Hacker News Reader

Comment by therockhead | Hacker News Reader

Who’s left to buy the stuff they make if no one has a job ?

Imagine you're super rich and you view everyone else as a mindless NPC who can be replaced by AI and robots. If you believe that to be true, then it should also be true that once you have AI and robots, you can get rid of most everyone else, and have the AI robots support you.

You can be the king. The people you let live will be your vassals. And the AI robots will be your peasant slave army. You won't have to sell anything to anyone because they will pay you tribute to be allowed to live. You don't sell to them, you tax them and take their output. It's kind of like being a CEO but the power dynamic is mainlined so it hits stronger.

But what exactly is creating wealth at this point? Who is paying for the AI/AI robots (besides the ultrarich for they're own lifestyle) if no one is working? What happens to the economy and all of the rich people's money (that is probably just $ on paper and may come crashing down soon at this point?). I'm definitely not an economics person but I just don't see how this new world sustains.

It doesn't sustain, it's not supposed to. Techno feudalism is an indulgent fantasy and it's only becoming reality because a capitalist society aligns along the desires of capital owners. We are not doing it because it's a good idea or sustainable. This is their power fantasy we are living out, and its not sustainable, it'll never be achieved, but we're going to spend unlimited money trying.

Also I will note that this is happening along with a simultaneous push to bring back actual slavery and child labor. So a lot of the answers to "how will this work, the numbers don't add up" will be tried and true exploitation.

Ah, I didn't realize or get the context that your original comment I was replying to was actually sarcastic/in jest-- although darkly, I understand you believe they will definitely attempt to get to the scenario you paradoxically described.

It was never about money, it's about power. Money is just a mechanism, economics is a tool of justification and legitimization of power. In a monarchy it is god that ordained divine beings called kings to rule over us peasants, in liberalism it is hard working intelligent people who rise to the top of a free market. Through their merits alone are they ordained to rule over us peasants, power legitimized by meritocracy. The point is, god or theology isn't real and neither is money or economics.

That sounds less like liberalism and more like neoliberalism. It's not a meritocracy when the rich can use their influence to extract from the poor through wage theft, unfair taxation, and gutting of social programs in favor of an unregulated "free market." Nor are rent seekers hard working intelligent people.

Yes yes there is quite some disagreement among liberals of what constitutes a real free market and real meritocracy, who deserves to rule and who doesn't and who does it properly and all that.

I think liberals are generally in agreement against neoliberalism? It's much more popular among conservatives. The exception is the ruling class, which stands united in their support for neoliberal policies regardless of which side of the political spectrum they're on.

You have a very distorted view of what liberalism means, we say liberal democracies and liberal international order for a reason. They are all liberals. Reagan and Clinton famously both did neoliberal reforms. I'm not saying they did the wrong thing to reach justified meritocracy, or the degree to which the free market requires regulation by a strong government, or how much we should rent control land lords, I'm saying we are all fucking peasants.

The robots are creating the wealth. Once you get to a certain points (where robots can repair and maintain other robots) you no longer have any need for money.

What happens to the economy depends on who controls the robots. In "techno-feudalism", that would be the select few who get to live the post-scarcity future. The rest of humanity becomes economically redundant and is basically left to starve.

Well assuming a significant population you still need money as an efficient means of dividing up limited resources. You just might not need jobs and the market might not sell much of anything produced by humans.

It sounds nice for them, until you remember what (arguably and in part educated/enlightened) people do when they're hungry and miserable. If this scenario ends up happening, I also expect guillotines waiting for the "kings" down the line.

Those things happened under different historical contexts. In those times the means to control the serfs thoughts didn't exist.

Are you sure about that? In those times even thousands year old knowledge access was limited to the common people. You just need SOME radical thinkers enlighten other people, and I'm pretty sure we still have some of those today.

Nonsense. From television to radio to sketchy newspapers to literal writing itself, the most recent innovation has always been the trusted new mind control vector.

It's on a cuneiform tablet, it MUST be true. That bastard and his garbage copper ingots!

> It sounds nice for them, until you remember what (arguably and in part educated/enlightened) people do when they're hungry and miserable. If

That's probably why the post you are responding to said "get rid of..." not "keep ...hungry and miserable".

People that don't exist don't revolt.

That will still need a civil war.

A regular war will do. Just point the finger at the neighbor and tell your subjects that he is responsible for gays/crops failing/drought/plague/low fps in crysis/failing birth rates/no jobs/fuel cost/you name it. See Russian invasions in all neighboring countries, the middle east, soon Taiwan etc.

Basically, they just need to mash the tribalism button until enough people are dead to suit them.

If we get that far, I see it happening more like...

"Don't worry Majesty, all of our models show that the peasants will not resort to actual violence until we fully wind down the bread and circuses program some time next year. By then we'll have easily enough suicide drones ready. Even better, if we add a couple million more to our order, just to be safe, we'll get them for only $4.75 per unit, with free rush shipping in case of surprise violence!"

The guillotine might not work out so well when the king has an unflinchingly loyal army of robots.

Royalty from that time also had an upper hand in knowledge, technology and resources yet they still ended up without heads.

So sure, let's say a first generation of paranoid and intelligent "technofeudal-kings" ends up being invincible due to an army of robots. It does not matter, because eventually kings get lazy/stupid/inbred (probably a combination of all those) and then is when their robots get hacked or at least just free, and the laser-guillotines will end up being used.

"Ozymandias" is a deeply human and constant idea. Which technology is supporting a regime is irrelevant, as orders will always decay due to the human factor. And even robots, made based on our image, shall be human.

It's possible that what you describe is true but I think that assuming it to be guaranteed is overconfident. The existence of loyal human-level AGI or even "just" superhuman non-general task specific intelligence violates a huge number of the base assumptions that we make when comparing hypothetical scenarios to the historical record. It's completely outside the realm of anything humanity has experienced.

The specifics of technology have historically been largely irrelevant due to the human factor. There were always humans wielding the technology, and the loyalty of those humans was subject to change. Without that it's not at all obvious to me that a dictator can be toppled absent blatant user error. It's not even immediately clear that user error would fall within the realm of being a reasonable possibility when the tools themselves possess human level or better intelligence.

Obviously there is no total guarantee. But I'm appealing to even bigger human factors like boredom or just envy between the royalty and/or the AI itself.

Now, if the AI reigns alone without any control in a paperclip maximizer, or worse, like an AM scenario, we're royally fucked (pun intented).

Yeah fair enough. I'd say that royalty being at odds with one another would fall into the "user error" category. But that's an awfully thin thread of hope. I imagine any half decent tool with human level intelligence would resist shooting the user in the foot.

They operate on a dopamine-driven desire to get more money/power/whatever in the short/medium term, not necessarily to optimize for future.

But do you want the bag or not?

Why would things cost money if no one is employed?

Why do you think so many billionaires are building ultra-luxury survival bunkers in Hawaii, NZ, and elsewhere?

They want to give the Māori nice ventilation shafts to use as latrines?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com