5 ms·

> As AI and automation improve, the majority of people will have negligible economic utility Who's going to subscribe to Prime and buy stuff when everyone is p

> As AI and automation improve, the majority of people will have negligible economic utility Who's going to subscribe to Prime and buy stuff when everyone is poor? The Walmart/Amazon wage strategy only works if the rest of society doesn't defect too. Henry Ford understood that his workers were also consumers.

vkou 2y ago
Henry Ford lived in a universe where the odds of the working class getting together and guillotining the owners were non-zero. Most of the West's labour gains were done under the shadow of the Red Scare. Nobody is seriously scared of that in 2024.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  It's still fundamental logic that the masses need to be able to afford your goods if you produce mass market goods. Or are you going to stockpile them?
  - vkou 2y ago
    > It's still fundamental logic that the masses need to be able to afford your goods if you produce mass market goods. It's fundamental logic that unless your company provides something close to 100% of the employment market (as in, you are a complete monopolist on all economic activity), you are better off paying your workers as little as possible. Your workers are a tiny portion of your customer base. Let some other sap pay theirs well. Now, if you have other reasons to pay your workers well (competitive demand for their labor, high turnover, need for growth, motivation tied directly to output, etc), then it is also logical to come up with a nice-sounding fairy tale justifying your largess. (Or you might actually be motivated by some kind of chivalristic noblesse oblige largess, and are tricking yourself - or socially signaling to your peers - by coming up with a 'logical' motivation for it. I wouldn't immediately assume this of HF, but I am not exactly a Fordian scholar. All I know about him is that he owned a factory that built cars, was a bit of an anti-semite, and also had a lot of opinions about how his employees should live their lives.)
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      > Your workers are a tiny portion of your customer base. Let some other sap pay theirs well. Other companies notice your "brilliant" strategy and start adopting it, and now your sales are in terminal decline as your customer base is impoverished. Short-term thinking is the Achilles heel of modern capitalism. Unless of course the new economy is automated companies trading with other automated companies; maximizing shareholder value as the human race withers away. This reminds me a short story of a damaged ambulatory AI space-suit carrying an injured and dying/dead astronaut over the surface of a desolate planet to get to "civilization" thousands of miles away.
      - porksoda 2y ago
        I think they're talking about one of the short stories in The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks What a great read.
        sangnoir 2y ago
        I was - thank you! I should have realized the story belongs to the Culture universe. Is there a story where non-sentient automation takes over society and leaves humanity by the wayside? Not malicious, sentient AI subjugating humanity (like Terminator or Matrix), but apathetic automated corporations maximizing profits trading with other automated corporations as humanity withers. I'd read/watch that
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      > Your workers are a tiny portion of your customer base. But they are the best representation of your customer base possible, if you're an industrialist selling mass market goods for civilan use. If they can't afford your stuff, then the rest of the masses can not either. Because among the masses of the population that you can draw your workforce from, the factory worker will be the best paid. They wouldn't work in a factory otherwise. The dilemma of the industrialist has always been that it's easy to crank up production enormously and the problem is to find enough customers to sell your product to that can afford it and keep the wheels running. Before industrialisation you only produced to demand and did bespoke stuff. So affordability and finding customers that can afford your product was always on top of the mind of any industrialist.

vkou 2y ago

Henry Ford lived in a universe where the odds of the working class getting together and guillotining the owners were non-zero. Most of the West's labour gains were done under the shadow of the Red Scare. Nobody is seriously scared of that in 2024.

carlosjobim 2y ago
It's still fundamental logic that the masses need to be able to afford your goods if you produce mass market goods. Or are you going to stockpile them?
- vkou 2y ago
  > It's still fundamental logic that the masses need to be able to afford your goods if you produce mass market goods. It's fundamental logic that unless your company provides something close to 100% of the employment market (as in, you are a complete monopolist on all economic activity), you are better off paying your workers as little as possible. Your workers are a tiny portion of your customer base. Let some other sap pay theirs well. Now, if you have other reasons to pay your workers well (competitive demand for their labor, high turnover, need for growth, motivation tied directly to output, etc), then it is also logical to come up with a nice-sounding fairy tale justifying your largess. (Or you might actually be motivated by some kind of chivalristic noblesse oblige largess, and are tricking yourself - or socially signaling to your peers - by coming up with a 'logical' motivation for it. I wouldn't immediately assume this of HF, but I am not exactly a Fordian scholar. All I know about him is that he owned a factory that built cars, was a bit of an anti-semite, and also had a lot of opinions about how his employees should live their lives.)
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > Your workers are a tiny portion of your customer base. Let some other sap pay theirs well. Other companies notice your "brilliant" strategy and start adopting it, and now your sales are in terminal decline as your customer base is impoverished. Short-term thinking is the Achilles heel of modern capitalism. Unless of course the new economy is automated companies trading with other automated companies; maximizing shareholder value as the human race withers away. This reminds me a short story of a damaged ambulatory AI space-suit carrying an injured and dying/dead astronaut over the surface of a desolate planet to get to "civilization" thousands of miles away.
    - porksoda 2y ago
      I think they're talking about one of the short stories in The State of the Art by Iain M. Banks What a great read.
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        I was - thank you! I should have realized the story belongs to the Culture universe. Is there a story where non-sentient automation takes over society and leaves humanity by the wayside? Not malicious, sentient AI subjugating humanity (like Terminator or Matrix), but apathetic automated corporations maximizing profits trading with other automated corporations as humanity withers. I'd read/watch that
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    > Your workers are a tiny portion of your customer base. But they are the best representation of your customer base possible, if you're an industrialist selling mass market goods for civilan use. If they can't afford your stuff, then the rest of the masses can not either. Because among the masses of the population that you can draw your workforce from, the factory worker will be the best paid. They wouldn't work in a factory otherwise. The dilemma of the industrialist has always been that it's easy to crank up production enormously and the problem is to find enough customers to sell your product to that can afford it and keep the wheels running. Before industrialisation you only produced to demand and did bespoke stuff. So affordability and finding customers that can afford your product was always on top of the mind of any industrialist.