If all jobs are taken away for the sake of robot driven productivity, who will consume the products and services being offered that result in profit?!
(EDIT: I am not against AI at all, just trying to understand where this all leads)
(EDIT: I am not against AI at all, just trying to understand where this all leads)
hell, if actors are still making movies for the love of the game and competing with cheaper (SOMEHOW! I guess we forgot about Sora already) then the price on those will actually go down
oh no, more indie movies made out of the labor of love, the horror.
Yes if theres one thing we know about Chips and AI its that the price of equivalent performance literally never decreases...
"Capital investments" are not a magic money source if the economy is tanked.
The only reason they tolerate the proletariat is the need for labor to handle tasks that still require human beings. That’s what the modern capitalist machine does: it harvests labor. If they manage to eliminate the need for intellectual labor via AI and automate enough physical work using tech like Boston Dynamics and John Deeres, whoever's still around become trash. The reliance on this system of money flowing back and forth ends, because the only reason to maintain it is having people generate wealth for them. Once they can eliminate that "cost," they’ll do it without blinking.
We’re already seeing jobs being wiped out by the tens of thousands with the arrival of AI, and billionaires hoarding capital far beyond what they could ever consume, driven simply by the pleasure of having more than the next guy. We’ve also seen how some are depraved enough to treat human beings as mere resources for their own gratification. Why would them keep people around they don't need anymore? People are failable, expensive to keep and unreliable. If all can be automated, it will be. Expecting wealth distribution from them is also a fantasy. If they cared they would do it now, but the talk is always "when we reach certain goal the riches will tricke down, just wait."
The argument that "there won't be anyone left to buy products and keep capitalism running" might hold true during a transition phase, but that would just be like ripping off a Band-Aid. None of them super-rich will care about the money flow once this structure becomes obsolete and can be replaced by another system that’s more efficient and easier to control.
I think they do care. If someone like Mamdani becomes U.S president in 10 years - when significant segments of the population are unemployed and/or radicalized, the U.S can actually become real socialist - like REAL socialist. That means business owners lose parts or all of their business. What if Musk and Zuckerberg won't like it and fight? They're not really gonna have an army of robots, nothing large enough to take over a country. The state controls the monopoly over violence. The state controls the ability to print dollars to build a bigger army. Legislation will make it impossible for a private citizen to accumulate a private army. Guardrails will be put in place. Governments are not that stupid. I think the super rich have an incentive to see the current system keep ticking and not turn into a shit show, they will have no way to control what happens if it turns into a shit show.
People can vote if they want, but the far right (which is heavily influenced by the super-rich) is already working to erode the legitimacy of the voting system. And people will have a hard time revolting against the state because the state is far more capable now than it was in the past.
Trump implies every now and then that he intends to stay in power. Even if he doesn't follow up on these threats I don't think we can expect democracy to keep order, it seems unlikely to me. When capitalism fails, democracy is the first casualty.
This includes my teenager, who socks away $30/week in a VOO fund account. But yeah, no one can afford to "own (shares in?) the robot factories."
Let's assume that the stock market 10xes in the next decade, then the median American stock owner can get out $16,000/year.
* About 87% of adults with a household income of $100,000 or more own stock; compared to just 28% of those earning under $50,000.
* Only about 37% of adults hold stocks, bonds, or funds outside of a retirement account.
* Between 55% and 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are one large expense or missed paycheck away from homelessness.
* While some paycheck-to-paycheck workers technically own small amounts of stock, the actual value they hold is minimal.
* The wealthiest 10% of Americans own roughly 90% to 95% of all U.S. stock value.
> Between 55% and 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are one large expense or missed paycheck away from homelessness.
Is simply untrue
From their methodology:
> The Modern Wealth Index, developed in partnership with Koski Research and the Schwab Center for Financial Research [...] was conducted by Koski Research from January 12 to January 19, 2018, among 1,000 Americans aged 21 to 75. Quotas were set so that the sample is as demographically representative as possible. The margin of error for the total survey sample is three percentage points.
Anecdotally, this percentage makes sense to me based on roughly half of the people in my circles/family/life living paycheck to paycheck, but there's obviously some exposure bias at work there too. It's possible you have some exposure bias as well if that number seems too high for you.
According to some recent data[0], 22% of households earning above $250k report themselves as living paycheck to paycheck. That alone tells me that the term can have very different meanings for different people. Perhaps those high earners mean that after all the taxes, retirement and ESPP deductions are taken out of their paycheck, what's left over is just enough to pay for their lifestyle. That's not what I would call paycheck-to-paycheck. And whatever the definition, I can assure you that 22% of the households in that income bracket are not a paycheck away from homelessness.
[0] https://www.lambdafin.com/articles/percent-of-americans-livi...
That's surprisingly high. I know several people with millions in their retirement accounts and nothing outside. It is also not uncommon for people to prefer real estate investment outside of retirement accounts. Both of these groups are wealthy but both would be excluded from this statistic.
> Between 55% and 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are one large expense or missed paycheck away from homelessness.
This "statistic" is based on definitions so misleading or unrigorous as to be meaningless. Nor is it derived from any of the data sources that are the gold standard for this type of economic research.
US Federal Reserve and BLS studies are broadly recognized authoritative sources for these types of economic statistics. Per these sources, the percentage of American households that have income that is entirely consumed by necessary expenses is 10-15%.
In the US, the median household has a ~$15,000/year surplus after all ordinary (not necessary) expenses per US statistical authorities. This surplus has been growing over time, so it isn't like it is at risk of disappearing either. This data alone obviously contradicts your assertion that most Americans are "one large expense or missed paycheck away from homelessness".
So as an owner of 1 million robots, in a world where there are 1000 rich people to serve, I can have 1000 robots per person to serve them and can do everything for them.
Why do I care about the rest of the population? Why I need them to consume my resources? I already have all the power in the world. I have food, health, security, scientist etc. I don’t need the rest of the humans for anything.
Why currently “the rich” need the rest of humans is: you need baristas, servers, builders to help save time and make life enjoyable for most humans. then you need office workers to do the research, manage wealth of a richer category. So all this chain is needed such as top 1000 people have: housing, food, health, security, etc. that’s all they care. They don’t need the money. That’s the real power.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
And yet I see videos all the time of Indians running contraptions straight out of the steam age in their shacks to make plastic straws or sandals. Or just doing it by hand. Better machines to do these tasks already exist, but are obviously too expensive for them to afford. Why would these hypothetical robots be any more affordable or disruptive to Indian workers in particular?
If anything I think American blue collars would be the ones to worry about.
-- Madame de Pompadour
Ugh, capitalism.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communi...
It has always resulted in no long term effect on unemployment and higher worker wages.
If you don't understand why that counterintuitive thing has consistently happened for centuries, you probably shouldn't speculate on the current automation wave.