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Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

We even have ample evidence from history that this did not occur with other innovations. We don’t have a field of workers anymore, we have one guy in a tractor. We don’t have a factory of workers anymore, we have one guy watching the machines.

We won’t have a field of lawyers, radiologists, programmers anymore, we will have one guy watching the machines. You can tell yourself you’ll be that one guy, but statistically you won’t.

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How does that one guy in a tractor or that one guy watching the machines get paid when no one has a job to buy food, widgets, health care, et cetera? A sudden disruption like AI is purported to potentially cause is a recipe for total societal collapse.

We’ve tried to kick the can down the road to a weird ponzi where we all do services for one another, but I don’t know how much longer that can go for. Now AI is going to disrupt that. We need to just stop sending all the money upwards and enjoy the benefits that mechanization and AI can bring. But I doubt that happens.

> In a short essay published in 1930, the world’s most important economist, John Maynard Keynes, predicted that within 100 years, most people would be working no more than 15 hours a week.

We did not get this future. We got a future where both husband and wife have to work 40+ hour weeks for the same lifestyle. He did not envision the siphoning off of wealth that would characterize the 20th and 21st century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

Easy. Make things for rich people only.

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