Comment by hn_submit
5 hours ago
If A.I. starts to replace jobs en masse I propose we tax the companies profiting from this at a rate of 95% so we can finance welfare and Universal Basic Income schemes.
We need to be aware that said companies and the people behind them will do anything in their power, including bribing politicians, to prevent this and to keep the money they believe are they're entitled to.
I even believe the Big Tech bigwigs have long foreseen this and are quietly prodding our society towards an authoritarian regime where people have no say so they can keep their moonies.
But it's impossible to measure how does a company or a person benefit from AI. The economy is a complex system. A construction company may benefit more than a robot-making company.
The right approach could be to raise the general tax level, possibly increase the weight of wealth taxes, and redistribute.
That said, there will be enough jobs for the foreseeable future. Any job that has some physical component - hospital staff, barber, judge, bartender - won't be replaced within the next 2 decades.
Many comfortable jobs, typically someone who's sitting behind a computer at home or in the office, could get replaced. That would be bad for many people including me, but if you think about it, it would be a net good thing. I'm currently leaning towards "AI would be somewhat bad or at best neutral for me, but significantly good for the society".
I like the thought, but it seems daunting. What about global competition? If some other countries have few or no such taxes, how do you deal with that? Do you outlaw the outsourcing of all white collar work? Outlaw all remote work as well? Will you have to suppress a local black market for intellectual labor, built on self-hosted open source models?
Whilst the objections you raise are valid, in the face of the country being destroyed if you don’t, the equation’s rather different. What does it matter if China is dominant if you’re better off living in the US?
Anyone seriously trust in the fairytale that the rich and powerful gives 95% of their profit back to customers?
It's not really what they've built their business empires for.
> I even believe the Big Tech bigwigs have long foreseen this and are quietly prodding our society towards an authoritarian regime where people have no say so they can keep their moonies.
That's been obvious for a while.
> If A.I. starts to replace jobs en masse
But then nobody will have money to buy anything anymore, then nobody will have money to pay the AI companies, and then they won't have any money. The jobless will starve to death and then those who have their food made by robots will reign over an empty world where money has become meaningless. LLMs and robots don't eat money, they eat electricity.
If you really simplify how this works:
Owners of capital use the capital in combination with workers to produces goods and services. They give half of the production to the workers and keep the other half.
If AI replaces workers, the owners of capital will simply keep all of the production to themselves. So they would be better off. If I have a construction company, I could just lay off the workers and distribute the surplus houses to myself and other owners.
There are nuances to this of course, but this is a point that most people miss.
Paperclippers but in slow motion with the economy in the loop.
> I even believe the Big Tech bigwigs have long foreseen this and are quietly prodding our society towards an authoritarian regime where people have no say so they can keep their moonies.
“Quietly”? They’re not even subtle about it! Hard to get those types of news here, though, as submissions in that direction tend to be heavily flagged, no matter how tame the comments.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49411762