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Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

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Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#221

Post by fwipsy »

Aurornis wrote: post #36

> The government hands cash to displaced people, who immediately send that money right back to the tech companies to pay for subscriptions, automated food delivery, or digital entertainment. No plausible UBI system gives people so much money than they can relax and order food delivery while they watch all of their entertainment from their paid subscriptions. Funding UBI is extremely hard. We would have to more than d…

It could perhaps work economically if AI automation also reduces the price of goods. What about automation-backed universal basic necessities? Mass-produced tract housing in the Midwest? Sounds awful but better than spending 90% of income on rent. Bread and circuses; subsidized mobile homes and Netflix.

But it won't work if necessities are captured by special interests, e.g. doctors ban AIs giving any medical info, even if it is technically capable of replacing them, so they can keep their own jobs.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#222

Post by dessimus »

echelon_musk wrote: post #67
dessimus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't the only ones: on average there are 1.5 guns for each person in the U.S.

Try shooting a tank with a 9mm.

How are tanks working out in the Ukraine against an almost inexhaustible supply of cheap drones?

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#223

Post by ryeights »

tombert wrote: post #207
ryeights wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You saw something kinda analogous in a movie once, therefore it's impossible? Am I the one basing my views off of science fiction?

It just seems like people are asserting that AI will enslave humanity without any reason to actually think that outside of speculative fiction.

I’m trying to discuss a scenario where the labor class becomes extraneous/unnecessary to the elite class, not an AI takeover.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#224

Post by FridgeSeal »

marcocampos wrote: post #161
LarsDu88 wrote: post #100

This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but here goes... The rise of AI does not mean that everyone will lose their jobs and the economy will collapse. That is an utter fallacy. It's important to ask two questions: - What happens to the workers? - What happens to the capital? For the first category, it's obvious. The workers lose their jobs. For the second category, the author and many others are under the presumpt…

The things some people on HN believe leaves me baffled.

“It’s totally fine guys, if we give billionaires even more money it will totally all work out and be fine! Everything is ok and our benevelont overlords will take earnest care of us, despite literally never having shown the merest inclination to do that ever before”.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#226

Post by FridgeSeal »

fwipsy wrote: post #183
datadrivenangel wrote: post #2

This is one of the biggest questions as the singularity compresses the deployment of capital and material resource allocation: if the majority of people aren't competitive with machines, who provides for them and how is that structured?

New technology doesn't eradicate what came before. It only replaces what's profitable. There are still some people in the world subsistence farming. A tech worker is many orders of magnitude more productive in monetary terms, but hasn't replaced them. In the worst case, automation (including physical) may drive the cost of labor far down, but it cannot drive it to zero, and as it does so commodity goods will become c…

> Lots of struggle. But not as bad as some folks are saying

I don’t know, what you’re outlining there is pretty grim. Especially as we could elect to just…not destroy people’s livelihood’s en masse?

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#227

Post by samplatt »

einrealist wrote: post #96
Aurornis wrote: post #36

> The government hands cash to displaced people, who immediately send that money right back to the tech companies to pay for subscriptions, automated food delivery, or digital entertainment. No plausible UBI system gives people so much money than they can relax and order food delivery while they watch all of their entertainment from their paid subscriptions. Funding UBI is extremely hard. We would have to more than d…

I strongly doubt it will even provide us with a roof over our heads. In an unconstrained market, the pressure to extract as much as possible from the UBI will be enormous. The amount of UBI will probably always lag years behind the actual amount required to create a liveable situation, and increasing its amount will be a constant political struggle. UBI in an unconstrained market is nothing else than enslavement. Fai…

This is the most concisely-expressed version of the actual concerns for UBI that I've ever seen, thankyou.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#228

Post by EMIRELADERO »

quantummagic wrote: post #192

It seems pretty clear that the economy all of us grew up in is a historical anomaly; and it's ending. There has never been a sustained large and dominant middle-class, and ours is disappearing right before our eyes; with little chance of saving it. There will be the ultra rich, a privileged few who make a good living as their minions, and a huge majority of the underclass or serfs. The power dynamics seems unflexible…

Things aren't as hopeless as you assume.

I read this essay a few months ago which calmed those doomsday theories for me somewhat: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#229

Post by cindyllm »

quantummagic wrote: post #192

It seems pretty clear that the economy all of us grew up in is a historical anomaly; and it's ending. There has never been a sustained large and dominant middle-class, and ours is disappearing right before our eyes; with little chance of saving it. There will be the ultra rich, a privileged few who make a good living as their minions, and a huge majority of the underclass or serfs. The power dynamics seems unflexible…

[dead]

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#230

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #2

This is one of the biggest questions as the singularity compresses the deployment of capital and material resource allocation: if the majority of people aren't competitive with machines, who provides for them and how is that structured?

There's a darkly simple answer - they won't be provided for, they'll be culled.
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