Comment by AnthonyMouse
4 days ago
> 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
No it's fine, we don't have to require anyone to buy a house built by people who are "just trying to get a paycheck".
As long as nobody is stopping them from building houses for the people who do want them.