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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?

#191

Post by lurking_swe »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #53
sampton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that until they are asked to pay more and earn less.

Well, I had a high-paying job, six figures. But that six-figures came with less freedom, higher-paced work, life bureacracy, and I wasn't happy. I had no time or mental space to just sit and think. Probably the least happy I was in my entire life. So I quit. Now, I do live a slower-paced life, and earn very little. But I'm the happiest I've ever been. But YMMV I guess.

there are many many 6 figure jobs that don’t require working more than > 40 hours a week. Bureaucracy is hard to avoid though, unless you’re at a startup, but then you’re working all the time lol.

For me personally, lack of money early in my career caused me _far_ greater daily stress than bureaucracy at work. Not needing to budget daily purchases? now that’s low stress.

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

#192

Post by mritterhoff »

immibis wrote: post #186
mritterhoff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your problem with growth? Growth means higher GDP which is correlated with all sorts of good things, including longer lives, and less food scarcity.

Most GDP growth is just a change in price level - even inflation-adjusted GDP, since prices consistently rise faster than inflation. How does this help anyone?

Higher GDP means, on average, better living conditions for the people that live in that country. This is a good thing.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index-v...

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

#193

Post by culopatin »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #54
arkis22 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really ironic, based on my understanding, is that the world that you have expressed a desire for, is much likelier in a world where economic growth accelerates based on AI. Granted, you need to have the political structure in place that allows the growth to benefit everyone.

I sincerely doubt it, because that technology also invades life. It invades the world with more information, not less. More business...when has technology ever slowed things down? AI just seems to make certain tasks more efficient, but I haven't seen anything slow down.

Before technology, even if things were slow, people didn’t have time to do anything with the slowness anyway. I think you’re thinking of some past utopia that never existed. Or maybe you’re thinking of the 90s, idk.

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

#195

Post by pydry »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #190
pydry wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>capital has become such an important gatekeeper in society in the first place because most people aren’t that trustworthy Not really. It became that way because wealth begets power. The narrative it tells us is that we should be terrified to change this because nobody else except the owners of capital can be trusted as stewards of our economy and political system (particularly not "government").

It certainly seems functional more than narrative… a long papertrail is physically costly to fake.

Try comparing Chinese and western industrial capacities.

Ours is a joke compared to theirs and we started off richer. The primary difference is that their government allocates capital.

Wasteful, indeed.

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

#196

Post by coldtea »

gruez wrote: post #129
coldtea wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "comm…

>How convenient that your preferred metrics can't objectively be measured

"Would you believe your own lying eyes over the statistics based on a KPI widely understood to be a crap metric?"

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

#197

Post by coldtea »

Nasrudith wrote: post #188
tempodox wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the fairy tale that growth not only can continue indefinitely but continually accelerate has to be kept up. It's almost as though word “enough” has been banned from economy altogether.

[flagged]

>You clearly don't understand what growth is and think it is just more of existing things. Or understand just how dysfunctional things would have to be for stasis to occur. Developing new drugs is growth.

And yet compared to a couple decades ago we have declining infant mortality and life expectancy, record low for life satisfaction metrics, demographic collapse, climate catastrophes piling up, enshittification, but yay! growth!

You know what else is called a "growth"?

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

#198

Post by andsoitis »

coldtea wrote: post #6
andsoitis wrote: post #2

Until 1700 the world economy did not really grow—it just stagnated. Over the previous 17 centuries global output had expanded by 0.1% a year on average, a rate at which it takes nearly a millennium for production to double. Then spinning jennies started whirring and steam engines began to puff. Global growth quintupled to 0.5% a year between 1700 and 1820. By the end of the 19th century it had reached 1.9%. In the 20…

Real growth has stalled for decades and is only propped up with rent-seeking and money printing credit - hence the results we see...

> Real growth has stalled for decades

The world economy is not bigger than a few decades ago? That’s self-evidently false.

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

#199

Post by dang »

Nasrudith wrote: post #188
tempodox wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the fairy tale that growth not only can continue indefinitely but continually accelerate has to be kept up. It's almost as though word “enough” has been banned from economy altogether.

[flagged]

> You clearly don't understand

Could you please stop being aggressive with other users in comments here? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and it's very much against the site rules. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Edit: this has unfortunately been a problem for quite a while:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44697685 (July 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42955972 (Feb 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24498260 (Sept 2020)

We ban accounts that keep doing this and won't stop when we ask them, so it would be really good if you'd fix this.

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