[arkis22]

What's really ironic, based on my understanding, is that the world that you have expressed a desire for, is much likelier in a world where economic growth accelerates based on AI. Granted, you need to have the political structure in place that allows the growth to benefit everyone.

[vouaobrasil]

I sincerely doubt it, because that technology also invades life. It invades the world with more information, not less. More business...when has technology ever slowed things down? AI just seems to make certain tasks more efficient, but I haven't seen anything slow down.

[culopatin]

Before technology, even if things were slow, people didn’t have time to do anything with the slowness anyway. I think you’re thinking of some past utopia that never existed. Or maybe you’re thinking of the 90s, idk.

[bakuninsbart]

> Granted, you need to have the political structure in place that allows the growth to benefit everyone.

Which is the scary part of the AI revolution. Devaluing labor always leads to increased inequality in the short-to-mid term until a new equilibrium is met. But what if we have machines that can do most jobs for 10-20k a year? Suddenly we have a hard ceiling for everyone below a certain "skill level", where skill includes things like owning capital, going to the right college, and having the right parents.

In the past, when inequality became too extreme, (the threat of) violent uprisings usually led to reform, but with autonomous weapon systems, drones and droids, manpower becomes less of a concern. The result might be a permanent underclass.

[spwa4]

Really? The AI revolution is happening in the West, and mostly in the US. Just imagine it happened in a muslim country, or Russia, or China, or even India. Half of them would immediately use it to start a war. If you think labor is devalued here, it can be SO much worse.

Also I don't understand the entire argument. The thread is about stopping economic growth. You say you don't receive enough of the current economic growth ... so you want growth to reduce? That will make your life a lot worse, won't it? At 0 growth the only way to give you anything would be to take it away from someone else. In other words: you want an extra meal at 0% growth? That can only happen if someone else doesn't get one ...

[vouaobrasil]

> so you want growth to reduce? That will make your life a lot worse, won't it?

Personally, I don't want growth to reduce, exactly. I'd prefer it if there were tighter restrictions on the direction of growth, and we spent more time finding creative ways to return to smaller communities where the efforts are spent less on pure money and more on people helping each other. And more time restoring nature. So growth, but not purely in an economic sense.

It only seems like a degrowth thing when you look at from a purely fiscal angle.

[spwa4]

There is nothing stopping you from moving to a smaller community, and in the west there's tons of them around. And if you're willing to take the (very low) wages that go with that, you can live there for the rest of your life easily.

Hell, I know people who've done this. Several actually. Well, only one that's still alive (they retired there, wanted to grow old and die there ... and did), but still.

But ... why bother anyone about it? You want others to do this but would never accept doing so yourself?

[vouaobrasil]

> But ... why bother anyone about it? You want others to do this but would never accept doing so yourself?

Well, first I already have, so I don't know where you got "never accept doing so yourself", which is something you made up. Secondly, why bother: because the current world system is destroying nature, which in my opinion is on the same level as actively targeting people. So I do want that to stop.

If nature was not being destroyed and it was just people messing up their own little world, then that would be different.

[spwa4]

> Secondly, why bother: because the current world system is destroying nature

Is it? If you put it this dramatically, it's bullshit. Nature will survive us, rather than the other way around, guaranteed. MAYBE we can kill large animals if we tried, but probably not even that (they'd just shrink and then grow large again, wouldn't be the first, or second, or even the tenth time that happened).

Life on earth is being sustained by the sun and by nuclear reactions inside the earth. Nothing we do makes the tiniest of difference in the long run.

Increased temperature and increased CO2 and climate change essentially make more chemical and solar energy available in the environment. Life is chemical in nature and is limited by available energy. That means there would be more life, more green, if more energy was available. Life would have to be pretty damn badly designed if this damaged it, rather than what we actually see happening: life is spreading to much more of the planet than even 100 years ago.

So, first, you can rest assured: it is just people messing up their own little world.

Second: it would be seriously unnatural if we stopped. After all competing and using up all available resources is literally the sole goal of all life on earth. And if you compare humans to an average ocean-bound bacterial species, we're not even particularly good at it.