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Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

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Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#281

Post by bigbadfeline »

cousin_it wrote: post #147
baron816 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a winner takes all situation? There’s really intense competition up and down the supply chain for AI. That competition is going to bring down costs for everything. It’s becoming cheaper and easier every day to start a company that will disrupt the established players and bring down prices. Everything will become commoditized. The winners in the end will be consumers, and the losers will be the big AI compan…

I think you and the parent comment are both wrong. The right analogy is something like a new species, which consumes resources and makes more of itself. The species is "AI", or "AI-empowered organization with a handful of humans on top", whichever way you like to think of it. It doesn't have to be winner-take-all, there can be many such things running around. But the point is humans can't compete with such things and…

> It doesn't have to be winner-take-all,

Avoiding the winner-take-all trap requires a lot political efforts of the kind that's non-existent at the moment. Besides, winners and losers can be hand-picked these days, it's a simple process.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#282

Post by Ma8ee »

jameslk wrote: post #143
jbxntuehineoh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone wants more Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat and would be much, much happier for it. Unfortunately that option isn't available to me, nor to most people.

> Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat Most people wouldn’t be content to live in one room huts with thatched roofs and no hospitals or antibiotics. There might be some that do, but most prefer having more things and “better” lives. If we kept progressing, we’d look back at the era we live today and consider it just as primitive

If you instead imagine the perspective of anyone from 16th century, you’d realise we are already living as kings. We have way more food and clothes than we can eat and use, we have self driving carriages, magic devices with entertainment in our pockets, not to mention that almost all our kids live to adulthood.

At what point do we say that we don’t need to waste more of earth’s resources and instead find time to enjoy our current enormous wealth?

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#283

Post by GeoAtreides »

Loughla wrote: post #151
marcus_holmes wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you imagine a sci-fi world where machines can build and do everything humans can do, the concept of a human-centric economy would be pointless. In Iain Banks' The Culture novels, the machines provide the How, humans provide the Why.

I mean, there is a read of the culture that is pretty dystopian. If Minds are able to, essentially, predict the future, what is the purpose of the humans, other than as a sort of abstract pet acting out the Minds' great plans. Something something Bora Horza Gobuchul was right all along.

No, that's a read from people who equate suffering and toiling with meaning. The Culture is a true utopia, Iain says it explicitly.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#284

Post by kart23 »

the economy sucks. the fact that cars cost 30k. the fact that morrocco has high speed rail and california doesn’t. the fact that practically no new housing gets built in san francisco.

the economy needs to get a whole lot better before i would even consider something like this looking true. human demands are wildly elastic, which is why we’re not all farmers riding around in horse drawn carriages still.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#285

Post by Johanx64 »

jameslk wrote: post #108
stephc_int13 wrote: post #79

The idea of a consumer based economy has always appeared dumb to me. The reason why the masses should consume is to motivate them to work. And the reason why having a large amount of people working is that human work has been producing a surplus basically since the dawn of civilization. This surplus is partially shared but tend also to "trickle up", contrary to some weird beliefs, as can clearly be seen almost everyw…

> The reason why the masses should consume is to motivate them to work. The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around. Everyone wants more > But if you imagine a sci-fi world where machines can build and do everything humans can do, the concept of a human-centric economy would be pointless. There’s a number of obstacles I can think of to get there, in a human governed world, where humans make…

> The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around.

Hell, no. Masses work, because they have to.

It's not under threat of violence, it's under threat of sleeping under a bridge and starving. Which, frankly, isn't that far off.

People often spend as much as 30-40% of income on rent alone. Plus, once you stack up all the other basic necessities (which have heavily gone up under inflation), you'll have very small sliver left to allocate to "consumption" in a traditional sense of the word, where you "consoom" for sake of consooming all sorts of meaningless stuff.

Moreover, society is structured such, that you can't really partially retire - say take 5 year sabattical and come back without people perceiving as if there must be something wrong with you.

Most jobs aren't really accomodating of people who just wanna come in 2 times a week. Neither would that support basic necessities and rent except for some select few jobs.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#286

Post by strken »

jameslk wrote: post #273
strken wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first comment said "They need a lot of money to do that. Where do they get it all from? Not the jobless masses I presume?" I was explaining that money is irrelevant and so are the jobless masses. Someone owns the factories, and that person is the one who is relevant here. They of course need to be convinced, by money or other means, but the jobless masses are only relevant to the extent that they own and control…

> You are correct that there are additional steps here, but wealth is growing increasingly concentrated, and the burden of proof is on the person claiming that trend won't continue. Whoa there internet friend! I don't think I said anything about wealth concentration not being a trend. I'm just talking about AI. I'm still waiting for someone to explain coherent, undeniable watertight reasons that we're on a one-way tr…

Unless I'm misunderstanding, the argument isn't that whoever controls AI will use it to kill everyone, it's that they'll control nearly everything because power snowballs.

They could kill everyone, so aren't you glad they decided to open a soup kitchen instead? Here, have some UBI. Of course, it's not quite "universal" yet, so you'll have to sell your house to make it under the means test. A local firm, owned by a national private equity company, forming part of an international portfolio fund, making up an ETF owned mostly by Anthropic investors, will be happy to buy that bit of real estate. Oh, you wrote that on social media? I'm afraid you're not the kind of tenant we're looking for.

This is basically how life already works for people who aren't capable of holding down a job today. I don't think it's ridiculously cynical or nihilistic to extrapolate from the available data and assume it's going to suck once working people have no bargaining power other than asking politely.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#287

Post by jameslk »

Ma8ee wrote: post #282
jameslk wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat Most people wouldn’t be content to live in one room huts with thatched roofs and no hospitals or antibiotics. There might be some that do, but most prefer having more things and “better” lives. If we kept progressing, we’d look back at the era we live today and consider it just as primitive

If you instead imagine the perspective of anyone from 16th century, you’d realise we are already living as kings. We have way more food and clothes than we can eat and use, we have self driving carriages, magic devices with entertainment in our pockets, not to mention that almost all our kids live to adulthood. At what point do we say that we don’t need to waste more of earth’s resources and instead find time to enjo…

Well that's kinda my point. If we could all afford yachts tomorrow because AI robot factories made it a commodity like Swiss watches of yore[0], we'd all be buying yachts. And instead of bickering about not being able to afford yachts, people would be bickering about the rich asshole with the limited edition Aston Martin space yacht, while they could only afford the 3-speed helipad Temu yacht

0. https://www.paulgraham.com/brandage.html

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#288

Post by danaris »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #212
qsera wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unless one of us happens to be a food producer we will both starve. We need our trade graph to be connected to resources we need.. How will you starve when the robots will produce food for everyone, for free? Isn't that the idea? >Who owns the robots though.. I think may be the government. The population will have to pay taxes for their maintenance. But it will be vastly less.

It is never really “for free”. It appears free because machines, like perfect slaves, don’t ask to be paid for work. They still need to be fed though, energy, iron, etc. No matter how you turn it, it can’t be free. Meaning you can’t benefit from it without owning it or trading something.

Energy has become nearly free, though, as the space- and cost-efficiency of solar skyrockets. That's really not the problem here.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#289

Post by mjanx123 »

qsera wrote: post #159
xyzzy123 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You and I can still trade with each other, no robots need be involved. Unless one of us happens to be a food producer we will both starve. We need our trade graph to be connected to resources we need. Production also tends to need exclusive access to resources (land, materials, etc) and you will be competing with machines for access to those. > The reason we have an economy and money and trade is that we need to in…

>Unless one of us happens to be a food producer we will both starve. We need our trade graph to be connected to resources we need.. How will you starve when the robots will produce food for everyone, for free? Isn't that the idea? >Who owns the robots though.. I think may be the government. The population will have to pay taxes for their maintenance. But it will be vastly less.

> The population will have to pay taxes for their maintenance. But it will be vastly less.

Taxes are actually the means of how the government extracts work from the population. At the start of the circuit the government prints tokens and offers them for the things it wants done. At the end of the circuit the government demands to be handed tokens else prison. The value of the tokens only comes from it being the means to pay the artificial debt imposed on you.

Government: I want you to produce these weapons, and I offer you this bag of 1.5 trillion small metal discs Population: thank you but we are not into collecting small metal discs Government: on this day next year I will want a small metal disc from each of you and who will not give one will go to prison Population: how did you say we can get them?

A society that does not extract work from the population lacks the mechanism that gives the tokens the value. Nobody would be interested in being "paid" government tokens for maintaining the robots. Maintenance robots will maintain the robots.

Humans will not need to do anything and will just be having fun all the time. For some that means to be on the top/high in the hierarchy. That requires undermining others to get above them. The fun will be spoilt in some ways.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#290

Post by danaris »

qsera wrote: post #231
shimman wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government has two political parties that are both entirely opposed to expanding the welfare state. Both parties are against medicare for all [1]. Both parties are against universal childcare [2]. Both parties are against free student school lunches [3]. Both parties against free higher/tertiary education [4]. Both parties are against a universal jobs program [5]. All these programs poll above majorities in th…

>but you have to pay for the privilege too... You are not considering the fact that if there are robots to do everything, then they won't be interested in you paying them. This applies to the programs that you listed as well. The equation changes completely when automonos robots do everything. >now they have the means to not only control production + its consumption but also have the military means to enforce it. Tel…

> The equation changes completely when automonos robots do everything.

Yes, but how it changes depends entirely on who owns the robots.

There is zero current evidence that benevolent governments will own the robots, and huge evidence that self-centered wealthy billionaires (and trillionaires!) will own them.

In such a case, the response to "the robots will make everything" isn't "so give it away to the people for free! :-)". It's "so what do I need all these stupid people for? make killbots to keep them away from my fully-automated luxury oligarchy compound!"

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