Comment by FloorEgg

Comment by FloorEgg 3 days ago

> Also, can we just STFU about AI and jobs already?

Phew, yes I'm with you...

> We've long since passed the point where there was a meaningful amount of work to be done for every adult.

Have we? It feels like a lot of stuff in my life is unnecessarily expensive or hard to afford.

> The number of "jobs" available is now merely a function of who controls the massive stockpiles of accumulated resources and how they choose to dole them out.

Do you mean that it has nothing to do with how the average person decides to spend their money?

> Attack that, not the technology.

How? What are you proposing exactly?

shmel 3 days ago

> Have we? It feels like a lot of stuff in my life is unnecessarily expensive or hard to afford.

We have, yes. If you notice things to be too expensive it's a result of class warfare. Have you noticed how many people got _obscenely rich_ in the last 25 years? Yes, that's where money saved by technology went to.

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FloorEgg 3 days ago

Are you sure it's class warfare?
It may result in class warfare but I am skeptical that's the root cause.
My guess is it has more to do with the education system, monetary policy and fiscal policy.

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- torginus 3 days ago
  
  2 well identifiable classes in western societies are landlords vs renters, where the latter is paying a huge chunk of their income to be able to use an appreciating asset of the former.
  This class thing is especially identifiable in Europe, where assets such as real estate generally are not cheaper than in the US (with the exception of a few super expensive places), yet salaries are much lower.
  Taxes tend to be super high on wages but not on assets. One can very easily find themselves in a situation where even owning a modest amount of wealth, their asset appreciation outdoes what they can get as labor income.
  
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jrowen 3 days ago

> Have we? It feels like a lot of stuff in my life is unnecessarily expensive or hard to afford.

Look at a bunch of job postings and ask yourself if that work is going to make things cheaper for you or better for society. We're not building railroads and telephone networks anymore. One person can grow food for 10,000. Stuff is expensive because free market capitalism allows it and some people are pathologically greedy. Runaway optimizers with no real goal state in mind except "more."

> How? What are you proposing exactly?

In a word, socialism. It's a social and political problem, not a technical one. These systems have fallen way behind technology and allowed crazy accumulations of wealth in the hands of very few. Push for legislation to redistribute the wealth to the people.

If someone invents a robot to do the work of McDonalds workers, that should liberate them from having to do that kind of work. This is the dream and the goal of technology. Instead, under our current system, one person gets a megayacht and thousands of people are "unemployed." With no change to the amount of important work being done.

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FloorEgg 3 days ago

The first half of your comment doesn't quite click for me.
I appreciate the elaboration in the second half. That sounds a lot more constructive than "attack", but now I understand you meant it in the "attack the problem" sense not "attack the people" sense.
What I think we agree on is that society has resource redistribution problem, and it could work a lot better.
I think we might also agree that a well functioning economic engine should lift up the floor for everyone and not concentrate economic power into those who best weild leverage.
One way I think of this is, what is the actual optimal lorenz curve that allows for lifting the floor, such that the area under the curve increases at the fastest rate possible. (It must account for the reality of human psychology and resource scarcity)
Where we might disagree is that I think we also have some culture and education system problems as well, which relate to how each individual takes responsibility for figuring out how to ethically create value for others. When able bodied and minded people chose to spend their time playing zero and negative sum games instead of positive sum games we all lose.
E.g. If mcdonald automates their restaurants, those workers also need to take some responsibility for finding new ways to provide value to others. A well functioning system would make that as painless as possible for them, so much so that the majority experiencing it would consider it a good thing.

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- jrowen 2 days ago
  
  > The first half of your comment doesn't quite click for me.
  Anything specific?
  > When able bodied and minded people chose to spend their time playing zero and negative sum games instead of positive sum games we all lose.
  What types of behaviors are you referring to as zero and negative sum games?
  I think at the very least we should move toward a state where the existence of dare-I-say freeloaders and welfare queens isn't too taxing, and with general social progress that "niche" may be naturally disincentivized and phased out. Some people just don't really have a purpose or a drive but they were born here and yes one would hope that under the right conditions they could blossom but if not I don't think it's worth worrying about too much.
  I would say that education is essentially at the core of everything, it's the only mechanism we have to move the needle on any of it.
  
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