What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode? • Hacker News Board

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#131

Post by danaris » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

Nevermark wrote: post #128

danaris wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a system that can only work in a fully urbanized country. Otherwise, a nonexhaustive list of problems it seems guaranteed to cause: - Push those currently in rural poverty over the edge into homelessness. Their homes will stand vacant and fall to ruin, leaving large swaths of land dotted with the wreckage of houses, trailers, and even whole villages. Some of it will be highly toxic. Many of the people…

Your reversing the effect. A steeper land tax, but no development tax, discourages sprawl and incentivizes parsimonious & maximally effective use. Which would be the opposite dynamic to the one you are concerned about. An income tax break on food production would be a good way to keep food prices lower, while maintaining a farmers incentive to use land efficiently. And is good economics: matching a national tax break…

I still don't see how this doesn't punish non-rich people in rural areas.

ETA: You seem to have edited your post after I made mine. However, your edit does not in any way explain how "steeper land tax" does not hurt people in rural areas. I'm not concerned with sprawl; I'm concerned with rural people near the poverty line being taxed out of their homes with no recourse.

Also, "income tax breaks for food production" a) do not scale proportionally with farmer land use, and b) would seem, on first glance, to encourage overfarming, rather than letting fields lie fallow periodically, which would be a short-term gain for long-term losses and damage to the soil.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#132

Post by effed3 » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 5:03 PM UTC

Economy is way too much growth, as inequality and inefficiency, pollution, and resource exaustion, being mainly based on finance and speculation and not on -real- economy, for the good of a very small part of humanity. Has to grow in this manner even more? And with the help of AI?

If some rules are not changed and a more equality model is developed, there are no more world at all.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#133

Post by exe34 » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #122

exe34 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

money gets inflated into monopoly money.

Presumably "money" in this case doesn't mean literal hundred dollar bills stuffed into mattresses. They're being invested.

".....and it's gone." (south park)

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#134

Post by bbuut » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #121

bbuut wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for one, no computers collating every persons value to the economy to buy and sell as and manipulate through targeted effort Credit system didn’t exist, which conveniently grandfathered in all the Bloomberg, Trump, and other old money …obviously inheritance made them geniuses who deserved it Basically Boomers came of age 40 years ago and needed something to do. So the 80-90 year olds of the day handed them all t…

All of that might be true, but it doesn't address my core question: why didn't people kick back and relax 50 or even 100 years ago? If people 50, 100, or 200 years ago made the choice to keep working hours constant rather than convert productivity gains into leisure, why is the choice to keep working hours constant today suddenly caused by malign influence of the powers that be?

They did.

The average person worked fewer hours through almost all of recorded history until the last few decades.

They did not have vague “line go up” motives. They worked to stabilize biological necessity.

Workers today work more because of a large investor class that doesn’t. We’re working for two or more shareholders not our own roof and food.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#135

Post by effed3 » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

Nevermark wrote: post #19

vouaobrasil wrote: post #8

I'd rather just have a world where people move a little slower, care less about efficiency, appreciate the smaller things in life, and stop forcing endless upgrades of every kind on everyone with new phones, new apps, soulless art, and new ways of doing things. But that's just me.

With enough money/capital growing, you can live however reasonably paced you like!

only if you have a real (sane, sustainable, efficient) economy to give the money some value. without a real economy money is a number in a computer/a piece of paper, and growing is constrained by the finite resources of the world

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#136

Post by radixdiaboli » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 5:18 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #130

danaris wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're asking "what caused the change?" the answer is "Ronald Reagan". If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible". Just to expand on that a bit, in case it isn't fully clear: There is a level of productivity per worker required to support everyone in the society. This level fluctuates some with the overall standard of liv…

>If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible". >[...] I don't know exactly when real-world productivity got enough higher than P that we could realistically start reducing worked hours, but it definitely did so at some point in the last several decades. [...] GDP per capita has been growing exponentially for centuries[1]. Is t…

"Economic statistics shows it hasn't been captured"

Your citation

* Doesn't show how labor compensation is distributed among workers (CEO pay vs. median wages).

* Doesn't account for how capital returns are distributed among different wealth levels.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#137

Post by gruez » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 5:26 PM UTC

bbuut wrote: post #134

gruez wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that might be true, but it doesn't address my core question: why didn't people kick back and relax 50 or even 100 years ago? If people 50, 100, or 200 years ago made the choice to keep working hours constant rather than convert productivity gains into leisure, why is the choice to keep working hours constant today suddenly caused by malign influence of the powers that be?

They did. The average person worked fewer hours through almost all of recorded history until the last few decades. They did not have vague “line go up” motives. They worked to stabilize biological necessity. Workers today work more because of a large investor class that doesn’t. We’re working for two or more shareholders not our own roof and food.

>The average person worked fewer hours through almost all of recorded history until the last few decades.

If you're claiming that people worked fewer hours during the industrial revolution than today, I'll need a citation for that. If you're referencing the claims made by "Original affluent society", that has problems around how working hours are counted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Crit...

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#138

Post by AlecSchueler » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

karim79 wrote: post #34

Tyrubias wrote: post #5

I think a more important question is not whether AI will make economic growth explode but rather who that economic growth will benefit and in general how those benefits will be distributed.

I suppose, if a huge proportion of workers get replaced by AI software, leading to mass unemployment, there will be impetus for governments to step in and force corporations to contribute to some sort of UBI or social wealth fund. If AI grabs everything and few consumers are left then it is zero-sum. I'm looking forward to seeing how this might play out. Pessimistically, it seems very bubblish.

Or setup camps where a lot of people can disappear. The disabled, trans people, the old working class etc. Isn't that where we're at already?

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#139

Post by bugsMarathon88 » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

vouaobrasil wrote: post #8

I'd rather just have a world where people move a little slower, care less about efficiency, appreciate the smaller things in life, and stop forcing endless upgrades of every kind on everyone with new phones, new apps, soulless art, and new ways of doing things. But that's just me.

[flagged]

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#140

Post by pyman » Sat, Jul 26, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

bugsMarathon88 wrote: post #139

vouaobrasil wrote: post #8

I'd rather just have a world where people move a little slower, care less about efficiency, appreciate the smaller things in life, and stop forcing endless upgrades of every kind on everyone with new phones, new apps, soulless art, and new ways of doing things. But that's just me.

[flagged]

I'm in favour of countries regulating US exports, social media, tobacco, weapons, AI, and porn included.

I'm sure those living in the US won't agree with me and will be against such regulations, since they don't benefit their companies and that's fine, everyone has to protect their own interests.