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Comment by sj8822 | Hacker News Reader

At some point, I became disenchanted with tech and working as a software engineer when I realized that tech doesn't ethically fit into our primitive economic organization right now. It's made me feel bad about myself and the career path I've chosen.

Basically, with tech, you can build a product with a very limited amount of people and resources with a potentially infinite customer base. And this means that this product can suck up money from the whole world and redirect it into the hands of very few. At its essence, this is the case. With tech, this phenomena is exacerbated to the extreme compared to other industries where more physical resources and labor are required to scale production and distribution of the product, which means more wealth getting spread.

At its core, tech has the potential to exacerbate wealth inequality in mind-boggling proportions.

Our current economic system is not made for tech.

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I think ultimately tech will result in humans being like the rest of animals - completely unable to participate in the economy. This will only start to happen once AGI is reached though which might only be a decade away or less.

I think you're right, we're going to need to completely rethink our economy to decouple the idea of human effort (Unfortunately I can't see how that's going to happen without everything first falling apart).

A single barrel of oil is estimated to replace about 5-10 years of a human's effort in pure energy terms. Our human ability in physical terms was already significantly obsoleted by that.

AI feels like the discovery of cheap oil but for mental effort.

At the same time, oil is getting more and more expensive and energy intensive to drill (and costly to the environment to use).

I suspect there will be essentially three different economies - Digital Human-experiences, and hybrid.

AGI will focus primarily on problems that can be mostly solved within digital worlds where it can cycle incredibly fast. Building software, finance, paperwork, etc, etc It will eventually evolve to design, control, and operate physical systems, but will need humans to intervene and fix systems (hybrid).

The human economy will built on experiences that are explicitly, and intentionally void of computers. Restaurants, guided tours, exploration, etc, etc.

Yes I could see that happening, assuming the AIs don’t manage to outwit humans and subvert power and take over.

However, even if humans remain dominant (political power-wise), eventually there will probably be fake humans/cyborgs, like Cylons in Battle Star Galactica, that can do everything humans can but better. And also provide human-level experiences. Impossible to know how long this will take though.

But if people are paying for the product then they value it more than the money right?

Tech might bring more inequality, but what is the problem with it if it substantially increases everyones standard of living?

If something makes everything take half as much effort but removes your ability to earn an income (or slashes it more than twice) then it decreases your standard of living despite substantially increasing it for many others.

You are assuming everything else stays static. Maybe if this happens, the ability to do everything in as half as much time will increase competition in a lot of areas bringing prices down and increasing your purchasing power.

That’s not what’s happening in the US. Too much concentration of wealth (not just tech), leading to almost 3rd world country health outcomes, education levels plummeting and unaffordability to live.

Will backfire at one point if it continues.

I would argue that is caused by regulatory capture and government interference (e.g. zoning laws) and not technological progress

Despite all these zoning laws there are tent encampments everywhere...

That is exactly what I meant.

Hi Maxilevi, regarding some of your points:

"Tech might bring more inequality, but what is the problem with it if it substantially increases everyones standard of living?"

The problem is that ultimately, wealth inequality decreases the standard of living for most people. There are a finite amount of resources. This world we live in is finite. And these resources are being concentrated at the top, in the hands of a few, which leads to less and less of these finite resources being available for more and more people. Although economics is of course complex to some degree, don't lose sight of this very simple mechanism because it is a reality.

"I would argue that is caused by regulatory capture and government interference (e.g. zoning laws) and not technological progress"

If by regulatory capture, you are referring to regulatory corruption influenced by lobbying, then yes, of course that is increasing wealth inequality, and thus decreasing standard of living. Regarding government interference - it's the exact opposite of what you say - proper government interference is what we need. Under current conditions our economic system is not distributing wealth properly. That much is evident and easy to see. And there will be worse living conditions under more stark wealth inequality as opposed to a more even distribution of resources. As mentioned, this world we live in is finite. If these finite resources are syphoned to the hands of very few individuals, this leaves less of these finite resources for the rest of human beings. And as mentioned, tech has contributed to accelerating this, for the reasons mentioned in my above post. So, as mentioned, what we need is government interference. This means taxing heavily the areas that the finite resources I have spoken of are getting concentrated in and redistributing them more evenly.

I do not believe that standard of living should be compared in a vacuum. Since I assume that this is what you are referring to, I am firmly convinced that happiness is relative.

What this means is that improving the standard of living of the average person by 5% while improving it by 50% for a smaller population will hurt more than it helps.

Why would it hurt?

There is evidence that people do worse on average across a variety of metrics in more unequal societies.

Naturally this is disputed by those on the right and implicitly believed by those on the left.

See the book "The Spirit Level" and subsequent discussions around that for more info.

Ignoring study, that would be a more graphic example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg

Or historically, if this wasn't true we would be the happiest humans to ever live on earth. Doesn't seem to be true on any possible metric.

Increased standards if living, also know as trappings.

You need a phone or computer these days to participate in society, to earn a living and so on and you buy these and further services from big tech.

Corporations make profits if their products are worth it to people, true. But in a sufficiently unequal world, what's "worth it" to a rich person matters more in the market than what's "worth it" to a poor person - the rich command more money than the poor. If the money made by corporations accrues only to a few, we get a positive feedback cycle of inequality: corporations cater to the market; the market caters to rich people; and in a highly concentrated market, only a few people get rich off of this. The result is a poor underclass. Society as a whole gets richer, perhaps, but very unevenly. Besides causing political instability, this is also an inefficient allocation of resources - an additional $1000 improves a poor person's life more than it does a rich person's.

> you can build a product with a very limited amount of people and resources

If you can do it with limited resources, then so can anyone else.

(This is an oversimplification, of course)

this is not so straight forward, i've been using google for ten years even though it has been progressively getting worse. Inertia is a hell of a thing. Given a lot of choices, people generally choose one or two and stick to them (these choices mostly being determined by things like first movers advantage, good marketing, etc...)

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