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> No one asked farmers to do less work after tractors were invented I'm so tired of this sort of take because it isn't the whole picture Yes, an individual fa

> No one asked farmers to do less work after tractors were invented I'm so tired of this sort of take because it isn't the whole picture Yes, an individual farmer still works just as many hours. Thanks to modern equipment they accomplish much more and can manage much larger properties As a result there are fewer farmers "No one asked farmers to do less work" isn't the problem The problem is that there are less farmers and we don't know what to do with the former farmers that we don't need anymore

Animats 2y ago
> The problem is that there are less farmers and we don't know what to do with the former farmers that we don't need anymore The US is way past that point, being down to under 2% farmers. China is mostly past that point, at 17% farmers as of 2017 and dropping. India is being hit hard by that, with 43% farmers. Their farmers are fighting farm mechanization.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  Keep in mind we're not actually talking about farmers right now We are talking about every industry that will have "productivity increases" due to AI tools Which it seems might be every industry It sure seems like we might be looking at a massive "productivity gain" across a ton of industries that is going to leave a whole shitload on people unemployed and franky I'm a little worried about what that is going to mean
  - danaris 2y ago
    ...And also leave the people who own companies that see those "productivity gains" massively richer, explicitly at the expense of the people who are now unemployed. We are seeing in real time right now what happens when inequality grows too stark. The people at the top abuse their disproportionate financial power to capture the government, and then start ensuring that the government can never threaten their economic dominance, regardless of the consequences for the 90% of people who do not share in it. There are a number of potential solutions to this. Many of them involve violence. Among the least violent are various forms of UBI.
Terr_ 2y ago
Closely related: Textiles. There's a reason those were the first two things humanity mechanized the crap out of. It's hard for us to imagine nowadays exactly how much distributed domestic work went into simply keeping the family in clothes.

Animats 2y ago

> The problem is that there are less farmers and we don't know what to do with the former farmers that we don't need anymore The US is way past that point, being down to under 2% farmers. China is mostly past that point, at 17% farmers as of 2017 and dropping. India is being hit hard by that, with 43% farmers. Their farmers are fighting farm mechanization.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
Keep in mind we're not actually talking about farmers right now We are talking about every industry that will have "productivity increases" due to AI tools Which it seems might be every industry It sure seems like we might be looking at a massive "productivity gain" across a ton of industries that is going to leave a whole shitload on people unemployed and franky I'm a little worried about what that is going to mean
- danaris 2y ago
  ...And also leave the people who own companies that see those "productivity gains" massively richer, explicitly at the expense of the people who are now unemployed. We are seeing in real time right now what happens when inequality grows too stark. The people at the top abuse their disproportionate financial power to capture the government, and then start ensuring that the government can never threaten their economic dominance, regardless of the consequences for the 90% of people who do not share in it. There are a number of potential solutions to this. Many of them involve violence. Among the least violent are various forms of UBI.

Terr_ 2y ago

Closely related: Textiles. There's a reason those were the first two things humanity mechanized the crap out of. It's hard for us to imagine nowadays exactly how much distributed domestic work went into simply keeping the family in clothes.