Comment by dns_snek
4 days ago
That's a nice vision but if AI and robots end up replacing most jobs then we're first going to suffer a total collapse in living standards across the world, until we replace capitalism at least. When the economy no longer relies on labour people won't have anything to trade in exchange for basic necessities.
> if AI and robots end up replacing most jobs
The only way AI and robots end up replacing most jobs is if they can do them for less money than people can. Which in turn means that those things become less expensive, since that's the thing causing suppliers to do it.
So there are really three possibilities here. First, we get robots that can e.g. build houses and housing scarcity goes down, so now you don't need to make much money to afford rent. Second, robots still can't build housing, so then you get a job building housing and have a job. Or third, robots still can't build housing but we have a bunch of rent-seeking incumbents that won't allow you to get a job doing that either, because they're trying to keep rents high or artificially limit the supply of trade labor.
It's the third one that really screws you and is the one that we need to prevent.
> so then you get a job building housing and have a job
Let's say 50% of all jobs are lost. What would that kind of oversupply do to pay rates and working conditions in the remaining sectors?
> Let's say 50% of all jobs are lost.
So now things cost an average of 50% as much. If you were spending $100 before, it's $50 now, and you have the other $50 to spend on something else. Which in turn creates a job doing the something else.
Consider all of the other times things like this have happened. The majority of existing jobs at the time of e.g. the industrial revolution were the occupations that no longer exist or can be done with less than half the original amount of labor. Why then has the modern unemployment rate typically been at <10%? Because then people get other jobs.
The absolute extreme case where all jobs are automated is the one where nobody needs to work because all work is automated and everything is abundant. In every other case, people have jobs doing the things that can't be automated.
If it costs half as much to produce something, is the result that people get more of those things or less? Do more people starve today or in the times before tractors and combine harvesters?
The transition period often sucks, because then you have a lot of people whose skills are misaligned with where the new demand is, but long term that goes away so the real question is what do you want to do about it in the short term.
You jsut start demanding goods and services fall in price by 50% because labor costs have been eliminated or drastically reduced. If vendors demur, then you take stuff or make your own.
I don’t want a house built by people who are just trying to get a paycheck because they got laid off from their cushy office jobs.
as opposed to the current people building houses who are doing it because they just love building houses so much
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You only have to look at the current situation in China to see that the problem is not capitalism, or communism, at least not by itself:
https://www.wsj.com/world/china-economy-gen-z-f9058941
https://www.economist.com/china/2019/11/14/homelessness-has-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si2zT-wCs3c
We all know that "real" communist societies like North Korea are worse, much, much worse. In fact within China how bad this is varies enormously. If you're in a "rope village" somewhere deep inland, having the finest house in the entire city is arguably worse than homelessness in Beijing, but the party won't let you leave except as homeless, because you're allocated a "Household" (Hukou) and you aren't allowed to leave.
And, of course, half the problem is the very structure of the communist party itself: local officials hide the problem, because if they don't, they'll be purged or at the very least won't see promotions, ever. Which means that the police will be using violence to hide the problem rather than fix it.
AI can provide incredible wealth, or immeasurable misery, in both capitalist and communist societies. That is not what makes the difference, that is just how political parties like to frame themselves and so the argument why you should choose "left" or "right".
Capitalism and private home ownership can certainly provide housing, but if you go too far or not far enough in private ownership and "protecting capital" they won't. And communism can certainly fix homelessness (the Soviets did, for example), except nowadays they just won't.
AI will provide more tools for people with capital, which primarily will be the government. Whether that solves, say, homelessness is a choice, in either system.
you're allocated a "Household" (Hukou) and you aren't allowed to leave.
This is really not accurate. Historically people have been disincentivized to leave by being excluded from social services and so on, the intent being to avoid large cities turn into mega slums. But the Chinese state has begun to dismantle the hukou system in recent years and allow people to move to mid-tier cities without restrictions, and to grant hukou rights based on duration of residency.
You missed the point and went on a tangent about random countries today.
I don't claim to have a solution for what comes after but it is certain that capitalism will collapse if we ever see significant job loss due to AI and robotics.
> it is certain that capitalism will collapse if we ever see significant job loss due to AI and robotics.
The Luddites said the same thing.
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Nope.
1) Capitalism has historically been proven to work with 90% unemployment, unlike communism. Of course that would represent an enormous loss compared to today but it would not be enough to collapse it.
2) The same would happen to communism. Talk to someone from China and ask what their government will do when they can run the economy on 90% less people. The answer I've gotten is that they already know: after all the division between CCP/state jobs (which includes all state companies) and "normal" jobs already works like that. Then it was mentioned that there's a reason that people have committed murders for CCP jobs ...
I don't understand what you're complaining about. Yes, the US and Europe are capitalist, BUT there is more than enough room in the law for communist communities. Some of those existed for decades, and some still exist.
If you truly believe communism is better, why not just join one of those instead of dragging everyone along with you?
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Oh, think it will/can be worse than that. The collapse of the present system can mean all out genocidal wars, either by eugenic and deranged humans doing it to themselves or true AGI and its robots removing human interference with its goals and Earth's resources.
As for the AGI and robot part, various oligarchs are talking about manufacturing millions to even billions of robots. Combine that with billions of AI agents in massive data centers all over the world. Bringing forth a new self-sustaining artificial life form that can do what humans do (if not vastly better) and at comparable numbers or mass.