Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible • Hacker News Board

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#251

Post by dlev_pika » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:19 AM UTC

jaggederest wrote: post #109

dlev_pika wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is?

GDP = C + I + G + Xn = W + I + R + P (To grossly simplify the single-nation macroeconomic picture, at least) C = consumption I = investment (the first one) G = government Xn = net exports W = wages paid to labor I = interest on capital R = rent on resources and real property P = profit to entrepreneurs consumption ~= wages, so if wages go to zero, the economy massively shrinks unless government steps in with somethin…

Sure, what you describe is usually in the Macro textbooks. However in XXI century USA, Consumption has been detached from ‘wages’ for a while now (“since the 1970s”, ie 2 generations, per https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/)

In reality, the top income brackets are propping up Consumption numbers. This is part of what have become to understand as the ‘K’ shaped economy, together with the speeding up of capital accumulation/concentration.

https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/1125-yang-...

Edits for clarity

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#252

Post by caconym_ » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:20 AM UTC

Seems like a fairly long winded and poorly written article to state the obvious: that you can in principle have one really rich guy enjoying a lifestyle similar to what he might enjoy today as a billionaire/trillionaire, except that instead of being sustained by production from an economy reliant on human labor, he has a robot factory/farm/etc. that makes everything he needs and wants. And at that point, of course, everybody else becomes an inconvenience (at best).

I don't really understand the comments (apparently) denying the basic logic of this scenario (maybe the article is so confusing that they, or I, am wrong about what it's trying to say). IMO the only real question is how close current technology is to achieving this scenario.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#253

Post by phendrenad2 » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:23 AM UTC

kingstnap wrote: post #29

What AI really seems to be posed to do is make labour a lot less valuable and capital a lot more valuable. Running a government requires a lot of cash flow. I think its sort of inevitable that it's going to need to start coming mostly from the later and not the former.

Why does running a government require a lot of cash flow? To pay people? Like, labor..?

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#254

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:26 AM UTC

whatever1 wrote: post #60

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…

Does wealth continue to be a coherent concept once very few have all of it? I don't think it's been tried.

Also, since markets are fundamentally neural networks (with prices as action potentials) it seems like an improved understanding of how to manipulate neural networks would coincide with a change in how we practice markets.

I suspect it'll come down to whether they can use markets to dispense with us faster than we can dispense with the use of markets amongst ourselves. Neither is an outcome that has much precedent because both would've seemed impossible pre-AI.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#255

Post by nradov » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:27 AM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #205

baron816 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Why is it a winner takes all situation?" I have lawyer agent x10 better than yours in a civil matter. Guess who wins. What value is second best lawyer?

That's meaningless. First, there's no evidence that one legal agent would be 10x better than another. Second, winning a case requires more than just a good lawyer. At some point you have to actually have the facts and/or law on your side.

Some of you have never spent any time in a courtroom and it shows.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#256

Post by nearbuy » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:28 AM UTC

foogazi wrote: post #198

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not much point in serfdom when they don't have use for human labor.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#257

Post by jdkoeck » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:37 AM UTC

wyre wrote: post #158

pirate787 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piketty is just a marxist flailing around, backfilling data to fit his belief that communism is the solution for every problem. He's been spectacularly wrong in his predictions so far, for example he said Milei would be "devastating" for Argentina and the opposite is the case.

Maybe critique his ideas instead of his predictions. Piketty is an economist, not a future-teller.

If he is confident enough to make economic predictions, it’s only fair that we take him to task on these.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#258

Post by rdedev » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:41 AM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #126

whatever1 wrote: post #60

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…

> It’s becoming cheaper and easier every day to start a company that will disrupt the established players and bring down prices.

The underlying assumption here is that there is always something established players won't try to buy out new companies or use their existing capital to screw over others

> The winners in the end will be consumers, and the losers will be the big AI companies

Right now that is not the case. Look at the PC industry. I worry for the autonomy of a consumer in the future. It's probably going to be something like here is your rental thin client PC with agents on a monthly rental plan. What's that? you want to build a game with your own gpu? No no. A consumer grade gpu does not make sense in this day and age. Just ask the agent to build your game. We need the gpu compute for better things

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#259

Post by baq » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:54 AM UTC

cousin_it wrote: post #147

baron816 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you and the parent comment are both wrong. The right analogy is something like a new species, which consumes resources and makes more of itself. The species is "AI", or "AI-empowered organization with a handful of humans on top", whichever way you like to think of it. It doesn't have to be winner-take-all, there can be many such things running around. But the point is humans can't compete with such things and…

The technical term is ‘mirror life’.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#260

Post by e40 » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 4:55 AM UTC

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #254

whatever1 wrote: post #60

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…

Does wealth continue to be a coherent concept once very few have all of it? I don't think it's been tried. Also, since markets are fundamentally neural networks (with prices as action potentials) it seems like an improved understanding of how to manipulate neural networks would coincide with a change in how we practice markets. I suspect it'll come down to whether they can use markets to dispense with us faster than…

Of course it does. It’s still a measurement though against other super rich.