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The dead economy theory

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Re: The dead economy theory

#861

Post by maxerickson »

My_Name wrote: post #784

Not many people see that the end result is that when ordinary people stop earning money, and stop buying products, all the money will be used purely for B2B transactions. Money will still exist, but people will not see hardly any of it. To break out of being just a person and start a business you will still need money, but be unable to get any. Thus, the endgame is revealed. You don't need to form a dictatorship, you…

Your analysis assumes our current politics where money roughly equates with power. That won't hold if people feel controlled.

AI of course also has the potential to concentrate power, but people aren't just going to ask the accountants who should be in charge.

Re: The dead economy theory

#862

Post by Qem »

noopprod wrote: post #819
kajaktum wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that the limit of this is that the only people worth existing is the people with capital? > I foresee a wave of entrepreneurship coming. AI will empower more people to provide useful services directly to other people, with less middlemen and menial work, and more direct problem solving. Why do I need to buy products/services from this startups when I can just reverse engineer their product and use all my…

> only people worth existing is the people with capital? replying to this with my thoughts IMO The missing link is that, as long as humans still have political power, that is the basis of their economic power under the new system. The reason is that it is a continuation of the dynamic we see now in western decadence - politicians bribe the populace for votes. So on one side you have the market for political support,…

> IMO The missing link is that, as long as humans still have political power, that is the basis of their economic power under the new system.

It's because of this Big Tech is busy undermining the basis of democracy, isolating people in bubbles, poisoning political discourse with slop and pimping would be autocrats. They want to strip political power from common citizens, turning toward sefdom.

Re: The dead economy theory

#863

Post by cvwright »

iliaxj wrote: post #457

The article doesn't seem to take his train of thought quite far enough. If AI suddenly makes it possible for a law firm to be run with a skeleton crew, then what's stopping all those people you fired from starting new law companies, where AI also does most of the work, and competing with you for the same market? And ultimately, if AI gets to be so good that it can competently do a lawyer's job, what reason do big law…

The best early example of this is that Anthropic is already eating the lunch of all the new “AI security audit” companies. And they were only a few years old.

Those guys certainly thought they were being novel and creative, using AI to disrupt an expensive and labor intensive business model. But now with Claude Security, their own market share is going to be gobbled up before they can even get established.

Re: The dead economy theory

#864

Post by pasttense01 »

bluGill wrote: post #834
peonicles wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can take your train of thought further still. If AI ever becomes super good at lawyering, why would we even need law firms and lawyers at all? We could feed legislation and constitution into the model and have it argue against other lawyer bots in court in front of a judge bot.

Because you need a human lawyer to appear before a jury. AI can fill in forms but not appear in person.

Only a very small percent of cases go before a jury; the vast majority are decided by a judge by himself.

Re: The dead economy theory

#865

Post by duxup »

I don’t know what is going to happen economically but I did search this morning to investigate some beeping from my garage door opener.

Every page was the same AI garbage that provided lots of wordy paragraphs … no real information.

Sad state.

Re: The dead economy theory

#866

Post by Jensson »

maxerickson wrote: post #861
My_Name wrote: post #784

Not many people see that the end result is that when ordinary people stop earning money, and stop buying products, all the money will be used purely for B2B transactions. Money will still exist, but people will not see hardly any of it. To break out of being just a person and start a business you will still need money, but be unable to get any. Thus, the endgame is revealed. You don't need to form a dictatorship, you…

Your analysis assumes our current politics where money roughly equates with power. That won't hold if people feel controlled. AI of course also has the potential to concentrate power, but people aren't just going to ask the accountants who should be in charge.

Money buys drones, drones are the future of power.

Re: The dead economy theory

#867

Post by Jensson »

wolttam wrote: post #860
Falimonda wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We see the start of it already, when just two individuals have a combined wealth on the order of a trillion dollars. That inequality is not going down, only upwards. Isn't there an inconsistency here? You've set up this narrative of businesses as being the only entities with money (wealth?) but then singled out two individuals. Also, how do calls for equality of wealth address the inequality in contribution of valu…

Businesses will still be owned or at heavily influenced by individuals and it is those individuals that will be able to steer how those business’ capital is allocated (including towards themselves).

That is true until the owner dies, at that point you will have zombie AI companies that continues even though everyone associated with it is dead.

Re: The dead economy theory

#868

Post by Jensson »

patentatt wrote: post #859
itake wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That inequality is not going down, only upwards. This was talked about 15+ years ago when I was a young student. I saw the writing on the wall and made it a priority to live below my means and aggressively invest. Unfortunately, many of my friends think I am crazy for not "enjoying life" more... We shall see what happens I guess.

And all it cost was 15+ years of life?

It doesn't cost life to eat modestly and live smaller than you can afford, you live life while doing this. Many think the best part of their life was when they were young and poor, its not a bad life to have low costs so you can live stress free.

Re: The dead economy theory

#869

Post by nm980 »

BoneShard wrote: post #647
iliaxj wrote: post #457

The article doesn't seem to take his train of thought quite far enough. If AI suddenly makes it possible for a law firm to be run with a skeleton crew, then what's stopping all those people you fired from starting new law companies, where AI also does most of the work, and competing with you for the same market? And ultimately, if AI gets to be so good that it can competently do a lawyer's job, what reason do big law…

but just imagine the brave new world, where a law firm has super-duper-frontier model and you're trying to argue with it in a court with your latest best local oss model (only 6 month behind the bestests ones).

This isn't any different than paying more for a better lawyer with a lighter caseload instead of using a public defender

Re: The dead economy theory

#870

Post by Earw0rm »

iliaxj wrote: post #457

The article doesn't seem to take his train of thought quite far enough. If AI suddenly makes it possible for a law firm to be run with a skeleton crew, then what's stopping all those people you fired from starting new law companies, where AI also does most of the work, and competing with you for the same market? And ultimately, if AI gets to be so good that it can competently do a lawyer's job, what reason do big law…

In that scenario, the AI owners become rentiers - able to charge as much as the market will bear for brokerage - and everyone else gets to offer their services via said brokerages, which charge the customer the most they can bear, and pay the worker the least.

Any economy of scale - which is, in a way, what allows knowledge economies to exist at all - will accrue to the middleman.

Good news for those able to master manual, craft skills to a degree most cannot. High-end tradespeople, specialist installation technicians and so on. Bad news for everyone else besides rentiers.

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