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The dead economy theory

owenmcgrann.com

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Re: The dead economy theory

#11

Post by smallmancontrov »

RC_ITR wrote: post #5

>There is only one market that large: the global labor market. This isn't even close to true and it's kind of the central thesis of this article. Saudi Aramco has consistently been a $2tn company in the oil market. Walmart is a $1tn-ish company focusing on a fraction of US retail. It also ignores the idea that the economy is not zero sum and companies create their own market/economic value all the time.

And "grow the pie" ignores the reality that the distribution of benefits is often "150% to capital, -50% to labor" because capital isn't held accountable for displacing labor and labor suffers displacement risk without compensation.

This would be fine if the money reliably trickled down, but it doesn't. This would be fine if we used redistributive policy to make it right, but we don't.

Re: The dead economy theory

#12

Post by pacifi30 »

I think this is where government steps in for each country, go on the path of exploration that has no profit per se in it like space exploration, human body understanding. I am drawing parallel to 1930s or 40s where great depression was smoothen because America embarked on to take many huge infrastructure projects.

Lastly, OpenAI and Anthropic or any other frontier labs needs to be nationalized because they become a public utility and the profits of automation goes to fund infrastructure or grand projects via government.

We do not need to do menial work anymore and AI is helping us with it, what we can do exploratory work, and we need a visionary to get this rolling.

Re: The dead economy theory

#13

Post by somesortofthing »

senordevnyc wrote: post #8

This starts with a claim that last year over half the content on the internet was created by AI, and links to a source. The source makes no such claim, rather, over half of internet traffic is from bots. Even that claim is suspect, but it’s very different from half of the content on the internet coming from AI. I stopped reading at that point.

I don't know if over half of the content on the internet was AI-generated but over half of this article definitely was.

Re: The dead economy theory

#14

Post by Miner49er »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #6

So what happens when it is companies powered entirely by AI directly getting money from the federal reserve print, spending it on other AI companies with humans getting nothing? Game theory suggests they must exterminate us as we’d present a liability. If you give us universal income capitalism will create inflation and force us to ask for more and more from the machine state. And for what? So we don’t destroy the ma…

There's a chance AI will still need us for data/entropy.

It does today, that could continue.

Re: The dead economy theory

#15

Post by spongebobstoes »

this whole blog post is basically "people need jobs to be happy, so we should design our society such that they need jobs"

not only is the premise wrong, but forcing people to work is not a good or ethical way to address this problem

most people like the social aspect of work, but not being beholden to their boss

we can give people meaning, community, culture, growth, without relying on employment and money

we can do better than this

Re: The dead economy theory

#16

Post by BobbyJo »

pacifi30 wrote: post #12

I think this is where government steps in for each country, go on the path of exploration that has no profit per se in it like space exploration, human body understanding. I am drawing parallel to 1930s or 40s where great depression was smoothen because America embarked on to take many huge infrastructure projects. Lastly, OpenAI and Anthropic or any other frontier labs needs to be nationalized because they become a…

> I think this is where government steps in for each country

People quite often lose the plot that "government" is "collective will". Governments will only do this if their constituents want them to. If the constituents would rather spend those recourses on free VR for every household and gatorade from drinking fountains, then that's all we're getting.

Re: The dead economy theory

#18

Post by ismaelyws »

Miner49er wrote: post #3

> Turn three: the company that fired its workers to save money discovers that its customers were, in aggregate, other companies’ workers. Revenue growth stalls. The AI subscription that was supposed to be an investment in efficiency turns out to be a contribution to the destruction of its own market. For some companies yeah, but this is why companies are switching to consumption based pricing - so they can charge AI.…

Yep, if AI gutters the middleclass and small budinesses who you gonna sell to?

Re: The dead economy theory

#19

Post by parliament32 »

Miner49er wrote: post #3

> Turn three: the company that fired its workers to save money discovers that its customers were, in aggregate, other companies’ workers. Revenue growth stalls. The AI subscription that was supposed to be an investment in efficiency turns out to be a contribution to the destruction of its own market. For some companies yeah, but this is why companies are switching to consumption based pricing - so they can charge AI.…

If the business process is fully AI-able, why wouldn't it just be implemented by the next AI in line?

I'd argue the only companies to survive will be the ones with either a human input or a human output. Everything else is effectively worthless now.

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