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Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

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Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#441

Post by decimalenough »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #430
bluGill wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their existence was even more precarious because they were one crop failure from starvation. They couldn't save food for long, and even if they tried an army is likely to come and take it all (if mice didn't get it first). Dept is bad, but it isn't nearly as bad as the things they dealt with.

Umm, have you ever heard of pickling? Root cellars? Canning? I hate this fake idea that everyone in the past was one bad harvest from starvation. They could survive a bad harvest every so often, its when the weather changed due to drought/etc. that caused famine.

Correct, they were mostly two bad harvests away from starvation. 240,000 people starved to death in Sweden because 1867 was cold and 1868 was dry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_famine_of_1867%E2%80%9...

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#442

Post by datadrivenangel »

bluGill wrote: post #410
mothballed wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of those people were able to do it without debt which made it far less precarious. I have equally pessimistic view of the future so I built my house one piece of wood at a time with cash. I bought a piece of shit car with cash. I've never used debt, I just got all the things I have by buying shit cars and shit land and slowly slowly making things better until I have nice things. For much of the youth, this is i…

Their existence was even more precarious because they were one crop failure from starvation. They couldn't save food for long, and even if they tried an army is likely to come and take it all (if mice didn't get it first). Dept is bad, but it isn't nearly as bad as the things they dealt with.

Modern civilization is ~2-3 years of correlated bad harvests away from major disaster. If food costs 20x what it used to, a good number of people will starve or die in the political turbulence that will follow...

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#443

Post by abyssin »

chrsw wrote: post #388
dominicrose wrote: post #320

It is frustrating to not be able to predict the future. How can you get married, have children, get a 25 year mortgage on a house, buy a car for comfort even though you don't absolutely need it? Even if you do consider buying a home, how do you know it's worth anything if you can't predict this particular place's future situation? Some countries tax enough to make the risk of buying quite high. A leap of faith is req…

There are enough people in the same boat that I would think the future would tend to support families, maybe with a bit of struggle, above all else. No matter how good computers get at devaluing labor or how expensive housing gets, kids still need to eat, learn and grow.

Seeing the number of poor people in the world, I don't understand what makes you believe you couldn't be one of them. Their kids also need to eat, learn and grow.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#444

Post by throw0101c »

georgeecollins wrote: post #355
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.

> Everyone wants more John Maynard Keynes thought people might eventually work only a few hours per month because the growth in productivity would allow only a few hours of work to cover consumption. He did not imagine that people would want their own cars, their own lavish houses filled with appliances, extensive wardrobes, fancy food. As a westerner you do not feel like you live an opulent lifestyle but compared to…

> John Maynard Keynes thought people might eventually work only a few hours per month because the growth in productivity would allow only a few hours of work to cover consumption. He did not imagine that people would want […]

This is incorrect: Keynes thought with productivity gains people could eventually satisfy their material needs working very few hours, but their wants could be "insatiable":

> Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes --those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs-a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.

* John Maynard Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" (1930)

* http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

An essay putting forward / hypothesizing four reasons on why the above did not happen (We haven't spread the wealth around enough; People actually love working; There's no limit to human desires; Leisure is expensive):

* https://archive.is/https://www.vox.com/2014/11/20/7254877/ke...

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#445

Post by elvis10ten »

jstanley wrote: post #408
elvis10ten wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your examples, I can still find the “for whom”, even if that is several layers deep. I’m trying to understand your position: are you saying the same will be true in the ongoing case, just that we don’t know the connections yet?

Approximately, yes. In a sense all this communication is "for somebody". But do you know all the communication your laptop is doing? Do you really claim it is all for you, or all for your benefit? Or is it just something the laptop does that isn't really for anyone in particular?

> But do you know all the communication your laptop is doing? Do you really claim it is all for you, or all for your benefit? Or is it just something the laptop does that isn't really for anyone in particular?

Hmm, why would anyone add comms to a laptop if there wasn’t some benefactor in some way? The way I see it is that it’s either benefiting me or benefiting the company which ends up benefiting some individuals (and sometimes me again).

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#446

Post by vinyl7 »

qsera wrote: post #173
whatever1 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will need electricity, water you will be producing waste etc. in your Tennessee house. Why would someone who owns all of the power and resources share with you? Really I don’t see any playable alternative other than near complete annihilation of human race. It’s very similar to a nuclear apocalypse. Very few get to survive.

>Why would someone who owns all of the power and resources share with you? Ideally governments will see to it. This also assumes that governments have a much larger army of robots than any private individual. Just like how governments makes it illegal to own firearms, it will be illegal to own certain class of robots with combat capability.. Thus governments (the people really/ideally) will see to it that everyone wi…

With the way things are now, the corporations own the government. The 'government' is not some sort of impartial mediator that people have been lead to believe it is

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#447

Post by kjshsh123 »

mothballed wrote: post #407
kjshsh123 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Necessities count as consumption. You could survive off rice and live in an internet cafe for $15/night. I don't know what you think the traditional sense of the word "consumption" is.

At the lower levels it's mostly meeting arbitrary regulatory requirements. You can live in a shack for next to no rent just fine, but the state will steal your kids 'cuz neglect, inferior shelter' and then they'll condemn your shack and dump you on the streets where it's ~illegal to be homeless.

The person I replied to was trying to separate necessities from consumption in the "traditional sense of the word".

No doubt there's problematic regulations like exclusionary zoning laws. But you can't say that these regulations are so binding that there is no choice and no expression of preferences as opposed to needs in their choices. Lots of homes still have unmandated second floors, basements, bathrooms, and square footage.

The human brain is great at (ir)rationalizing wants as needs. If you want to live in a nice place in a high-cost of living city, that's a want, not a need.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#448

Post by zoomerwaffen »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #442
bluGill wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their existence was even more precarious because they were one crop failure from starvation. They couldn't save food for long, and even if they tried an army is likely to come and take it all (if mice didn't get it first). Dept is bad, but it isn't nearly as bad as the things they dealt with.

Modern civilization is ~2-3 years of correlated bad harvests away from major disaster. If food costs 20x what it used to, a good number of people will starve or die in the political turbulence that will follow...

Sounds like France circa 1790.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#449

Post by organsnyder »

bluGill wrote: post #417
captainbland wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The masses work because they want to consume For many millennials and younger working people a huge bulk of income is taken up by housing. There's also a cliff edge of jobs when you transition from full time to part time, it's only rarely possible to find part time work which pays enough to sustain living costs. This leads to a situation in which people have to work full time in order to meet basic conditions of li…

They choose to live on part time income. You can have roommates which greatly reduces your cost of housing. You can eat "steak and lobster", or "rice and beans". Not everyone buys streaming subscriptions, and not just the Amish are doing without. I wouldn't choose most of the above either, which is why I have a full time job.

In the United States, healthcare is a major factor, especially if you have a family.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#450

Post by throw0101c »

Ma8ee wrote: post #312
jameslk wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What a miserable world view. What do you need a yacht to when you have two weeks of holiday every year? While I agree that many people are status seekers, that can be different things. Where I live, a yacht is vulgar. Even a bigger car is looked down on if it isn't for some specific utility. Status is showing your care for the climate by leaving your kids in daycare with a cargo bike. Status is being able to leave wo…

> What a miserable world view. What do you need a yacht to when you have two weeks of holiday every year?

If your job involves network connectivity and SSH, satellite Internet would allow you to do your job on your yacht where ever it happens to be, even in the middle of an ocean.

James Hamilton, Senior Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon, [1] was doing this 15+ years ago as he motored around the world in a Nordhavn 52 [2] with his wife:

* https://mvdirona.com/2009/06/remote-data-communication-costs...

* https://mvdirona.com/2015/08/communications-at-sea/

* https://mvdirona.com/2018/03/kvh-v7-hts-twice-the-speed-more...

[1] https://www.wired.com/2013/02/james-hamilton-amazon/

[2] https://mvdirona.com/dirona/

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