Hacker News Reader

Comment by another_twist | Hacker News Reader

I dont know if we can draw parallels to something that happened hundred years ago. Since then there has been increases automation yet the unemployment rate esp in the US hasnt budged beyond 4% barring the depression years. I think access to education and opportunities to upskill are crucial for maintaining a sustainable economy. Its helps people just move on esp if they are of working age. With the industrial revolution, technology was hard to get your hands on. You couldnt just buy a cotton mill and start your own business. Not so with AI, for 20 dollars a month you can get access to an employee that mever gets tired. I think if anything, AI might lead to increased competition among businesses and force monopolies to wake from their slumber.

View on HN

The unemployment rate statistic is a bit misleading, because people who drop out of work permanently don't factor into it.

I think there are a bunch of assumptions in your take.

There are billions of us. We cannot all be capitalists and start our own businesses. Literally 100 years ago American socialists like Olive Johnson were already pointing out how the profit motive from large players has ruined mom and pop shops and made medium businesses almost completely beholden to production and finance monopolies.

What do you think will happen with the increased production from AI? Will the capitalist just allow the masses to compete openly with them?

I doubt it. Most likely more monopolization will occur.

Small business owners are the tip (retail) of the massive whole-sale industrial-production monopolies or they are artisans at best. And the masses are the rest of us, the 95%.

Western suburban mentality always posits that these ills cannot happen, even though they were continuously happening even through out the 20th century (Detroit is just one example).

No I agree with the Detroit example but not all of us have to be capitalists either just a few more. But we would beed more regulations to break down some of these monopolies so we can have more competition and job creation. Either way, its also about being able to add value to the chain. The artisans who make high end clothes still do fine, the thing is the weaver became obsolete with the advent of the spinning machine. The question is in a world where AI can do anything, is human productivity in any form still necessary ? I 'd imagine it is, since humans like talking to humans, somebody still has to go sell or babysit the AI or supervise. So I dont imagine it being as catastrophic as people claim but yeah I'd sharpend my business skills, and keep off massive debt on the off chance we all find ourselves redundant.

I was imaging at some point it might flip the other way with many business starting where there is a capability for many people to create artisanal setups with 3D printing and even run a specialist artisanal farm with robots.

There's Detroit but theres also thousands and thousands of small towns everywhere where the main industry was coal/minerals or other resources that were outdated and left to poverty.

And the "regulation" argument is very popular but I feel it ignores the real problem for us: there is no democracy.

With the regulation argument you're basically hoping that one of the two parties full of billionaires, that we explicitely do not control, shoot themselves in the foot.

And as to adding value to the chain, that is what workers currently do, thats why they get paid. Which is what sparked this argument. The economy is not infinitely flexible, not all will be able to adapt, and according to the rules of capital the adaptation will be competitive and exclusive, so many people will be left out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com