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Thought experiment - Startrek replicators are real. This basically means almost everything can be built without human involvement. The guy who owns the replica
by irjustin 1y ago
Thought experiment - Startrek replicators are real.
This basically means almost everything can be built without human involvement. The guy who owns the replicators is the richest.
The wealth gap is so massive you get revolts (because we're educated, not serfs, right?) So then government needs to step in. Either tax->ubi?, socialize it, or make it a state asset?
Regardless, that's the goal of AGI/robotics/etc.
- twoodfin 1y agoBut these aren’t replicators owned by a monopolist. There are a number of highly funded, highly competitive vendors at every level of the stack.
- moralestapia 1y agoSure, but you're not one of them.
- rogerrogerr 1y agoSure, but who do they sell stuff to if no one has a job? We’re on the brink of some _very_ unexplored branches of human behavior.
- ok_dad 1y agoImagine a few billionaires pay big bucks to keep AGI to themselves and let the rest of us die on the vine.
- rogerrogerr 1y agoOkay, but why would we die on the vine? Wouldn’t we just… make a parallel economy without the AGI? The world works today without AGI.
- lemonlearnings 1y agoParallel economies are banned. Try making a new currency in the US.
- SoftTalker 1y agoEconomies can work without currencies. It's a little inconvenient, but bartering/trading goods for services was common in the depression when nobody had any cash.
- amatecha 1y agoInterestingly, new ad-hoc currencies pop up all over in times like that: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/history/europes-economic-history/alternative-currencies-of-the-great-depression/ https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/history/europes-economic-... https://collectingpapermoney.spmc.org/wiki/Scrip_Issued_during_the_Great_Depression_of_the_1930s https://collectingpapermoney.spmc.org/wiki/Scrip_Issued_duri...
- scotty79 1y agoPrinting money is lucrative for the printer so any time it might get even a little bit useful and feasible for other parties somebody will start printing.
- majormajor 1y agoDid we just ignore the last fifteen years of crypto?
- lemonlearnings 1y agoNo I had the speculative ponzi front of mind when making that comment. Governments love crypto because it lets you seize lots of money from criminals across borders. And it is legal gambling where you can tax the winnings without reimbursing the losers (unless they can offset it but most probably can not)
- card_zero 1y agoWhat is the fantasy AGI supposed to be that's so great for billionaires to have? A human baby is an <s>A</s>GI, it won't tell you the Ultimate Answer, or even a penultimate one, because it has no way to know. No, seriously, what? You think an AGI is going to be a willing slave and endowed with special knowledge? Where does either part of that come from?
- irjustin 1y agoThis is why revolts happen. If you scratch under the hood of UBI, it's a mechanism to keep revolutions at bay. The balance of tax the ultra wealthy vs giving people enough to "live comfortably" is always the job of governance.
- scotty79 1y ago> If you scratch under the hood of UBI, it's a mechanism to keep revolutions at bay. It's also putting money in the hands of the consumers so the rich can compete between themselves at how much each can scoop back up. Something like feeding animals in the forest to compete with your friends at who can hunt better. When poor have nothing then you have to shift to taking money of the other rich, but they are clever, so it's easier to take a little bit from the hands of all rich equally, give that money to the poor and reduce the new problem to the old one, how to extract as much as you can from the poor.
- dinkumthinkum 1y agoThe first sentence is definitely. But, UBI is a nerd/socialist fantasy. It would nevet work and will never happen. Everyone with these sci-fi fever dreams of what will happen if AI collapses white collar jobs are coming from people that don’t know how the world or people actually work outside of their daydreams. People aren’t going to just be like “ok, well I guess it’s time for bread and water and Soviet style tenement housing, all this progress in livings was great while it lasted.” And other people are talking about using batteries for money or something. People need to touch grass.
- lemonlearnings 1y agoBots. Agentic consumers.
- Buttons840 1y agoThat's the key. The poor are useful to business so long as they are a source of money and power. What happens if the time comes that the poor have nothing the rich want?
- tbossanova 1y agoOh, the rich will be very happy wielding sadistic power over the poor
- happymellon 1y agoThey will always want entertainment. Whether it's gladiators or bum fights, the poor will ultimately be given a job. Robot wars was fun, but UFC has stayed.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoHistorically in this case eventually the poor kill the rich Probably not this time though
- 64718283661 1y agoIf they killed the poor, then how can they enjoy their power over people?
- balamatom 1y agoThey'll just make some more poor to kill.
- noduerme 1y agoIt's strange that socialists seem more concerned with their material possessions than anyone else.
- Lio 1y agoI guess that’s why Larry, Zuck and Thiel, et al want constant recording of the plebs, so that ‘citizens will be on their best behaviour’. This time there will be no revolution but it will be televised. :P
- throw3141592 1y ago[dead]
- intended 1y agoThis is very explored - it was the state of humanity for most of its existence. The few had resources, the many were poor.
- Fricken 1y agoFor most of humanity's existence nobody was poor because there was no such thing as money.
- zo1 1y agoWe're nearly-there. The humans then become the capital/resource to be acquired, not money. That's why every country is somehow chasing that elusive "population growth". It creates more "things" to own, whether that be money by virtue of more people creating more money through economic activity or simply more people to claim as "yours" (for the elites/leaders).
- rogerrogerr 1y agoIf you can make many replicators, money stops making much sense. You probably end up with energy (if these devices take a lot of energy to operate) as the new currency. My gut says that _somehow_ the middle class will get screwed as always, but I struggle to articulate the way that abundant cheap goods lead to that outcome. Maybe because the very few that control the replicators will be able to cut people they don’t like out of partaking from them? That’d make some sense. If replicators were replicatable, that control evaporates quickly. Remember how nervous we all were about LLM censorship, then suddenly a $2000 MacBook Pro could run pretty great open source models that seem a few months behind SOTA?
- SoftTalker 1y agoBut energy is essentially free also, at least on the margin, and if we're talking about sunlight.
- majormajor 1y agoWhat does it mean in practice to have energy instead of money as currency? People would still want to be able to trade with lower friction than lugging batteries around, so don't you just re-invent money on top of it? orrrrrr just keep having the current money around the whole time? -- The general limiting factor with the "one person controls the replicators, only they have income" idea is that they would rapidly lose that income because nobody else would have anything to trade them anymore. (If you toss in the AI/robotic dream scenario, they don't even need humans to manage the raw material.) But then does that turn into famine and mass-die-off, or Star Trek utopia?
- noduerme 1y agoYeah, but which tech has not had a homegrown variant that ultimately democratized it? Makes me think of the "feed" vs the "seed" in "The Diamond Age".
- 7952 1y agoUltimately labour goes and works on something else instead. And the availability of free labour makes that possible. New industries and markets develop as a result. But a huge number of people will be left behind. But people will focus on things that were a lower priority before.
- forgetfreeman 1y agoI have bad news for you, we've run out of sectors to pretend labor could be funneled towards. Manufacturing and agriculture are highly automated, service industry is full tf up, and nobody can afford more construction.
- 7952 1y agoWhat about medical, elder care, fitness, leisure. Even service industries that focus on a more human connection. Or jobs focused on nature, the environment etc. And i don't think this would nbe an easy process or something that could or would be managed. But it is probably already happening.
- jfyi 1y agoThe world of Star Trek was fully post scarcity. Rich/poor were not things that existed. They had to get through this before things got better: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bell_Riots https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bell_Riots
- jobigoud 1y ago> The wealth gap is so massive you get revolts This never happens. It's not the relative wealth gap that creates revolts it's the poverty/bad conditions in absolute terms. If the lower class conditions improve, even just a little bit, there is no revolt.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoThought experiments in science work because there are falsifiable scientific theories that make definite predictions about the world than can be tested. What you wrote is not that.