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Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

gmalandrakis.com

191–200 of 613 posts

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#191
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you accept "fairly" distributed instead of "evenly"? I think it's fair to say that some jobs do actually deserve to be compensated more highly? Jobs that require special skills and training, or require taking on more responsibility? I don't think the problem is that some work earns different amounts of money. To me it seems that the problem is how much wealth is concentrating in such few hands, because the peop…

"fair" involves a value judgement and requires a moral system. "even" is pure mathematics. > I think it's fair to say that some jobs do actually deserve to be compensated more highly? Agreeing with that is easy. Agreeing with which jobs should be compensated more highly is hard. Because everyone has different morality systems. > To me it seems that the problem is how much wealth is concentrating in such few hands I k…

Fairness can also be mathematical. Fair chances. No special treatment.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#192
"Once the owning class owns mostly everything and has intelligent machines that serve them, The Economy crashing will not have real consequences for them."

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This assumption is not necessarily valid. If things get bad enough for the masses, things will become even worse for billionaires. Inequality fuels revolution. Bunkers and security bots will not save them.

To put it another way, if you have command of the resources to do whatever you want, does it make sense to use them in such a way that your future is to cower in an underground bunker?

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone wants more Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat and would be much, much happier for it. Unfortunately that option isn't available to me, nor to most people.

> Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat Most people wouldn’t be content to live in one room huts with thatched roofs and no hospitals or antibiotics. There might be some that do, but most prefer having more things and “better” lives. If we kept progressing, we’d look back at the era we live today and consider it just as primitive

Please, not even poor starving destitute people in 3rd world countries live in thatched huts anymore. Also antibiotics are not that expensive, especially if you buy them for "fish" and get them closer to production cost. You could sell some watermelons and afford antibiotics.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#195

Why do we believe that AI (if indeed we achieve human level AI) will have different outcome than the means of production or capital? It’s a winner takes all situation. Very few will accumulate all of the wealth of world. This time it will be more efficient than the Industrial Revolution, because not only you can produce the weapons for the meatbags to protect your wealth, you can even get rid of the meatbags and just…

Why is it a winner takes all situation? There’s really intense competition up and down the supply chain for AI. That competition is going to bring down costs for everything. It’s becoming cheaper and easier every day to start a company that will disrupt the established players and bring down prices. Everything will become commoditized. The winners in the end will be consumers, and the losers will be the big AI compan…

Machines are historically more obedient than people — so employing millions of AI agents to maintain your empire isn’t as fragile as enslaving millions of people. Historically its been the revolts of people, not the commoditization of resources that brought down empires

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#196
post #94

Man, I really freaking hate cloudflare bot checks. I can't even access this site, which I presume is just a few kilobytes of simple static HTML with some straightforward text content. I shouldn't have to work this hard to prove I'm human, it's exhausting

https://imgur.com/a/peopleless-economy-terrifyingly-enough-n...

https://pastebox.io/paste/ZtZHQETZcjdh

https://pastes.io/OZqRw8jT

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat Most people wouldn’t be content to live in one room huts with thatched roofs and no hospitals or antibiotics. There might be some that do, but most prefer having more things and “better” lives. If we kept progressing, we’d look back at the era we live today and consider it just as primitive

Please, not even poor starving destitute people in 3rd world countries live in thatched huts anymore. Also antibiotics are not that expensive, especially if you buy them for "fish" and get them closer to production cost. You could sell some watermelons and afford antibiotics.

I’m talking about how many people lived in the past

OP said they would be content with 40% less income for less work. That's fine, but I think it misses the point. On a large enough time scale, progress is so great that most wouldn't choose the past, nor would they choose our present if the future is substantially better. That's what I mean by "everyone wants more" ... it's what contributes to endless consumption rather than us working less hours when technology improves

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#198

Why do we believe that AI (if indeed we achieve human level AI) will have different outcome than the means of production or capital? It’s a winner takes all situation. Very few will accumulate all of the wealth of world. This time it will be more efficient than the Industrial Revolution, because not only you can produce the weapons for the meatbags to protect your wealth, you can even get rid of the meatbags and just…

Ironically, if 1 person had 99.99% of all the wealth in the world, I’m not entirely sure it would have as much meaning as one might assume. The one with the wealth would be effectively be unable to obtain greater wealth, power, or influence. Other this individual being able to command arbitrary amounts of goods and services, the rest would compete for the remaining scraps as we do today. Ironically, if they want tech…

> then it would be in their interest to give the rest something to aim for. Serfdom isn’t going to cut it

They can give them drones to aim at - enjoy your serfdom, let the AI tell you how to live your best life, don’t worry and don’t step out of the walled garden

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#199
We need an Amazon for AIs whereby AIs can order other AIs to do particular work for a particular fee, then retrieve the work product, and rate the worker. The worker doesn't have to be limited to AI agents; it can also be a human agent or an any entity. The work can be digital or physical.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat Most people wouldn’t be content to live in one room huts with thatched roofs and no hospitals or antibiotics. There might be some that do, but most prefer having more things and “better” lives. If we kept progressing, we’d look back at the era we live today and consider it just as primitive

Please, not even poor starving destitute people in 3rd world countries live in thatched huts anymore. Also antibiotics are not that expensive, especially if you buy them for "fish" and get them closer to production cost. You could sell some watermelons and afford antibiotics.

Upper middle class people in the UK live in traditional thatched cottages today - it's still a trade.

African traditional cattle herders are still a thing and they're still living in thatched huts with weave walls.

Elsewhere in Africa, Thatching is still an up market thing: https://www.africathatch.co.za/

Perhaps spend some time learning about the wider world before making such obviously incorrect sweeping generalisations?

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