Comment by rglullis
1 day ago
What?!
The primary resource needed to build a home is land. Do we have infinite availability of land in desirable areas to build on?
1 day ago
What?!
The primary resource needed to build a home is land. Do we have infinite availability of land in desirable areas to build on?
In a world where it’s dramatically cheaper to build infrastructure like roads, power, and plumbing, lots more land becomes desirable as a place to live.
Take Phoenix, for example, once air conditioning became cheap and pervasive.
> In a world where it’s dramatically cheaper to build infrastructure...
You can not make things dramatically cheaper by bringing only the cost of labor to zero. Your argument is circular!
The argument isn’t that AI brings the labor cost down to 0 in isolation. It brings the labor cost of the same amount of production down. So you get more production (more things = more supply -> lower prices) out of less labor.
9 replies →
Its also the 'labor theory of value'. That's the economic theory that Communism is based on. It has never been accurate and wasn't even considered legitimate during Marx's lifetime. It has possibly the worst track record of predictions of any theory ever conceived by people. Yet somehow academics still reference it. Nobody who actually is impacted by making the wrong economic predictions does though. Funny that...
1 reply →
Enough that it's effectively infinite, yes. Especially if we are imagining a world where subways cost 1/20th of what they do today.
> where subways cost 1/20th of what they do today.
1) We are talking about reducing the cost of labor, not overall costs.
2) Your logic only applies in the micro, not on the macro. If the cost of producing one thing goes down while population keeps their purchasing power, then what you are saying would make sense. The whole point of the article is that accelerated automation can bring a scenario where the cost of producing "things" would go down, but the economically active population would shrink drastically.