[collingreen]

They aren't. Nobody in power is so dumb they haven't thought of this yet - the scary idea is that those people in power don't think this is a problem, which implies the normal folk like us are either on our own or actively exterminated.

If the billionaire class doesn't think they need taxes or a workforce then what does that look like? If the population goes from 8B to like 5K + robots for the drudgery then all the problems go away - no more war, no more climate change, no famine, no large logistics problems.

I continually worry that these people in power see the rest of us as a nuisance to optimize away.

[RiverCrochet]

Why can't this happen now without AI?

- Certainly the current population level isn't needed to support the current number of billionaires. Isn't there about 1000 right now? I probably eat more than 2 or 3 of them.

- What happens in 100 years when the billionaires have kids and their kids have kids?

[collingreen]

Yeah I don't think AI is required for above, it just pushes the question of what's going to happen if huge swaths of jobs go away. Parent asked who is going to pay taxes in that world. I'm simply saying there's a version of this where "they" don't care because there is no intention to keep the current social order of a large tax paying lower and middle class.

[floren]

> Certainly the current population level isn't needed to support the current number of billionaires. Isn't there about 1000 right now? I probably eat more than 2 or 3 of them.

That's a good attitude, if we all set out to eat more than 2 or 3 billionaires they'll be in our stomachs and out of our hair before you know it!