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At what point does reducing white collar labor headcount begin to reduce aggregate demand for the kind of products and services produced by said labor? At some

by boppo1 4y ago

At what point does reducing white collar labor headcount begin to reduce aggregate demand for the kind of products and services produced by said labor? At some point, if all firms participate in this, the decrease in demand would cause the benefits of white collar labor replacement to diminish to 0, no? Or, perhaps, firms with goods broadly consumed by (relatively) irreplaceable blue collar labor would have a competitive advantage in such an environment and would be able to benefit more from white collar labor replacement. Hmm.

Garlef 4y ago
That's a good thing. Less BS jobs. But we'll have to invent new means to entertain and subjugate each other.
tempaccount420 4y ago
That sounds a lot like the broken window parable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Firms are headed by individuals, and said individuals take home pay is directly tied to stock performance. And stock performance is directly tied to how much money you can make while cutting costs. Bonus points if you tie your firm to a dominant narrative. CEOs have all the incentive in the world to overspend on AI adoption.
- yoyohello13 4y ago
  This will probably be awesome for CEOs for the next 5-10 years. Until the teaming masses of starving poor start a violent uprising.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Nothing that more circus can't fix, even if the bread becomes too expensive :)
  - ChatGTP 4y ago
    Obviously shareholders can replace CEO’s with AI too? So yeah, doesn’t really matter. If we adopt more AI , we replace ourselves totally.
EGreg 4y ago
When A and B make a deal, it can negatively affect C. Over time, this builds up and can also hurt A and B later when they are “the C”. But most decision makers are pushed and don’t understand that everyone acting in their own individual self-interest gets them short-term wins but can create a downward spiral systemically for everyone. Example: the Great Depression as farmers all were in a race to the bottom due to automation, laying off farmhands and producting a glut of products. The US government had to step in and pay them not to plant, thereby breaking the downward spiral of everyone acting in their own individual self-interest.
FuckButtons 4y ago
If you extrapolate out ai job replacement to its logical conclusion, where each company follows its rational self interest in cutting jobs and replacing them with ai, then yeah, basically all consumer demand ceases and the economy implodes. But we’re a ways from that yet.
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  It could happen pretty fast though right ? Like as soon as it starts happening, I guess it snowballed quite quickly ?
  - FuckButtons 4y ago
    The biggest unknown is how society reacts, while it’s in each companies self interest, it’s actually not in the interest of any countries population, even in the us where the corporations basically write the laws for themselves, the politicians still need most people to have jobs or they will be held accountable, so it seems likely that there would be some pushback. But it’s anyone’s guess how it plays out when we get to the point that it’s possible, particularly if it happens gradually rather than suddenly.

by boppo1 4y ago

Garlef 4y ago

That's a good thing. Less BS jobs. But we'll have to invent new means to entertain and subjugate each other.

tempaccount420 4y ago

That sounds a lot like the broken window parable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Firms are headed by individuals, and said individuals take home pay is directly tied to stock performance. And stock performance is directly tied to how much money you can make while cutting costs. Bonus points if you tie your firm to a dominant narrative. CEOs have all the incentive in the world to overspend on AI adoption.

yoyohello13 4y ago
This will probably be awesome for CEOs for the next 5-10 years. Until the teaming masses of starving poor start a violent uprising.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Nothing that more circus can't fix, even if the bread becomes too expensive :)
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  Obviously shareholders can replace CEO’s with AI too? So yeah, doesn’t really matter. If we adopt more AI , we replace ourselves totally.

EGreg 4y ago

When A and B make a deal, it can negatively affect C. Over time, this builds up and can also hurt A and B later when they are “the C”. But most decision makers are pushed and don’t understand that everyone acting in their own individual self-interest gets them short-term wins but can create a downward spiral systemically for everyone. Example: the Great Depression as farmers all were in a race to the bottom due to automation, laying off farmhands and producting a glut of products. The US government had to step in and pay them not to plant, thereby breaking the downward spiral of everyone acting in their own individual self-interest.

FuckButtons 4y ago

If you extrapolate out ai job replacement to its logical conclusion, where each company follows its rational self interest in cutting jobs and replacing them with ai, then yeah, basically all consumer demand ceases and the economy implodes. But we’re a ways from that yet.

ChatGTP 4y ago
It could happen pretty fast though right ? Like as soon as it starts happening, I guess it snowballed quite quickly ?
- FuckButtons 4y ago
  The biggest unknown is how society reacts, while it’s in each companies self interest, it’s actually not in the interest of any countries population, even in the us where the corporations basically write the laws for themselves, the politicians still need most people to have jobs or they will be held accountable, so it seems likely that there would be some pushback. But it’s anyone’s guess how it plays out when we get to the point that it’s possible, particularly if it happens gradually rather than suddenly.