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I'm skeptical we're there yet. But the worse thing is that it's never rational for economic actors (e.g., employers) to pay out a "social dividend" by cutting

I'm skeptical we're there yet. But the worse thing is that it's never rational for economic actors (e.g., employers) to pay out a "social dividend" by cutting everyone's hours but paying them the same. 30 workers got replaced by 1 worker at a computer? Cool, but are you gonna pay that 1 worker 30 times the wages of a laid off worker? No; otherwise, why lay the 30 off to begin with? Conversely, are you gonna NOT lay off the 30, pay them the same, but have them work 1/30th of their regular 8 hours because their base productivity just got achievable in 1/30th of the time by computerization? Economically, that's absurd. The only thing that can force those economic absurdities is the government. (Not having slavery is also economically absurd. Voluntarily refuse to have literal, self-replicating, AGI automata working for you? That's crazy! But it's enforced by the government and international norms, so the absurdity is now normal.) The scary thing about that is how hard it would mess with the economy, having the government tell you how many people you can fire and how much to pay them based on some measure of productivity or just business profits. In a future of "AI, math PhDs, and serfs", though, we really need to figure it out. If we're headed toward that, it's going to be insanely asymmetric cyber-feudalism where 9.9/10 people are GrubHub peasants OR The Culture's post-scarcity luxury space communism. The latter seems way better. On the plus side, I think we'd only be GrubHub peasants for like 15 years, max, before that kind of AI ignites the Singularity, at which point who knows what happens? GrubHub would probably be gone though.

pixl97 3y ago
>Economically, that's absurd. Only if you're very greedy. The truth is just the opposite, it's not absurd at all to pay well. Lets imagine a hypothetical economy where there is only one company. "Pool party supplies". That is they sell things like beach balls and pool floats. So in your economic system it would make sense for the company to get rid of many employees as possible, and have the ones remain work 16 hours a day... ...and then they go out of business???... People that are working 16 hours a day don't go to pool parties. The small economic upper class doesn't buy enough pool party supplies to justify the companies existence. The unemployed don't buy party supplies. Economic profit maximization lead to less profit in this case! In this derived scenario having more employees that earn well and have plenty of time off leads to more pool party supply sales.
dv_dt 3y ago
I think the technology is there, but maddeningly the system is going the opposite direction in terms of utilizing the technology for human good, or even basic human needs - the system path utilization and distribution is not sustainable. AI will make it worse. In contrast, in the early 19th century, when the western system was disrupted by labor unrest, it was 60+ hr work weeks were common and 40 hour weeks with weekends off was unthinkable. There were literal bloody fights to shift the system - and I hope we have progressed enough to not require that this time around, but it seems within the realm of possibilities in our modern day.

pixl97 3y ago

>Economically, that's absurd. Only if you're very greedy. The truth is just the opposite, it's not absurd at all to pay well. Lets imagine a hypothetical economy where there is only one company. "Pool party supplies". That is they sell things like beach balls and pool floats. So in your economic system it would make sense for the company to get rid of many employees as possible, and have the ones remain work 16 hours a day... ...and then they go out of business???... People that are working 16 hours a day don't go to pool parties. The small economic upper class doesn't buy enough pool party supplies to justify the companies existence. The unemployed don't buy party supplies. Economic profit maximization lead to less profit in this case! In this derived scenario having more employees that earn well and have plenty of time off leads to more pool party supply sales.

dv_dt 3y ago

I think the technology is there, but maddeningly the system is going the opposite direction in terms of utilizing the technology for human good, or even basic human needs - the system path utilization and distribution is not sustainable. AI will make it worse. In contrast, in the early 19th century, when the western system was disrupted by labor unrest, it was 60+ hr work weeks were common and 40 hour weeks with weekends off was unthinkable. There were literal bloody fights to shift the system - and I hope we have progressed enough to not require that this time around, but it seems within the realm of possibilities in our modern day.