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shouldsmellitfirst t1_j0xsw5c wrote

Reply to comment by jeremy-o in AI won’t replace you. There will be different jobs in the future that don’t exist right now. by [deleted]

Is there actual research supporting this, or are we guessing and theorizing here? Not saying I disagree, just curious how people come to a position like this.

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icedrift t1_j0xtogq wrote

Research can only go so far in the social sciences. There is no definitive answer. Having said that, looking at the rust belt it probably one of the best recent examples of mass replacement via uncompetitive labor markets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt

The answer seems to be that yes, the invisible hand won't magically create new jobs in a free market, government investment into propping up new industries is necessary.

The question is can government keep up with the coming replacement.

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Omnomcologyst t1_j0xv7iq wrote

It comes from how technology has worked in the past.

Think of how the steam engine and industrial revolution took away hundreds of millions of jobs. How every leap in technology replaces the need of thousands of workers, freeing them up for other professions.

If you follow this logic forward, you end up at a point where labor is entirely replaced by machines. It isn't too far fetched, as jobs are already being replaced with bots, and anything you can teach a person, you can make a bot to do the same thing and instead of costing minimum wage, it costs pennies of electricity. There are exceptions to this, but those are being eroded away as time moves forward.

Eventually you run out of professions for people to be freed up for, and you end up with an employment crisis. We tied the ability to live directly to employment, and now that system and the progress of human technology are at direct odds with each other. If tech advances, people lose their jobs. The problem isn't that they lose their jobs, it's that their ability to not starve to death in the street is dependant on their employment. When there's more people than jobs, and no system to deal with this, those people die.

You solve this in 4 ways.

  1. You let them die.

  2. You create jobs for jobs sake (basically menial labor that is meaningless, but exists so people can be employed)

  3. You stop technology. This is simply impossible.

  4. You decouple the ability to survive from employment, and use the surplus generated by the mechanized economy to allow people to live as they wish, while machines and bots do the work.

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shooketh_not_stireth t1_j0zm5h8 wrote

1a. You encourage them to die, and provide an "ethical" means of suicide

1b. You actively set about eliminating them

We have many examples of genocide from the last century alone for reasons far more petty than the wealthy protecting their hoard. The ultra wealthy are naturally at odds with the interests of the public, and if they have the support of the military, don't even have to pretend to care (e.g. Myanmar).

Couple that with innovations military automatons, and the ultra wealthy may be faced with a choice between living like God Emperors in a world denuded of most human life or having to share their wealth to prevent a second Reign of Terror.

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jeremy-o t1_j0xu278 wrote

Heaps; get on Google Scholar and do some reading.

(Or you could start with a primer like this)

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