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by fortissimohn 1163 days ago
Surely this technology will be used for the benefit of humanity. By 2030 we will be working 15 hour weeks and all people will have homes!
4 comments

It will be interesting to see what happens. By not taxing capital gains at higher or similar rates to income most of the larger % of the new wealth being generated was moving to owners of capital rather than workforce already. Now this is going to compound the problem further as the last avenue to increase wealth is closed off for the people without capital.
(for the sake of critical thinking)

or rich get richer, poor get poorer and will not have access to AI tools, society will collapse, more jobs will be low paying, most on demand skills would be everything done by physical activity

> society will collapse,

The great promise of robotics and AI is the possibility of decoupling societal stability from the vagaries of the poor.

That's not the great promise of AI. The great promise is relieving humans from all types of labor and freeing their time to create, explore, imagine, love and live. But human time would only be useful for such goals if proper societal structures are put in place, which is a political issue, not a technological one.

In our current compounding-capital model, what you get is a depreciation of all human capital to zero, therefore everybody who doesn't already own capital is fucked for eternity because they have nothing to compound and get the ball rolling. Zero social mobility, absolute polarization between an AI-owning class and an own-nothing class for as long as revolution is prevented.

How?

By having armies of semi-intelligent armed drones, that will kill the poor if they decide to riot?

By bringing wealth so cheaply that it can be given away.

We already have many things that are given away for free, whereas a 100 years ago they were considered luxury (books, pens, papers, access to knowledge in general, and in Europe - public transport and healthcare, plus to some extent food, heat and electricity).

Would the wealthy and the powerfull be happy for everyone to become wealthy?
Why not?

If you’re a part of a startup ecosystem, you’ve seen how it works first hand - wealthy and successful sharing knowledge with the others.

Then that’s not wealth anymore, because wealth is relative.
Sounds like a good guess.

Computers, the web, mobile drastically increased the productivity of office workers, but somehow they don't work 15 hour work weeks.

Yeah humanity messed up somewhere. Instead of working 15 hours in a sustainable world, we work our ass off destroying it so that a few can get rich.
Surely YC will be the force pushing for that and not just the enrichment of a few people who are already insanely rich.
Most startups funded by YC are from first time founders, and definitely not by people post-exit. The whole idea, and value that the startup ecosystem brings is giving opportunities to anyone to enter the field and compete with the establishment.

For me, personally - before the startup ecosystem happened in my country, it was extremely difficult to break through. If you worked for a large entity - good for you. If you wanted to do something on your own - you weren't treated seriously, and it was very difficult to get through.

Now, people from anywhere, can visit meetups and hackathons to get up to speed, and gain connections. And accelerators like YC provide resources and mentoring to the ones that are the best.

Also, notice that YC has an open application, and they don't look at your social status, your wealth, nor your connections, when judging your application.

Of course it's not perfect - being from US, or the bay area, helps. Knowing people who got through YC and can help you prepare your application also helps.

But I haven't heard of anyone with a better idea for solving this.

Why do you think YC does what they do?
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