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Comment by seaucre | Hacker News Reader

In the long run, absent intervention, virtually all income flows to the owners of compute.

We need more than UBI. AGI is the culmination of all human activity up to that point and all humanity deserves ownership of it. It should not belong solely to those who put the cherry on top with the rest of us at their mercy. They don't deserve to control the humanity's destiny. AGI, at some point, has to be made into ... I don't know. Not nationalized - something more. A force of pure good for all humans unaffiliated with any corporation or state.

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Why would compute be any less of a commodity than electricity?

The same reason why owning a business is less of a commodity than electricity.

It's the ultimate monopoly. Anyone with more compute will ultimately be able to out perform any business you could invent ultimately locking you out of competition.

The owners of compute will make a killing and can set whatever price they like. But if the owner is someone like say amazon, then what actually stops them from using their massive compute army they already own to enter the most lucrative businesses for compute slowly dominating everything?

attempting to come up with reason here:

because compute is owned and sold by people who have businesses built on top of compute, thus they let you have their excess compute, it follows that their needs will come before yours.

You are kinda calling for Communism without spelling it out, I think.

Of course. If AGI becomes real I don't see any reason to keep a capitalism society. Ultimately capitalism works because it incentivizes people to produce goods and services efficiently. If AI is more efficient than humans in every single aspect then what's the point of giving people economic incentives?

Things still cost money. There are always scarcities. For example cells already reached exponential self replication capabilities long ago, but eventually hit environment constraints. It became a struggle for survival, but under infinite resources they would infinitely replicate without effort instead of evolving.

We're much closer to modelling cells than humans, yet we still pretend like we're already there somehow on both accounts.

Don’t worry, the AI cokeheads have told me that LLMs will usher in Star Trek post scarcity.

It's funny that just over 100 years ago, they were saying EXACTLY the same thing about electricity. Ultimately, history has shown all the reasons to to keep a capitalism society.

100 years ago people said electricity would be more efficient than humans in every single aspect? They said electricity would invent more efficient way to generate electricity itself?

That's news to me! Some people were really ahead of their time.

> 100 years ago people said electricity would be more efficient than humans in every single aspect?

Yes, literally.

Let's call it Commonism then. Where we recognize the need for economic activity that furthers whatever we humans have in common. Instead of tumour-like, zero-sum, number must go up turbocapitalism that just concentrates wealth.

If AGI occurs some form of communism will be necessary no? How else will they cover all the costs of UBI? It's our work/earths resources/internet its been born from, it should benefit us all.

How does the occurring of AGI lead to the need for UBI?

I'm assuming there won't be more meaningful work for most of population to do that AI can't do. Some people think the opposite. That seems to be the main point of contention.

Solve for bread or the circus is free.

And some hybrid of capitalism and socialism eventually will happen. Target would be to prevent rich few from hoarding wealth and force them to put it back into economy. Otherwise people with nothing to lose will just repeat social revolutions from 19-20th century.

Because too many HN folk see that word and recoil as they're only casually "familiar" with human attempts at it during the era of scarcity as told by mass media, with no understanding as to the reality of why said systems failed or succeeded.

In a post-scarcity society (which we're technically in now, if we took this seriously), Communism is a more appropriate model of governance than Capitalism. It would ensure a more equitable distribution of resources, incentivize stronger environmental policies to minimize waste, and drive technological innovation towards preservation (of truly scarce resources - rare elements, for instance) over extraction.

The problem is that humans desire power for themselves and the humiliation of others, which results in every method of governance becoming corrupted over time, especially if it doesn't see regular change to address its weaknesses (as we see now with neoliberal societies resisting populism on both extremes of the political scale). Combined with centuries of nationstates lumbering onwards and fighting for their own survival in an increasingly nebulous and ever-shifting digital landscape, and no wonder things are a tinderbox.

All that being said, Communism is an (maybe not the, but an) appropriate choice for a post-scarcity, post-AGI society. It's something we need to discuss in earnest now, and start dismantling Capitalism where feasible to lay the foundation for what comes next. As others (myself included) have pointed out repeatedly, this is likely the last warning we'll get before AGI arrives. It's highly unlikely LLMs and current technology will give rise to AGI, but it's almost a certainty that we'll see actual glimmers of AGI within the next fifty years - and once that genie is out of the bottle, we'll be "locked in" to whatever society we've created for ourselves, until and unless we leave our planet behind and can experiment with our own alternatives at scale.

Good craftsmen know when they've reached the limits of their current tooling. We need to recognize that Capitalism is the wrong tool for an AGI era if we value our humanity.

>In a post-scarcity society

Human needs unlimited. There can't be any "post-scarcity society".

The transition point to a post-scarcity society is in the eyes of the beholder, and moves away from them at the same speed with which they approach it.

From the perspective of the hundreds of millions of people working for 10 cents an hour, any American, even the poorest of them, whose only available job is a minimum wage of $8 an hour, has long since passed that point of post-scarcity society.

But try convincing minimum wage American that he's beyond that point and that he needs to give up $6 out of $8 because "there are no scarcity after $2 per hour". Then you will know the real opinion of people about "more equitable distribution of resources, incentivize stronger environmental policies to minimize waste, and drive technological innovation towards preservation"

If I'm understanding your broken sentences correctly, you're seemingly trying to parrot the same "insatiable appetite of humanity" that all proponents of Capitalism like to trot out as some sort of defense of the (otherwise) indefensible; same with your misleading comparison of income and cost of living across national boundaries.

The fundamental needs of humanity aren't infinite: a safe home, nutritious food, healthcare, and education are the sum total of human needs. Everything else is superfluous to survival, albeit not self-fulfillment or personal enrichment. We're post-scarcity in the sense that, on a planetary scale, we have enough food, shelter, healthcare, and education for every single inhabitant on Earth, but Capitalism incentivizes the misuse of these surplus resources to create value for existing stakeholders.

This is where I flatly reject any notion of Capitalism being viable, suitable, or acceptable in a post-AGI society, and rail against it in the present day. Its incentives no longer align with human needs or challenges, and in fact harm humanity as a whole by promoting zero-sum wealth extraction rather than a reconciling of the gap between human needs and Capital desires. As much pro-Capitalism content as I consume in an effort to better my perspective, the reality is that it is rapidly outliving its usefulness as a tool like a shambling zombie, wholly divested from human survival and soldiering onward solely as a means to prop up the existing power structures in existence.

> as some sort of defense of the (otherwise) indefensible

Trying to dispute this fact reveals your inexperience and out-of-touch worldviews. And frankly, I'm not entirely understand what you think this fact is defending.

> The fundamental needs of humanity aren't infinite: a safe home, nutritious food, healthcare, and education are the sum total of human needs

You are literally listing needs that are insatiable.

Let me repeat, there are hundreds of millions of people in the world working for 10-20 cents an hour. Try talking to them and ask them what salary a person needs to get "safe home, nutritious food, healthcare, and education". You'll almost certainly hear a figure around a couple of dollars per hour, maybe even less.

And no, it's not about the cost of living, it's about the fact that in their opinion, anyone with access to the American labor market (even as an illegal worker) makes several times more money than they need to get "safe home, nutritious food, healthcare, and education". Because these human needs are exactly as infinite as other "superfluous to survival" needs.

> Capitalism incentivizes the misuse of these surplus resources to create value for existing stakeholders

Or, in the opinion of people earning 10-20 cents an hour, the enormous salaries of American workers earning the American Minimum Wage. American workers EVERY year earn more money than American billionaires have accumulated over generations. What a enormous source for distribution and building a fair post-capitalist society!

But alas, if the builders of a post-capitalist society cannot convince even the most needy workers to show class solidarity and give up $6 of their $8 minimum wage in the name of avoiding "the misuse of these surplus resources" and "safe home, nutritious food, healthcare, and education" for every human on the planet, what can we expect from capital, which is in a much more advantageous negotiating position?

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