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> What happens in an economy when machines can do most tasks? We invent new things for people to do. As we have time immemorial. What happens to clergymen when
by Nadya 4y ago
> What happens in an economy when machines can do most tasks?
We invent new things for people to do. As we have time immemorial. What happens to clergymen when nobody has faith in a religion? They find other things to do than preach.
> What happens to power structures when people become a cost rather than a benefit?
If you want to look at this pessimistically - a good portion of the world's population can already be considered a cost and are a net economic negative on the privileged people's ability to hoard even more insane amounts of wealth. We've, thankfully, decided that mass genocide of impoverished people is inhumane and humanitarian efforts are instead created to try and improve their lives. Even a pessimistic take that the humanitarian efforts only being done to create more workers doesn't hold up given a cost/benefit analysis. More money is invested than could ever be extracted again - and yet we continue investing.
Maybe instead of filling our lives being paid to dig holes so that others can be paid to fill them we could turn more attention and efforts to improving people's lives without having to worry about sustaining society through work?
- acover 4y agoOther technologies created more jobs than they destroyed. The internal combustion engine destroyed more jobs for horses than they created. Further, artificial general intelligence is a resource curse. Leaders can extract value without worrying about the people's wellbeing. Obviously there are good outcomes but that doesn't exclude bad outcomes.
- Nadya 4y agoHorses, unlike humans, are incapable of specializing in new or complex tasks and have a very narrow set of tasks they can accomplish even with a lifetime of training. The argument holds almost no water unless you assume humans are only good for a single, maybe two, tasks and are incapable of learning or being trained on other tasks if the task they were performing was made redundant. We didn't cull switchboard operators and calculators when we automated their jobs through technology. They found new jobs. > Leaders can extract value without worrying about the people's wellbeing. Historically this has had limits. After those limits have been reached - leaders quickly find themselves 6' under ground if people even gave them that courtesy. There are parts of the world where this has already happened - this century, maybe even this decade. Consider yourself quite privileged if you live in a part of the world where the mere thought of this seems outlandishly absurd and unrealistic.