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The dead economy theory

owenmcgrann.com

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Re: The dead economy theory

#111

Post by philipkglass »

CM30 wrote: post #89

I think the thing companies forget is that a lot of them can't remain functional if a shrinking percentage of the population can afford their products. Yes, you can try and appeal to the rich and sell products/services aimed at their needs. But does that work for most companies? I'd say no. The rich won't buy millions of food items or works of fiction or go to every service available in real life. So, many of those c…

Most of the world's democracies don't have influential AI companies, so if the voters want X and companies want Y, X will win. There's little reason for Indonesian politicians to prioritize the interests of American or Chinese AI companies over domestic voters.

Re: The dead economy theory

#112

Post by troosevelt »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #90
spongebobstoes wrote: post #15

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…

> we can do better than this In theory we can do better than this, in practice we can't. 40% of the people in the US would rather starve to death themselves than live in a world where people they hate for their skin color get anything without toiling for it.

I appreciate that there is a significant chunk of people that are like this, but I think if you really believe the 40% number or anything like it, you're giving yourself a false worldview.

The majority of people aren't racist nor do they have a problem with government helping them out. What was happening (are you referencing 2024?) in 2024 and today was a government saying the economy was fine when it is not. When that happens, people are going to pick the person that isn't in power, who says they are going to fix it, even if they aren't. "It's the economy stupid". People care about their own well-being above pretty much everything else most of the time.

I don't think putting this on racism or anything else (though it is a smaller factor) helps, it's just rhetoric. 40% of the people in the US aren't dedicateed racists, they are, however, in working groups that the government has ignored for decades.

Re: The dead economy theory

#113

Post by aleqs »

skrebbel wrote: post #85

This article's premise is entirely built on the idea that CEOs who layoff people citing AI aren't just lying. And, well, of course they are. If AI was really making these companies meaningfully more productive, they could use that to out-innovate competitors. Instead, they're doing cost-cutting. That only makes sense if you're entirely out of ideas! It's a terribly embarrassing thing to say for a CEO! Really what's g…

Another point to consider - how efficient/productive/useful is the typical tech company really? How innovative is the typical tech company? From my experience, the majority of them are focused more on marketing and enshitification, than actually building innovative and useful technology. And at the end of the day most of the profit from this goes to a relatively small number of people in a highly unequal way.

What prevents 10000 experienced engineers from organizing, investing their own money and working to build data centers and an open LLM (for example), and sharing any profit fairly? I know that in practice there are many reasons, but I don't see why this isn't a solveable problem.

Re: The dead economy theory

#114

Post by stratos123 »

treis wrote: post #4

This isn't how the economy works at all. We're not all unemployed because farms mechanized. We're not all unemployed because factories automated. We won't all be unemployed if AI takes over white collar work.

When automation happened historically, people whose job were displaced suffered a lot and eventually pivoted to different jobs. Having to relearn all of your career skills is already quite bad in practice, but a bigger problem is that it only works if you can learn the skills for job B before it, too, is automated. That'd require AI progress to hit a wall and stay there for at least years, ideally for decades. If this doesn't happen, then there simply won't be any white-collar jobs to pivot to, and shortly after that, no jobs to pivot to at all.

Re: The dead economy theory

#115

Post by 10xDev »

alex_young wrote: post #53

Why is this time different? Won't super power AI tools allow companies to do more with the same number of people? Don't you think a smarter way to run a business is to capture more of the market if you have the resources to do so? If company A decides they just want the same slice of the market they have now and can fire half of their employees and pocket $$$, can't company B hire the same workers and compete harder…

Does every business scale that way? Sure video games for example have only required more people and resources to develop games as the ability to create larger scale games have increased. But does that really apply to accounting? Not a rhetorical question.

Re: The dead economy theory

#116

Post by zozbot234 »

10xDev wrote: post #102
zozbot234 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence that AI is replacing human jobs to any real extent. We're just seeing AI being blamed for ordinary layoffs that have more to do with broad economic instability.

Actually you can for entry level jobs. You also shouldn't just look at unemployment but underemployment . >Overall, 42% of recent college graduates were classified as underemployed, the highest level since 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2026/02/23/unem...

Entry-level jobs are the easiest to get rid of in any layoffs. This doesn't look like anything genuinely new.

Re: The dead economy theory

#117

Post by alterom »

alex_young wrote: post #53

Why is this time different? Won't super power AI tools allow companies to do more with the same number of people? Don't you think a smarter way to run a business is to capture more of the market if you have the resources to do so? If company A decides they just want the same slice of the market they have now and can fire half of their employees and pocket $$$, can't company B hire the same workers and compete harder…

>Why is this time different?

If only someone wrote an entire article about this, huh.

Oh well. I guess we'll never know.

/s

Re: The dead economy theory

#118

Post by petra »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #15

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…

Maybe people don't need jobs to be happy.

But it's a big change, and a better way to go about it, instead of huge layoffs is:reduce the hours of work gradually and equally. And possibly create some social infrastructure in the background, to fullfil the social roles of work.

Re: The dead economy theory

#119

Post by kalleboo »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #15

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…

The solution is The Matrix.

The "real world" is just computers/AIs running everything in a pointless loop.

Humans aren't "batteries" (that never even made sense to begin with) but instead are living their happy lives in the simulation to provide something to simulate investment and shareholder value.

It's dumb, but it still seems more plausible than people accepting an overnight switch into the "space communism" of nobody needing to work. Everyone is too invested in their own spot in the hierarchy.

Re: The dead economy theory

#120

Post by stratos123 »

kqp wrote: post #105
spongebobstoes wrote: post #15

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…

I agree in theory, but this is so extremely far from the US political and social system that I think no nation has ever changed so much without being overthrown. So unless you’re talking about plans for a post-US world, this idea will always be theoretical and not how “the world” works.

I'm not sure it's that far out of the Overton window. US already managed to do some small-scale UBI trials, after all. Maybe one day it can do a countrywide trial.
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