41–50 of 104 posts
That's why we are going to get some for of government mandated UBI eventually. Because workers are optional but consumers are obligatory for any market and company to function.
Rich can't get richer without consumers and that's the only thing that drives decision making.
U.S. unemployment rate is steady at ~4% and we are now almost 4 years after the release of ChatGPT. The Jobs Apocalypse seems to be always on the horizon. UBI is being pushed by college educated workers burnt out of white collar work (understandably), but when you suggest to them working construction, teaching school, or working in a hospital, they deflect and go quiet.
No, that's not the usual response, because people in this situation have evaluated those alternatives and will be easily able to articulate what is wrong with them (pay). Also, the 4% figure treats doordash as employment. In a parallel universe where the pay was decent, that could be reasonable. In this universe, not so much. These are boomer-tier talking points and if you bring them up to a kid stuck in this positio…
Add to your excellent takedown the implication that any of us can walk into a school with our résumé and ask for a teaching interview. It's the most meme-ified of the boomer memes presented unironically.
U.S. unemployment rate is steady at ~4% and we are now almost 4 years after the release of ChatGPT. The Jobs Apocalypse seems to be always on the horizon. UBI is being pushed by college educated workers burnt out of white collar work (understandably), but when you suggest to them working construction, teaching school, or working in a hospital, they deflect and go quiet.
No, that's not the usual response, because people in this situation have evaluated those alternatives and will be easily able to articulate what is wrong with them (pay). Also, the 4% figure treats doordash as employment. In a parallel universe where the pay was decent, that could be reasonable. In this universe, not so much. These are boomer-tier talking points and if you bring them up to a kid stuck in this positio…
Slapped (or beaten) would be fair-er.
> If AI displaces human workers faster than the economy can reabsorb them, it risks eroding the very consumer demand firms depend on. We show that knowing this is not enough for firms to stop it. That's why we are going to get some for of government mandated UBI eventually. Because workers are optional but consumers are obligatory for any market and company to function. Rich can't get richer without consumers and tha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But total unemployment is going up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE
Correlation isn't causation; in the last few years we've experienced some significant economic headwinds like COVID and the current oil crisis. AI rollout is not happening in a vacuum.
U.S. unemployment rate is steady at ~4% and we are now almost 4 years after the release of ChatGPT. The Jobs Apocalypse seems to be always on the horizon. UBI is being pushed by college educated workers burnt out of white collar work (understandably), but when you suggest to them working construction, teaching school, or working in a hospital, they deflect and go quiet.
hospital and construction works get about $20/hour. Being a teacher will require going back for a 2nd degree. Is that the alternative for knowledge worker when getting laid off?
> If AI displaces human workers faster than the economy can reabsorb them, it risks eroding the very consumer demand firms depend on. We show that knowing this is not enough for firms to stop it. That's why we are going to get some for of government mandated UBI eventually. Because workers are optional but consumers are obligatory for any market and company to function. Rich can't get richer without consumers and tha…
i'm sure it's meant in some kind of technical sense that is precisely defined in the field of economics, but this use of the word "rational" is irritating: > This demand externality traps rational firms in an automation arms race, displacing workers well beyond what is collectively optimal. you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time. the rational thing for these rational competit…
It's rational at the individual level, irrational at the group level. The issue is you can't easily enforce cooperation without some external overarching force (e.g. regulation), especially across competing powers. Refer to nuclear arms race in general. A specific example on why not to be the only one to cooperate: Ukraine gave up nukes in order to push for group level rationality, gets walked over as an individual.…
Instead of wasting a potential reader's time, here's a way better framing: "The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses."
My understanding regarding the moratorium is that that is exactly the objective: the current regulatory environment fails to price in the negative externalities of data centers, so their primary investors have an incentive to hem-and-haw on negotiations for revised regulations. A moriatorium is an action that can be taken unilaterally that changes those incentives, that brings them to the negotiating table.
edit: this sentiment is also produced in a comment in the substack (Ben Verschoor):
The thing with the data center issue is that a moratorium is the moderate option, because it gives us space to actually think about what we want to do with this technology and implement it. Recently there was an earnest, centrist-y guy who works for the industry but has concerns who came to our anti-data center group asking us to participate in some roundtable dialogue event. My answer was that as long as these data center projects are still moving forward, using our limited time and bandwidth to engage in dialogue rather than slow and stop their approach would amount to unilateral disarmament.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
hospital and construction works get about $20/hour. Being a teacher will require going back for a 2nd degree. Is that the alternative for knowledge worker when getting laid off?
Yes (and many more options). The alternative is having all the construction workers, teachers, janitors continue to labor and pay taxes while the former knowledge workers sit on the sidelines, which would be deeply unfair.