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by vrganj 2 days ago
> Land is an inherently limited resource

Yes, that's my point exactly.

> whatever process exists to obtain land after the singularity, the robots can do it

Who's robots? Who will get all this land? And its spoils, and the robots that multiply them?

Because your utopia sounds like a recipe for making our oligarchs even more powerful at the expense of the rest of us. It sounds like a slide into neofeudalism. The already existing don't even need labor to multiply their riches anymore, the rest of us will be robbed of being able to trade our labor for even basic subsistence.

1 comments

You are missing the point: robotic labor does not create anything "at the expense of the rest of us". It's not some stock market speculation, but real productivity increase. The pie of wealth is not fixed, the robots actually enlarge it, massively. The robot owning class wil not be some exclusive billionaire club: as the price of robots comes down (inevitable, with any technology, doubly so with one that can make itself), essentially everyone will own one, just like almost everyone owns a car today (or could own one if they needed it).

Worst case scenario: you will live exactly as you live today, with one change: instead of you having to do your job, your robot will do it for you, and you gain more free time.

I believe you are missing the point.

You've already conceded that there is inherently limited resources like land. These are going to be the limiting factor in any economic system, the key question is always how you distribute these.

Robots will not magically produce more land. What they will do is that the ones with the capital to buy many robots will be able to use those robots to then buy up all the land and then extract the resources from there to build even more robots etc.

No resources for you and me. No robots for us either. Why are you talking about prices going down? We're making money obsolete, remember? Why would they even sell us robots when they already own all the land and all the resources to make as many robots as they want? Sure, the pie will get bigger. But you ain't getting a slice.

What leverage would the vast majority of people have? If the oligarchs own all the robots and land and resources, how do we even ensure basic subsistence? Our labor is worthless. Our money is worthless. What stops them from... simply not sharing? The goodness of their hearts?

> Robots will not magically produce more land. What they will do is that the ones with the capital to buy many robots will be able to use those robots to then buy up all the land and then extract the resources from there to build even more robots etc.

The speed at which the availability of the robots to the general population increases will be much faster than the speed at which the initial robot owners would be able to buy land, and exclude others from using it. There are trillionaires today, extremely rich people have existed for a long time, yet they still own only a small fraction of all available land.

There could be a class of people who do not own any robots and thus are dependent on the goodwill of the robot owners to get anything they need to live, but this will be a small fraction of the population, equivalent to the homeless today. Definitely not the majority.

> The speed at which the availability of the robots to the general population increases will be much faster than the speed at which the initial robot owners would be able to buy land, and exclude others from using it. There are trillionaires today, extremely rich people have existed for a long time, yet they still own only a small fraction of all available land.

What are you basing this prediction on?

If you're a robot maker, already part of the oligarchy class, and you knew that robots would rapidly accelerate resource acquisition, why sell the robots at all? Money is about to become useless, remember? Why let the plebes have robots? They'll just use up resources you could hoard.

I feel like you predict the end of market economics, but at the same time make a bunch of assumptions based on them. Why would availability increase, price decrease etc etc if we're ending that whole resource allocation system? It'll be a giant landgrab by the ultra rich to grow and cement their empires, why wouldn't it be?