| ▲ | YackerLose a day ago |
| Somehow, I don't think the people with all the money, gunmen and (soon) robots will be OK with the world you envision. |
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| ▲ | pkphilip a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| True. Expecting the super rich to be concerned a lot about the poor - especially when they aren't useful as employees, is quite a stretch. |
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| ▲ | fullshark a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Not useful as soldiers even, and that includes those on the enemy side. | |
| ▲ | lanfeust6 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Their wealth is more contingent on our consumption than employment status. If that goes, then you're looking at a zero-sum society where no new wealth is generated. Ultimately people will remain enterprising status-seekers. Rich people can already sit around with their wealth doing fuck-all excepting consuming, and they don't. | | |
| ▲ | ydat a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Their wealth is more contingent on our consumption than employment status. Is it? Or is it dependent on the consumption of someone much greater than you. For example: I was reading something the other day about dining experiences in Las Vegas. Really though, the video was about how recently Vegas has abandoned the traditional middle class patrons in favor of providing experiences to a smaller, but much wealthier clientele. This seems to be a trend across many industries. In some cases your consumption is even a cost center to be eliminated in favor of a more successful customer base. | | |
| ▲ | lanfeust6 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | lol well the majority of the top 1% globally didn't make their fortune serving food, to other wealthy patrons no less (how's that for circular reasoning). We're in a consumer society, B2B sales is a thing but it's a side-effect of that. |
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| ▲ | zqna a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | They wealthy will be buying islands (as big as Australia) get high on cocaine and do safari, shooting humans there as the ultimate fun [1]. The prey underestimates how the mind of predator works, and that's why it is a prey. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3epygq5272o | | |
| ▲ | SimianSci 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Predator and prey dynamics typically cross outside of classifications like species and are not inter-species like what is suggested here. It can be easy to mistake a parasitic relationship for a predatory one. | | |
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| ▲ | lanfeust6 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In a post-scarcity society, having a meagre policy to keep people alive and not-unruly is cheap. It's also getting way ahead of ourselves, since it's nowhere in sight. Software hiring was up this year. |
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| ▲ | Gud a day ago | parent [-] | | Not really. The planet is crowded, currently with mostly productive members of society. For the ultra rich psychos who run the show, do you really think they want poor people hanging around? When we can be wiped out in a few months? Consider the pure greed Donald Trump is displaying. Now imagine that the 1000 most powerful people are the same, except they are smart enough to at least not rub it in peoples faces on live television. They hate you, and want you dead. | | |
| ▲ | lanfeust6 a day ago | parent [-] | | Motivated reasoning. You want to believe it. > do you really think they want poor people hanging around? Which by your rationale would include everyone who isn't rich (and tautologically would mean "no one is rich anymore"). They do not care whether we're hanging around, the same way they do not care now whether poor people exist. It has no bearing. All that does is whether they remain rich and powerful, and last I checked, that's relative. Being the only one left on the planet won't make you feel rich, and there being poors on a piece of land won't have any bearing on you. > When we can be wiped out in a few months? Lol Also, on the population front, growth is poised to completely stall in less than 100 years. The fertility rate is terrible in developed countries, and falling quickly in developing ones as they get richer | | |
| ▲ | red-iron-pine a day ago | parent [-] | | want to believe it? mon ami have you looked at any labor history? they used to send 9 year olds to the mines. mortality rates were as high as 50% before they turned 20. why do you think the AI robber barons are any nicer? it is painfully obvious they're not. and all of this is set to a backdrop of global ecological collapse. | | |
| ▲ | lanfeust6 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | > they used to send 9 year olds to the mines Yeah, at the advent of the industrial revolution. And prior to that 80% of people had to work the land, with no ammonia, just horses and manure. Labor conditions from over a century ago, before the laws were written, have no bearing on whether wealthy people would try their best to kill you "just because". That's nonsensical. "Nice" has nothing to do with it. | | |
| ▲ | Fricken an hour ago | parent [-] | | The only reason any of us can read is because industrialists a long time ago decided we would be more productive if we would. The labour standards in the US today established by FDR and the New Deal were done under duress, with a very popular effectively holding a gun to the ownership class's head. They've been working to claw it all back ever since. The whole reason trillions are being spent on AI and not making thing better for little people is because we don't want to have to depend on them anymore for anything... you know, so we can get rid of them. Having 8 billion people alive at once is a huge liability. |
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| ▲ | madaxe_again a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Indeed. Far more likely, a more economic human is engineered. Oryx and Crake, I think, was the first time I encountered that idea. |
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| ▲ | lenerdenator a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Well, they don't have all of the second one. |
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| ▲ | speak_plainly a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | toomuchtodo a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| “Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” —- John Maynard Keynes What does the data and observations tell us so far, in this context? |
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| ▲ | 33e a day ago | parent [-] | | The real blame lies at the door of the folks who created a lot of things who were incredibly naive that others wouldnt come in to profit from it. | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo a day ago | parent [-] | | That’s certainly a component, but I think the biggest issue is that people have this religious fervor that capitalism is the only way to structure a socioeconomic system, even when the data shows it is exceptionally bad at ensuring a good quality of life for the majority of citizens. It’s changing in the US with Democratic Socialists over performing, and with high support for them with the under 35 cohort, the question is if this momentum can be sustained for years through various election cycles (as ~2M 55+ voters age out every year, and ~3M voters turn 18 and age into the electorate every year). “Progress occurs one funeral at a time.” — Max Planck |
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