Comment by 9rx

Comment by 9rx 3 days ago

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> It’s funny that perfect capitalism (no payroll expenses) means nobody has money to actually buy any of the goods produced by AI.

When you remember that profit is the measure of unrealized benefit, and look at how profitable capitalists have become, its not clear if, approximately speaking, anyone actually has the "money" to buy any goods now.

In other words, I am not sure this matters. Big business is already effectively working for free, with no realistic way to ever actually derive the benefit that has been promised to it. In theory those promises could be called, but what are the people going to give back in return?

acuozzo 3 days ago

Can you please dig into this more deeply or suggest somewhere in which I can read more?

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  • fatherwavelet 2 days ago

    The economy in the 21st century developed world is mostly about acquiring positional goods. Positional goods as "products and services valued primarily for their ability to convey status, prestige, or relative social standing rather than their absolute utility".

    We have so much wealth that wealth accumulation itself has become a type of positional good as opposed to the utility of the wealth.

    When people in the developed world talk about the economy they are largely talking about their prestige and social standing as opposed to their level of warmth and hunger. Unfortunately, we haven't separated these ideas philosophically so it leads to all kinds of nonsense thinking when it comes to "the economy".

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  • 9rx 3 days ago

    Money is an IOU; debt. People trade things of value for money because you can, later, call the debt and get the exchanged value that was promised in return (food, shelter, yacht, whatever) I'm sure this is obvious.

    I am sure it is equally obvious that if I take your promise to give back in kind later when I give you my sandwich, but never collect on it, that I ultimately gave you my sandwich for free.

    If you keep collecting more and more IOUs from the people you trade your goods with, realistically you are never going to be able to convert those IOUs into something real. Which is something that the capitalists already contend with. Apple, for example, has umpteen billions of dollars worth of promises that they have no idea how to collect on. In theory they can, but in practice it is never going to happen. What don't they already have? Like when I offered you my sandwich, that is many billions of dollars worth of value that they have given away for free.

    Given that Apple, to continue to use it as an example, have been quite happy effectively giving away many billions of dollars worth of value, why not trillions? Is it really going to matter? Money seems like something that matters to peons like us because we need to clear the debt to make sure we are well fed and kept warm, but for capitalists operating at scales that are hard for us to fathom, they are already giving stuff away for free. If they no longer have the cost of labor, they can give even more stuff away for free. Who — from their perspective — cares?

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    • czl 3 days ago

      Money is less about personal consumption and more about a voting system for physical reality. When a company holds billions in IOUs, they are holding the power to decide what happens next. That capital allows them to command where the next million tons of aluminum go, which problems engineers solve, and where new infrastructure is built.

      Even if they never spend that wealth on luxury, they use it to direct the flow of human effort and raw materials. Giving it away for free would mean surrendering their remote control over global resources. At this scale, it is not about wanting more stuff. It is about the ability to organize the world. Whether those most efficient at accumulating capital should hold such concentrated power remains the central tension between growth and equality.

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    • acuozzo 3 days ago

      The gap for me was mapping [continuing to hoard dollars] to [giving away free goods/services], but it makes sense now. I haven't given economics thought at this level. Thank you!

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  • jacquesm 3 days ago

    It's really simple: if you crash the market and you are liquid you can buy up all of the assets for pennies. That's pretty much the playbook right now in one part of the world, just the same happened in the former Soviet Union in the 90's.

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    • acuozzo 3 days ago

      I get (and got) that. My focus was specifically on: "its not clear if, approximately speaking, anyone actually has the 'money' to buy any goods now."

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