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No obviously not. Lots of machines replace workers. Why would taking scarce resources away from productive businesses and allocating to unproductive things be
by bofadeez 10mo ago
No obviously not. Lots of machines replace workers.
Why would taking scarce resources away from productive businesses and allocating to unproductive things be good for anyone other than government bureaucrats?
- nemomarx 10mo agoI mean this is how all welfare works, isn't it? If as a society we think it's important to reallocate some resources so that people can get food in bread lines, we generally do that.
- varenc 10mo agoIf full AGI dreams are achieved and 80% of jobs disappear, leading to mass unemployment, then we need to do something to support the huge numbers of people that no longer have any income. Taxes to support a UBI program seem one solution. Or maybe the labor market can shift to find opportunities for humans that AI can't replace and we'd avoid the mass unemployment. But feels like we're a long way from that right now.
- bofadeez 10mo agoWe don't need taxes to pay a UBI. If "every country" is in debt, who owns the debt exactly? ... (it's not real debt)
- WillAdams 10mo agoThe problem with socialism, is eventually, one runs out of other people's money. For an example of what unlimited borrowing and money printing results in, look up Germany in 1921--1923
- lovich 10mo agoI’m pretty sure the poster you’re replying to is hinting at MMT and for your own statement, Money is a nations currency. It’s actually the people of that nations property and you only get a lease on it. If you disagree then try to do something like ceding the land that you “own” to another nations and see how that goes
- harimau777 10mo agoSure, but then we at least don't have the ultra wealthy coming up with ways to make everyone elses lives worse. If we took Elon Musk's money away and simply burnt it, that would still be a net win for society as a whole.
- smallmancontrov 10mo agoWe're 45 years into the trickle-down experiment and we can now tell if what trickled down was gold or piss. (It was piss.)
- WillAdams 10mo agoYeah, when folks say they want to go back to the '50s, I immediately ask, "Bring back the 90% tax bracket? Yes, please."
- BurningFrog 10mo agoWe have "disappeared" ~97% of jobs since the Industrial Revolution started, and no increased unemployment has materialized. Until you understand how something that counter intuitive happened, you should not speculate on how AI replacing current jobs will play out!
- the-mitr 10mo agoCan you give a source for the 97% claim?
- BurningFrog 10mo agoI have two ways to think of it, and both give similar numbers. A: 250 years ago, 98% worked in farming. Today it's 2% (who produce more food!). Assume that the other 2% are at least twice as productive, and you get that 3% of the population now produces as much as 100% back then. B: It's hard to directly estimate how much GDP per person has increased in 250 years. But the typical number economists get when trying is that it's 30x as big. Which means 3.3% of today's workforce produces as much (per person) as the whole workforce did back then. Both A and B can be critiqued, but the precise numbers don't really matter for the argument.
- harimau777 10mo agoI suspect that the reason might be that the Industrial Revolution happened over 200 years ago. That provides a lot of time for 97% of jobs to progressively disappear without disrupting society too much (except for all the revolutions and world wars). That would be quite different than if AI caused any significant percentage of jobs to disappear in a much shorter period of time.
- smallmancontrov 10mo agoIf you're so sure that new jobs will appear (and -- critical omission -- that they will be any good), surely you would be willing to ask the capital interests for whom these arguments are self-serving to put money where their mouth is and backstop a guarantee? No? Hmmmmmm.
- 10mo ago
- CrossVR 10mo agoInfrastructure is not unproductive, even machines need roads. I don't think self-driving vehicles should be exempt from road tax.
- bofadeez 10mo agoRoads should be (and are in many places) paid for with fuel excise taxes only. The more you drive, the more you pay.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- t-writescode 10mo agoOnly if it’s not an electric car. Electric cars need to start paying somehow, too. I’m open to many options, especially including weight * miles driven or similar.
- seanmcdirmid 10mo agoIn most states electric cars are paying via registration surcharges. For me, it’s a lot more than I would have paid via WA state’s gas tax since I don’t drive much. Miles driven would work out better.
- xg15 10mo agoUnproductive things like building roads, the electrical grid, water lines, schools, etc?
- bofadeez 10mo agoFuel excise taxes (roads) and property taxes (local stuff)
- smallmancontrov 10mo ago> productive According to the economic notion of value, which is unique among definitions of "value" in being wealth-weighted, enshrining "mega gainz in brokerage accounts" as the ultimate social good while shrugging its shoulders at the plight of the ahem low-weight individual.
- bofadeez 10mo agoValue isn’t something society measures or adds up by people’s bank balances; it’s just how much each individual personally wants something, and markets show this only through voluntary choices, not by declaring rich people’s gains more important than poor people’s lives.
- smallmancontrov 10mo agoIf you have lots of money, you can spend lots of money. If you have no money, you can spend no money. Your demand is indeed wealth-weighted in the objective function of the market. That's not really the problem, though. The problem is that rich people have most of the money and rich people care mostly about one thing: getting paid for being rich. That happens when assets go up. Assets have a counterparty, so policy that pumps assets can do so by encouring genuine growth (difficult, unreliable) or by whacking the counterparty over the head (easy, reliable). Anti-consumer and anti-labor policy makes stocks go up, for example. NIMY policies make real-estate go up. Selling our industrial base to the Communist Party of China makes bonds go up. Once rich people get all of the money (US gini is 0.83, are we there yet?) the objective function of the entire system shifts away from satisfying the needs of people and towards whacking counterparties of assets over the head. It's an ugly thing to see, once you know how to see it. > bofadeez Your name and arguments are both young-libertarian coded so let me take a shot in the dark at a personal appeal: the reason why houses are so damn difficult for you to afford is that you are the counterparty.
- harimau777 10mo agoExcept that it does declare rich people's gains more important than poor people's lives. The purpose of a system is what it does.
- harimau777 10mo agoIt would benefit the people you are calling "unproductive things". That's basically the point.