[pizza234]

> Nobody is objecting to the loss of bad jobs. The jobs themselves are not the problem.

Very strong disagree; a lot of people is objecting. A job on an assembly line may be "bad" for somebody, but for somebody else can be a lifeline, if they won't be able to find another job soon enough and/or in reasonable conditions. Long-term, the job market can rebalance (and if unemployed people are supported in their education, it's great), but short-term displacement is a serious issue.

[bcjdjsndon]

If your job is that tedious a robot could do it, it's a bad job. Do you think Sam Altman wastes a single minute on operations and the actual minutae of running a business? Fuck no he gets wageslaves like me and yo to do it

[estearum]

Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.

"Robots" broadly defined are getting more capable and more intelligent at a significantly faster rate than humans are.

This obviously produces incredible economic surplus, but 1) that surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced, and 2) doesn't seem clear that all the negative consequences of mass obsolescence are solvable by economic surplus even in theory.

[bcjdjsndon]

Search "Humans are becoming horses" by CGP grey. He's making the exact same point as you except his is 15 years old and still hasn't passed.

I ask you to follow your premise to it's conclusion... who's paying for it these robots and who buys the stuff the robots make? Other robots?? In this world where robot serves robot, where exactly did we disappear to?

[estearum]

If you want to see what just productivity improvements (with no social innovations) naturally does, you can go read about the Gilded Age. Productivity improvements are necessary but not sufficient to enhance human wellbeing. Productivity improvements by themselves appear to simultaneously suppress quality of life for those below the productivity and/or capital ownership bar while increasing quality for those above it.

Yes, an economy is perfectly capable of orienting itself around satisfying the wants of the few people who have a lot of capital at the expense of the many who have little capital. Why wouldn't this be possible?

It obviously creates systemic risk in the economy, which is one of many reasons it should be mitigated by policy and taxation, but I'm not sure why you're acting like it's some mathematical impossibility.

Not sure anyone said anything about humans "disappearing," just driven to extreme economic hardship despite ample overall productivity, which again we have literally hundreds of real world examples of throughout history.

[bcjdjsndon]

> Not sure anyone said anything about humans "disappearing," just driven to extreme economic hardship despite ample overall productivity,

Just answer my question, who's buying all the stuff the robots are making when everyones "driven to extreme economic hardship"?

[estearum]

Again with a strawman. You should consider engaging with the arguments people are actually making, and not the silly versions you make up in your head.

No one said "everyone" is being driven to extreme economic hardship. Without that word, your implication doesn't quite work :)

Here's a rephrasing of your question using the dynamic that I actually described. Let me know if you still need me to fill in the blanks for you:

> when automated systems owned by fewer and fewer people are responsible for greater and greater proportions of economic surplus, who buys the output of those systems?

Do you need help answering that question still?

[pizza234]

This view misses the difference between the transitional and structural effects of job loss.

Even if a job is "bad", losing it creates short-term shocks; especially low-income workers can’t instantly move to better jobs.

No doubt that structural (long term) changes are profitable for everybody - but both phenomenons can hold true.

[idiotsecant]

... You realize you just made exactly the same point I did, right? I know you have two eyes and 10 fingers but give those appendages a rest and reread