| ▲ | stephc_int13 2 hours ago |
| The idea of a consumer based economy has always appeared dumb to me. The reason why the masses should consume is to motivate them to work.
And the reason why having a large amount of people working is that human work has been producing a surplus basically since the dawn of civilization. This surplus is partially shared but tend also to "trickle up", contrary to some weird beliefs, as can clearly be seen almost everywhere you look. But if you imagine a sci-fi world where machines can build and do everything humans can do, the concept of a human-centric economy would be pointless. Machines don't need to be motivated to work, they just need energy, materials and obeying to whoever controls them. This kind of economy would be less abstract and more directly related to physics. |
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| ▲ | jameslk 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > The reason why the masses should consume is to motivate them to work. The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around. Everyone wants more > But if you imagine a sci-fi world where machines can build and do everything humans can do, the concept of a human-centric economy would be pointless. There’s a number of obstacles I can think of to get there, in a human governed world, where humans make the buying decisions |
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| ▲ | jbxntuehineoh 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Everyone wants more Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat and would be much, much happier for it. Unfortunately that option isn't available to me, nor to most people. | | |
| ▲ | Waterluvian 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Getting 3/5ths fired is my dream, too. For a while I had a sweet gig where instead of raises I got to work less but that just bewilders management even though I’m very confident they got more for their money. | |
| ▲ | jameslk 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat Most people wouldn’t be content to live in one room huts with thatched roofs and no hospitals or antibiotics. There might be some that do, but most prefer having more things and “better” lives. If we kept progressing, we’d look back at the era we live today and consider it just as primitive | | |
| ▲ | AngryData 23 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Please, not even poor starving destitute people in 3rd world countries live in thatched huts anymore. Also antibiotics are not that expensive, especially if you buy them for "fish" and get them closer to production cost. You could sell some watermelons and afford antibiotics. | | |
| ▲ | defrost 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Upper middle class people in the UK live in traditional thatched cottages today - it's still a trade. African traditional cattle herders are still a thing and they're still living in thatched huts with weave walls. Elsewhere in Africa, Thatching is still an up market thing: https://www.africathatch.co.za/ Perhaps spend some time learning about the wider world before making such obviously incorrect sweeping generalisations? | |
| ▲ | jameslk 14 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | I’m talking about how many people lived in the past This kind of life was normal then and the same argument could be made of not needing much more. But many would not be content with it now |
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| ▲ | chongli 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's still wanting more: more free time. You're not going to take a 60% paycut if it means 60% less food, 60% less shelter, etc. | | |
| ▲ | nextaccountic 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > That's still wanting more: more free time. But this is working less to have more free time. > You're not going to take a 60% paycut if it means 60% less food, 60% less shelter, etc. Why not? That's exactly what the person said they want. The incorrect point that was made is that everyone want to work because they want more stuff, not because they want more free time. People that get more free time typically achieve this by working less, or not working | | |
| ▲ | chongli 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Free time is a luxury just like anything else, but it's only valuable if you have enough of everything else. Nobody is jealous of all the free time homeless people have. They're jealous of the free time of people who don't need to work full time to pay all their bills. |
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| ▲ | stephc_int13 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, the transition is unlikely to be linear and without conflict, if this was ever possible. But I am sure that some would be happy to control armies of bots and very few humans. | | |
| ▲ | jameslk an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | That’s quite a lot of slippery slope hand waving to get there. I’d wager those obstacles will pose a larger challenge than most people in this article’s thread seem to think | | |
| ▲ | stephc_int13 an hour ago | parent [-] | | I genuinely have no idea how that transition would happen. And I agree that it would pose many unforeseen challenges. This is why the transition is the interesting part, not the sci-fi end game with a world populated with billions of robots doing everything. |
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| ▲ | smallmancontrov 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Pertinent section from Rules for Rulers https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs?t=746s |
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| ▲ | wyldfire 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Physics, or ... capital. Look at the cryptocurrency and Bitcoin economies for an example. Instead of being a democratic mining economy where spare cycles are used, only companies which invest capital to find semiconductors from the latest process node combined with facilities and inexpensive electricity benefit from mining. Only the next Standard Oil / Amazon / Google will benefit from the people-free economy. |
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| ▲ | stephc_int13 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, you don’t feed machines with bitcoins or any kind of currency, you feed them with Joules, Iron, Copper, rare earths etc. |
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| ▲ | marcus_holmes 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > But if you imagine a sci-fi world where machines can build and do everything humans can do, the concept of a human-centric economy would be pointless. In Iain Banks' The Culture novels, the machines provide the How, humans provide the Why. |
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| ▲ | Loughla an hour ago | parent [-] | | I mean, there is a read of the culture that is pretty dystopian. If Minds are able to, essentially, predict the future, what is the purpose of the humans, other than as a sort of abstract pet acting out the Minds' great plans. Something something Bora Horza Gobuchul was right all along. |
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| ▲ | peterldowns 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Keep following this line of thought and you'll end up in the same territory as Nick Land. If you haven't read already, the xenosystems blogs would probably be quite interesting to you. |
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| ▲ | stephc_int13 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I have not, but I am curious. I think the end-state is not that interesting, but the transition could not happen overnight and seems both difficult technically and would be unlikely to happen without a fight. |
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| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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