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by lostphilosopher 119 days ago
In every discussion of AI eliminating or dramatically reducing the compensation for <some large double digit percentage> of “white collar” jobs (and probably “blue collar” too). It’s unclear to me what the end state is - the vast majority of the economy works on volume. You need large numbers of people with enough money to buy your product/service. As wealth concentrates there are fewer potential buyers and economies of scale start working against producers. (And governments need people with money to tax…)
4 comments

The economy becomes a palace economy, where the money fountains are owned by a few and the loot slowly flows through rings of gatekeepers while the outer rungs are plagued by desperation and poverty despite living in the shadow of abundance. These are common around the world and through time. It's the Star Wars fate.
Sadly, that matters very little!

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-10-earners-drive-nearly-1...

If this is to be believed, regular consumer goods won't matter anymore, and instead you just cater to the wealthy.

Wealth likely won't mean much, it will be a concentration of power.

The question is if the AI will respect that concentration of power, or if it will just do it's own thing.

The concentration of power will own the AI so it will be at their whim
The end state is economic collapse/feudalism - quite desired by various current oligarchs.