this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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They should replace them. What really needs undoing is this imbecilic idea that only workers deserve to live comfortably.
They should replace workers and people should deserve to live without being workers, but it should also be painfully obvious that our current economic system won't support this idea, and won't until we do some pretty drastic things.
It's not that we couldn't build a post-scarcity society probably even right now given some pretty radical adjustment of resource allocations, we just don't want to build one – "we" being the 0.01% that have such insane amounts of wealth that they've essentially taken over the whole economic system, largely thanks to eg. dumb fucks like Reagan and sociopathic fucks like Thatcher and the people who idolize them buying into the idea that they too can be that rich because the wealth will somehow magically trickle down.
That would be the mentality I’m talking about us needing to kill. Regardless, AI will help with this problem, in both it being inevitable that it will provide people with more free time (due to efficiencies or unemployment) - which is needed to be able to effectively revolt - and it will help address the issues of transforming our economic model, as the machines will have a much better way of distributing goods and services. Also capitalism needs workers to have money so that they can buy the products they produce, which should at some point necessitate a universal basic income, which will further help erode the work = money paradigm.
If you think this current brand of capitalism requires plebs to have money, I'm not sure how you explain the fact that when taking inflation into account wages have been either stagnant or actually going down ever since the 70's / 80's, the amount of wealth owned by the same plebs compared to the "financial ruling class" (mainly executives and such, and especially the banking sector thanks to deregulation) has shrunk dramatically, and cost of living keeps getting higher, while at the same time the compensation for the "financial ruling class" has grown at a frankly exponential rate.
Sufficiently advanced AI will, if anything, make it even more likely that that "ruling class" will realize they don't need quite as many of us around because all we do us suck up their resources and complain how we haven't eaten anything but cup noodles in a week and our teeth hurt.
I wish the bar was at living comfortably. As it stands it feels like the average person doesn't think non-workers deserve to live :/
Of course, the end goal (mind the word "end") is to replace them. However, in this current situation, where many people are struggling to find a job, it's not good.