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What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

economist.com

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Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#121

Post by gruez »

bbuut wrote: post #119
gruez wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just like they have for 40 years. Taking that at face value, what happened before 40 years ago? There was unimaginable growth in per-person GDP, so people could have plausibly kicked back and relaxed rather than toiling in factories.

Well for one, no computers collating every persons value to the economy to buy and sell as and manipulate through targeted effort Credit system didn’t exist, which conveniently grandfathered in all the Bloomberg, Trump, and other old money …obviously inheritance made them geniuses who deserved it Basically Boomers came of age 40 years ago and needed something to do. So the 80-90 year olds of the day handed them all t…

All of that might be true, but it doesn't address my core question: why didn't people kick back and relax 50 or even 100 years ago? If people 50, 100, or 200 years ago made the choice to keep working hours constant rather than convert productivity gains into leisure, why is the choice to keep working hours constant today suddenly caused by malign influence of the powers that be?

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#122

Post by gruez »

exe34 wrote: post #89
Nevermark wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can’t drive money, fly money, surgery money, publish money, build a house out of money that doesn’t melt in the rain… If you want to put it that way. But given we agree it is absolutely useless, you should probably periodically trade some of it for food. Etc. That works out really well, since money doesn’t mold as quickly as food, and doesn’t require refrigeration. So accumulate money, let it work for you in…

money gets inflated into monopoly money.

Presumably "money" in this case doesn't mean literal hundred dollar bills stuffed into mattresses. They're being invested.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#123

Post by liampulles »

mg wrote: post #20

The biggest change I anticipate is larger cities. When I ask people what they would like to change about their life, pretty much everyone mentions that their apartment is too small and too expensive. Because everyone wants to live right in the center of a big city. While at the same time, when I look at Google maps, big cities are tiny. I zoom out a bit and every big city is just a tiny speck in the middle of nowhere…

There is an interesting book called Scale by Geoffrey West, which speculates about how the scale of things like organisms and cities is bound by spatial networks. Worth a read

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#124

Post by bgwalter »

1995-2000: The Economist warns about the bubble.

2024-2025: The Economist fuels the bubble.

The attack on humans is coordinated. Vance is pushing for "AI", which is curiously but deservedly under-reported in the US/EU press, so here's an Indian link:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/vic...

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#125

Post by danaris »

erikerikson wrote: post #118
danaris wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Then you run even faster into the problem that this is not a real thing . There is no AI that has consciousness. There is no AI that has human-level intelligence. We have no idea what it would take to build either of these things. Even if we were able to build either of these things, that does not automatically mean it is, or could ever become, superintelligent. Your whole post is basically equivalent to saying…

I only quoted you and the grandparent. I've made no other comments here. You may have become confused. Taking some time and some breaths might be helpful.

Ah, my apologies; I thought you were the grandparent (I'm afraid I didn't check).

Doesn't change the argument, merely its direction! ^_^

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#126

Post by gruez »

Teever wrote: post #29
vouaobrasil wrote: post #8

I'd rather just have a world where people move a little slower, care less about efficiency, appreciate the smaller things in life, and stop forcing endless upgrades of every kind on everyone with new phones, new apps, soulless art, and new ways of doing things. But that's just me.

Maybe the issue with society is that we don't care about efficiency? We throw away 1/3 of the food that we make. We're overweight and waste energy from carrying that excess weight. We're less physically active as a result so we require motorized transport that is predominantly single passenger cars so we build all our infrastructure around cars which in turn causes us to be even more inactive and unhealthy. This also…

>Maybe the issue with society is that we don't care about efficiency?

>We throw away 1/3 of the food that we make. We're overweight and waste energy from carrying that excess weight.

Throwing away food can be efficient. In fact, absent evidence to the contrary, we should expect that throwing away food (or buying/producing more) is the more efficient option out there, given that people aren't putting effort into conserving food. Remember, conservation isn't free. For instance it might be possible to reduce the amount of fruits that are bruised and thrown away, but that requires more packaging and more careful handling, which isn't free. At the household level, proper meal planning and inventory management can probably eliminate all food waste, but nobody wants to spend the mental effort into managing an ERP for their kitchen.

>We're less physically active as a result so we require motorized transport that is predominantly single passenger cars so we build all our infrastructure around cars which in turn causes us to be even more inactive and unhealthy.

You got cause and effect mixed up. People live in suburbs and drive around everywhere because they like the suburban lifestyle (eg. cheaper/bigger houses, "safer" and "quieter" neighborhoods), not because they're not too fat to live in 15 minute cities. Remember, suburbanization happened well before the obesity epidemic.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#127

Post by danaris »

gruez wrote: post #117
danaris wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Efficiency improvements tend not to create more leisure time, because one person working eight hours a day remains more efficient than two people each working four hours a day. Efficiency improvements tend not to create more leisure time because the gains all go to the people at the top . Just like they have for 40 years.

>Just like they have for 40 years. Taking that at face value, what happened before 40 years ago? There was unimaginable growth in per-person GDP, so people could have plausibly kicked back and relaxed rather than toiling in factories.

If you're asking "what caused the change?" the answer is "Ronald Reagan".

If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible".

Just to expand on that a bit, in case it isn't fully clear:

There is a level of productivity per worker required to support everyone in the society. This level fluctuates some with the overall standard of living, but does not vary with total productivity, population, or GDP. Let's call this level P, for Parity. (And let's assume it's not "just barely enough to support everyone", but "enough to support them comfortably and reliably, with a decent buffer".)

Once the level of productivity per worker passes certain thresholds—multiples of P—the total amount of work required to maintain the society at the same level drops. More work produces surplus. That surplus can be then used in a variety of ways. One of those ways is by reducing the amount of work being done. So, for instance, if the productivity level reaches 2P, then every worker can work half the amount of time they were working before, and still be producing enough to fully provide for everyone. If it reaches 3P, then every worker can work 1/3 the amount of time, and so on.

If, instead, the surplus is captured by the wealthy, the workers don't see benefit, and inequality grows.

I don't know exactly when real-world productivity got enough higher than P that we could realistically start reducing worked hours, but it definitely did so at some point in the last several decades. I'd say that at this point, just as a rough estimate, we're probably somewhere between 1.5P and 2P, but that's not really my field of expertise. But because the wealthy have captured approximately all productivity gains above the level we were at in 1980, they have seen their wealth massively increase, while the rest of us have just been scraping by.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#128

Post by Nevermark »

danaris wrote: post #83
Nevermark wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If land was taxed (the physically exclusionary resource that should be taxed), but property/development on it was not, the economics of building big and building up would be much cheaper. No more annual wealth tax (on the same value, year after year!) on development. And holding land to parasitically benefit from neighbors improving the neighborhood would become unprofitable. With land no longer a money parking/hedgi…

This seems like a system that can only work in a fully urbanized country. Otherwise, a nonexhaustive list of problems it seems guaranteed to cause: - Push those currently in rural poverty over the edge into homelessness. Their homes will stand vacant and fall to ruin, leaving large swaths of land dotted with the wreckage of houses, trailers, and even whole villages. Some of it will be highly toxic. Many of the people…

Your reversing the effect.

A steeper land tax, but no development tax, discourages sprawl and incentivizes parsimonious & maximally effective use.

Which would be the opposite dynamic to the one you are concerned about.

An income tax break on food production would be a good way to keep food prices lower, while maintaining a farmers incentive to use land efficiently.

And is good economics: matching a national tax break directly to a real national commons benefit, food security, while maintaining efficiency incentives.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#129

Post by gruez »

coldtea wrote: post #100
whatshisface wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a chart of real growth over the past few decades: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1

That's only "real" in that it's inflation adjusted. It's still the same balooney that GDP is inherently. What this "growth" is based on is the same rent-seeking and money printing credit I mentioned. And of course even people getting paid to dig and then fill in holes would increase the GDP. My "dismal results" refers to actual state of labor market and quality of jobs, actual purchasing power, actual production, act…

>My "dismal results" refers to actual state of labor market and quality of jobs, actual purchasing power, actual production, actual innovation, actual infrastructure, actual quality of life changes, etc. Not GDP or stock market or how rich the 0.00001% gets.

How convenient that your preferred metrics can't objectively be measured and basically give you free reign to define the results however you want! It's the "community adjusted EBITDA"[1] of economic metrics.

[1] https://qz.com/1685919/wework-ipo-community-adjusted-ebitda-...

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#130

Post by gruez »

danaris wrote: post #127
gruez wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just like they have for 40 years. Taking that at face value, what happened before 40 years ago? There was unimaginable growth in per-person GDP, so people could have plausibly kicked back and relaxed rather than toiling in factories.

If you're asking "what caused the change?" the answer is "Ronald Reagan". If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible". Just to expand on that a bit, in case it isn't fully clear: There is a level of productivity per worker required to support everyone in the society. This level fluctuates some with the overall standard of liv…

>If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible".

>[...] I don't know exactly when real-world productivity got enough higher than P that we could realistically start reducing worked hours, but it definitely did so at some point in the last several decades. [...]

GDP per capita has been growing exponentially for centuries[1]. Is there some arbitrary GDP per capita level where people should be expected to kick back and relax? Why makes your arbitrary line more or less correct than someone else's arbitrary line? Moreover people's revealed preferences show that for most people, that line hasn't been reached yet. Why should people's revealed preferences be overridden by whatever number you came up with?

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-p...

>If, instead, the surplus is captured by the wealthy, the workers don't see benefit, and inequality grows.

Economic statistics shows it hasn't been captured. Even if you're some sort of marxist that thinks labor's share of GDP should be 100%, at the very most this means the point at which everyone can kick back and relax is delayed by 40%.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG

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