[Sohcahtoa82]

> Which means 100% of the money goes to the owner.

As more jobs get automated, this is becoming more and more inevitable anyways.

There have been massive strides in computer vision and planning in the past few years. I think in 5-10 years we'll have robots that can handle nearly any manual labor task.

In 10-15 years, we could be facing skyrocketing unemployment. We'll either see the collapse of society as the economy collapses, or we'll need to increase taxes on the owners to fund UBI.

[chii]

> In 10-15 years, we could be facing skyrocketing unemployment

The productivity growth from such new technology would induce more consumption, and induce _different_ consumption. These would produce new work opportunities.

UBI is not necessarily the only solution. And to me, it cannot be a solution from which taxation is utilized to fund.

[Joker_vD]

> The productivity growth from such new technology would induce more consumption

Whose consumption? There is nothing impossible about a scenario in which there are about 2-3 millions of owners of fully automatic businesses and/or landlords who, with their total output combined, produce more than enough of anything needed for, or desired by, 2-3 million people. The only problem is that the rest of humanity would have to somehow disappear to not sullen this perfectly harmonious market economy of entrepreneurs (which is ironically quite similar to Adam Smith's naive descriptions of it in his own times), but we do have negative fertility rates, after all.

So there is absolutely a path where the well-to-do will just switch to trading with each other, with aggregate output shrinking to match the shrunk demand, and the rest of people could go and drop dead or whatever they want, as long as they don't trespass on the private property. After all, most of what those losers would have would be their ability to work but it just won't be priced competitively: the fair market price equals marginal costs (which for labour is the price of the subsistence minimum), and if robot maintenance is cheaper... yeah. To quote on of the designers of the shock reforms of 1992 in Russia, "what do you care for those people? So, 30 millions will go extinct. They failed to fit into the market".

[ryandrake]

The future is looking a lot like the movie Elysium, with a few million owners doing all the commerce, safely segregated away from a few billion have-nothings who are barely economically relevant.

[ryandrake]

This is the obvious end-state of unregulated capitalism. Fewer and fewer people owning and benefiting from the means of production, and more and more people with nothing and nothing to do besides revolt and (eventually) chop heads off. All the ownership class needs to stop the "head chopping" part is a robust and powerful police/surveillance state, which we all know they are diligently working on right now.

[ta1243]

The wealthiest 10% of America have increased the ownership of wealth from about 40% in the 1970s to 70% today, with no sign of slowing.

A typical HN techbro may not care because they're likely in the wealthiest 35 million, but the only way for the top 3 million / 1% to continue growing at the same rate once the bottom 90% have nothing more to lose is to take the wealth from the 32 million between 1% and 10%.

It took 50 years for the bottom 90% to halve the ownership of wealth in the US. Once they are fully tapped out the only way the 1% will continue to increase their wealth is taking it from the 10%. Then the 0.1% from the 1%.

[chii]

wealth isn't a zero sum game. Not to mention that it's a false dichotomy to claim that the wealth increase could only have came from taking it from someone else.

[ryandrake]

The pie may be growing, but when the rich take proportionally more from the pie every time it grows, then to the poor, it might as well be zero sum. To use the other analogy: it's a rising tide, but only the rich have boats.

[Sohcahtoa82]

From a purely theoretical standpoint, you're correct.

In reality, it definitely feels like zero sum when the government moves to eliminate social programs so they can give a tax break to the rich.