Comment by OgsyedIE

Comment by OgsyedIE 3 days ago

The investment thesis in AI is that the decline in consumer spending in the other sectors of the economy won't matter when the consumers cease to be a significant participant in the economy in the near term: that moving investment away from the activity in agriculture, transportation, goods and services, etc., is rational because those sectors are soon to be obsolete when their customers buying power and long term capacity to produce buying power is sucked away.

Think of the promise of AGI as a promise of billions of tireless immigrants with PhDs who outcompete the other ethnicities in the labor market. It's the same reason people stopped investing in Detroit-based things years ahead of the industry pullout.

bequanna 3 days ago

I’m not sure I follow. So, are you saying that wealth will become completely concentrated at the top and the rest of us are obsolete, out of work and broke?

That seems unlikely. What is the point of an economy if there is no one who is actually able to consume?

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haizhung 2 days ago

It’s more likely than you think. In fact, this was true for almost the entirety of human history. The last 100 years, where the common person is NOT in destitute poverty, is the exception to the rule.

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OgsyedIE 3 days ago

There will not be no one who is able to consume. The investment thesis is that the investment classes' servant robot armies will be doing trillions of USD of consumption, mostly in metals, munitions, chips, etc.
I don't agree with the thesis, but that is what the thesis is.

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int_19h 2 days ago

The ones who own the robots will be doing the consumption.
Of course, this all implies that the rest of us will just sit and starve quietly. Somehow I don't think that's likely.

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- actionfromafar 2 days ago
  
  No, we need entertainment, potato chips, some drugs and the mandated degree of access to contraceptives. I'm sure OpenAI can calculate the optimal levels of each.
  
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  johnnyanmac 2 days ago
  
  And the current reaction is to make entertainment and potato chips more expensive, and to ban contraceptives and drugs.
  The only saving grace of this administration's cruelty is its stupidity. It wants to rule like Rome over slaves, but didn't learn how the rulers kept the populace from uprising and rebelling.
  
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  int_19h 2 days ago
  
  Yes, the time-honored strategy of keeping the poi holloi fed and entertained just enough to prevent riot, but not anymore.
  Long-term, it usually fails because the elites become too greedy and too complacent because they haven't seen what a large scale riot looks like, and try to squeeze too much. Then things blow up somewhere and there's a mad scramble to prevent it elsewhere by making concessions (witness all the improvements in labor rights in the West after the Russian revolution).
  
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__MatrixMan__ 2 days ago

The point of an economy is to put a stupid flag on mars. Or to melt the ice caps so that Russia has access to ports that aren't clogged with ice. Or to get revenge and throw lavish parties. Or any of a million other arbitrary goals dreamed up by those few who get to steer this thing.
For most of us its just gas or breaks, but those at the top have non economic goals. The economic indicators are looking positive because progress is being made towards those goals, but the gloom persists because most of us don't want the outcomes that were progressing towards.
We're in a car that we can't steer, and the economist article says everything is fine because look how high the number on the speedometer is.

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intended 2 days ago

Mixing two things up.
A point for the economy.
The mechanics of trade.
Or the objective outcomes vs subjective goals.
It is entirely possible for an economy to land up in an equilibrium point that works for a small set of people and not for the majority.
The point of the economy is a subjective societal thing, achieved via laws, regulation and enforcement of those rules.

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cal_dent 3 days ago

more importantly, good luck to any country that has to deal with an environment full of huge swathes of people festering with the anger and nihilism that comes from going from something to nothing...not for me

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