[robertlagrant]

People with things have to be useful to people who can do things as well. I work to get paid a salary; my employer pays me enough that I don't leave. The only exception to this is taxes, which don't require mutually agreed exchange.

[tivert]

> People with things have to be useful to people who can do things as well.

That's not super clear, but I think I get what you're saying.

My whole point is AGI breaks that idea, and frees capital from the need for labor.

> I work to get paid a salary; my employer pays me enough that I don't leave.

And when an AGI can do your job better and cheaper than you, your employer fires you and stops paying you. And all the other employers don't hire you because they don't need you either. Then, if you're lucky, you get to live on the dole, otherwise you (eventually) get to be homeless have the opportunity to try scrape by at the margins (maybe you can squat and live off a garden for a few years, until a solar megaproject evicts you from now unprofitable farmland). In all cases you're marginalized and economically irrelevant.

[robertlagrant]

If no one is hired then the employers don't have anyone to buy their stuff. Employers only do well if they provide someone else a useful good or service.

What's more likely - not that AGI is likely, but still - is that people move into other jobs. In 18th century Europe almost half the population were agricultural labourers. Mechanisation reduced that drastically. That did not mean that other jobs weren't created.

[tivert]

> If no one is hired then the employers don't have anyone to buy their stuff. Employers only do well if they provide someone else a useful good or service.

You're still stuck with assumptions that are obsolete in this scenario.

In the AGI scenario, the employers that are dependent on consumer sales will wither and die, as consumer buying power shrinks due to unemployment. Eventually the economy will realign towards certain kinds of B2B sales (e.g. electrical power) and vanity projects.

> What's more likely - not that AGI is likely, but still - is that people move into other jobs. In 18th century Europe almost half the population were agricultural labourers. Mechanisation reduced that drastically. That did not mean that other jobs weren't created.

Not if the AGI can do all those jobs better and cheaper than most people (or even just good enough and more obediently). There might be a rump of exceptionally talented individuals who still could be employed like today, but that's just a tiny sliver of the population. There will also be some "entertainment" jobs, like prostitute that will remain as well, but given the vast decrease in individuals participating in the economy, the total numbers would likely be less than now.

Not everything is going to be a replay of the past. As they say, "past performance is not indicative of future results."

[robertlagrant]

> In the AGI scenario, the employers that are dependent on consumer sales will wither and die, as consumer buying power shrinks due to unemployment.

Why? People will find ways to exchange value.

> Not if the AGI can do all those jobs better and cheaper than most people (or even just good enough and more obediently).

What does this mean? By AGI do you mean "cleaning robots" or "entertaining bartenders" or "live music" or "person who owns this house I want to rent" or "mind I will pay to learn from"? None of those sounds like anything to do with AGI, unless the AGI is housed in a robot that can clean things (and then I don't need AGI).

Also there will be a floor of jobs not worth doing with AGI because of the energy and maintenance requirements. AGI is not a magic wand. It's a specific thing. ChatGPT being able to spit out a decent but generic essay doesn't suddenly mean that all the crazy numbers of jobs everyone does will vanish.

[tivert]

>> In the AGI scenario, the employers that are dependent on consumer sales will wither and die, as consumer buying power shrinks due to unemployment.

> Why? People will find ways to exchange value.

Sure, but they'll have increasingly less to exchange among themselves. They'll have nothing to sell that the AGI-powered economy wants to buy, except truly limited legacy resources like land that can be gobbled up in one-time purchases. Eventually the AGI-powered economy will monopolize the resources that are useful to it, in a way that likely conflicts with the needs of now-obsolete workers (e.g. converting vast amounts of farmland to solar power megaprojects).

That's the end-state of automation, in our current social system.

>>> What's more likely - not that AGI is likely, but still - is that people move into other jobs.

>> Not if the AGI can do all those jobs better and cheaper than most people (or even just good enough and more obediently).

> What does this mean? By AGI do you mean...

I mean intellectual automation that can do at least what a typical person can do as well as they can or better. Eventually it means the automation that can do all the jobs (or even just enough of the jobs). Eventually you won't have a new job to move into once your job is replaced.

AGI will eventually mean there will cease to be a practical necessity to using human to do labor to operate capital. The capital will be able to operate itself on behalf of its owners. Once that happens, under the current system, the owners of that automated capital will eventually accumulate all the wealth of the economy, because they'll be able to sell without paying wages. Eventually they'll pivot to vanity projects and B2B sales among themselves.

> Also there will be a floor of jobs not worth doing with AGI because of the energy and maintenance requirements. AGI is not a magic wand. It's a specific thing.

Probably, but I expect even those will eventually disappear too, at least on the mass scale needed to support billions of people, during the later stages of the economic transition.

> ChatGPT being able to spit out a decent but generic essay doesn't suddenly mean that all the crazy numbers of jobs everyone does will vanish.

I'm not talking about ChatGPT, I'm talking about the utopia the AI folks want to create.