3 ms·

How are resources allocated in this utopia?

fighterpilot 5y ago
My personal guess is - assuming that democracy is in tact, redistribution will be voted in with landslide support. In a hypothetical future where almost nobody can compete with an AGI and 90% of voters find themselves completely useless in the economy, the proportion of voters who are against redistribution will drop precipitously.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  Then what? Everyone is allocated the same by the state? A society where no-one has any function to society and where the state allocates resources to individuals sounds more dystopian than utopian to me...
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    I was merely stating what I expect to happen, not what I want. It sounds pretty bad to me as well. Not worse than poverty, but meaningless and boring otherwise. Some people will make their own meaning, but many won't.
    - warent 5y ago
      Going off on a tangent here, but I'm curious to know what would be meaningless and boring about it. This would permanently solve the first two foundations of Maslow's hierarchy of needs so people can focus on the top three. It could be argued that the truth is actually the reverse: it would enable most people to find a much deeper meaning, while only an exclusive few (probably mostly pathological people, like sociopaths and narcissists) won't.
      - fighterpilot 5y ago
        You're possibly right, but do people who inherit millions or win the lottery strike you as particularly happy after 10 years? Admittedly, I only have anecdotal data on that.
        danaris 5y ago
        That's not generally a good measure, because a) the people who play the lottery tend to be poorer, and b) poorer people tend to have poorer financial literacy/education. This means that they don't know what to do with that massive windfall, they manage it poorly or are taken advantage of, and end up unhappy. And the ones who do know what to do with it tend to do very boring things (set up iron-clad structured annuities or something, I imagine—I don't claim to have enough financial education to do it well myself!), and we don't hear about them because "guy won $500m 20 years ago, is living a comfortable but unremarkable life now" doesn't sell papers. Note that this is also very different from how a UBI would affect people, because that would be moderate amounts of money regularly for life (y'know...rather like an iron-clad structured annuity); there's no way to "blow it" and end up with nothing. People who inherit very large sums of money, but are not themselves born into wealth, are so rare as to be essentially a myth. There certainly aren't enough of them to make a reasonably rigorous sample size for a scientific study.
        Can_Not 5y ago
        The ones that were able to keep their anonymity and didn't engage in fiscally irresponsible behavior like drug purchases and $200k+ vehicles are probably very happy after 10 years.
    - JohnPrine 5y ago
      Do you really think the people who wouldn't make their own meaning are finding tons of purpose in their current jobs?
      - fighterpilot 5y ago
        I might be wrong: https://users.nber.org/~confer/2001/midmf01/oswald.pdf https://users.nber.org/~confer/2001/midmf01/oswald.pdf

My personal guess is - assuming that democracy is in tact, redistribution will be voted in with landslide support. In a hypothetical future where almost nobody can compete with an AGI and 90% of voters find themselves completely useless in the economy, the proportion of voters who are against redistribution will drop precipitously.

mytailorisrich 5y ago
Then what? Everyone is allocated the same by the state? A society where no-one has any function to society and where the state allocates resources to individuals sounds more dystopian than utopian to me...
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  I was merely stating what I expect to happen, not what I want. It sounds pretty bad to me as well. Not worse than poverty, but meaningless and boring otherwise. Some people will make their own meaning, but many won't.
  - warent 5y ago
    Going off on a tangent here, but I'm curious to know what would be meaningless and boring about it. This would permanently solve the first two foundations of Maslow's hierarchy of needs so people can focus on the top three. It could be argued that the truth is actually the reverse: it would enable most people to find a much deeper meaning, while only an exclusive few (probably mostly pathological people, like sociopaths and narcissists) won't.
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      You're possibly right, but do people who inherit millions or win the lottery strike you as particularly happy after 10 years? Admittedly, I only have anecdotal data on that.
      - danaris 5y ago
        That's not generally a good measure, because a) the people who play the lottery tend to be poorer, and b) poorer people tend to have poorer financial literacy/education. This means that they don't know what to do with that massive windfall, they manage it poorly or are taken advantage of, and end up unhappy. And the ones who do know what to do with it tend to do very boring things (set up iron-clad structured annuities or something, I imagine—I don't claim to have enough financial education to do it well myself!), and we don't hear about them because "guy won $500m 20 years ago, is living a comfortable but unremarkable life now" doesn't sell papers. Note that this is also very different from how a UBI would affect people, because that would be moderate amounts of money regularly for life (y'know...rather like an iron-clad structured annuity); there's no way to "blow it" and end up with nothing. People who inherit very large sums of money, but are not themselves born into wealth, are so rare as to be essentially a myth. There certainly aren't enough of them to make a reasonably rigorous sample size for a scientific study.
      - Can_Not 5y ago
        The ones that were able to keep their anonymity and didn't engage in fiscally irresponsible behavior like drug purchases and $200k+ vehicles are probably very happy after 10 years.
  - JohnPrine 5y ago
    Do you really think the people who wouldn't make their own meaning are finding tons of purpose in their current jobs?
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      I might be wrong: https://users.nber.org/~confer/2001/midmf01/oswald.pdf https://users.nber.org/~confer/2001/midmf01/oswald.pdf