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Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

gmalandrakis.com

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Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#481

Post by flextheruler »

athrowaway3z wrote: post #317
blks wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machines don’t exist by themselves, someone owns them.

There are quite a few machines connected to the internet right now with no owner. Boxes forgotten over time and power consumption not enough to matter. If we keep on the trajectory of energy usage and computation, in 50y you might have the same with smarter models. Also, a virus could have its own bitcoins to rent compute and work for more. Ownership is as much a social construct as Money or The Economy. Do with that…

Sure it's a social construct, but billions have killed or been killed for money, land, and ownership of assets. Social constructions at their extreme are just abstractions of power which determines life and death. Something being a social construct does not make it invalid or ignorable. All of life is a series of intrapersonal relationships built atop social constructions. I'm sorry but I find pointing out something being a social construct only serves a somewhat naive/juvenile purpose as an easy way to make a statement look nonsensical.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#482

Post by mothballed »

bluGill wrote: post #468
mothballed wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything about being a male parent was far less precarious, and being a female parent was less precarious after childbirth. There was literally basically no liability if the children died, and not only that, the people around you would likely understand and sympathize with you. You could just make a best effort and if you failed, chalk it up to bad luck and try again. And if you died of starvation, welp your respon…

While child death was common, there is no reason to think it was somehow less devastating to the families it happened too.

There is every reason to think legal consequences + misfortune of a child are more devastating than just misfortune of a child. For one, for instance people have had all their children removed when a single child has a fragile bone disease or similar poorly explained illness causing injury or death and CPS accuses the parents of abuse and causes the trauma of not just losing/injury of the child but also losing all your children and possibly being charged. There are cases of people adopting abused children and documenting the prior abuse at time of adoption, but then having their other kids removed when doctors find the signs of the prior documented abuse when the child dies despite the best efforts of the person adopting the child.

I don't know why on earth you would think the trauma of having the legal system + other people attacking you + possibly losing custody of your other kids wouldn't cause more devastation. The whole system is geared around causing additional devastation for families this happens to compared to in prior times.

Maybe the chance of having a child die or an unfixable injured is less than before, but the weight of consequences to consider are higher than before.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#483

Post by jmye »

mothballed wrote: post #436
doctorwho42 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, have you ever heard of pickling? Root cellars? Canning? I hate this fake idea that everyone in the past was one bad harvest from starvation. They could survive a bad harvest every so often, its when the weather changed due to drought/etc. that caused famine.

Everything about being a male parent was far less precarious, and being a female parent was less precarious after childbirth. There was literally basically no liability if the children died, and not only that, the people around you would likely understand and sympathize with you. You could just make a best effort and if you failed, chalk it up to bad luck and try again. And if you died of starvation, welp your respon…

What a weird take. You make it sound like their dead children were no big deal, but by god, someone not paying for your children for you is a catastrophe.

> And if you died of starvation, welp your responsibilities in life have ended.

Yes, gosh, imagine people making a big deal out of starving to death. At least they didn't owe someone money.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#485

Post by golddust-gecko »

lqet wrote: post #399
dominicrose wrote: post #320

It is frustrating to not be able to predict the future. How can you get married, have children, get a 25 year mortgage on a house, buy a car for comfort even though you don't absolutely need it? Even if you do consider buying a home, how do you know it's worth anything if you can't predict this particular place's future situation? Some countries tax enough to make the risk of buying quite high. A leap of faith is req…

Yes, predicting the future was never possible. In fact, for most of the time in human history, the future looked incredibly bleak. Yet I am immensely grateful that my ancestors chose to build homes and marry and have children and live life through the great plague, through middle ages in which most of the population expected the apocalypse to be just around the corner, the 30 years war with up to 70% of the populatio…

> Yet I am immensely grateful that my ancestors chose to build homes and marry and have children

I think this premise is questionable. I double that choice had much to do with it, for most of our ancestors. In particular a large fraction of children (majority?) born were not born out the free choice of the parents, but rather as a result of accident, social pressure/expectation, economic necessity etc.

Given a free choice, the same uncertain and/or bleak future produces the rational outcome that it does not seem prudent to have children.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#486

Post by InsideOutSanta »

lqet wrote: post #399
dominicrose wrote: post #320

It is frustrating to not be able to predict the future. How can you get married, have children, get a 25 year mortgage on a house, buy a car for comfort even though you don't absolutely need it? Even if you do consider buying a home, how do you know it's worth anything if you can't predict this particular place's future situation? Some countries tax enough to make the risk of buying quite high. A leap of faith is req…

Yes, predicting the future was never possible. In fact, for most of the time in human history, the future looked incredibly bleak. Yet I am immensely grateful that my ancestors chose to build homes and marry and have children and live life through the great plague, through middle ages in which most of the population expected the apocalypse to be just around the corner, the 30 years war with up to 70% of the populatio…

> In fact, for most of the time in human history, the future looked incredibly bleak

In the past, this was a reason to have children, because you needed somebody to help out and look after you when you were old. Now, it's a reason not to have children, because you're putting people into a world knowing that there is a non-trivial probability that they will suffer all their lives through wars, famine, social unrest, and other man-made disasters.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#487

Post by shimman »

po1nt wrote: post #322
Jtarii wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A poor example considering Musk is responsible for a substantial increase in hunger in Africa recently.

I'm not here to defend Elon Musk, but what is the context of this?

Attacking and dismantling various USAID programs during his DOGE stint.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#488

Post by otikik »

apetrov wrote: post #480
otikik wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no hate for income taxes. There's hate about income taxes not accompanied with wealth taxes.

surely there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_as_theft

That is "tax in general", not income taxes specifically.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#489

Post by cm2012 »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #486
lqet wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, predicting the future was never possible. In fact, for most of the time in human history, the future looked incredibly bleak. Yet I am immensely grateful that my ancestors chose to build homes and marry and have children and live life through the great plague, through middle ages in which most of the population expected the apocalypse to be just around the corner, the 30 years war with up to 70% of the populatio…

> In fact, for most of the time in human history, the future looked incredibly bleak In the past, this was a reason to have children, because you needed somebody to help out and look after you when you were old. Now, it's a reason not to have children, because you're putting people into a world knowing that there is a non-trivial probability that they will suffer all their lives through wars, famine, social unrest, a…

But a lower probability than ever before in human history of those things

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#490

Post by qsera »

vinyl7 wrote: post #446
qsera wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would someone who owns all of the power and resources share with you? Ideally governments will see to it. This also assumes that governments have a much larger army of robots than any private individual. Just like how governments makes it illegal to own firearms, it will be illegal to own certain class of robots with combat capability.. Thus governments (the people really/ideally) will see to it that everyone wi…

With the way things are now, the corporations own the government. The 'government' is not some sort of impartial mediator that people have been lead to believe it is

The government at least has to maintain the appearance.
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