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by alfalfasprout 1y ago
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- therockhead 1y agoWho’s left to buy the stuff they make if no one has a job ?
- ModernMech 1y agoImagine you're super rich and you view everyone else as a mindless NPC who can be replaced by AI and robots. If you believe that to be true, then it should also be true that once you have AI and robots, you can get rid of most everyone else, and have the AI robots support you. You can be the king. The people you let live will be your vassals. And the AI robots will be your peasant slave army. You won't have to sell anything to anyone because they will pay you tribute to be allowed to live. You don't sell to them, you tax them and take their output. It's kind of like being a CEO but the power dynamic is mainlined so it hits stronger.
- indigodaddy 1y agoBut what exactly is creating wealth at this point? Who is paying for the AI/AI robots (besides the ultrarich for they're own lifestyle) if no one is working? What happens to the economy and all of the rich people's money (that is probably just $ on paper and may come crashing down soon at this point?). I'm definitely not an economics person but I just don't see how this new world sustains.
- ModernMech 1y agoIt doesn't sustain, it's not supposed to. Techno feudalism is an indulgent fantasy and it's only becoming reality because a capitalist society aligns along the desires of capital owners. We are not doing it because it's a good idea or sustainable. This is their power fantasy we are living out, and its not sustainable, it'll never be achieved, but we're going to spend unlimited money trying. Also I will note that this is happening along with a simultaneous push to bring back actual slavery and child labor. So a lot of the answers to "how will this work, the numbers don't add up" will be tried and true exploitation.
- indigodaddy 1y agoAh, I didn't realize or get the context that your original comment I was replying to was actually sarcastic/in jest-- although darkly, I understand you believe they will definitely attempt to get to the scenario you paradoxically described.
- lyu07282 1y agoIt was never about money, it's about power. Money is just a mechanism, economics is a tool of justification and legitimization of power. In a monarchy it is god that ordained divine beings called kings to rule over us peasants, in liberalism it is hard working intelligent people who rise to the top of a free market. Through their merits alone are they ordained to rule over us peasants, power legitimized by meritocracy. The point is, god or theology isn't real and neither is money or economics.
- soraminazuki 1y agoThat sounds less like liberalism and more like neoliberalism. It's not a meritocracy when the rich can use their influence to extract from the poor through wage theft, unfair taxation, and gutting of social programs in favor of an unregulated "free market." Nor are rent seekers hard working intelligent people.
- lyu07282 1y agoYes yes there is quite some disagreement among liberals of what constitutes a real free market and real meritocracy, who deserves to rule and who doesn't and who does it properly and all that.
- soraminazuki 1y agoI think liberals are generally in agreement against neoliberalism? It's much more popular among conservatives. The exception is the ruling class, which stands united in their support for neoliberal policies regardless of which side of the political spectrum they're on.
- lyu07282 1y agoYou have a very distorted view of what liberalism means, we say liberal democracies and liberal international order for a reason. They are all liberals. Reagan and Clinton famously both did neoliberal reforms. I'm not saying they did the wrong thing to reach justified meritocracy, or the degree to which the free market requires regulation by a strong government, or how much we should rent control land lords, I'm saying we are all fucking peasants.
- int_19h 1y agoThe robots are creating the wealth. Once you get to a certain points (where robots can repair and maintain other robots) you no longer have any need for money. What happens to the economy depends on who controls the robots. In "techno-feudalism", that would be the select few who get to live the post-scarcity future. The rest of humanity becomes economically redundant and is basically left to starve.
- fc417fc802 1y agoWell assuming a significant population you still need money as an efficient means of dividing up limited resources. You just might not need jobs and the market might not sell much of anything produced by humans.
- mrbungie 1y agoIt sounds nice for them, until you remember what (arguably and in part educated/enlightened) people do when they're hungry and miserable. If this scenario ends up happening, I also expect guillotines waiting for the "kings" down the line.
- panta 1y agoThose things happened under different historical contexts. In those times the means to control the serfs thoughts didn't exist.
- mrbungie 1y agoAre you sure about that? In those times even thousands year old knowledge access was limited to the common people. You just need SOME radical thinkers enlighten other people, and I'm pretty sure we still have some of those today.
- Applejinx 1y agoNonsense. From television to radio to sketchy newspapers to literal writing itself, the most recent innovation has always been the trusted new mind control vector. It's on a cuneiform tablet, it MUST be true. That bastard and his garbage copper ingots!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 1y ago> It sounds nice for them, until you remember what (arguably and in part educated/enlightened) people do when they're hungry and miserable. If That's probably why the post you are responding to said "get rid of..." not "keep ...hungry and miserable". People that don't exist don't revolt.
- mrbungie 1y agoThat will still need a civil war.
- numpad0 1y agoBut do you want the bag or not?
- dymk 1y agoThey operate on a dopamine-driven desire to get more money/power/whatever in the short/medium term, not necessarily to optimize for future.
- alfalfasprout 1y agoWhy do you think so many billionaires are building ultra-luxury survival bunkers in Hawaii, NZ, and elsewhere?
- Yossarrian22 1y agoThey want to give the Māori nice ventilation shafts to use as latrines?
- missedthecue 1y agoWhy would things cost money if no one is employed?
- OtomotO 1y agoSo they want to kill capitalism and feudalism? Or they want to kill everyone else? Because people won't just lay down and wait for death to embrace them...
- reducesuffering 1y agoGood luck against the Chess grandmaster like AGI controlling millions of drone swarms
- jeremyjh 1y agoGood point, we should get started now.
- kvdveer 1y agoSo far, the average US workforce seems to be ok with working conditions that most Europeans would consider reasons to riot. So far I've not observed substantial riots in the news. Apparently the threshold for low pay and poor treatment among non-knowledge-workers is quite low. I'm assuming the same is going to be true for knowledge workers once they can be replaced an mass.
- ETH_start 1y agoThe average U.S. worker earns significantly more purchasing power per hour than the average European worker. The common narrative about U.S. versus EU working conditions is simply wrong.
- qwerpy 1y agoAgree. There’s no other place in the world where you can be a moderately intelligent person with moderate work ethic (and be lucky enough to get a job in big tech) and be able to retire in your 40s. Certainly not EU.
- ricardorivaldo 1y agothere is no "average worker", this is a statistical concept, life in europe is way better them in US for low income people, they have healthcare, they have weekends , they have public tranportation, they have schools and pre-schools , they lack some space since europe is full populated but overall, no low income (and maybe not so low) will change europe for USA anytime.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoIndeed, this is overlooked quite often. There is a need for similar systems to defend against these people who are just trying to squeeze the world and humans for returns.
- coderoller 1y agoWho will be buying the stuff they produce though?
- reducesuffering 1y agoWhy would they need people who produce X but consume 2X? If you own an automated factory that produces anything you want, you don't need other people to buy (consume) any of your resources. If someone can own the whole world and have anything you want at the snap of your finger, you don't need any sort of human economy doing other things that take away your resources for reasons that are suboptimal to you
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoBut it is likely not the path it will take. While there is a certain tendency towards centralization ( 1 person owning everything ), the future, as described, both touches on something very important ( why are we doing what we are doing ) and completely misses the likely result of suboptimal behavior of others ( balkanization, war and other like human behavior, but with robots fighting for those resources ). In other words, it will be closer to the world of Hiro Protagonist, where individual local factions and actors are way more powerful as embodied by the 'Sovereign'. FWIW, I find this like of thinking fascinating even if I disagree with conclusion.
- reducesuffering 1y agoIt doesn’t need to be one person. Even 1 thousand people who have everything they need from vast swaths of land and automated machinery need nothing from the rest of the billions. There’s no inherent need for others to buy if they offer nothing to the 1000 owners
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoThen we are back to individual kingdoms and hordes of unwashed masses sloshing between them in search of easy pickings. The owners might not need their work, but the masses will need to eat. I think sometimes people forget how much of a delicate balance current civilization depends on.
- verzali 1y agoWhy do the CEOs think they are safe? If AI can replace the knowledge workers it can also run the company.
- fragmede 1y agoAre they? https://ceo-bench.dave.engineer/ https://ceo-bench.dave.engineer/ In practice though, they're the ones closest to the money, and it's their name on all the contracts.
- boston_clone 1y agoHubris. In general, I don't think you make it to CEO without a blindingly massive ego as your dark passenger for that journey. https://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/babiak2010.pdf https://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/babiak2010.pdf
- mrandish 1y agoI was the CEO of a tech company I founded and operated for over five years, building it to a value of tens of millions of dollars and then successfully selling it to a valley giant. There was rarely a meeting where I felt like I was in the top half of smartness in the room. And that's not just insecurity or false modesty. I was a generalist who was technical and creative enough to identify technical and creative people smarter and more talented than myself and then fostering an environment where they could excel.
- lukan 1y agoSo you don't want to kill off knowledge workers? How unfitting to the storyline that got created here.
- boston_clone 1y agoThank you for your reply. To explore this, I'd like to hear more of your perspective - did you feel that most CEOs that you met along your journey were similar to you (passionate, technical founder) or something else (MBA fast-track to an executive role)? Do you feel that there is a propensity for the more "human" types to appear in technical fields versus a randomly-selected private sector business? FWIW I doubt that a souped-up LLM could replace someone like Dr. Lisa Su, but certainly someone like Brian Thompson.
- ETH_start 1y ago[dead]