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The dead economy theory

owenmcgrann.com

571–580 of 1001 posts

Re: The dead economy theory

#571

> OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Microsoft: the combined investment in large-scale AI infrastructure now runs into the hundreds of billions of dollars, with projections into the trillions over the next decade. These numbers need an addressable market large enough to justify them. There is only one market that large: the global labor market. It's getting tiring hearing this alarmist view unchallenged hon…

It kinda seems like you are just stating the implied argument this article is targeted towards? Or something else? Do you disagree with, e.g., Daron Acemoglu's position here? Or is there some truism somewhere we are all missing?

Re: The dead economy theory

#572

this whole blog post is basically "people need jobs to be happy, so we should design our society such that they need jobs" not only is the premise wrong, but forcing people to work is not a good or ethical way to address this problem most people like the social aspect of work, but not being beholden to their boss we can give people meaning, community, culture, growth, without relying on employment and money we can do…

Nice thought, but who controls the production (AI Compute) that enables this lifestyle? Those who control the production will control the non-workers.

Re: The dead economy theory

#573
post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before the AI craze, Musk chopped an awful lot of headcount at Twitter, right, and proved it was overkill, has that panned out? He basically killed the Twitter as a business. The only lesson here is that it is really hard to fail having infinite money.

Killed? Twitter's AI/datacenter business is practically the only thing propping up SpaceX's valuation now, per their S-1 filing!

Yes, that is a completely new business which has OpenAI, Anthropic and Google as competitors.

While Twitters competitors were Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr and Mastodon.

Re: The dead economy theory

#574
post #566

A couple of disorganized thoughts in case anyone reads far enough to see them. The article posits that people don't want a check, they want a job. It's interesting because I think that varies widely from person to person and from job to job. The guy standing on the corner in the 95º heat with the "NEW HOMES >" sign isn't doing it for the love of the craft. Ditto for people picking tomatoes. People walking door to doo…

> t's interesting because I think that varies widely from person to person and from job to job. The guy standing on the corner in the 95º heat with the "NEW HOMES >" sign isn't doing it for the love of the craft. Ditto for people picking tomatoes.

There’s two ways to look at “that person picking tomatoes,” though. One is, “they’d be happier doing nothing”, funemployment, whatever. The other is, “they’d be happier doing something fulfilling.”

I think the author would agree that drudgery is an effective distraction from existential malaise. Despair, in a sense, is a luxury that the desperate cannot afford.

Re: The dead economy theory

#575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industrial revolution was enabled by more efficient agriculture feeing labour to do other work.

The flipside is that there must be other work to be done or people starve to death .

In unrelated news, we are expelling our agricultural and service industry workforces at the moment.

Re: The dead economy theory

#576
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in theory, but this is so extremely far from the US political and social system that I think no nation has ever changed so much without being overthrown. So unless you’re talking about plans for a post-US world, this idea will always be theoretical and not how “the world” works.

"a post-US world" I see, so you like large scale warfare then. Did you run out of WWII docs and want some more history for content?

Parent didn't say they liked it; I'm reading it as an expression of concern (that I share).

Re: The dead economy theory

#577
post #251

This article describes a vicious cycle: Layoff of workers -> Workers stop spending -> businesses suffer This is not a foregone conclusion. Laid off workers could find other jobs, with higher incomes, due to productivity increases from AI. This narrative falls into the trap of zero sum thinking, taken at the limit, you can advocate for jobs programs and helicopter money where people get paid to do nothing to keep the…

> jobs programs and helicopter money where people get paid to do nothing to keep the economy humming. The article addresses your concerns already. I know it's long, but you could probably skip a few paragraphs in the middle and start here: > Piketty, no conservative, has argued that UBI fails to address root structural problems: “unequal access to education and health, low-paying and low-productivity jobs, malfunctio…

"In the beginning of the 20th century when Jews started campaigning for bringing more Jews into Turkish, then British Palestine, the process often went like this: Jewish community or a wealthy individual buys a plot of land from a Turk owner. Turks never worked that land themselves, and used to hire local Arabs to do the agricultural labor. Jews would not rehire Arabs after acquisition, instead, they used the newly bought land to create jobs for more Jewish immigrants."

I have never heard this one before. And it doesn't really track with the populations that were actually there in 1900. The Arabs at that time, in that place were largely nomadic herders. The largest city in the region at the time only had about 30,000 people in it. And it had been sometime since the Ottomans actually had any real political control of the area. So perhaps it did happen to some extent, but to claim it was the driving force in creating the conflict seems very ahistorical to me. Especially considering the 200 years of Pograms that preceded it. The real reasons for the conflict happened between 1500-1700, and have more to do with trade and the collapse of the Silk Road than Zionism.

PS The Ottomans outlawed selling land to Jews in about 1900. So a lot of the sales weren't recorded so perhaps you have a point, IDK.

Re: The dead economy theory

#578

>The US horse population grew from nine million in 1840 to twenty-one million by 1900, seemingly immune to technological change. Within sixty years of the internal combustion engine, the population collapsed by eighty-eight percent. I think this is a very interesting and chilling point, especially if you draw the parallel literally. For quite some time, I was pondering the question:"Who is buying though?". I.e if you…

This is already to some extent a solved problem. The top 10% of households in the US for example are 50% of spending, the "horses" to a large extent already don't matter to the economy. This is similar to the relationship between US consumers and workers in undeveloped nations during globalization. Historically this tends to be resolved when it creates an unsustainable level of political instability, but there are ma…

That sounds off intuitively. The lowest earners are the base making higher earner possible both through their labour and consumption.

Re: The dead economy theory

#579

>The US horse population grew from nine million in 1840 to twenty-one million by 1900, seemingly immune to technological change. Within sixty years of the internal combustion engine, the population collapsed by eighty-eight percent. I think this is a very interesting and chilling point, especially if you draw the parallel literally. For quite some time, I was pondering the question:"Who is buying though?". I.e if you…

The pitch from some people is the wealth will lift all of the boats, etc. Rich people have fewer kids.

Reality is 1984 style. You’ll have the party, soldiers and a proles. A modern version of what the Romans or some medieval societies did.

Re: The dead economy theory

#580

India has the problem with farming that the US is starting to have with AI. Farming in India is still far too labor intensive by world standards. 43% of workers still work in agriculture. [1] For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily. This inefficient agricultural system is not by accident. It is supported by heavy subsidies. Attempts to cut the subsidies resulted in riots…

Every country subsidies their agriculture for national security purpose. You don't want an enemy to starve you in case of a big war.

It is also the only alternative to a granary system to smooth out the variability of yields each year that might not average out for anything less than 10-15 year spans.

And the granary system regularly still resulted in shortages and famine. While crop subsidization has a bullet proof record of surplus.

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