always relied on the power of the state for their security and asserting their property are absolutely delusional if they think they can keep it without it.
When states collapse, the one who emerge victorious aren't the well-mannered business people, it's the warlords (a.k.a. the heads of organized crime).
For example, how Mallory can gain power over Alice and Bob who don't directly communicate.
First, Mallory tells Alice: "I am stronger than you. If you don't do what I say I'll kill you." So Alice decides to submit.
Then, Mallory takes Alice to Bob and says to him: "Together with Alice we are stronger than you, and kill you if you don't do what I want." So Bob submits.
This only works if Bob doesn't talk to Alice, otherwise they would together see the empty threat.
With more people, it becomes a bit trickier but hopefully you see how blocking communication helps to gain power over people. Often the blocking of communication is done through propaganda, e.g. Mallory might entice Alice and Bob to hate each other, so they wouldn't get together and figure he's the manipulator. Or Mallory might just kill someone randomly to motivate people not to talk to each other.
Anyway, this shows the importance of free speech (which is really a misnomer; it should be called a right to listen). If you can freely talk (and listen) to other people, you reduce your chances to being subjugated by someone.
(This is also why in a war, people are incentivized to dehumanize the other party and not to listen what they say, because together they could figure out that the real enemy are the war profiteers on both sides, colluding. And besides, killing is the most reliable way of silencing someone. That's why people should also universally reject killing - based on someone else's word - unless they are directly threatened themselves.)
First, general power dynamics are in no way inherently predicated on misinforming people. That can help, but it's really quite a lot simpler than that: A commands B and C. A approaches D and says get in line or we'll kill you. D says OK or dies. ABCD approach E and repeat this process. The person with the most connections, actual real connections, wins. The challenge to building more connections than A is not having a cell phone, but rather attempting to find connections who aren't truly loyal to A, because anyone who is loyal will out you and have you killed for treason. Indeed cell phones make this harder, not easier, because they leave a paper trail of evidence that you were attempting to betray the existing group.
Second, mobile phones do nothing to change this dynamic in favor of the weak, and in fact, are one of the most powerful tools for cementing existing power structures ever created. They are both the ultimate channel to propagate misinformation, and are also 24/7 surveillance devices that will betray any attempt to conspire against those in power. If you want to foster rebellion against your evil overlords, your organization absolutely cannot use phones without giving themselves away, which puts you at a massive technical disadvantage. And even if you try to forbid members from using phones, they're so deeply ingrained into daily life that somebody will inevitably slip up and give the surveillance state info on your planned rebellion. I would go so far as to say we can expect to never see a successful rebellion against anybody with the level of surveillance as the US, in our lifetimes.
In the absence of civic order, personal relationships between the elites are what matters. Your thugs can easily take everything you own, but they don't inherit your relationships. A billionaire in an isolated self-sufficient bunker has nothing to offer to thugs who are already inside. A billionaire in a bunker that relies on trade with other nearby bunkers is in a much stronger position.
But, historically, strongmen/chieftains have not had incredible trouble keeping their goons under control. Most threats from from palace coups not popular revolt. Most normal people in uncertain times like order and aren't going to flip the table on a system that gives them stability, food and shelter.
Sure. But some of them seize power from others on their way up via force.
Yup, but those aren't the same people as the one who get to become tech billionaires.