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Comment by pharmakom | Hacker News Reader

And who are the 0.1% going to sell the output of their robot labour to if everyone else is in ghettos?

Anyway, I’d hope in such a scenario some smart underdogs would illegally repurpose some robotics to create their own abundance. Might make a good TV show.

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Let's take the states for example 99.95 are nonentities so that leaves 330,150,668 *.0005 = 165,075.

That doesn't count the sex workers, security, or workers programming and running the bots. That is still a lot of people for one country, and shopping will change a bit, and they will all pat themselves on the back for saving the planet now that the population is under control.

You will have resistance but in the end the deathbots will win.

That is frankly a deeply stupid sensationalist assumption of "structural unemployeement? straight to genocide!" The main origins I can find for it are outright projection from The Party's leadership who treated their people as tools and property who existed only for them. It showed in many ways from their military doctrines to lack of investment in even their intellectual workers like doctors. Lumpenproletariant were treated far worse than even homeless vagrants in the most callous of capitalists. Not even late Rome with its later high levels of unemployment and unrest was so cruelly stupid. They knew panem et circenses was the cheaper option in spite of the expense and the whinging of patricians about politicians appealing to the masses with quality of life issues. If the marginal cost of goods goes to nill guess what becomes cheaper than dedicated genocide bots which will lead to retaliation? Building more and using the excess to support them. Let alone what sorts of tasks become possible with a large excess, and the nature of veblem goods.

Romans attempted to feed its slaves to lamprey. They also refused automation because it would displace the slaves. They worked slaves to death on occasion. Rome had crucifixion and boiled people in oil for trivial reasons. Human cruelty knows no bounds and as a species we haven't changed much. If you look at modern examples:

https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017839/Madman-star...

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