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Comment by Practicality | Hacker News Reader

"everybody it [is] fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money."

That's the idea. Let's for the moment, just assume that AI and robots and some other technologies are ridiculously productive sometime in the future and we solve all sorts of problems and have the resources to provide everyone with everything they want.

At that point it's not a question of giving everyone jobs it's a question of whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources (and a question of, should we?).

Of course, I don't think the time has arrived yet for all this to happen. But as mentioned earlier, I do think it is going to happen (if we don't have some horrible nuclear war or some other megadisaster that kills everyone first)

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> whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources

You can already decide to do this today, and the government will even reward you for doing so. What you're really talking about is redistributing others' resources.

A non-zero number of businesses already do this. For example, where I presently work I don't get paid for overtime or public holidays in spite of the law requiring that I do.

I complained, and I was told that if I don't like it I can quit. I said that I would be going to the regulatory body, and I was outright threatened with physical harm: "Bad things happen to people who do that."

In accepting this position, are you not allowing others to be harmed? I'm assuming you're not uniquely being abused by the powers that be.

> redistributing others' resources

Automation is getting cheaper by the year, and more open. People will be able to benefit directly from automation after the transit period, and won't need UBI forever. At some point it's going to be free to cover the needs, especially if we can use raw materials that are in abundance in nature. After the first self replicating factory is going to be made, any country or region could bootstrap itself out of poverty.

Self replication is closer than AGI, it's just a matter of digitizing the industrial process and developing accessible materials. Human society, the ecosystem and the cell are self replicating factories too. We need to compile a factory in itself, to bootstrap the whole material process. Just like a DNA molecule is replicating all it needs to survive and reproduce, such a factory would be able to make "babies".

Maintaining the system of resource allocation we use today known as "property" takes resources and violence. If we can create one that is cheaper, less cruel, and has better outcomes then the current one, we should do it. Arguing that its wrong because this system says it is wrong is backwards circular thinking.

Right. This star trek utopia is a long way off.

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