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time to dust this off again, is it? --- Car company CEO, after giving a visibly exasperated UAW boss a tour of his company's brand new 100% automated factory:

time to dust this off again, is it? --- Car company CEO, after giving a visibly exasperated UAW boss a tour of his company's brand new 100% automated factory: "So Bob, looks like you have quite the dilemma: how will you get your workers to outperform my new robots? They are cheaper, mistake-free, disposable, replaceable, and can never go on strike, let alone vacation." UAW boss: "I don't know, Henry. But if you think about it, that problem is fundamentally yours, not mine." "Oh, how so?" "How will you get these robots to buy your cars?"

atleastoptimal 2y ago
Treating the anecdote as a legitimate rebuttal, I can only assume the meaning of the passage is that completely economic disempowerment of most humans is a non-starter because those humans will thus have no money thus there would be no economic incentive for universal automation/disempowerment. I believe this is a fallacy. It's like saying that the dog food industry shouldn't exist since dogs don't have any money to pay for it. What I mean by this is: the economic utility of dogs is so insignificant that any economic activity that happens to benefit them will not be by their choice. Did the sudden unemployment of millions of horses prevent the rise of the car?
- moose_man 2y ago
  Yeah, but the horse didn't drive the cars.
  - atleastoptimal 2y ago
    The point is, why make a car factory if the humans who drive the cars have no economic utility? The effort needed to produce the factory would be better spent on something productive to economically useful agents, namely AI, robots and the capital contract networks they belong to. Any intelligent agent, human or AI could understand that. Would anyone spend money on a car factory for ants? Perhaps one errant billionaire who really likes ants.
- SubiculumCode 2y ago
  So when we start seeing advertisements for robot consumers, then head for the hills

atleastoptimal 2y ago

Treating the anecdote as a legitimate rebuttal, I can only assume the meaning of the passage is that completely economic disempowerment of most humans is a non-starter because those humans will thus have no money thus there would be no economic incentive for universal automation/disempowerment. I believe this is a fallacy. It's like saying that the dog food industry shouldn't exist since dogs don't have any money to pay for it. What I mean by this is: the economic utility of dogs is so insignificant that any economic activity that happens to benefit them will not be by their choice. Did the sudden unemployment of millions of horses prevent the rise of the car?

moose_man 2y ago
Yeah, but the horse didn't drive the cars.
- atleastoptimal 2y ago
  The point is, why make a car factory if the humans who drive the cars have no economic utility? The effort needed to produce the factory would be better spent on something productive to economically useful agents, namely AI, robots and the capital contract networks they belong to. Any intelligent agent, human or AI could understand that. Would anyone spend money on a car factory for ants? Perhaps one errant billionaire who really likes ants.
SubiculumCode 2y ago
So when we start seeing advertisements for robot consumers, then head for the hills