Submitted by Charming-Coconut-234 t3_zoxvv7 in Futurology
Stillwater215 t1_j0pu8at wrote
Reply to comment by coyote-1 in How would the economies be if AI takes most / all the jobs? by Charming-Coconut-234
The big question is how long this will last when it becomes significantly cheaper to build a machine to cook fast food than it would be to keep humans on staff.
The-Sun-God t1_j0qlg2j wrote
Who will buy the burgers and how will they pay? It is in the best interests of Capital that more people are able to purchase products. Meaning it is in the best interest of capital that people earn wages.
Even Fascist Ford determined that paying his employees more not only got him better employees, but more importantly minted him new customers.
All of this fear-mongering neglects this…
That, or the people at the top of the capital hierarchy must absolutely commit to making the world their playground, and kill everyone else off.
usaaf t1_j0r0qxq wrote
>It is in the best interests of Capital that more people are able to purchase products. Meaning it is in the best interest of capital that people earn wages.
Ah great, so we have to work forever. Sure the jobs will get easier, but that's not much of a help, and it's certainly not the way forward. Having to have a job forever because we can't think past Capitalism is just sad. I do not want that future for the human race, but that is what we'll get if we let the Capitalist be in charge.
Capitalism, like most economic systems, is simply a management system for scarcity. And just like slavery and feudalism before it, it is a VERY bad one for many reasons, but the most important one for the future is this: it has no management system/plan for abundance.
When there is enough of something to go around, there's no capitalist incentive to provide it for all. When people talk about prices always falling, there is a lower limit to that. Prices cannot get too low, to the point where providing a service to everyone would not be profitable. Capitalism encourages this. It also encourages flat out waste. Dutch East India company traders burned excess spice crops because they knew that their existence jeopardized a high price.
We can do better, but not with the profit motive as a guiding operating principle. Even without robots, labor could be divided much more fairly, waste could be curtailed, etc., but none of that will happen with Capitalists in charge because such reforms would massively eat into profit. Which is the point. Our scarcity fuels their profit.
A Post-Scarcity (my preferred definition for this is not everyone gets space yachts, but rather to say that society has no need unfilled rather than every want fulfilled) future requires the dismantling of Capitalism, down to even the social and cultural machinery that perpetuates it.
xantec15 t1_j0sficc wrote
Capitalism has one plan for abundance: subsidies. Through our taxes we literally pay farmers to grow excess crops to manage prices, while producing staggering amounts of food waste. Meanwhile, we still have millions, if not billions, of people on the planet living in food scarcity.
The-Sun-God t1_j0sowt5 wrote
That’s all good and true. But what is this form of organization that maintains efficiency of resources and allocation and also allows for abundance?
Surely not everything is or will always be abundant, so we must retain elements of both.
Is it AI Central Planning?
is AI China the new world order?
Omegalazarus t1_j0t16cr wrote
There isn't a point in maintaining elements of another socioeconomic system in the chance we need to change in the future. As it is now things are scarce, but they may not always be scarce. However, we don't retain elements of utopia for that chance.
When you are taking about needs being met, as long as whatever energy breakthrough that gives us abundance functions and there is federalized planning, resources production can be shifted as needed to fill regular gaps in the system.
Each system has methods of patching itself (we have subsidization and state welfare systems etc). There is no reason to think a future system we adopt won't have any. If that's the case, why would it be opted?
Edarneor t1_j0u9241 wrote
Well, if we're talking about the future where AI is so good to take most jobs then yeah, it has to be AI central planning or something like that.
Introsium t1_j0stuj8 wrote
I walked into a McDonalds literally two days ago and didn’t interact with a single human. Zero hyperbole.
norbertus t1_j0tphk4 wrote
>Who will buy the burgers and how will they pay?
The rich will just eat us and machines will cook us
Edarneor t1_j0u84wl wrote
>people at the top of the capital hierarchy must absolutely commit to making the world their playground, and kill everyone else off.
There are loads of conspiracy theories about this, but the more I think about it, the less improbable it seems. Why wouldn't they? Out of compassion? You don't earn billions with compassion. Most of them are sociopaths...
Doesn't mean they can or have an actual plan to, but I bet they'd LOVE to.
The-Sun-God t1_j0u946q wrote
I think the question becomes how many humans do you need to rule to feel like a king? And then add some number to that for eating.
AppleGeniusBar t1_j0sdv35 wrote
It already is. Maybe not entirely prepare food but definitely cook it. I’ve been to multiple non-chain restaurants which use conveyor belt-style grill (like a high quality hotel toaster or a similarly styled pizza oven). They just throw the meat onto the belt, and then grab it on exit to prepare the sandwich.
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