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The first time around (and every subsequent time) the tools used for production, lets call them capital, made laborers more efficient and cheapened goods and dr
by green_man_lives 4y ago
The first time around (and every subsequent time) the tools used for production, lets call them capital, made laborers more efficient and cheapened goods and drove wages up (mostly). In all of these cases there was still the need for a laborer.
At a point when all labor is obsolete there will be literally no method of survival for anyone who doesn't own the "compute capital". The two options will be to let everyone starve because they weren't lucky enough to shareholders in the company that owns all the bots, or just make that enterprise socially-owned and pay the unemployed workers.
- bitcoin_anon 4y ago> At a point when all labor is obsolete there will be literally no method of survival for anyone who doesn't own the "compute capital". How about subsistence farming?
- the_only_law 4y agoMaybe, but they still need a different type of capital. Unless property rights stop being enforced, where are all the people who don’t own land, or people who don’t own arable land supposed to farm? Are we bringing back manorialism?
- namaria 4y agoConsidering I am mostly obliged to rent land where I can perform work so I can use my salary to pay my rent just makes me feel like I live in some sort of distributed virtual manor to be honest.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- green_man_lives 4y agoI supposed if the gracious techno-overlords are gracious enough to grant the underclass a nature preserve where they can keep living in a labor-powered society then sure. Somehow I feel that bulldozing ghettos would be the more realistic outcome. Truthfully I think we'd have a few large societal shifts before we ever got to the stage where genius level AI could be spun up and down like containers, but it helps to illustrate the point that a post-labor society is incompatible with the tenets of capitalism, which is something that a lot of people fail to comprehend when they worry about AI.
- jzb 4y agoIsn’t that what the gig economy is basically already?
- namaria 4y agoLaborers are not fungible you know. There is plenty of evidence of lives ruined by industrial change. The fact that the net result is positive doesn't mean that everyone profits equally. Having lived in capitalistic societies should have made that clear already.
- green_man_lives 4y agoI never said that it was. I just explained why this time was different. Innovation always hurts people but it benefits enough people that there's not massive social unrest. I am not making a moral assertion here just pointing out the qualitative difference.