[jameslk]

> They will corner finite resources and land.

They need a lot of money to do that. Where do they get it all from? Not the jobless masses I presume?

Investors don’t usually like to invest in companies that aren’t going to eventually earn any revenue either

[strken]

Money is a mirage. You can't use dollars to hold land; you need force projection.

Once upon a time that meant guns and soldiers, but today it increasingly means drones. Drones mean mines, factories, supply chains, chemical plants, and farms. Money can buy these things, but it's not the only way to get them.

You can chase the money around all day, but money is only one small part of wealth, and wealth can increase with no injection of money at all.

[jameslk]

We can’t magically skip steps. It’s like South Park’s underwear gnomes. We’re missing steps in between and hand waving them away

[strken]

The first comment said "They need a lot of money to do that. Where do they get it all from? Not the jobless masses I presume?"

I was explaining that money is irrelevant and so are the jobless masses. Someone owns the factories, and that person is the one who is relevant here. They of course need to be convinced, by money or other means, but the jobless masses are only relevant to the extent that they own and control wealth; since they are jobless, they probably have very little ownership or control.

You are correct that there are additional steps here, but wealth is growing increasingly concentrated, and the burden of proof is on the person claiming that trend won't continue.

[jameslk]

> You are correct that there are additional steps here, but wealth is growing increasingly concentrated, and the burden of proof is on the person claiming that trend won't continue.

Whoa there internet friend! I don't think I said anything about wealth concentration not being a trend. I'm just talking about AI. I'm still waiting for someone to explain coherent, undeniable watertight reasons that we're on a one-way track that goes from AI companies to infinite money glitch or robot death factories. I've already made my arguments against why I don't think it will happen before[0][1]

Maybe the argument is some already-rich fella with magic robot factories will have everything they will ever need, so they brush away all of humanity like an unsightly bit of dandruff on their shoulder with their kill bot drone army.

I guess if you squint at it long enough, that kinda sounds plausible. In the same way someone could press a giant red nuke button and have us all wiped out like a Terminator movie. But it's making a lot of fantastic assumptions without a lot of concreteness. That is, many people seem to be claiming "this is the AI endgame" rather than seeing other possibilities that aren't so ridiculously cynical or nihilistic with leaky abstractions

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48330434

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47966936

[strken]

Unless I'm misunderstanding, the argument isn't that whoever controls AI will use it to kill everyone, it's that they'll control nearly everything because power snowballs.

They could kill everyone, so aren't you glad they decided to open a soup kitchen instead? Here, have some UBI. Of course, it's not quite "universal" yet, so you'll have to sell your house to make it under the means test. A local firm, owned by a national private equity company, forming part of an international portfolio fund, making up an ETF owned mostly by Anthropic investors, will be happy to buy that bit of real estate. Oh, you wrote that on social media? I'm afraid you're not the kind of tenant we're looking for.

This is basically how life already works for people who aren't capable of holding down a job today. I don't think it's ridiculously cynical or nihilistic to extrapolate from the available data and assume it's going to suck once working people have no bargaining power other than asking politely.

[samrus]

Money isnt real. If you can go to a peice of land and just claim it, and no one can rest it from you, then its your land.

Governments and society is what we make to avoid that sort of anarchy, but if certain entities become more powerful than the these institutions, then they can just take over whatever they want

[lumost]

The abstraction of capital and money get a bit funny when wealth is sufficiently concentrated. If there is a monopsomy (one buyer), then they can largely dictate the price of anything. If they also control violent coercion via a captured state or other means, then they can compel production at that price point.

The idea of capitalism only really makes sense when wealth is reasonably distributed such that there is still reasonable competition in both the marketplace and control of the state.

[pixl97]

You mean like the Russian oligarchs that keep 'investing' in the war they are in... oh, you mean where they fall out a window when they don't.

The next thing is the idea of money really does break down once you get automation without people. If you have said automation and enough materials to get going you can start increasing your 'wealth' in things like factories/robots/data where the now unemployed stop having any means to make more money. Hence you'll start buying up properties from people that are going bankrupt.