[ryandrake]

I mean, the promise of perfect AI and perfect robotics is that humans would no longer have to do anything. They could live a life of leisure. Unfortunately, we're going to get these perfect AI and perfect robotics before we transition socially into a post-scarcity, post-ownership society. So what will happen is that ownership of the AI and robots will be consolidated into the hands of the few, the vast rest of us will have nothing economically relevant to do, and we'll probably just subsist or die.

We're already seeing this today. Every year, thousands of people are becoming essentially irrelevant to the economy. They don't own much, they don't invest much, they don't spend much money, they don't make much money, and they are invisible to economics.

[xp84]

> They don't own much, they don't invest much, they don't spend much money, they don't make much money, and they are invisible to economics.

Indeed. Sometimes I think the so-called “lower classes” end up functioning more like crops to be farmed by the rich. Think, dollar stores that sell tiny packages of things at worse unit cost, checking account fees, rent-a-center, 15% interest auto loans and store credit cards with 30% interest…

[rafterydj]

I've definitely felt this kind of way in the past. But these days I'm not so sure.

Setting aside the AI point about it, the idea of people becoming essentially irrelevant to the economy is an indictment on society. But I'd argue that the indictment really is towards what constitutes measurement in the economy. Not an indictment on society itself, or technology.

Sure, someone may not spend much money or produce much money, but if they produce scientific research or cultural work that is intangibly valuable it is still valuable regardless of whether economists can point to a metric or not. Same goes for the infinite amounts of contributions to our world from nature: what is the economic value of a garden snake or a beetle? A meaningless question when the economy can only see things in dollars.