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What will our economic future look like?

anthropic.com

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Re: What will our economic future look like?

#461

Post by zahlman »

pembrook wrote: post #291
zahlman wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey Anthropic: before we worry about raising GDP growth to 20%, maybe we focus on making blog posts that don't crash your browser window if you try to resize it? Have you tried disabling JavaScript? The simulations won't work of course, and there are some random large blank spaces; but the main content is completely readable and handles resizing without issue[0] even on my mid-range office PC from 2014. [0]: Just l…

"We're confident our technology will 10X GDP growth, we just need you to disable javascript first. That one we couldn't figure out."

[dead]

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#462

Post by dismalaf »

bmitc wrote: post #452
dismalaf wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making everyone poor never made the world better.

Getting rid of the rich by taxing them and getting rid of legal and financial loopholes that allows them to operate outside of the system with absolutely no contributions back does not make everyone poor. In fact, it's the complete opposite. Reducing wealth inequality is not the same thing as making everyone poor. And you know that.

Lots of counterpoints. Peronist Argentina, France under Hollande, Canada from 2015-today, etc...

I live in Canada. Under the current government, business investment cratered, 40% of our 1% earners left and our GDP per capita relative to the US dropped by 40%.

Keep in mind that LLMs were basically invented in Canada and we've captured next to none of the economic activity.

Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy and Geoffrey Hinton are all Canadian citizens lol...

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#463

Post by adam_arthur »

bradishungry wrote: post #437
adam_arthur wrote: post #274

It seems obvious that labor displacement due to AI will create labor surpluses in existing fields. Which will feel quite bad for many of us in the present, but net-net be good for society in the long run. Wages will go down, but cost of goods and services will decline even more. Markets will be more competitive than ever, which limits the moat/margin capability of many businesses. It's only really particularly bad fo…

What is obvious about that? What jobs are being created long term that can be filled by those displaced? To me it seems like even jobs that are not knowledge jobs are going to utilize ai to cut hiring, not grow it

When wages decline, cost of producing the service/good does down too. And when the costs go down, relative demand goes up.

When relative demand goes up, the total labor needed expands.

How many Uber rides would you take at $5 vs $20?

How many times would you eat out at $10 vs $50?

Would you pay for a house cleaner at $25/visit over $150/visit?

A live in nurse at 50k/year vs 200k?

The costs of all these things will decline materially when the labor pool expands meaningfully due to displacement.

Technology has always been deflationary in the long run throughout history.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#464

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

pessimizer wrote: post #295
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse for who? The nurse? The hospital administration? The hospital owners? The insurance company?

Your comment is how blame dissolving into the ether looks.

Then I suppose your reply should have said "all of them" ?

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#465

Post by bmitc »

dismalaf wrote: post #462
bmitc wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of the rich by taxing them and getting rid of legal and financial loopholes that allows them to operate outside of the system with absolutely no contributions back does not make everyone poor. In fact, it's the complete opposite. Reducing wealth inequality is not the same thing as making everyone poor. And you know that.

Lots of counterpoints. Peronist Argentina, France under Hollande, Canada from 2015-today, etc... I live in Canada. Under the current government, business investment cratered, 40% of our 1% earners left and our GDP per capita relative to the US dropped by 40%. Keep in mind that LLMs were basically invented in Canada and we've captured next to none of the economic activity. Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy an…

> Under the current government, business investment cratered, 40% of our 1% earners left and our GDP per capita relative to the US dropped by 40%.

With the assumption that this is true (I have no idea either way), has it made people more poor or worse off?

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#466

Post by dismalaf »

bmitc wrote: post #465
dismalaf wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of counterpoints. Peronist Argentina, France under Hollande, Canada from 2015-today, etc... I live in Canada. Under the current government, business investment cratered, 40% of our 1% earners left and our GDP per capita relative to the US dropped by 40%. Keep in mind that LLMs were basically invented in Canada and we've captured next to none of the economic activity. Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy an…

> Under the current government, business investment cratered, 40% of our 1% earners left and our GDP per capita relative to the US dropped by 40%. With the assumption that this is true (I have no idea either way), has it made people more poor or worse off?

https://www.statcan.gc.ca/hub-carrefour/quality-life-qualite...

You tell me. Median household (+ individuals not in an economic family) income went up $5k from 2015-2024. Given what you've experienced inflation wise in that time period what do you think?

US median household income went up $15k in that time period ($22k CAD), so >4x more.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#467

Post by yencabulator »

chrisjj wrote: post #210
jdiff wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marshall Brain really nailed it back in 2003 with Manna. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 AI leaves humans as the limbs of the machine, with less and less thinking or comprehension required on their part.

URL not responding here.

He died in 2024. The domain is paid for 10 years, but the hosting probably got shut off.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#468

Post by WalterBright »

d3dd wrote: post #439
WalterBright wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will find out for myself how much of a backbone software engineers etc have when I employ them. You're in for a rude awakening.

Am I? I’ve worked with them and did a comp sci degree years ago. I’ve got enough exposure. However I want to see given what is happening in the world now - are they still weak and feeble?

Being an employer means you will find out. Employees are not weak and feeble. They quit all the time for more money elsewhere, or just don't want to work. And there's NOTHING you, as employer, can do about it.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#469

Post by WalterBright »

nixon_why69 wrote: post #427
WalterBright wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX has a 90% market share.

Numbers aside, SpaceX has a technological lead. They're not strangling competitors in a commodity business with monopoly practices. I wouldn't call ASMR or TSMC monopolies either, anyone can compete with them in theory. Standard oil, by contrast, would cut their competitors off from rail transit and selectively dump to drive them out of business. The other reason they're not a monopoly is that they may do 90% of tota…

Before going any further, I suggest taking a deeper dive into Standard Oil and its so-called "monopoly".

Start with "Titan" by Chernow.

SO was basically convicted of "making too much money", and the government failed to convict SO of a monopoly.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#470

Post by cucumber3732842 »

lbreakjai wrote: post #392
slopinthebag wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

healthcare is one of the most highly regulated and state-controlled industries on the planet. surely that has nothing to do with it though. must be those damn capitalists!

We should remove the red tape and let Joe down the street operate, that will surely fix everything. It has to be the regulation, not the parasitic layer of health insurance racket in the middle.

>We should remove the red tape and let Joe down the street operate, that will surely fix everything.

I'll settle for just letting the vets do people. Like if you can ultrasound a cat's heart for a grand and sew up a horse for a cool five hundo then you can do the same to me for the same prices.

>It has to be the regulation, not the parasitic layer of health insurance racket in the middle.

They regulation and the parasitic layer have a positive feedback loop with each other.

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