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The dead economy theory

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Re: The dead economy theory

#421

Post by pacifi30 »

Shalomboy wrote: post #179
pacifi30 wrote: post #12

I think this is where government steps in for each country, go on the path of exploration that has no profit per se in it like space exploration, human body understanding. I am drawing parallel to 1930s or 40s where great depression was smoothen because America embarked on to take many huge infrastructure projects. Lastly, OpenAI and Anthropic or any other frontier labs needs to be nationalized because they become a…

There is absolutely zero will in the United States to invest money in unprofitable exploration or scientific research. There used to be such will generations ago, but today's wannabee-autocrats couldn't care less. Look at how they gleefully cut scientific research funding, undermine academic sovereignty, and strip-mine the public sector performing that work in favor of private enterprises. When the shit hits the fan…

That is perhaps the current administration, may be we do need a visionary in government again

Re: The dead economy theory

#422

Post by wrs »

jvanderbot wrote: post #402

The "TAM as all white collar labor" thing looks good on paper. But AI companies don't need to really capture much labor to be fantastically profitable. If we all delegate 20% of our work, and 20% of our salary for that 20% (e.g., 4% of our salaries in exchange for 20% of our jobs being automated), we get easier jobs and the AI labs supplant the existing tech moguls for revenue, with 1000x $/employee profits. That's j…

I don’t follow that valuation math either (well, there was no math, just an assertion). Microsoft and Apple are worth a lot more than $800 billion without replacing the entire world labor market.

Re: The dead economy theory

#423

Post by threetonesun »

marshray wrote: post #407
rootusrootus wrote: post #226

I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…

> Musk chopped an awful lot of headcount at Twitter, right, and proved it was overkill, has that panned out? Has X-Twitter released a single new feature since?

You can buy blue checks, I guess. On the other hand they shut off embeds and access to replies unless you were signed in so it's functionally dead as a "website". Oh and sometimes there's child porn? So I guess it was overkill unless you care about things like moderation and safety. Anyway, excited to see how it very fairly handles the next US elections! I'm sure most of the remaining devs have invested their time there.

Re: The dead economy theory

#424

Post by Epa095 »

FloorEgg wrote: post #387
TimByte wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference though is that the agriculture transitions had somewhere for labor to go: factories, construction, urban services, export manufacturing, etc

This transition does too. It's just not clear to most where yet.

He talked about exactly this in the article

  The optimists will tell you this is just productivity gains. The economy has absorbed automation before; agricultural employment collapsed from ninety percent of the American workforce to two percent and civilization continued. David Autor at MIT has shown that roughly sixty percent of today’s jobs didn’t exist in 1940. New technologies create new categories of work. True. But there’s a difference between an observation about the past and a law of nature, and the optimists consistently confuse the two. The agricultural transition took a hundred and forty years. Carl Benedikt Frey at Oxford has documented that the Industrial Revolution took seventy years before wages and employment recovered for the workers it displaced. In the interim, wages stagnated, the labor share of income collapsed, profits surged, inequality skyrocketed, and the political consequences included the Chartist movement and widespread social upheaval. As Frey puts it: “Most economists will acknowledge that technological progress can cause some adjustment problems in the short run. What is rarely noted is that the short run can be a lifetime.”

Re: The dead economy theory

#425

Post by vinyl7 »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #345
mrdependable wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ignoring the part where human labor is the leverage required for democracy to work.

I don't think it is required, democracies aren't designed that way not everyone in charge is a cartoon villain

Most are...it's pretty much required to be a psychopath to climb the ladder to the top

Re: The dead economy theory

#426

Post by rglullis »

FloorEgg wrote: post #387
TimByte wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference though is that the agriculture transitions had somewhere for labor to go: factories, construction, urban services, export manufacturing, etc

This transition does too. It's just not clear to most where yet.

There is no guarantee that this transition will lead to any type of desirable or meaningful job.

Around the time "Bullshit Jobs" was published, more than a third of people said they believed their job was not meaningfully contributing to the world. Graeber goes as far as saying that more than half of white-collar jobs are actually harmful and kept around only because people associate work with self-worth. There is no way that this number will go down with increased automation.

It's not uncommon to hear Boomers say things like "kids these days don't want to work hard anymore. Everyone wants to be an youtuber, no one wants to be a teacher or a doctor or an engineer". Well, guess what? We are heading to a world where being an youtuber might be the only option.

Re: The dead economy theory

#427

Post by jijijijij »

Animats wrote: post #248

India has the problem with farming that the US is starting to have with AI. Farming in India is still far too labor intensive by world standards. 43% of workers still work in agriculture. [1] For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily. This inefficient agricultural system is not by accident. It is supported by heavy subsidies. Attempts to cut the subsidies resulted in riots…

> 43% of workers still work in agriculture. For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily.

Don't you have to contrast these figures with import and export of produce, and environmental/ecological factors? Technology is one thing, but increasing yields by wasting resources (e.g. water, phosphorous, soil erosion, ...) may increase nominal productivity, but not efficiency. Not saying the conclusion is wrong, but I think your numbers are not necessarily causally linked to productivity/efficiency. I mean, the US also has a declining domestic fabrication percentage, but that's not merely indicative of productivity, but mostly outsourcing/loss of capabilities, I think.

Anyway, apparently India also doesn't score very well for food self-sufficiency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-025-01173-4

Re: The dead economy theory

#428

Post by iknowstuff »

logicchains wrote: post #234
rootusrootus wrote: post #226

I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…

>What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger I thought the point was to minimize the amount of talented devs who instead try to do their own startups that could compete with Messenger, by hiring them and paying them well so they've got no appetite to try their own thing.

No individual company would be able to make a dent in the jobs market that way. Especially because they would be inflicting damage on themselves alone

Re: The dead economy theory

#429

Post by fragmede »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #267
rootusrootus wrote: post #226

I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…

The economics of a service economy really just don't make sense. We pay way too much for software (which should trend towards zero-cost to distribute), we pay too much for ads. The value of it is inherently downstream of the real economy, which is about making and distributing goods and stuff people actually need to live. Especially a company like facebook only provides a glorified forum, which should be free or coll…

Start by understanding how to price a product. Say a chair. From first principles, you'd take however much wood it takes, plus however many hours it took you to turn that wood into a simple chair, then add in whatever you consider a reasonable profit margin, and that's how much you should sell the chair at. Which is totally and utterly wrong.

You throw away that number, and look at how much other chairs are selling for, compare features, the landscape of the whole market, and set your prices that way.

Process that, and things start to look different.

Re: The dead economy theory

#430

Post by 5701652400 »

harimau777 wrote: post #383
5701652400 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nonsense. people want basic things. ask any gal what guy needs, or any guy what gal needs. what really happenign is elites lost the plot. we are on airplaine falling down without a captain. nobody is in the control room.

Isn't there a big problem with people not being able to find partners? In that case it seems like people aren't getting the basic things that they want.

don't get what you mean. the thread above says "peopel need magnificent wealth created before their birth". I am saying most people do not need extreme wealth.

are you saying that food, sex, shelter, community, and entertainment is "magnificent wealth"? or are you saing "finding partner" is "magnificent wealth created before their birth"?

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