[hn_acc1]

So let's say everything is cheap - will that lower housing prices? Grocery prices? Energy prices?

Or will the cheapest provider gobble everyone else up and then raise prices to maximize marginal revenue / whatever everyone can bear? For example, imagine if Oracle (or whoever you want) somehow wins the AI price wars and completely owns every energy company, every housing company, every farm on earth, every bank, etc. You think they'll LOWER prices to make life easy for everyone? When they'll know exactly just how much you can pay each month to still survive and not riot?

[fragmede]

Haha I mean if you’re asking for doomerism, I’ve got that too! Once robots can do it all, why keep any of the poors alive? Implement human breeding programs based on attractiveness and intelligence, and cull the rest. You know who don't riot? The dead. Once there's robot soldiers and baristas, everyone who's not super intelligent (but none of that autism) tall white and blonde, with blue eyes, is of no use to the overlords in this dystopian scenario, and is just a waste of resources. Better, then, to make it quick and painless for all of them. So they'll select "the good ones" among the poor to escape away on nuclear submarines, nuke the planet, get the rest of humanity to die off, then resurface once it's safe and repopulate the Earth in their own image. We're firmly in to writing science fiction now though, so we might as well add in a time machine and a cure for aging and bioengineering so I can have extra arms and also gills for breathing underwater.

If you want to go to conspiracies theory land, the world is already controlled by 100 families, or corporations, or the Jews or the lizard people. We’re all just toys for them to play with.

At the end of the day, you have three options and a choice to make: corporations, government, or billionaires. Which one are you going to throw your lot in with to survive the upcoming upheaval?