Thoughts on AI and Jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#41

Post by estearum » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #40

estearum wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not incompatible with each other. If not for growth in land rents (which has no reason to exist given the complete lack of input costs), then each unit of labor would produce a more substantial improvement to their material circumstances. Land rents are a very aggressive tax on all activity. > There is an official government policy in all the English speaking countries I know about that every year prices sh…

Ok, well you've transitioned from "Yet somehow the prices keep rising." to "[prices rising] is an economic necessity to prevent an extremely perverse incentive". You don't seem to regard this state of affairs as suspicious so much as good policy. > The rise in land rents, or more specifically its capture by private individuals, is not an economic necessity Make your mind up, are prices going up something you want to…

Huh?

Here, let me flesh out the original claim so you can see the difference:

> Like every single productivity improvement before it, the bulk of the gains of AI will be piled into land rents, which then gets diffused into the cost of everything that happens upon land (which is everything) and does not intrinsically result in higher wages to match higher nominal costs like monetary inflation does. Then we'll just remark "wow, we still need to keep working because the cost of living has really gone up!"

It's not a different claim at all. Didn't think I needed to account for the guy who doesn't know that monetary inflation isn't captured by anyone and is economically neutral in the long run lol.

> people not having to work to cover the cost of living is a perverse incentive.

You are simply mistaken if you think this is what happens when you have deflation.

And to be clear, I actually don't even have a problem with rising land prices. Prices are important tools for allocating resources. I have a problem with rising rents being captured by landowners for doing nothing. This should draw an even clearer distinction between rising land rents and monetary inflation which –– again –– does not get captured by anyone. It instead equilibrates with higher wages, increasing nominal costs but not affecting real wages. This is truly elementary stuff.

Nominal prices don't mean anything. I'm interested in the relationship between a person's productivity and their material conditions. Today's technology, sans the unjustified capture of land rents, is able to convert a person's labor into dramatically better material conditions than they actually get today. Land rents are the only expense in an economy where higher nominal prices do not feed back into an equilibrating increase in nominal wages. Those higher nominal prices do not do anything in the economy. They do not spur more production. They do not generate more demand. Land rents truly siphon productivity out of the economy in a way no other price increases do.

"Deflation is good" is the rightwing analog of "just tax unrealized gains" haha. Total inability to think one step further.

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#42

Post by roenxi » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 3:29 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #41

roenxi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, well you've transitioned from "Yet somehow the prices keep rising." to "[prices rising] is an economic necessity to prevent an extremely perverse incentive". You don't seem to regard this state of affairs as suspicious so much as good policy. > The rise in land rents, or more specifically its capture by private individuals, is not an economic necessity Make your mind up, are prices going up something you want to…

Huh? Here, let me flesh out the original claim so you can see the difference: > Like every single productivity improvement before it, the bulk of the gains of AI will be piled into land rents, which then gets diffused into the cost of everything that happens upon land (which is everything) and does not intrinsically result in higher wages to match higher nominal costs like monetary inflation does . Then we'll just re…

So when you say

> Then we'll just remark "wow, we still need to keep working because the cost of living has really gone up!" and somehow not realize that the only thing in our economy where its inputs have not increased in price -- ever -- is the land beneath our feet. There are no input costs! Yet somehow the prices keep rising.

> Suspicious.

What you're actually doing is just adding generic filler that doesn't say anything? Because it seems like a lot of paragraph was ignoring the idea that monetary inflation isn't captured by anyone and is economically neutral in the long run lol.

EDIT And I'm not even convinced you've checked that rents are up compared to monetary inflation if you're using adjusted prices. Assuming we're talking about the US, if I pick out a reasonable-looking series for rent [0] and compare it to the M2 [1] from 1970 the two are close enough to keeping pace. Land rents are actually going up slower. What data are you working with here?

> Like every single productivity improvement before it...

On an aside, this is obviously wrong. It is clear we've all captured some of the benefits of past productivity improvements, life is pretty luxurious today compared to what our ancestors lived with. That couldn't be done without capturing some of the productivity gains.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASRLRRA027N

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#43

Post by estearum » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #42

estearum wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Here, let me flesh out the original claim so you can see the difference: > Like every single productivity improvement before it, the bulk of the gains of AI will be piled into land rents, which then gets diffused into the cost of everything that happens upon land (which is everything) and does not intrinsically result in higher wages to match higher nominal costs like monetary inflation does . Then we'll just re…

So when you say > Then we'll just remark "wow, we still need to keep working because the cost of living has really gone up!" and somehow not realize that the only thing in our economy where its inputs have not increased in price -- ever -- is the land beneath our feet. There are no input costs! Yet somehow the prices keep rising. > Suspicious. What you're actually doing is just adding generic filler that doesn't say…

Wait why didn’t you excerpt the next few words in that second citation? Is it because you’d find the phrase “the bulk of,” which is clearly not “all of?”

I get the sense you don’t even know what you’re arguing.

Me: the bulk of the gains are captured by land rents

You: some of the gains are not!

Me: yes… that is why I said “the bulk of” and not “all of”

Lmao

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#44

Post by Der_Einzige » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #38

Der_Einzige wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Georgism is the only good leftwing economic system. I wish we had a modern version of him with more popularity than Andrew yang

It's really not even leftwing. It's the purest form of capitalism, but it would move us closer to the leftwing utopia than any idea the Yangs of the world have ever proposed.

To be clear, Andrew Yang is a georgist. He advocates for a LVT and his whole platform is modernized Georgism. Henry George and Thomas Paine absolutely did advocate for UBI (I think Paine originated it in Agrarian Justice)

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#45

Post by estearum » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #44

estearum wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not even leftwing. It's the purest form of capitalism, but it would move us closer to the leftwing utopia than any idea the Yangs of the world have ever proposed.

To be clear, Andrew Yang is a georgist. He advocates for a LVT and his whole platform is modernized Georgism. Henry George and Thomas Paine absolutely did advocate for UBI (I think Paine originated it in Agrarian Justice)

Henry George definitely did not advocate for UBI in the absence of already solving the problem of land rent capture. If you do solve that problem, then there are a million other solutions you can stack on top of it. If you don't solve that problem, then none of those other solutions mean anything.

George actually specifically "disproves" UBI as an actual solution (in lieu of LVT).

Yang has said he "likes" LVT, but has advocated for a million other taxes and solutions which, without LVT, won't work, and with LVT are probably just unnecessary drag on an economy.

It's way, way too generous to say his whole platform is modernized Georgism.

George is fundamentally a capitalist while Yang is fundamentally a socialist. The fact Yang is down to tax land does not really make him a believer in the overall mechanism and argument behind it, and his policy proposals prove that he is not.

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#46

Post by satisfice » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 7:05 PM UTC

cultofmetatron wrote: post #28

all this talk of "protecting people's jobs" no, we need to get rid of as many jobs as possible. whats missing is talk of a universal basic income. AI is going to get rid of a lot of jobs but people still need to eat and have a place to live. its really created a need for us to explore a system beyond the lessai fair capitalism the US has been creating over the years. tax AI and use it for building subsidized housing…

I think you are right. ALSO, this is not happening and will not even start happening because no mechanism exists to make the kinds of transformations necessary for it to happen.

I think I know how patricians felt as the Roman Empire was falling and all the systems of long distance trade collapsed. You can see it happening but you can’t change anything.

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#47

Post by pyrale » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

k1m wrote: post #27

pyrale wrote: post #11

> I have sympathy for people worried about losing their livelihoods. But at the same time I struggle to sympathise with the idea that jobs themselves are something sacred we should be fighting for. I can agree with the author's point, but they seem oblivious to the fact that people lamenting the loss of their job is usually the politically correct way for them to lament the loss of their paycheck.

I understand that, and that's what I was trying to get at with the post. That an AI future which can take away jobs, doesn't have to be a bad one if the paycheck is replaced with something else. The Rutger Bergman piece I linked to argues for Universal Basic Income. Many people assume jobs are the only way.

What I was getting at, is that people argue about jobs rather than about money, is that society values work, not paying "bums". They may be more or less self-conscious about it. If you offer to pay them for not working, they are likely going to be suspicious, and for good reason: for all of their lives, and for all of society's life, paying people for existing has been, essentially, frowned upon.

And that's the issue with UBI: no one in their right minds can believe that UBI won't be (or quickly become) the bare minimum needed for people not to riot. And those of us that are pessimistic or have read history books know that, at some point, there is also the risk that people on UBI may get deported/castrated/sent to work camps/killed (or, in modern parlance, transformed into biodiesel). That's not necessarily the agenda of people arguing for UBI, but that's an inevitable risk that comes with it.

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#48

Post by LastTrain » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 11:14 PM UTC

k1m wrote: post #34

LastTrain wrote: post #21

The whole “guiding hand” of our government is done through the lense of job creation. Tax incentives. Protectionist trade policies. War. IP law. It all imperfectly comes down to job creation, because jobs are fucking important and necessary. Beware people who now come along and say “oh jobs aren’t that great” because they are warming you to accept a certain reality. That is to say, this essay is not just complete rub…

> because jobs are fucking important and necessary Why are they important and necessary, and for whom?

[dead]

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#49

Post by skeledrew » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 12:02 AM UTC

pyrale wrote: post #47

k1m wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that, and that's what I was trying to get at with the post. That an AI future which can take away jobs, doesn't have to be a bad one if the paycheck is replaced with something else. The Rutger Bergman piece I linked to argues for Universal Basic Income. Many people assume jobs are the only way.

What I was getting at, is that people argue about jobs rather than about money, is that society values work, not paying "bums". They may be more or less self-conscious about it. If you offer to pay them for not working, they are likely going to be suspicious, and for good reason: for all of their lives, and for all of society's life, paying people for existing has been, essentially, frowned upon. And that's the issue…

Would be even better if there wasn't need to be paid at all. I find it somewhat funny/ironic/strange that I've never encountered the argument "members of families - especially the young - don't pay each other for services". That's a core, universal, functional economy. Also works/worked for "villagers" in some parts of the world. People should be able to get what they need, and shouldn't have to provide anything in return. Now AI is moving us in that natural direction and people are fighting tooth and nail to keep things unnatural.

Re: Thoughts on AI and Jobs

#50

Post by skeledrew » Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 12:22 AM UTC

relte wrote: post #14

A few-paragraph post of no worth. "Oh, work is undemocratic, how odd we devote so much time to it!" - do you realise what work is? That it is at the foundation of human civilisation? Most things you see around you every day are the result of someone's work. And of course you don't present even the slightest idea how else the world might work.

Work is at the foundation of human civilization. And continuously tooling and automating it away is what had allowed civilization to progress to where it is today.

The world can work pretty much as it did before civilization: people went out to get what they needed, little to no fuss. Except instead of climbing a few fruit trees or hunting a mammoth, now one can go to a resource distribution machine (generic term I've coined for a "vending" machine), insert a resource card (not debit/credit card) because resource usage still needs to be tracked to ensure efficient distribution, and carry on with life. Machines do all the provisioning, etc in the background just as nature provisions fruit on trees and edible animals.