[OptionOfT]

FOMO was literally built in into Bitcoin. In the beginning it was a lot easier, and then it slowly gets harder.

But what I really hate about AI and how most people talk about it is that if one day it does what the advertisements say, all white collar jobs collapse.

[steve1977]

> all white collar jobs collapse

Then everything collapses. The carpenter will also be out of work if more than half of his client base cannot afford his work anymore.

[coldtea]

Not to mention millions of ex-white-collars or student age that would have tried to be white-collar rushing to become carpenters and roofers, bringing down the pay and the quality of those jobs way down...

[moron4hire]

This idea doesn't sit well with me. Like, I recognize it very likely could happen, but it feels kind of like a dumb magic trick. Like learning economy goes up because people generally believe economy should go up.

If everyone is out of a job, then what is the point of the economy? Who is doing what work for whom? If nobody can afford anything, then why are we even doing this?

And, at some point, needs have to be met. If you were to drop 1000 random people on a remote island, you wouldn't expect nothing to happen just because there aren't any employers with jobs to hire people to do. People would spontaneously organize for survival and a local economy would form.

I find depictions of post-apocalyptic societies in sci-fi to be difficult to accept, too. Like Elysium: how could the entire Earth be an underclass, yet the space station needs them to work to be able to survive? That would be the easiest siege warfare of all time; do literally nothing and the space station eventually starves to death. Like Fallout: how could places stay completely run down for centuries? You mean to tell me that nobody would at least start a scrap yard and start cleaning up the old baby buggies and scrap metal from burnt out hulks of cars?

And then grown-ass adults tell stories about what could happen as if they are experts in Economy. Nobody knows how Economy work. Hell, half the Nobel prizes in economics in the last decade have basically been about proving the stupid, fairytale version of economics that existed for the last 100 years was a complete farce.

Yeah, I can definitely see a market collapse leading to a lot of mortgages getting foreclosed. But a complete shutdown? It seems preposterous. How? Why would everyone go along with it?

[NoGravitas]

> If everyone is out of a job, then what is the point of the economy? Who is doing what work for whom? If nobody can afford anything, then why are we even doing this?

This kind of question is called "political economy". It used to be basically synonymous with "economics", but after one 19th century economist wrote a very detailed and convincing study that provided solid answers that were not politically acceptable, economists turned away from political economy, and declared this kind of question out of scope, and focused on working out all the mathematical details of a political economy in which all those questions had, as you say, fairytale answers.

[steve1977]

> it feels kind of like a dumb magic trick.

Welcome to capitalism.