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by pmoriarty 3030 days ago
Much of what I said above applies equally to artisans as it does to artists.

People might be paying a premium for hand-made trinkets now, but if there's a glut of supply from all the new artisans, those prices will plummet unless a huge amount of new demand for these artisonal goods materializes.

Sure, these newly unemployed people might themselves occasionally be able to splurge on some hand made trinket, but it's very unlikely that they themselves will be providing enough income to sustain each other. As now, the vast majority of purchasers of artisonal goods are likely to be the relatively well off, and there's just not that much demand among them to absorb the new glut of supply, so artisonal wages will necessarily plummet.

That's all assuming that the newly unemployed will will want to and somehow magically be trained to make furniture, jewelry, hand-made ice cream or what have you. Doing that to a high enough quality that people will actually buy and value what you make to outcompete all the other artisans making similar stuff is not going to be easy.

Also, it's far from clear that the cheapness of manufacture of AI-made goods will result in lower prices for the consumer. Prices consumers pay might remain the same and the extra profit be pocketed by the manufacturers.

To your final point about investing in index funds, it's far from a certainty that the index will continue to rise in the future. It could fall for any number of reasons, in which case even those fortunate enough to be able to afford to invest in the market will suffer.

1 comments

Sure, lots of worst case scenarios are possible, and if you’re worried about it, you should stockpile some canned food in your basement because there’s no guarantee against a dystopian future.