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And it isn't like people can't do still everything they could do yesterday. There are just more and better options. Economically AI is no particular threat to t

by roenxi 9mo ago

And it isn't like people can't do still everything they could do yesterday. There are just more and better options. Economically AI is no particular threat to the median human and even knowledge workers are still going to have fine lives. Maybe not as knowledge workers. The real risk here is the military implications of pairing AI and robots. If the army doesn't need lots of people then there is a real problem. But robotics will take a long time to get there even in an optimistic case. Labour will still have value for a long time to come.

mitthrowaway2 9mo ago
Right, you can still do everything you could yesterday. You can still hand-weave cloth and sell it if you want to, just like your ancestors could do three hundred years ago; you'll simply have to do it three thousand times faster than your ancestors did to exchange that labor for a loaf of bread, because even though bread is cheaper than it used to be, your customer's next best alternative is an automatic loom, and those move very quickly these days.
- roenxi 9mo ago
  I'm pretty sure you're literally just wrong on that one - no special knowledge of the weaving market but it seems people do still make a living from hand-weaving fabric. Eg, I found https://loomandstars.com/collections/handwoven-fabrics https://loomandstars.com/collections/handwoven-fabrics - they claim to have a shop in New York. They can probably afford bread - bread is quite cheap. The issue is if bread becomes insanely cheap and cloth becomes insanely cheap, then a very inefficient weaver can still afford food. It runs in to comparative advantage theory eventually - just because someone else is much more efficient than you at literally everything doesn't mean you can't still do something inefficiently and set up a win-win situation. Although there might still be something better to put your time towards. I recommend managing your own capital - maybe even building it and maintaining it yourself - but people seem dead set against the idea for some reason. I dunno why geohotz thinks in this article that shares in a granary are a bad idea, someone has to profit from storing food. May as well be me. I'll do it if he won't. I like granaries.
  - DiscourseFan 9mo ago
    It is a luxury good like Art, which is an elevated form of labor that is only possible on account of the development of technology like the automated loom, which provides clothes for most people at almost no cost, affording some lucky individuals the leisure time to do things like hand weave cloth or argue about capitalism on Hacker News.
    - roenxi 9mo ago
      Sure, I don't know why anyone would want to hand-weave cloth in this era of miracles where a machine can do it for you faster and better. It looks like hard work and it is technically a waste of time. But, hypothetically, if there was a portion of society that for some mad reason can't get access to machine-made cloth they can still weave their own. And the fact is, for those souls who are motivated to do so, they can make a living hand-weaving anyway and do not need to weave 3,000x faster. They weave at a similar pace to that people always have. They can still afford bread. Society will almost give bread away to people, it is absurdly cheap.
      - DiscourseFan 9mo ago
        Bread is only cheap on account of mechanization. Before technological innovations bread was often paid in wages, like those of the workers who built the pyramids.
      - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
        At this point it really seems like your taking bread too literally here. To put it more simply, you won't keep a roof over your head by only selling baskets to your local village these days. You can scale it up, but by that point you need much more than a craftman to maintain a business and keep up with a minimum wage lifestyle.
  - mitthrowaway2 9mo ago
    This is one of those cases where it's really important to remember the assumptions built into comparative advantage theory, such as "no mobility of labor". If the Green-country people are more productive at all tasks than the Blue-country people, they can still both profit from trade with each other. But that does not represent the maximum productivity allocation of resources. Output can be increased still further by the Green people replacing the population of the Blue-country with more Green people, in which scenario the optimal resource allocation to sustaining the Blue people is unfortunately zero. This is why the population of labor animals plummeted in the 20th century. And to put it plainly, it means that there's no guarantee you can always sell labor for enough to keep your home from getting paved over for a data center.
- derangedHorse 9mo ago
  > you'll simply have to do it three thousand times faster than your ancestors did to exchange that labor for a loaf of bread Who's to say that a loaf of bread will be that much more valuable? You acknowledge that bread is cheaper than it used to be, but baselessly assert that an automatic loom will accentuate the value differential rather than lessen or maintain it with the innovations in bread making.

by roenxi 9mo ago

mitthrowaway2 9mo ago

Right, you can still do everything you could yesterday. You can still hand-weave cloth and sell it if you want to, just like your ancestors could do three hundred years ago; you'll simply have to do it three thousand times faster than your ancestors did to exchange that labor for a loaf of bread, because even though bread is cheaper than it used to be, your customer's next best alternative is an automatic loom, and those move very quickly these days.

roenxi 9mo ago
I'm pretty sure you're literally just wrong on that one - no special knowledge of the weaving market but it seems people do still make a living from hand-weaving fabric. Eg, I found https://loomandstars.com/collections/handwoven-fabrics https://loomandstars.com/collections/handwoven-fabrics - they claim to have a shop in New York. They can probably afford bread - bread is quite cheap. The issue is if bread becomes insanely cheap and cloth becomes insanely cheap, then a very inefficient weaver can still afford food. It runs in to comparative advantage theory eventually - just because someone else is much more efficient than you at literally everything doesn't mean you can't still do something inefficiently and set up a win-win situation. Although there might still be something better to put your time towards. I recommend managing your own capital - maybe even building it and maintaining it yourself - but people seem dead set against the idea for some reason. I dunno why geohotz thinks in this article that shares in a granary are a bad idea, someone has to profit from storing food. May as well be me. I'll do it if he won't. I like granaries.
- DiscourseFan 9mo ago
  It is a luxury good like Art, which is an elevated form of labor that is only possible on account of the development of technology like the automated loom, which provides clothes for most people at almost no cost, affording some lucky individuals the leisure time to do things like hand weave cloth or argue about capitalism on Hacker News.
  - roenxi 9mo ago
    Sure, I don't know why anyone would want to hand-weave cloth in this era of miracles where a machine can do it for you faster and better. It looks like hard work and it is technically a waste of time. But, hypothetically, if there was a portion of society that for some mad reason can't get access to machine-made cloth they can still weave their own. And the fact is, for those souls who are motivated to do so, they can make a living hand-weaving anyway and do not need to weave 3,000x faster. They weave at a similar pace to that people always have. They can still afford bread. Society will almost give bread away to people, it is absurdly cheap.
    - DiscourseFan 9mo ago
      Bread is only cheap on account of mechanization. Before technological innovations bread was often paid in wages, like those of the workers who built the pyramids.
    - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
      At this point it really seems like your taking bread too literally here. To put it more simply, you won't keep a roof over your head by only selling baskets to your local village these days. You can scale it up, but by that point you need much more than a craftman to maintain a business and keep up with a minimum wage lifestyle.
- mitthrowaway2 9mo ago
  This is one of those cases where it's really important to remember the assumptions built into comparative advantage theory, such as "no mobility of labor". If the Green-country people are more productive at all tasks than the Blue-country people, they can still both profit from trade with each other. But that does not represent the maximum productivity allocation of resources. Output can be increased still further by the Green people replacing the population of the Blue-country with more Green people, in which scenario the optimal resource allocation to sustaining the Blue people is unfortunately zero. This is why the population of labor animals plummeted in the 20th century. And to put it plainly, it means that there's no guarantee you can always sell labor for enough to keep your home from getting paved over for a data center.
derangedHorse 9mo ago
> you'll simply have to do it three thousand times faster than your ancestors did to exchange that labor for a loaf of bread Who's to say that a loaf of bread will be that much more valuable? You acknowledge that bread is cheaper than it used to be, but baselessly assert that an automatic loom will accentuate the value differential rather than lessen or maintain it with the innovations in bread making.