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Comment by ChriSumlin | Hacker News Reader

I agree and I think uncertainty causes people to miss this. A dystopian world is good for no-one. The shitty things people do to each other are scarcity motivated and call me delusionally optimistic but I think a world of total and complete abundance doesn't incentivize people at the top (who are there because people at the bottom allow it) to mercy kill everyone else with AI drones.

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> I think a world of total and complete abundance doesn't incentivize people at the top (who are there because people at the bottom allow it) to mercy kill everyone else with AI drones.

They will have one of the strongest incentive: to remain at the top. Moreover, it will not be that hard. In Soviet Union one honest socialist with four revolvers (major general Vasily Blokhin) could easily kill up to a thousand people per day personally (if he were laboriously working overtime). And back then there wasn't even a global governmental surveillance or AI-drones with explosives.

> They will have one of the strongest incentive: to remain at the top.

At the top of what? After all the massacres the remaining billionaires and their families would be all that's left of humanity. Who would want to rule over a human-empty, machine-led Earth for the rest of their lives? Not to mention the attitude and morality of their families and those close to them.

I can think of several billionaires who would be quite fine ruling over a devastated and machine-led earth. Their families are chosen or bred to agree with their amorality, and they and their dynastic families would rule with pleasure.

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