I think the fix is to get started on post scarcity economics now. Sooner or later we're going to have to come up with practices that boost or limit endeavors based on how people feel about them, rather than based on how much money somebody has.

It doesn't have to be ((post scarcity) economics), it can be (post (scarcity economics)). Both systems can coexist for a while, one providing a bit of a safety net while the other falls apart.

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epistasis 4 hours ago | parent [-]

There will still be scarcity, just of different things.

Even if we vastly increase productivity beyond our current wildest dreams, the production system takes time to adjust to changes in demand, creating continuous points of scarcity.

But Georgist economics are way ahead of how to deal with this. Tax the ownership/control of things that can not be increased (e.g. land).

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__MatrixMan__ 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, but that's no reason to continue using control over scarce things as a proxy for consent. It's not exactly working out.

We had to tolerate gold because it implied a game that was facilitated by the laws of physics, and we didn't have the resources to set up any other sort. But now we do, the rules can be whatever we want them to be.

Sure, let's try Georgism, but given the historical track record of that kind of reform, let's work on other things in parallel.

	▲	epistasis an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> continue using control over scarce things as a proxy for consent. This is an expression for which I can imagine a multitude of specific meanings, can you clarify? I don't know of anybody who is actually using control over scarcity as a proxy for consent (consent of whom?) Physics still puts bounds on production, and what we can have. Land is the perfect example. Gold was only ever used as an accounting mechanism, and fiat money is definitely an improvement but accounting must still happen. We were never richer or poorer because of the amount of gold we had in our possession, it was merely used as a token of how much of others' labor we could have. As many current things that are scarce become less scarce, we'll still keep accounting for them. And as new things become scarcer, accounting will be just as necessary, by US dollar or by crypto or by handmade pieces of art that AI can't produce, or whatever. Georgism's failures have been through landowners getting control of the taxation mechanism and taking the money back that belongs to the rest of society. Literally any other social change is going to have to confront that same question of power and allocation of resources too, it's nothing specific to Georgism.

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paulpauper 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

agree. wealth inequality has only widened despite AI. things like healthcare insurance, tuition, rent and homes less affordable or more expensive than ever. Nothing has changed and probably ever will. Ai creates abundance in some things like knowledge but other tangible scarcities and individual differences of status remain.