[kranke155]

Eliminate current-form capitalism and you eliminate the dystopian outcome. Enforce UBI and you have utopia.

If an economic system does not provide utopian outcomes for emerging technology, then the economic system is wrong.

Economic systems that provide dystopian outcomes with emerging technology are meant to be replaced.

Your worries are about an economic system, not AI. Economic systems are tools, means to an end.

If you accept that we live in post scarcity and begin from that principle, everything is not only fine, but we could be entering an amazing age.

If you say - only those who provide value will get value - then you will enforce dystopia.

[twblalock]

We don't live in a post-scarcity society and AI isn't going to change that. We are constrained by natural resources and energy in numerous ways.

AI replacing human workers isn't going to make UBI possible. It's just going to put people out of work. The core problem with UBI remains: it's not affordable without a magical infinite wealth generator.

[kranke155]

We’re constrained in what way? Are you saying we can’t produce enough food and shelter for virtually all of the human population?

The USSR provided food and shelter using maybe 20-30% of its economy to do so. What is there a scarcity of? iPhones?

Even middle income countries have more problems with obesity and diabetes than hunger. What is there a scarcity of exactly ?

[pxue]

Energy is the obvious problem.

Some 2B people live in constant hot humid weather, if we provide every single one of those people with north american level cooling facility, we'd probably have to increase the world's energy generation by at least 40%. That's no small feat.

[AlecSchueler]

Clean energy. We've got avocados year round but the world is choking to provide it. I think you're ignoring a lie of externalisef costs.

[kranke155]

But that’s the point isn’t it.

If ChatGPT designed robots tomorrow that we could build for 99$ that could automate most farming and most construction, we could have food and shelter built at something like a few percent of our economies.

On clean energy, same thing. Ask AI to work up a plan in 10 years. Ask AI to improve solar panel construction.

In 10-20-40 years what is there a scarcity of, exactly ?

I’m not promising avocados, but there’s certainly no shortage of food when obesity is this prevalent.

[AlecSchueler]

Was that the point?

You were postulating that we already lived in a post scarcity society.

Now the goalposts have moved to require another breakthrough in AI that will have them solving the energy crisis across a period of decades or more.

If you can ask it to design these things tomorrow then why don't you?

10 years from now could be well too late to begin with any of this. 40 years is hard to even imagine with the current rate of climate change.

[kranke155]

I described what I meant by post scarcity here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35351936

In order to be able to engage I’d have to ask you what do you mean by energy crisis?

The next 40 years, if they are of unimpeded climate change, sound shitty indeed.

[agentultra]

Except it doesn’t require magic and late stage capitalism demands infinite growth.

An economic system is merely a system, not a fundamental law of nature like current capitalism wants us to believe.

[_skel]

You can't just engineer whatever the heck you want out of an economic system, or a government, or an entire society. There are at least some fundamental laws of nature, including human nature, at play.

After a century of failed communist experiments all over the world, it's disappointing that people still believe that utopian economic systems are possible.

[agentultra]

Human nature is one of the most bald-faced lies of post-monetarist capitalism.

We are not inherently greedy and there is nothing fundamental or immutable about capitalism.

UBI has nothing to do with communism either.

Changing the rules and structures of the system is going to be necessary if the system isn’t working for the society it serves.

[kranke155]

No one’s defending communism. UBI is not communism. It’s socialism at the bottom, capitalism on top.

[_skel]

I'm not calling UBI communism. That's not the point.

My point is that if we could simply invent any economic system we wanted, communism would have worked.

Communism failed because it's not possible to do that, because there really are some things about human nature and the way economies and societies work that we can't ignore or change, and those factors prevent utopian schemes from working.

[agentultra]

Many socialist states were put down by capitalist democratic ones on purpose before they could even take off.

For example, Chile. The US backed a fascist general in a coup to overthrow a democratically elected socialist. The US didn't back this violent coup because the fledgling socialist state was harming anyone and failing or because this was an authoritarian leader forcing the people to live in a dystopian communist state. The US companies were afraid they would lose their investments in Chile and the profits they gained from them.

Human nature is not a fundamental law of the universe like the speed of light or entropy. Such myths that humans are inherently greedy and self-interested are used to ensure that people can't imagine a system outside of capitalism. After all, if greed is as inevitable as entropy then we can't escape it and any system not built around greed will fail!

Except studies by sociologists and anthropologists disagree that there is such a thing as fundamental human nature. If anything we tend towards altruism. People that share resources and work together have a better chance at surviving and improving their condition than those who hoard resources and act for their own self interest. We'd be very different as a species without our ability to socialize and work together towards our mutual survival.

Capitalism is merely one system. And with the current prospects of this tech displacing thousands of jobs and no other jobs to replace them enough of the current capitalist system won't be sufficient for supporting us in the future. We need to change parts of the system or replace it entirely with something better.

[kranke155]

I think universal food and shelter based off an AI tax seems pretty workable.

Communism failed, but having capitalism without poverty is doable. On some scale some European countries have virtually eliminated poverty. They still have working economies.

Could we do that for a lot of the world using AI and automation? If we reduce the cost of food and shelter from 10-20% to 3-5% of the economy, why not?

[porknubbins]

I used to think it was just an econ problem that could be solved with UBI but lately I am not sure we are psychologically ready for UBI. Looking at the stats, young men who drop out of the labor force tend to spend their time on things like videogames, porn and marijuana rather than building a meaningful life.

[AlecSchueler]

That's within a context of living in a society that tells you you're worthless without work, though.

That's something we can change.

[hammock]

I’d like to hear more about this. What could be the meaningfulness of a life spent on videogames, porn and marijuana, if we were to change society’s perceptions about it?

[kranke155]

If you're having a good time and not harming anyone, what's the problem?

Do you know for sure you know the conditions for the happiness of all humans ? Because if you don't, then having them sort it themselves might be the best solution.

But of course by saying "Receiving value for work makes you happy" you're already saying that somehow our system works great at this.

But isn't it our current system that's causing a massive mental health crisis already?

[AlecSchueler]

I meant more that as soon as you leave the workforce as a young man society will frame you as useless, which in turn leads to poor self image and depression, which then leads to a life of quick fix feel good activities like getting high and jerking off for days at a time.

If we decouple workplace productivity and social validity then people who leave the workforce can find other meaningful ventures in their lives without shame.

[hammock]

Can you give some examples of what those ventures might be?

How will these people be supported?

[kranke155]

People working in factories could be described as “not having a meaningful life”.

Living a meaningful life is a choice left up to the individual. What are most people going to do when we automate everything ?

[twblalock]

A lot of people in the rust belt want those factory jobs back, because they were proud to support themselves through work and derived personal fulfillment from it. And they vote, and we know who most of them voted for last time...

If people could just change their minds about this, they would have done it by now.

[twblalock]

Just look at all the ridiculous ways people spent their Covid aid money. That pretty much tells us all we need to know.

[brightball]

Except that “post scarcity” is impossible. Economics are a natural law, not a system put in place.

In order to put a different system in place, somebody has to be in charge of enforcing that system which naturally leads to the outcome of a hierarchy of control that will filter the entire way down.

[kranke155]

Didn’t say there wouldn’t be a hierarchy, just that expecting people to have a job so they get food and shelter seems to be pretty impossible if AI does most things?

[cronix]

Ah yes, similar to the rat utopia experiment. Give them all the food and shelter and basic things they need while eliminating all stress (like predators), and everything will be amazing, right?

https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/mouse-heaven-or...

[kranke155]

I’m sure it won’t be perfect, but the idea that giving people food and shelter is all they need to remove the stress from their lives is funny. People need a lot more than that in my experience.

I’m sure we will find other forms of inequality to worry about then.

[kranke155]

Does rat behaviour always replicate in humans? I thought we were a bit smarter than that.

[prottog]

> If you accept that we live in post scarcity and begin from that principle

Are you saying we currently already live in a post-scarcity world? Or are you saying that AGI will get us there, some time in the relatively near future?

[kranke155]

We already live in post scarcity, in some locations. The world has an over abundance of goods.

The industrialised world already produces more than enough for the whole world, yet not all of the world is industrialised.

Even in Brazil, a low to middle income country, obesity and diabetes is a bigger problem than hunger. And the laptops they buy are made in China same as everywhere else. Notice how Brazil has no local laptop production - that’s because Chinese production is more than enough.

That already tells you what you need to know about “scarcity”. Certainly there is no scarcity of calorie production. And there is no scarcity of laptop production. Just the concentrated production in Shenzen, done by maybe 0.1% of the population, serves large parts of the world. Brazil could have a domestic industry, but there’s no need for one.

Deconstruct the concept of unemployment. Unemployment is simply put, an over abundance of people for the number of available tasks.

An over abundance of people for the number of available tasks is an unnatural situation. Hunter gatherers couldn’t have more people than the tasks available. If you were alive you hunted.

But Industrialised society has meant that a very small proportion of the population produces all the physical goods necessary to the entire population. Hence there is unemployment and underemployment. AI will super charge this.

You could of course say “we will find something for them to do”. Well, yes, sure but you’re increasingly going into what David Graeber called Bullshit Jobs - jobs where if you ask people if they think they are making a difference in the world, they say no. The UK already something like 50% of jobs are like this. My impression is this is correct - a lot of the jobs in the Uk are indeed meaningless. My hunch is that is because they are a post scarcity society in denial.

[prottog]

If you're talking about commodities, sure. Capitalism did a fantastic job at producing those very cheaply and delivering them worldwide. This is why I as someone living in a first-world country have my pick of laptops and phones and can buy enough beans and rice to feed myself for a week with an hour's labor. Like you point out, even people in relatively poorer countries are in no danger of going hungry; you have to go pretty far down in the HDI index to find someplace where more people die of hunger than are obese.

But scarcity isn't limited to commodities. Services are still scarce. Infrastructure is still scarce. Even in the US, some people don't have access to drinkable water from the tap. I've seen roads in some cities that rival the quality of those in developing African nations, with no exaggeration. The bathroom at the restaurant I went to last week was filthy. None of this can be fixed by ChatGPT-4 or whatever. We're nowhere near "fully automated luxury gay space communism" levels of technology that would satisfy all of these needs without human sweat and toil. And based on historical evidence, I don't think that UBI, or any other form of greatly expanded wealth transfer, is going to get us there quicker.

I'm familiar with the concept of bullshit jobs, and certainly some jobs do appear to be exactly that (and most white-collar jobs probably feel that way at some point or another). But I and many others feel that Graeber's formulation is too strong. Of course most people are going to say that their job isn't making a difference in the world; everyone's a tiny cog in a giant machine. Hopefully those that don't find fulfillment in their jobs will find it in the other parts of their lives. It doesn't mean that we as a society have gotten to the point that everyone can just do what fulfills them and let the robots do the rest.

[kranke155]

I will say one thing - the idea that infrastructure is scarce seems falsifiable considering that in major European economies, and overall in the European Union, the level of infrastructure is quite high.

So yes, this might be the case in the US but only due to the unwillingness of the government in the last few decades to collect enough tax in order to fund infrastructure. The current conditions of major European economies prove that no, infrastructure is not particularly scarce if you are willing to fund it.

The US is richer than europe in many ways. It appears to me that its political structure has just decided not to do it. I can't imagine that the relatively poorer countries in Europe (Portugal, Poland) are somehow solving this problem but the US can't.