| "The whole point is that a robot is going to be so much more efficient than a human, that for less than 1/50th the cost of a median house a human could buy a robot that could create enough economic production for his whole life." I don't think economics works that way. If the robot can "create enough economic production for his whole life" then either the robot will cost as much as the (present value of the) economic production for his whole life, or the cost of everything else will rise until the production capability of the robot is roughly equivalent to 1/Nth of her life. [Edit: Where 1/N is the proportion of 1/50th the cost of a median house to the current economic production of one life.] "The rich just want the poor out of the way while they become more rich / powerful. The most effective way of doing that is to just pay the poor people off while they start organizing greater and greater things." That's not how the psychology of power works, either. Or wealth. (You're not "rich", you are "richer than someone else"---wealth is only a goal when it is relative.) The rich don't have power unless there are poor handy to make do stuff. And historically, "just pay the poor people off" is the last option that anyone tries. Consider the French revolution and the 19th and 20th century class wars that resulted in the 40-hour workweek and unionization. (Hiring mercenaries to break strikes is cheaper than paying off poor people.) What's your opinion of unionization? Satisfactory way of balancing economic inequality issues, or economic atherosclerosis? "The real thing I'm worried about is actually hard AI." Actually, that's one thing I'm not particularly concerned about; I am familiar with computational complexity. "backed on land taxes, ideally" That is a brilliant idea! The economic value of the property I currently own is essentially nil. So, either my tax burden (such as it is) drops dramatically, or the price of property nearby does, as the skin-of-their-teeth farmers around get taxed out of business. I'd be able to buy my own fiefdom! |