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Comment by AnIdiotOnTheNet | Hacker News Reader

The problem isn't putting people out of work, that's the whole point of technology. The problem is that the gains are concentrated into the hands of those who own capital instead of distributed across the society of people who actually did the fucking work to make this level of progress possible.

We could be working far fewer hours, we could have higher pay, but neither are realized because we can't shake off the goddamned aristocrats and neo feudalists.

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We have (for the most part) democracy. At this point, either feudalism is a collective choice, or the collective wants to make self-interested decisions but isn't smart enough to know how.

Or the oversized influence of the neo-feudalists make the who enterprise of changing it via democratic means borderline/if not impossible...?

How is this different from the stupid collective scenario?

it's not victim blaming?

If democratic society writ large can be considered a singular entity, then yes, it is victim blaming. Democratic society is the victim of and cause of all of its own problems.

to do that need to create alternative economy which limits ones maximum wealth accumulation in logarithmic way, so nobody can make more than million usd a year. this may lead people accumulating commodities instead, not sure if thats positive or negative. if we can limit that too some how? I guess we need a proper class war

People who work to develop and use this tech are rewarded. It's not just for capitalists.

Most people are not helping with AI or with tech in general. Most people are not working to develop AI nor are they attempting to integrate AI into their workflow. If they don't adapt, they won't benefit and rightly so. But people who are actually helping will be rewarded proportionately.

Fewer hours and higher pay? It's here. We've all heard of comfy tech jobs, writing 10 lines of code a day working from home for $250k. That's mostly people who use tech like Python and JavaScript. Soon people will be doing better than that with generative AI. 4-day workweeks are around the corner.

McKinsey estimated that the top 5% of employees produce 95% of the value. These are not capitalists, they are technologically sophisticated workers. The media likes to report "productivity is increasing, wages are not" but the median worker isn't any more productive than 20 years ago. The people actually driving productivity increases are rewarded fairly, their wages are going up rapidly.

It's a snake eating its own tail situation.

Corpos need a wealthy consumer base in order to sell things and remain profitable. But to do that they have to collectively pay laborers higher wages because laborers are basically the consumer.

An individual corporation lowering labor costs in an economy of high wages benefits with greater profits so this strategy is logical. But if corporations act on this collectively they damage themselves. Most corporations, however are built upon short term gains. So they are unlikely to have the foresight to act wisely. It's the tragedy of the commons.

The tragedy is this, when a corporation hires AI and lowers labor costs he is acting rationally according to a cost benefit analysis. But this logic applied collectively becomes suicidal. It is ultimately rational and logical action that damages us. That it the tragedy.

Best solution I've heard of is ubi. But I'm not sure how it will play out in practice. I think government job creation might be better.

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