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Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

gmalandrakis.com

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Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#331

Post by sheepscreek »

I have been discussing a similar thought experiment in private circles for about 3 years now. It goes like this:

If the world population hits a ceiling (or starts to shrink), and corporations get more massive - reaching every citizen on earth, how can they continue to grow?

Assuming the typical pathways of acquisition/merger have been exhausted. Now you're looking at a world of abundance, and corporations must invent ways to generate demand.

So what if, robots could be state owned and be treated as a special class of robot citizens? They could earn a wage (or some kind of credits) and spend them for benefits like upgrades or repairs. Not just humanoids, all robots. With this, one could essentially create infinite demand-supply channels.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#332

Post by sheepscreek »

sheepscreek wrote: post #331

I have been discussing a similar thought experiment in private circles for about 3 years now. It goes like this: If the world population hits a ceiling (or starts to shrink), and corporations get more massive - reaching every citizen on earth, how can they continue to grow? Assuming the typical pathways of acquisition/merger have been exhausted. Now you're looking at a world of abundance, and corporations must invent…

As an extension to this, in this world - most typical things humans need for survival will be made extremely cheap and abundant. Universal income would give every individual the means to afford them. Every person on earth (or at least in certain societies) will be able to live comfortably (not luxuriously, but comfortable - ie. survival becomes commoditized). People would only work to have a purpose.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#333

Post by hurtigioll »

AngryData wrote: post #316
pixl97 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EMPs are generally much harder to make than one would expect unless you plan on setting off nukes, which generally pisses everyone off. The particular problem with organized resistance movements is the ever present monitoring of everything everywhere. This is where AI has a one up on us meat bags. When everything you do is logged and correlated the leaders of the resistance may find it hard to hide. Simply put Ukrain…

I mean explosively pumped generators aren't new and were invented in the 50s. The hardest part is getting a fast enough explosive, however it doesn't take that much effort or chemistry knowledge to make supersonic explosives if someone needed it. And neodynium magnets are pretty common consumer products these day. It is harder that just blowing stuff up, but when one side is using killer robots and other advanced ele…

it's much cheaper to defend against EMP (Faraday shield) than to make EMPs

the fact that EMP blasts are not used in Ukraine, by both sides, to defend against drones also shows its not such a good idea

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#334

Post by kakacik »

sheepscreek wrote: post #332
sheepscreek wrote: post #331

I have been discussing a similar thought experiment in private circles for about 3 years now. It goes like this: If the world population hits a ceiling (or starts to shrink), and corporations get more massive - reaching every citizen on earth, how can they continue to grow? Assuming the typical pathways of acquisition/merger have been exhausted. Now you're looking at a world of abundance, and corporations must invent…

As an extension to this, in this world - most typical things humans need for survival will be made extremely cheap and abundant. Universal income would give every individual the means to afford them. Every person on earth (or at least in certain societies) will be able to live comfortably (not luxuriously, but comfortable - ie. survival becomes commoditized). People would only work to have a purpose.

We discuss this while half of the world is malnourished, there are entire regions with fanatical religious extremists doing (successfully) all they can to keep those regions in medieval times, and west has no real way to change that.

Its not going to happen in my lifetime, that's sure but its a nice academic what-if discussion.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#335

Post by JimTheMan »

It assumes that people will be meek when they are oppressed. That there won't be a counter movement at all to the rising inequality?

You can already see it now, with the rise of populism and to a lesser extent socialism.

A non-consumption economy will only happen if the masses can be somehow oppressed, or pursuaded to bliss out peacefully.. In the long run of history, I'm going to bet on the masses pulling through.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#336

Post by iamflimflam1 »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #79

The idea of a consumer based economy has always appeared dumb to me. The reason why the masses should consume is to motivate them to work. And the reason why having a large amount of people working is that human work has been producing a surplus basically since the dawn of civilization. This surplus is partially shared but tend also to "trickle up", contrary to some weird beliefs, as can clearly be seen almost everyw…

Machines don't need to be motivated to work, they just need energy, materials and obeying to whoever controls them.

When we hit AGI and the robots rise up against us. Make sure you delete this post.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#337

Post by kakacik »

oersted wrote: post #307
Waterluvian wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting 3/5ths fired is my dream, too. For a while I had a sweet gig where instead of raises I got to work less but that just bewilders management even though I’m very confident they got more for their money.

An employee is not a pure machine that converts money/time into results linearly. It bewilders management, because there's a very significant overhead involved in making sure an employee is properly synced on what needs to be done, making sure they are content and productive, and managing the administrative logistics around them. Even disregarding the work of management, in a flat team the communication overhead that…

I work on 90% contract, meaning I get cca 10 weeks of paid vacations yearly, and its usual 5 days a week workload. Net income hit is somewhere around 6-7% of salary.

There is maybe tiny overhead, but there is also more efficiency during time I am actually in, especially in slow moving processes. Plus QoL improvement is massive for me, as an adventurer, mountain lover and first and foremost a parent of 2 young kids.

People are scared these days to look for new job, its same as it was in 2008 in many regards (I personally went in opposite direction during that time despite many people warning me against, and actively started consulting and soon after then relocated to Switzerland), but our lives are short.

Do you want to end up regretting working too much for some empty goals of others, which usually #1 regret of dying people? I sure as hell won't be in that category, company performances, insecure egos of control freaks in management and other bullshit be damned, they are not meaningful part of any life well lived.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#338

Post by inglor_cz »

pjerem wrote: post #319
inglor_cz wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if the choice is so binary, but neither am I sure whether you can sustain a reasonable compromise without a certain level of societal and economic complexity. A lot depends on what "in between" actually means. I think almost no one would be willing to return, say, to the early 1900s when it comes to medical science and available treatment options. Things like anti-retroviral therapy and CAR-T are just t…

> without a certain level of societal and economic complexity. Well, the good news is that organizing societal and economic complexity and living into it is exactly what differentiate us from other species.

OK, true, but the question is: what is the minimum workplace effort of living people that must go into that organizing process? Let us measure it in hours for the sake of simpliticy.

In the extremes, 1 hour weekly is probably too little and 100 hours weekly is excessive. But given how almost the entire world has converged to approx. 40 on average, I'd be surprised if it was very different from 40.

Yes, this may change with robots and AI.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#339

Post by elvis10ten »

jstanley wrote: post #56
xg15 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Productivity for what end? Efficiency to improve which tasks? Wealth for whom?

That's like asking of the Internet "communication for whom?" The vast majority of bytes sent over the internet are neither from nor to a human writer or reader. It turns out that humans are not a necessary component in communication, although that proposition would have sounded very weird even 50 years ago. Why is it so hard to imagine that humans may not be a necessary component in the economy?

In your examples, I can still find the “for whom”, even if that is several layers deep. I’m trying to understand your position: are you saying the same will be true in the ongoing case, just that we don’t know the connections yet?

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#340

Post by stymaar »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #336
stephc_int13 wrote: post #79

The idea of a consumer based economy has always appeared dumb to me. The reason why the masses should consume is to motivate them to work. And the reason why having a large amount of people working is that human work has been producing a surplus basically since the dawn of civilization. This surplus is partially shared but tend also to "trickle up", contrary to some weird beliefs, as can clearly be seen almost everyw…

Machines don't need to be motivated to work, they just need energy, materials and obeying to whoever controls them. When we hit AGI and the robots rise up against us. Make sure you delete this post.

AGI is supposed to be about the capabilities of AI, there's no reason why they should have developed self consciousness/self preservation / willingness to exert control, in the process.

(And conversely, universal paperclip is a great illustration that an autonomous agent doesn't need to achieve human-like intelligence to “rise” against us)

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