I think the bigger relief is that I know humans won’t put up with a two tiered system of haves and have nots forever and eventually we will get wealth redistribution. Government is the ultimate source of all wealth and organization, corporations are built on top of it and thus are subservient.

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m4nu3l 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Having your life dependent on a government that controls all AIs would be much worse. The government could end up controlling something more intelligent than the entire rest of the population. I have no doubt it will use it in a bad way. I hope that AIs will end up distributed enough. Having a government controlling it is the opposite of that.

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azemetre 4 days ago | parent [-]

Why would this be worse than the current situation of private actors accountable to no one controlling this technology? It's not like I can convince Zuckerberg to change his ways.

At least with a democratic government I have means to try and build a coalition then enact change. The alternative requires having money and that seems like an inherently undemocratic system.

Why can't AIs be controlled with democratic institutions? Why are democratic institutions worse? This doesn't seem to be the case to me.

Private institutions shouldn't be allowed to control such systems, they should be compelled to give them to the public.

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m4nu3l 4 days ago | parent [-]

>Why would this be worse than the current situation of private actors accountable to no one controlling this technology? It's not like I can convince Zuckerberg to change his ways.

As long as Zuckerberg has no army forcing me, I'm fine with that. The issue would be whether he could breach contracts or get away with fraud. But if AI is sufficiently distributed, this is less likely to happen.

>At least with a democratic government I have means to try and build a coalition then enact change. The alternative requires having money and that seems like an inherently undemocratic system.

I don't think of democracy as a goal to be achieved. I'm OK with democracy in so far it leads to what I value.

The big problem with democracy is that most of the time it doesn't lead to rational choices, even when voters are rational. In markets, for instance, you have an incentive to be rational, and if you aren't, the market will tend to transfer resources from you to someone more rational.

No such mechanism exists in a democracy; I have no incentive to do research and think hard about my vote. It's going to be worth the same as the vote of someone who believes the Earth is flat anyway.

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azemetre 4 days ago | parent [-]

What is your alternative to democracy then?

I also don't buy that groups don't make better decisions than individuals. We know that diversity of thought and opinion is one way to make better decisions in groups compared to individuals; why would there be harm in believing that consensus building, debates, adversarial processes, due process, and systems of appeal lead to worse outcomes in decision making?

I'm not buying the argument. Reading your comment it feels like there's an argument to be made that there aren't enough democratic systems for the people to engage with. That I definitely agree with.

	▲	m4nu3l 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> I also don't buy that groups don't make better decisions than individuals. I didn't say that. My example of the market includes companies that are groups of people. > We know that diversity of thought and opinion is one way to make better decisions in groups compared to individuals; why would there be harm in believing that consensus building, debates, adversarial processes, due process, and systems of appeal lead to worse outcomes in decision making? I can see this about myself. I don't need to use hypotheticals. Time ago, I voted for a referendum that made nuclear power impossible to build in my country. I voted just like the majority. Years later, I became passionate about economics, and only then did I realise my mistake. It's not that I was stupid, and there were many, many debates, but I didn't put the effort into researching on my own. The feedback in a democracy is very weak, especially because cause and effect are very hard to discern in a complex system. Also, consensus is not enough. In various countries, there is often consensus about some Deity existing. Yet large groups of people worldwide believe in incompatible Deities. So there must be entire countries where the consensus about their Deity is wrong. If the consensus is wrong, it's even harder to get to the reality of things if there is no incentive to do that. I think, if people get this, democracy might still be good enough to self-limit itself.

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kortilla 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Governments are not the source of wealth. They are just a requisite component to allow people to create it and maintain it.

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azemetre 4 days ago | parent [-]

This doesn't pass the sniff test, governments generate wealth all the time. Public education, public healthcare, public research, public housing. These are all programs that generate an enormous amount of wealth and allow citizens to flourish.

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m4nu3l 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

In economics, you aren't necessarily creating wealth just because your final output has value. The value of the final good or service has to be higher than the inputs for you to be creating wealth. I could take a functioning boat and scrap it, sell the scrap metal that has value. However, I destroyed wealth because the boat was worth more. Even if you are creating wealth, but the inputs have better uses and can create more wealth for the same cost, you're still paying in opportunity cost. So things are more complicated than that.

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azemetre 4 days ago | parent [-]

This isn't related to what I was commenting on where the other poster came across as not seeing government by the governed as having economic worth.

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andsoitis 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Synthesizing between you two’s thoughts, extrapolating somewhat:

- human individuals create wealths

- groups of humans can create kinds of wealth that isn’t possible for a single indovidual. This can be a wide variety of associations: companies, project teams, governments, etc.

- governments (formal or less formal) create the playing field for individuals and groups of individuals to create wealth

	▲	azemetre 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for this comment. You definitely crystalized the two thoughts well and succinctly. Definitely a skill I wish I had. :D

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kortilla 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No, I said it was a requisite to generate wealth, but it does not generate it directly.

	▲	azemetre 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Gotcha. Definitely felt like I made that comment a little too rush, especially in the context of all the others as well.

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m4nu3l 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>governments generate wealth all the time. Public education, public healthcare, public research, public housing. > These are all programs that generate an enormous amount of wealth and allow citizens to flourish.

I thought you meant that governments generate wealth because the things you listed have value. If so, that doesn't prove they generate wealth by my argument, unless you can prove those things are more valuable than alternative ways to use the resources the government used to produce them and that the government is more efficient in producing those.

You can argue that those are good because you think redistribution is good. But you can have redistribution without the government directly providing goods and services.

	▲	azemetre 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think I'm more confused. Was trying to convey the idea that wealth doesn't have to limited to the idea of money and value. Many intangible things can provide wealth too. I should probably read more books before commenting on things I half understand, my bad.

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kortilla 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Those programs consume a bunch of money and they don’t generate wealth directly. They are critical to let people flourish and go out to generate wealth.

A bunch of well educated citizens living on government housing who don’t go out and become productive members of society will quickly lead to collapse.

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AlexandrB 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

None of these are unique to the government and can also be created privately. The fact that government can create wealth =/= the government is the source of all wealth.

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thatfrenchguy 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, you can imagine a public bureaucracy being bad at redistributing too, that’s a lot of governments in the world