Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

gmalandrakis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 613 posts

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#301

Post by supriyo-biswas »

jameslk wrote: post #287
Ma8ee wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.paulgraha…

> If we could all afford yachts tomorrow because AI robot factories

Handwaving away constraints on production on physical goods because of advances in code generation is a new one.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#302

Post by inglor_cz »

toasty228 wrote: post #297
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

It's always the choice between flying cars and living in a hut made of cow dung, right? No in between is conceivable by the human brain, either boundless growth or the Neolithic

I am not sure if the choice is so binary, but neither am I sure whether you can sustain a reasonable compromise without a certain level of societal and economic complexity.

A lot depends on what "in between" actually means.

I think almost no one would be willing to return, say, to the early 1900s when it comes to medical science and available treatment options.

Things like anti-retroviral therapy and CAR-T are just too nice to have when something otherwise fatal hits you. But that requires top-notch chemistry and biology, which requires top-notch lab equipment and computers, which requires top-notch material science and industry etc.

I am not sure if you can sustain all of this if all the the relevant PhDs work 16 hour workweeks. I am also not sure which parts of the modern economy can be left out to regress to a previous stage of development if you still want to retain the capability to treat cancer with advanced biologicals. The supply chains are just too complex.

Maybe in the age of AI and robots the options are different, but not before.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#303

Post by david_shi »

theptip wrote: post #239
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 important question is, who has power in such an economy? In the current economy by necessity labor and capital are both required, and when capital tries to subjugate labor there tends to eventually be a violent reaction. Given the dependency on labor it has been hard to fully centralize capital. Labor can unite to unseat the biggest monopolies. I don’t see any such safety valves once you cross the rubicon into a…

Perhaps we are perceptually anchored to the last few hundred years where guns provided a scalable way for peasants to kill well-trained, well-armored knights.

If political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, then much of the post Enlightenment rebalancing from absolute monarchies and feudalism could have been an accident. In the future, the owners of autonomous weapon systems and surveillance will be able to easily subjugate those who don't have them (while still competing with each other).

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#304

Post by peepee1982 »

chongli wrote: post #181
nextaccountic wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's still wanting more: more free time. But this is working less to have more free time. > You're not going to take a 60% paycut if it means 60% less food, 60% less shelter, etc. Why not? That's exactly what the person said they want. The incorrect point that was made is that everyone want to work because they want more stuff, not because they want more free time. People that get more free time typically achieve…

Free time is a luxury just like anything else, but it's only valuable if you have enough of everything else. Nobody is jealous of all the free time homeless people have. They're jealous of the free time of people who don't need to work full time to pay all their bills.

I'm definitely jealous of the free time homeless people have. I just don't want to make the choice for my children to be homeless with me.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#305

Post by toasty228 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #302
toasty228 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always the choice between flying cars and living in a hut made of cow dung, right? No in between is conceivable by the human brain, either boundless growth or the Neolithic

I am not sure if the choice is so binary, but neither am I sure whether you can sustain a reasonable compromise without a certain level of societal and economic complexity. A lot depends on what "in between" actually means. I think almost no one would be willing to return, say, to the early 1900s when it comes to medical science and available treatment options. Things like anti-retroviral therapy and CAR-T are just t…

> A lot depends on what "in between" actually means.

Smaller local economies/communities like my grandparents had in the 60s don't sound too bad, especially if we keep a few nice things from today. Do you need aliexpress? Fruits shipped form the other side of the planets? Etc. Once everyone has electricity, water, shelter, food and a tight local community were good to go, I'd even argue the "progress" we made since then actually broke some of the core things we require to thrive as humans (purpose, stability, communities,...)

I don't care about medicine that save 0.00001% of the population if the price of it is what we're witnessing today tbh, otherwise there is truly no limits and no arguments to growth at all cost

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#307

Post by oersted »

Waterluvian wrote: post #131
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.

Getting 3/5ths fired is my dream, too. For a while I had a sweet gig where instead of raises I got to work less but that just bewilders management even though I’m very confident they got more for their money.

An employee is not a pure machine that converts money/time into results linearly.

It bewilders management, because there's a very significant overhead involved in making sure an employee is properly synced on what needs to be done, making sure they are content and productive, and managing the administrative logistics around them. Even disregarding the work of management, in a flat team the communication overhead that each member adds can also be significant and non-linear.

Generally, adding people adds a lot of complexity and inefficiency to an organization, and if you can do something without more people that's usually a lot better. It depends on the role of course, but in many jobs now an employee that is not fully dedicated can be a net-negative. The same can be said of employees that are not very experienced or competent.

This is why there's a significant crisis in early-career employment. More generally, it's also why we have a large fraction of population feeling like they cannot get a decent job, while many companies are simultaneously struggling to find the employees they actually need for a reasonable salary.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#308

Post by qsera »

mordae wrote: post #279
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.

> I think may be the government. The population will have to pay taxes for their maintenance. But it will be vastly less. Governments are no longer allowed to print money. Do you think they will be allowed to build unlimited supply of robots? You are funny. All the robot factories will belong to rich and we will have to _beg_ to have some measly allocation _while_ we feed the police that prevents us from just taking…

But then why hasn't governments and the rich already collaborated converted all of us plebs into slaves?

If that has not happened already then why do you think so pessimistically?

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#309

Post by inglor_cz »

toasty228 wrote: post #305
inglor_cz wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if the choice is so binary, but neither am I sure whether you can sustain a reasonable compromise without a certain level of societal and economic complexity. A lot depends on what "in between" actually means. I think almost no one would be willing to return, say, to the early 1900s when it comes to medical science and available treatment options. Things like anti-retroviral therapy and CAR-T are just t…

> A lot depends on what "in between" actually means. Smaller local economies/communities like my grandparents had in the 60s don't sound too bad, especially if we keep a few nice things from today. Do you need aliexpress? Fruits shipped form the other side of the planets? Etc. Once everyone has electricity, water, shelter, food and a tight local community were good to go, I'd even argue the "progress" we made since t…

Cancer kills about 25 per cent of the population and would kill maybe 35 per cent in absence of modern medicine. Granted, most of its victims are old people.

You personally may not care about regressing to 19xx medicine, but in a democratic society, I doubt that this would be an attractive policy for voters.

BTW I believe that "shipping fruit around the world" was already a thing 120+ years ago. United Fruit Company and its banana republics have a long, long (and dirty) history.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#310

Post by arethuza »

akomtu wrote: post #209
Loughla wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Minds keep humans as pets.

I can see why you might think that - but people and machines and groups are free to leave if they want - at least one of the Culture stories is based on this: e.g. "A Gift from the Culture".
Post reply on HN