4 ms·

Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future?" Specifically deals with the economic (monetary or information) contraction that happens with these events. It is a book e

Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future?" Specifically deals with the economic (monetary or information) contraction that happens with these events. It is a book everyone of us should read so we may have an active role in choosing an expansion rather than contraction of wealth. The disruption these AI systems will cause along with increasing concentrations of wealth away from the middle classes is worrying, but as humans we can engineer a humanist outcome. Sadly I think greed will win, as is human.

jeffreygoesto 4y ago
The typical HN crowd is convinced to be on the winning side. I am convinced this will turn out to be wrong as we all are part of the middle class that is slowly boiled to death like a frog. We actually build the cooker ourselves right now.
- drowsspa 4y ago
  Yeah, rich people needed us, what happens when they don't anymore? I think that the rise in executive's pay is a preview of what will happen.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    What actually is a "rich person", can you define it? If there is no economy, no jobs, no taxes being paid, there are no "rich people". Rich people are only rich in relation to poor people. So if there are no poorer people, there are no rich?
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      "Rich" is the wrong word. "Wealthy" is a better one. But even more meaningful is "owners". Or "capitalists" -- people who own capital. Ultimately both amount to control over resources and their allocation. Factories, land, even human beings. And that's "the economy" -- the productive aspects of society. Which in our model of political-economics, are privately owned and managed by individuals and their corporate conglomerations. "Rich person" is short hand for all of this.
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  I'm not so sure. There's no point be rich if your money has no economy. There's no point being powerful in an environment where you can't wield it. Both require a middle class. While Lanier paints a bleak picture at times of a probable mechanism and outcome, there are plenty of counter examples of capitalism seeking equilibrium while also ensuring stable wealth disparity. I'm in the "not sure" camp, and though things can be scary, it sure is interesting.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Unfortunately, I think you only need to look at the rest of the world, outside of Europe and the Americas (and parts of Asia), to see how a "typical" society gets structured without a prosperous "middle class." That, and look at history on a broader scale (centuries, not decades) and see that the era we're in now is a historical aberration and it's already returning to norm. The post-WWII structure of things in the west -- with a fairly well-off professional tier in the working class and "petit bourgeois" small business tier that is politically moderate -- has been in decline since the 70s. After the collapse of the USSR, the decline of organized labour, and other factors, there has been less pressure/thread on large capital to make the necessary welfare-state accommodations. Things have started to look more like what is the actual historical norm: a powerful land/factory/resource owning minority and a largely impoverished (or at least very vulnerable) working class underneath and a huge security apparatus built around maintaining that order. As in all things in the last 100 years, the United States is at the vanguard of this.
    - sirsinsalot 4y ago
      That's a fine view if you think history is doomed to repeat itself, but the times we live in now are not the times of then. What I mean is, I think that your take is one take, not fact.
      - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        That's fair, and I'd prefer it not be fact. I just think there's a constant struggle to stop it (power concentration) from becoming reality, and requires people to intervene in the political process to alter that trajectory. I think there's value in seeing the post-WWII structure of things as being the result of struggle, not automatically intrinsic to capitalism itself.

jeffreygoesto 4y ago

The typical HN crowd is convinced to be on the winning side. I am convinced this will turn out to be wrong as we all are part of the middle class that is slowly boiled to death like a frog. We actually build the cooker ourselves right now.

drowsspa 4y ago
Yeah, rich people needed us, what happens when they don't anymore? I think that the rise in executive's pay is a preview of what will happen.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  What actually is a "rich person", can you define it? If there is no economy, no jobs, no taxes being paid, there are no "rich people". Rich people are only rich in relation to poor people. So if there are no poorer people, there are no rich?
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    "Rich" is the wrong word. "Wealthy" is a better one. But even more meaningful is "owners". Or "capitalists" -- people who own capital. Ultimately both amount to control over resources and their allocation. Factories, land, even human beings. And that's "the economy" -- the productive aspects of society. Which in our model of political-economics, are privately owned and managed by individuals and their corporate conglomerations. "Rich person" is short hand for all of this.
sirsinsalot 4y ago
I'm not so sure. There's no point be rich if your money has no economy. There's no point being powerful in an environment where you can't wield it. Both require a middle class. While Lanier paints a bleak picture at times of a probable mechanism and outcome, there are plenty of counter examples of capitalism seeking equilibrium while also ensuring stable wealth disparity. I'm in the "not sure" camp, and though things can be scary, it sure is interesting.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Unfortunately, I think you only need to look at the rest of the world, outside of Europe and the Americas (and parts of Asia), to see how a "typical" society gets structured without a prosperous "middle class." That, and look at history on a broader scale (centuries, not decades) and see that the era we're in now is a historical aberration and it's already returning to norm. The post-WWII structure of things in the west -- with a fairly well-off professional tier in the working class and "petit bourgeois" small business tier that is politically moderate -- has been in decline since the 70s. After the collapse of the USSR, the decline of organized labour, and other factors, there has been less pressure/thread on large capital to make the necessary welfare-state accommodations. Things have started to look more like what is the actual historical norm: a powerful land/factory/resource owning minority and a largely impoverished (or at least very vulnerable) working class underneath and a huge security apparatus built around maintaining that order. As in all things in the last 100 years, the United States is at the vanguard of this.
  - sirsinsalot 4y ago
    That's a fine view if you think history is doomed to repeat itself, but the times we live in now are not the times of then. What I mean is, I think that your take is one take, not fact.
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      That's fair, and I'd prefer it not be fact. I just think there's a constant struggle to stop it (power concentration) from becoming reality, and requires people to intervene in the political process to alter that trajectory. I think there's value in seeing the post-WWII structure of things as being the result of struggle, not automatically intrinsic to capitalism itself.