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by kjkjadksj 24 days ago
How does average joe afford the tools and parts they need with no job employing them?
2 comments

Where I live, just the call out fee for a plumber would cover the cost of tools and materials with enough left over for beers afterwards. If you’re relatively handy and willing to thing things through, the main obstacle to doing all your own plumbing (again, at least where I live) is regulatory capture.
How does he afford a plumber then ...?
That's the point. Plumbers will be broke, too, because people who are supposed to hire them will not have jobs.
When we continue this line of thought far enough, we get to ask who's going to pay for the hardware and the electricity to run the AI that's taking all the jobs.
This is exactly the missing long-term perspective. All AI creators are focused either on the projected wins or the shiny technology, ignoring societal effects. Not that they should, they are engineers or MBAs after all, but somebody should. Somebody like us, or better somebody with better reach and better knowledge, should figure out a way to offer a future also to former clerks.
I don't get how this didn't become yet a major election topic in most democracies. It's business as usual mostly.
Because humans are bad at reacting to things that might happen; we’re far better once there is a literal crisis.