6 ms·

Sure, 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 ago
Imagine a few billionaires pay big bucks to keep AGI to themselves and let the rest of us die on the vine.
- rogerrogerr 1y ago
  Okay, 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 ago
    Parallel economies are banned. Try making a new currency in the US.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      Economies 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 ago
        Interestingly, 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 ago
        Printing 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 ago
      Did we just ignore the last fifteen years of crypto?
      - lemonlearnings 1y ago
        No 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)
  - AngryData 1y ago
    Or use any of the wonders of military technology invented in the last 200 years to take back society. These fuckers have lived in prosperity for so long that they don't even think it is possible. But so many people throughout history thought they were untouchable until the masses decided they had enough of their shit. Kings with professional armies, full plate knights, men with cannons, mens with guns, machine guns, bombs, planes, tanks, helicopters, and yet at the end of the day when enough random people are pissed off enough the mass of people with nothing to lose are the ones who "win" in the end with the powerful dead or hiding.
    - scotty79 1y ago
      When unrest happens the military sides with the ones that give better hopes of keeping the stream of money that funds the army flowing. It sides with the poor only if the powerful (gov) are hopelessly inept at gathering money. If there's a chance that current civilian power can reform and keep collecting the money from the people and funding the army then the army sides with them and help quell the rebellion. Those who hold kinetic power will never side with poor against the rich.
      - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
        Not always .. see the peasants revolt of 1381, French Revolution in 1789-1793, Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, etc.
      - AngryData 1y ago
        Im not talking about the military siding with the people, im talking about the military's side not being enough to prevent the people from rising up and taking down whoever is in power. Militaries require logistics, random people do not. Military needs a government or people to follow for direction, masses of angry people do not. Every time a government or military force has decided they were unstoppable or untouchable, history has proven them wrong. Hell we spent 2 decades in Iraq and Afganistan with the most powerful military and military tech the world has ever known backed by the strongest economy in the world against guys with 60+ year old bolt actions and guns filed out by hand in caves living in mostly desert landscapes, and we still ended up abandoning it because it was too costly. How would the military fair any better against the best armed population in the world with direct access to their supplying economy and logistics networks? Yeah sure masses of people aren't making aircraft carriers, but you don't need aircarft carriers to win a war at home. We have modern engineering and chemistry text books in every library across the US that will tell you how military technology works and its flaws, what technology you can utilize find or make yourself, and a supply of nearly any material someone could possibly want or need sitting in scrapyards across the nation.
  - palmotea 1y ago
    > Okay, 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. Because you need things they want. Like why would they spare the electricity to heat your home, when it could go to "better" use powering a few dozen GPUs serving a billionaire? Why would they spare the land for you to grow food, when they could use it to build ziggurats dedicated to their power (or whatever else is their whim)? The market sends the scarce resources to those with the most money.
- card_zero 1y ago
  What 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 ago
This 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 ago
  The 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 ago
Bots. Agentic consumers.
Buttons840 1y ago
That'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 ago
  Oh, the rich will be very happy wielding sadistic power over the poor
- happymellon 1y ago
  They 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 ago
  Historically in this case eventually the poor kill the rich Probably not this time though
  - 64718283661 1y ago
    If they killed the poor, then how can they enjoy their power over people?
    - balamatom 1y ago
      They'll just make some more poor to kill.
  - noduerme 1y ago
    It's strange that socialists seem more concerned with their material possessions than anyone else.
  - Lio 1y ago
    I 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 ago
This is very explored - it was the state of humanity for most of its existence. The few had resources, the many were poor.
- Fricken 1y ago
  For most of humanity's existence nobody was poor because there was no such thing as money.
zo1 1y ago
We'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).

ok_dad 1y ago

Imagine a few billionaires pay big bucks to keep AGI to themselves and let the rest of us die on the vine.

rogerrogerr 1y ago
Okay, 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 ago
  Parallel economies are banned. Try making a new currency in the US.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    Economies 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 ago
      Interestingly, 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 ago
        Printing 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 ago
    Did we just ignore the last fifteen years of crypto?
    - lemonlearnings 1y ago
      No 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)
- AngryData 1y ago
  Or use any of the wonders of military technology invented in the last 200 years to take back society. These fuckers have lived in prosperity for so long that they don't even think it is possible. But so many people throughout history thought they were untouchable until the masses decided they had enough of their shit. Kings with professional armies, full plate knights, men with cannons, mens with guns, machine guns, bombs, planes, tanks, helicopters, and yet at the end of the day when enough random people are pissed off enough the mass of people with nothing to lose are the ones who "win" in the end with the powerful dead or hiding.
  - scotty79 1y ago
    When unrest happens the military sides with the ones that give better hopes of keeping the stream of money that funds the army flowing. It sides with the poor only if the powerful (gov) are hopelessly inept at gathering money. If there's a chance that current civilian power can reform and keep collecting the money from the people and funding the army then the army sides with them and help quell the rebellion. Those who hold kinetic power will never side with poor against the rich.
    - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
      Not always .. see the peasants revolt of 1381, French Revolution in 1789-1793, Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, etc.
    - AngryData 1y ago
      Im not talking about the military siding with the people, im talking about the military's side not being enough to prevent the people from rising up and taking down whoever is in power. Militaries require logistics, random people do not. Military needs a government or people to follow for direction, masses of angry people do not. Every time a government or military force has decided they were unstoppable or untouchable, history has proven them wrong. Hell we spent 2 decades in Iraq and Afganistan with the most powerful military and military tech the world has ever known backed by the strongest economy in the world against guys with 60+ year old bolt actions and guns filed out by hand in caves living in mostly desert landscapes, and we still ended up abandoning it because it was too costly. How would the military fair any better against the best armed population in the world with direct access to their supplying economy and logistics networks? Yeah sure masses of people aren't making aircraft carriers, but you don't need aircarft carriers to win a war at home. We have modern engineering and chemistry text books in every library across the US that will tell you how military technology works and its flaws, what technology you can utilize find or make yourself, and a supply of nearly any material someone could possibly want or need sitting in scrapyards across the nation.
- palmotea 1y ago
  > Okay, 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. Because you need things they want. Like why would they spare the electricity to heat your home, when it could go to "better" use powering a few dozen GPUs serving a billionaire? Why would they spare the land for you to grow food, when they could use it to build ziggurats dedicated to their power (or whatever else is their whim)? The market sends the scarce resources to those with the most money.
card_zero 1y ago
What 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 ago

This 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 ago
The 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 ago

Bots. Agentic consumers.

Buttons840 1y ago

That'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 ago
Oh, the rich will be very happy wielding sadistic power over the poor
happymellon 1y ago
They 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 ago
Historically in this case eventually the poor kill the rich Probably not this time though
- 64718283661 1y ago
  If they killed the poor, then how can they enjoy their power over people?
  - balamatom 1y ago
    They'll just make some more poor to kill.
- noduerme 1y ago
  It's strange that socialists seem more concerned with their material possessions than anyone else.
- Lio 1y ago
  I 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 ago

This is very explored - it was the state of humanity for most of its existence. The few had resources, the many were poor.

Fricken 1y ago
For most of humanity's existence nobody was poor because there was no such thing as money.

zo1 1y ago

We'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).