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Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

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Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#241

Post by oxag3n »

somewhatgoated wrote: post #188
oxag3n wrote: post #168

Totally, that's what history teaches us /s Not from so distant past - Soviet Union collapse caused mass unemployment and similar socioeconomic scenarios - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wild_nineties Mass poverty and skyrocketing crime levels (mugged for sneakers was common), while ultra rich grabbed money and power.

What does history teach us in this context and how is the current situation comparable to the collapse of the Soviet Union? Not sure if I get your point

History teaches us that rich and powerful think about consequences of their actions and optimize for balanced, non-violent outcomes

In this context, I argue that if a significant sector of economy goes fully AI, it is similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union where within few months most people lost their jobs. The wikipedia link above shows how similar scenarios unfolded in many eastern block countries, specifically mass unemployment, poverty and crime.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#242

Post by xboxnolifes »

emehex wrote: post #202
Aurornis wrote: post #36

> The government hands cash to displaced people, who immediately send that money right back to the tech companies to pay for subscriptions, automated food delivery, or digital entertainment. No plausible UBI system gives people so much money than they can relax and order food delivery while they watch all of their entertainment from their paid subscriptions. Funding UBI is extremely hard. We would have to more than d…

I don't understand UBI. Let's say a burger costs $10. Then UBI is implemented. But not just like $1K/month UBI... $1M/year UBI... for everyone! There's no way that the burger is still $10 now. Right? Won't the economy just soak up all the extra UBI money? So a burger will cost $1000 in world where everyone gets $1M/year? And like $20 when everyone gets $1K/month? Isn't it all just a wash?

UBI in a world where everyone makes roughly the same amount of money per year would be a wash. You'd just be redistributing money to people in roughly the same percent that is was taxed from them. But we do not live in that world.

And even if it does end up as a complete wash, that still seems like it would lead to a better economic outcome. You'd end up with trickle-up economics. The kind that has incentives for companies to appeal to consumers, and consumers that have money to spend on goods and services.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#243

Post by bluefirebrand »

phainopepla2 wrote: post #153
bluefirebrand wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a roof over your head and enough to afford groceries. And plenty of free time to figure out how to eat the rich.

If the rich have control over the communication networks and over highly intelligent AI systems then it follows that they would use that control to prevent the masses from organizing into a cohesive political unit, and keep them fighting amongst each other for scraps. This is already happening on a smaller scale, of course, but if AI models become capable enough to replace the majority of workers then it will put the…

> it follows that they would use that control to prevent the masses from organizing into a cohesive political unit, and keep them fighting amongst each other for scraps

I think the mistake they're going to make is that they already have most of us fighting for scraps

But they want all of us fighting for even smaller scraps

There's always a limit to how far this can be pushed

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#244

Post by ropetin »

selectodude wrote: post #172
malfist wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that drove this home to me is that there is more vacant housing than there are unhoused people in the US. We could solve homelessness tomorrow, but we'd rather confiscate their camping equipment and throw them in prison than help. And I'm sure someone will be along shortly to tell me how wrong I am and what about mental illness and drug use. As if those people don't deserve our compassion too.

Are you going to be the one to round up all the homeless people and ship them off to abandoned houses in Appalachia?

Admittedly this is a few years old: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/61000-homes-are-empty-in...

61,000 empty houses in San Francisco, 10,000 unhoused people. Even if the unhoused population is under reported by an order of magnitude, there is more than enough housing available to house everyone where they currently are.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#245

Post by jamiequint »

elevatortrim wrote: post #170
jamiequint wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet somehow, magically, all of these things are better than they have been ever at any point throughout human history. It's almost as if the system is working.

I just had chatgpt draw a table of wealth distribution by year based on best data sources it can find. It shows that inequality has been on the rise from year 0 (top 1% has 45% of wealth) all the way until WW1 - top 1% had 65% in 1910. It then drops to 45% again post WW2 and has been on the rise since. 2026 shows top 1% own 62-63%. What is interesting is, the bottom 50% has never been poorer. The table starts from 3%…

Yes, envy is a bitch.

There being more $10+ billionaires doesn't make your life worse when you are earning 50% more on a real dollar basis than you would have been 50 years ago.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#246

Post by buu700 »

Aurornis wrote: post #36

> The government hands cash to displaced people, who immediately send that money right back to the tech companies to pay for subscriptions, automated food delivery, or digital entertainment. No plausible UBI system gives people so much money than they can relax and order food delivery while they watch all of their entertainment from their paid subscriptions. Funding UBI is extremely hard. We would have to more than d…

A true UBI might be hard to fund today, but it's not inherently hard to fund in principle.

Mathematically speaking, any UBI amount (or other expansionary monetary policy) could be offset by an equal and opposite increase in aggregate supply, resulting in more money with net zero inflation. If we had 100x higher annual growth in supply of housing/food/energy/transportation/healthcare/electronics/etc., creating 100x more annual growth in money supply would counter the positive supply shock to keep the purchasing power of a dollar stable; the fact that more dollars would exist would simply reflect the reality of having more stuff to go around.

Whether and how it may be possible to achieve such supply growth, however, is another matter entirely. While I'm personally optimistic about the technological trajectories of AI, solar/fusion, and humanoid robotics, optimizing/liberalizing Western economies and adjusting to a post-labor-scarcity world will both be at best politically turbulent.

The incentive for the wealthy to go along with such policies is that it would be a practical necessity in order to continue selling their stuff. If 90% of the population lacked a survivable income, that wouldn't be a functioning economy, it would be a precursor to civil war. Even so, private corporations won't want to voluntarily employ people they don't need, because that's just a textbook prisoner's dilemma. On the other hand, publicly funding such capital distribution puts the corporations on a level playing field relative to one another while enabling business to continue as usual.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#247

Post by svachalek »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #105
ihumanable wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CGP Grey has an older video now about what happened to horses over time. For a while every economic advance seemed to mean more and better jobs for horses. But then the automobile comes along and there's no more need for horses and we can see what happens to an animal that has no economic reason to exist. We still have a much smaller number of horses for the few economically viable roles a horse can fill and as toys…

At the risk of invoking “but this time it’s different”, AI hasn’t produced a new job sector. A farrier who can’t make a living off of horseshoes could at least go work at the Ford assembly plant. In other words, I have no idea where all the white collar workers are supposed to go.

Prompt engineering of course.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#248

Post by ropetin »

emehex wrote: post #202
Aurornis wrote: post #36

> The government hands cash to displaced people, who immediately send that money right back to the tech companies to pay for subscriptions, automated food delivery, or digital entertainment. No plausible UBI system gives people so much money than they can relax and order food delivery while they watch all of their entertainment from their paid subscriptions. Funding UBI is extremely hard. We would have to more than d…

I don't understand UBI. Let's say a burger costs $10. Then UBI is implemented. But not just like $1K/month UBI... $1M/year UBI... for everyone! There's no way that the burger is still $10 now. Right? Won't the economy just soak up all the extra UBI money? So a burger will cost $1000 in world where everyone gets $1M/year? And like $20 when everyone gets $1K/month? Isn't it all just a wash?

I think you're right, and when we talk about UBI it should be expressed in what it can provide not some arbitrary number. Can it provide all required needs (housing, food, transport, entertainment, etc) or not?

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#249

Post by Haven880 »

UBI gives 100 to John. John original subsidies as handicap of 2000 USD removed. You think this will work? Or corporations will obediently stay and pay more taxes instead of just do the corporate inversion? Or maybe you keep John subsidies and then on top of that give the UBI too. So where you get the extra funding given USA already 1.5T deficit every year? Fed print more free money? And if everyone get the UBI, you think the OLED TV is still 1000USD? UBI is a fanfic by people who don't know how economy works. EVERY SINGLE UBI failed to date. Yeah sure let's try again.

Re: Who will buy your services if you fire us all?

#250

Post by bodge5000 »

fwipsy wrote: post #194
bodge5000 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things become worth more as they become scarecer, not less. It's a bit more nuanced than that. Generally speaking, in society as we know it, there's a point at which something becomes so scarce that it's value begins to drop because there's simply no use for it and no reason to find a use for it. The second part to this is that scarcity-based value is a product of our current society, and we're describing a society…

If money remains backed by AI goods and services, it will remain valuable no matter how scare it gets. Scarcity raising prices is a fundamental law of economics. Your diamond example is just swapping which goods are scarce.

> If money remains backed by AI goods and services

Why do you think it would? If 99% of people never use those services, why do you expect they'd continue to exist? Just to justify the existence of some temporary class of worker to provide services that, for some reason, aren't fulfilled by the AI?

> Your diamond example is just swapping which goods are scarce.

Not at all. If you're starving and someone offers you the last diamond in the world for a weeks worth of food, its unlikely to be a worthwhile trade since without the food you'd die, and then (to you), the diamond is entirely worthless. Scarcity raising prices is a fundamental law of our current economic system, its not a fundamental law of reality

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