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Comment by slibhb | Hacker News Reader

The US has never experienced a widespread famine.

In some sense I agree with you that starvation in the modern world is a political problem. Evidence for that is the common observation that famines don't occur in functioning liberal democracies.

But food production relies on more than technology. Human labor is necessary to produce food, and so incentives have to exist for people to do that work (prices, free markets, capitalism, inequality, etc). So if we decide "everyone deserves free food" then we are undermining the production of food. Why would people work in the fields when they could just collect their free food? Scarcity won't be truly gone until food is abundant whether or not there are any people working the fields.

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Doesn't that just shift the problem away from incentivizing humans to incentivizing the godkings who own the robots? The scarcity becomes robot manufacturing.

Why should the owners undermine the value of their robots by providing free food for all? Those robots could be put to better use fighting wars instead.

Today, the decentralized nature of human labor means we have to incentivize people in broad ways. But if there's like 5 AI companies doing all the labor with their robots, we can just tax them and redistribute.

The owners/workers at AI companies won't resist the redistribution. It will be seen as inevitable as AI performs a greater and greater share of labor. Also, the AI company owners/workers will accrue massive status and fame; which will become the new currency (like you noted in your first post).

> The owners/workers at AI companies won't resist the redistribution.

I find this to be a somewhat incredible claim. I don't find it easy to believe such a thing. You can bring up enlightened self interest if you want, but you're going up against the entire history of humanity. I think it's more likely that something else will happen instead.

For example, you're underestimating the influence that being the ones to control all the labor in a society will grant these entities. When they reject your demands and send in the robot military to maintain order, how are you going to resist? Why should they bend when controlling all the labor will allow them to win?

This is what happens when people get "the entire history of humanity" from Howard Zinn-like sources. Healthy, stable societies are not based on the threat of violence, but rather consensual submission to a rule of law. As a rule, humans cooperate, play fairly, and want others to admire and respect them.

Why would the people who have control over this enormous automated labor force agree to taxation? How will you make them pay up if they tell you "no" and hide behind their robot army?

1. The government will force them to submit

2. They care about status, fame, reputation

3. Attitudes towards taxation/redistribution will change in a world where AI is doing almost all the labor

1. The government is already mostly focused on the needs of the rich, so this is anything but guaranteed. But say the government tries to force the rich - how, the military? Depending on the number of robots and how much military equipment is available (since the factories are fully controlled by the rich), it would turn into a numbers game.

Yet even with fewer robots than necessary for certain victory, if enough households own a robot, the rich could easily force the government to stand down by taking a small percentage of the population hostage.

2. They don't care about reputation, or we wouldn't have examples like "doing funny arm gestures at an inauguration" or the openly corrupt dealings we're seeing these days. Above status and fame they primarily care about power, but enslaving everyone else would give them all 3 of those things. And let's not act like they're too rational to delude themselves into thinking they'd still be morally righteous - again, just look at so many recent examples.

3. Attitudes don't stop bullets.

Really, I'd love to be wrong on all this, and for the Epstein class to be better than what they show everyone. But our system makes the greediest among us rise to the top, and after so many blatantly cruel actions I can't believe anyone still gives them the benefit of the doubt.

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