[agentultra]

People might think twice about digging a ditch if they had to do it with a shovel and hard labor. Might appreciate it more. Price a ditch accordingly.

Now we have more ditches than we need, the environmental damage from building the machines, extracting fuel, burning that fuel... never been cheaper to dig a ditch but who the hell needs one? Business shuts down, people lose jobs, the market re-adjusts... but the damage remains.

Capitalism isn't the end of economics. It's certainly not the most efficient means to ensure the needs of everyone are met and that the environment in which we depend is kept safe from destruction. Great at maximizing the production of ditches and paperclips though.

Although technology doesn't necessarily need to displace labor. We didn't invent compilers and stop hiring and training programmers. We hired more programmers. We invented better compilers and new programming languages.

The language that AI folks are using and the choices and policies they support show that they're not philanthropists or even interested in capitalism. They're trying to monopolize their businesses and remove competition. They don't see the value in labor and innovation and competition.