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> If robots produce so much value that it is actively not even viable for humans to work, the only real logical solution is to distribute the profits You don't

by tomp 1y ago

> If robots produce so much value that it is actively not even viable for humans to work, the only real logical solution is to distribute the profits You don't understand. Almost nobody actually thinks about this in the right way, but it's actually basic economics. Salt. We used to fight wars for salt, but now it's literally given away for free (in restaurants). If "robots produce so much value" then all that value will have approximately zero marginal cost. You won't need to distribute profits, you can simply distribute food and stuff and housing because they're cheap enough to be essentially free. But obviously, not everything will be free. Just look at the famous "cost of education vs TV chart" [1]. Things that are mostly expensive: regulated (education, medicine, law) and positional (housing / land - everyone wants to live in good places!) goods. Things that are mostly cheap: things that are mass produced in factories (economies of scale, automation). Robots might move food & clothing into the "cheap" category but otherwise won't really move the needle, unless we radically rethink regulation. [1] https://kottke.org/19/02/cheap-tvs-and-exorbitant-education-modern-america-in-one-chart https://kottke.org/19/02/cheap-tvs-and-exorbitant-education-...

dsign 1y ago
This is very well thought-out. But if regulation has such power, shouldn't we find better ways to use it? Yeah, I know, it's very hard to craft good legislation. In fact, there's this problem of agency: the will to have things be a certain way is not always in the humans, or does not always emanate from the direct needs of the people. Many of the problems of modern capitalism are because there's emergent agency from non-human things, i.e. corporations. In the case of US, agency emerging from the corporate world has purportedly sequestered democracy. But there also agency emerging from frenzied political parties that define themselves as opposition to each other with a salted no-mans-land in the middle. This emerging agency thing is not new; it existed before in other institutions, e.g. organized religion. In any case, the more things there are vying for power, the less power people have to govern themselves in a way that is fair. With AI, there's a big chance we will at least super-charge non-human agency, and that if we can avoid the AIs themselves developing agency of their own.
zurfer 1y ago
Regulation might be one part of the equation, but I would like to understand a bit deeper on how much of cost driver it is. Healthcare is heavily regulated in some countries and less in others. It should be possible to get some comparisons. I somehow feel that making many humans healthy is fundamentally a really hard problem that gets harder every year because the population ages and expectations rise. It feels to easy of a talking point to put it all on regulation.

by tomp 1y ago

dsign 1y ago

This is very well thought-out. But if regulation has such power, shouldn't we find better ways to use it? Yeah, I know, it's very hard to craft good legislation. In fact, there's this problem of agency: the will to have things be a certain way is not always in the humans, or does not always emanate from the direct needs of the people. Many of the problems of modern capitalism are because there's emergent agency from non-human things, i.e. corporations. In the case of US, agency emerging from the corporate world has purportedly sequestered democracy. But there also agency emerging from frenzied political parties that define themselves as opposition to each other with a salted no-mans-land in the middle. This emerging agency thing is not new; it existed before in other institutions, e.g. organized religion. In any case, the more things there are vying for power, the less power people have to govern themselves in a way that is fair. With AI, there's a big chance we will at least super-charge non-human agency, and that if we can avoid the AIs themselves developing agency of their own.

zurfer 1y ago

Regulation might be one part of the equation, but I would like to understand a bit deeper on how much of cost driver it is. Healthcare is heavily regulated in some countries and less in others. It should be possible to get some comparisons. I somehow feel that making many humans healthy is fundamentally a really hard problem that gets harder every year because the population ages and expectations rise. It feels to easy of a talking point to put it all on regulation.