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How can people be economically active if their jobs are eliminated from the economy? At best they job-share, and demand still collapses, just in slightly differ
by dofm 5mo ago
How can people be economically active if their jobs are eliminated from the economy? At best they job-share, and demand still collapses, just in slightly different ways.
AI cannot make money as an alternative to large scale employment, because essentially all the clients of those AI businesses will see demand for their products and services collapse. AI bots don’t go to In-N-Out Burger or Disneyland.
Anything else is fantasy maths, albeit commonplace fantasy in the AI industry at the moment.
- danielmarkbruce 5mo agoLook at the history of farming. Tractors also don't go to disneyland.
- dofm 5mo agoRight, but at best (putting aside the tractor's magnifying effect in the Great Depression) you would be looking at employment displacement from one sector to another. Those people went on to other jobs. Here you are talking about a shift taking employment out of the economy full stop — taking the money that would have gone to "a good chunk of labor", to use your words, and giving it to AI firms. You are necessarily talking about job elimination en masse — it's the only way this hypothetical source of money is available. If you take labour out of the market, en masse, you cause demand to collapse. Because they won't be economically active!
- danielmarkbruce 5mo agoNo, I'm not. I was using it to size the market for AI. I don't imagine those people just sit idle. They do something else. Tractors took a good chunk of labor out of farming, those people didn't sit idle.
- awillowingmind 5mo agoCan you give an example of what people may transition to?
- danielmarkbruce 5mo agolol if i knew the next big industry i wouldn't be sitting here chatting on hacker news. New industry after new industry has been created over the past 100 years. It's difficult to believe that all of a sudden that stops.