4 ms·

Labor costs are not the limiting factor on production.

• treis 5mo ago
  What is?
  • jonners00 5mo ago
    In theory breakeven demand, but ecosystens are basically economies, so termites are break even demand, and that's not good news.
  • rglullis 5mo ago
    Demand and primary resources go way higher on the list.
    • treis 5mo ago
      Demand and primary resources are effectively infinite.
      • rglullis 5mo ago
        What?! The primary resource needed to build a home is land. Do we have infinite availability of land in desirable areas to build on?
        • twoodfin 5mo ago
          In a world where it’s dramatically cheaper to build infrastructure like roads, power, and plumbing, lots more land becomes desirable as a place to live. Take Phoenix, for example, once air conditioning became cheap and pervasive.
          • rglullis 5mo ago
            > In a world where it’s dramatically cheaper to build infrastructure... You can not make things dramatically cheaper by bringing only the cost of labor to zero. Your argument is circular!
            • hunterpayne 5mo ago
              Its also the 'labor theory of value'. That's the economic theory that Communism is based on. It has never been accurate and wasn't even considered legitimate during Marx's lifetime. It has possibly the worst track record of predictions of any theory ever conceived by people. Yet somehow academics still reference it. Nobody who actually is impacted by making the wrong economic predictions does though. Funny that...
              • chadgpt3 5mo ago
                Solve the diamond/water paradox?
            • twoodfin 5mo ago
              The argument isn’t that AI brings the labor cost down to 0 in isolation. It brings the labor cost of the same amount of production down. So you get more production (more things = more supply -> lower prices) out of less labor.
              • rglullis 5mo ago
                > So you get more production out of less labor. We don't need "AI" to figure out that technological advances increase productivity. The problem with yout argument is assuming that increased productivity mean overall reduced costs. It does not. Healthcare, housing, education all have gone up despite increased productivity. Then you have things that are already so automated that there is no way to make them cheaper unless sacrificing quality - food, clothing, etc. Then we have all the types of consumer products that have prices completely decoupled from the cost of labor. No one in their right mind the "cost of labor" has any relation whatsoever with Apple charging $1000 for an iPhone and/or Motorola charging $180 for a Moto G.
        • treis 5mo ago
          Enough that it's effectively infinite, yes. Especially if we are imagining a world where subways cost 1/20th of what they do today.
          • rglullis 5mo ago
            > where subways cost 1/20th of what they do today. 1) We are talking about reducing the cost of labor, not overall costs. 2) Your logic only applies in the micro, not on the macro. If the cost of producing one thing goes down while population keeps their purchasing power, then what you are saying would make sense. The whole point of the article is that accelerated automation can bring a scenario where the cost of producing "things" would go down, but the economically active population would shrink drastically.
      • djeastm 5mo ago
        >primary resources are effectively infinite You just solved economics?
        • kys11 5mo ago
          [dead]
• fragmede 5mo ago
  If they were suddenly cut to near zero, a lot of projects that were previous uneconomical become viable.
  • rglullis 5mo ago
    "Becoming viable" does not mean "automatically put into execution". You still need to take overall demand in account. Consider this: if demand was not a factor, anyone living in a moderately wealthy country would be practicing labor arbitrage and sending money to poorer places. Ask yourself why this doesn't happen.
    • fragmede 5mo ago
      I'm sorry, I must be missing your point, because isn't that exactly what's happening with manufacturing having gone to China?
      • rglullis 5mo ago
        No. It's different in two ways: 1) corporations moved manufacturing to where labor was cheap, but brought back the goods to sell them. This only works for as long as there is healhy consumer market somewhere. If AI really gets to automate most white-collar work, there will be no healthy consumer market left anywhere around the world. 2) The essay touches on this: any of the previous offshoring / job displacement movements happened on a much longer timeframe than what is being pushed now by the powers that be.