Comment by jstummbillig
16 hours ago
> Who actually stands to benefit from the massive devaluation of services in an economy that is buoyed by service-based roles?
Everyone, if it comes with productivity gains. We will need good tools to distribute the gains.
None of the productivity increase of the last 50 years have benefited the workers, there is absolutely no reason for that to change
Is everyone on this website 20 years old? They pulled the same shit with automation, with computers, with internet, with cryptos, and now with ai,... And people keep falling for the same bs over and over again. "the three day workweek", "we'll retire at 45", &c.
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
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You're assuming that the gains from productivity improvements distribute themselves broadly. The last 50 years have clearly shown that this is certainly not the case unless there is political intervention. The elites and the political class attached to them will assign whatever meanger rations they can to avoid revolution but not much else.
Not to mention: the grand majority of the US's GDP is wrapped up into services. If AI can flatten the skill floor so that anyone from anywhere in the world can produce 80% of the output of a US or European skilled worker at a fraction of the cost, what do you think happens? We're doing to US white collar work what offshoring did to manufacturing, but it'll be faster and to the only healthy cohort of economic actors in the US.
AI does not control the inputs of lumber or vegetables.
> We will need good tools to distribute the gains.
There is enormous handwaving happening here. Tools built by whom? The US can hardly pass a budget now, and its dominant political movement is allergic to questions of wealth redistribution. And as I already mentioned, the wealthy class in the US is clearly openly contemptuous of the idea that they owe anything to the broader population.
> You're assuming that the gains from productivity improvements distribute themselves broadly
No, I am assuming the opposite. I agree: We do need political intervention.
Right. So then when is the best time for labor to act to ensure those mechanisms are put in place? Before or after AI has eliminated its leverage?
Like I totally realize we're agreed in some sense, but some form of socialism now in the US seems politically untenable, and as soon as AI actually starts making service labor obsolete, we lose our leverage. How do we do something about it?
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“ We will need good tools to distribute the gains.”
As of now there are basically no such tools. Everything is geared towards letting owners accumulate more and more. We would probably need highly progressive taxes to get some level of distribution