And to create a fancy mechanical robotic wall-farm to produce commodity products like lettuce seems folly. I'm sure they chose that because it comes to maturity in a score days, not weeks or months. And the 'floor space' per plant has to be enormous for that farm-of-the-future.
The article belabors the 'less land used' argument throughout. Perhaps because that's the only place they win (not on price; not on investment cost; not on variety or flexibility?) While that's important, the issue is not running out of farmland. The American farmer has gotten so efficient, doubling output per acre repeatedly for a century now. Iowa could feed two United States. The US could feed the world. With old-fashioned land-intensive agriculture.
There are still small farms, although they are continuing to die off. But even if farmers are not average, then what work do average people have?
Median estimation for AGI is around 2060 so its not just "average" people.
Is that AGI of 2060 a mistake?
Seeing the former group beginning to consider the effects of their work is dystopian.
I'm not sure what you mean by "mistake."
It's not dystopian to consider the possible effects of one's work. If you don't consider them, then how can you make adjustments/improvements? It would be dystopian to maximize the negative impacts. We are doing the opposite - questioning what the best course of action might be.
I never said we should forget about the average people or normal people as Yang calls them in his book "The War on Normal People."
Even if we don't have AGI we will have narrow AI such as self driving/factory stuff/textiles which will displace millions. I'm all for UBI or some sort of equivalent social safety net (I'm not an economist so I don't want to be prescriptive here as I have heard some drawbacks to UBI).
The technocrats have already created platforms that are tearing our social fabric apart by promulgating conspiracies and radicalizing our youth while reducing long-form literacy an increasing anxiety and depression.
What we need is some sort of social revolution that in my opinion could only be obtained by an authoritarian government that protects people from themselves and the exploitive tech corporations. Ban facebook to reduce conspiracy promulgation. Ban tiktok and ever increasingly addictive video games to prevent our youth from becoming dopamine junkees. Ban drugs so the listless and ever-growing welfare class remain mostly docile.
None of these changes are feasible in a country whose identity revolves around personal freedom/choice.
Why fight nature? Government shouldn't protect citizens from themselves. Let it take its course. The stupid people should reduce through natural attrition. It's controversial, but it's the way the natural world works.
Also reducing human suffering seems to be a pretty good thing to do and your natural system doesn't seem to do that.
The actions you were proposing weren't things to help people make better decisions (if they were, it would still be free will). They were to make laws to outlaw activities. If you don't believe in free will, why do you propose helping people make better decisions? Do you really think imposing someone else's will over others is more benign? The government imposes its will through force or threat thereof (causing human suffering).
Government and politics is not really artificial. They form naturally whenever there are groups of people - similar leadership and power dynamics exist in the natural world too (look at bees, ants, wolves, etc).
Why? Because it reduces human suffering.
Also surely with better technology we will be able to transform prisons into rehabilitation centers and thus reduce our countries prison populations and thus become a FREER country, albeit one with less rights?
I think comparing our government to a beehive or a pack of wolves is ridiculous I guess you can call governments "natural." Even if we consider this government natural, surely it doesn't have a natural state. What is the "natural state" of a government of 350 million people?
For example, why would I shoot you? I have no motive to do that regardless of what the laws may be. There is nothing the government has done to make it impossible for someone to shoot you. It's just that if some one does and gets caught, they go to prison.
On the subject of dissolving the government, you are completely wrong. There is nothing stopping me from non-violently overthrowing the government. The Constitution even states that if the people want to dissolve the government, they can. So I could try to convince people to elect myself and others who would change or even dissolve it.
"Also surely with better technology we will be able to transform prisons into rehabilitation centers and thus reduce our countries prison populations and thus become a FREER country, albeit one with less rights?"
This is completely nonsensical. Technology isn't holding back prison reform - social and political powers are the main drivers. Why would the number of rights be reduced? You've laid out no premise to connect nor support that statement.
The general trend has been to eliminate onshore jobs that are low skill and outsource those tasks to lower cost countries. As it has also been towards jobs requiring higher education. So what opportunities are there? After all, we are seeing increased dependence on support programs and wage stagnation.
I suspect in year 2100, we will have no small businesses but giant monolith corporations that will drive everything from content censorship to citizen governance through proxies, everyone's savings are going to be in their stocks which keep increasing at an ever increasing pace. Traditional currencies have been devalued and replaced by corporate-owned coins. Neuralink will ensure utter dominance of a few. Abstract things we consider today are commodicized and traded.
Future kind of sucks to be honest. We're past golden prime years. I just want to run a small tea shop and hang out with the locals.
Yes, on average its not a zero sum game. Ask your corner bookstore if its not a zero sum game. Local effects are real.
Just in another thread I was greeted by how much of a bargian GSuite is. For $5/month, you get world class in the cloud office/productivity tools + gazillion other services and email, SSO. No other SaaS can compete with this.
Github with free private repos, why would anyone choose another competitor? It has all the things and more.
And if they ever decide to lock you out, you lose everything. That cheap price comes with a cost.
You can’t compete with Amazon’s virtually infinite selection and they can’t compete with your local presence and the physical experience and customer service you offer to your patrons. If you’re incapable of doing a good job with any of those then you’re toast, but then again maybe you shouldn’t have been running a small bookstore anyways.
We both wonder how many shops have been wiped out. I also wonder how many online businesses have been created. I work with many online vendors who sell on Amazon that would not have been viable if they had to open a brick and mortar retail location.
Sure living standard is higher (but with more inequality), most fields are more advanced now, but what's the true purpose if people feel more depressed and inclined to kill themselves?
How did you determine it was generally higher because it appears to be lower in much of Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa?
The "general state of the world today" is likely to be much better for billions of people than it was in the 80s, however. It's worth keeping that perspective in mind, IMO.
Edit: I've linked one slide deck I think will describe what I'm talking about a bit, but there are certainly more and better sources for this kind of information.
Maybe we can share some sources here as a way to better educate ourselves on this topic?
https://slides.ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-food-provision/...
If you’re an average Chinese citizen, your life has probably improved dramatically. The auto mechanic down the street is struggling though since newer cars are basically unrepairable.
The majority of brand new cars that the average American is buying is still an ICE-powered automobile that’s nearly as serviceable as the old ones, sometimes requiring more advanced diagnostics tools, but far safer and more reliable.
Life in the United States was better for most Americans in the 80's than it is now. That was the beginning of the decoupling of productivity from pay, and it has been ongoing ever since.
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
It's ok to both acknowledge the developmental progress of the rest of the world and lament the backsliding of the US.
What I am not happy about is all of us, all 8 billion of us, being able to afford everything we can and hoard useless electronics and plastic doo-dads, waste a ton of resources and live an excessive life. But, "We in the west have it so they should also" is a controversial take on this.
We as Americans waste a lot of resources. That shouldn't be the role model for others.
When billions of people couldn't buy food and don't have clean water to drink, cries of, "But I'm not maximally benefitting from my own productivity increases!" come across as relatively unimportant.
The phrase that caught my eye was, "the general state of the world today is worse off." I don't think that meshes with observed reality over the past 40 years for the humans living on this planet, if you're not white, affluent, straight and American.
But comparing market cap (wealth) to gdp (production) doesn't really make sense.
It would make more sense to compare revenues maybe?? Top 5 tech revenues would combine to about $1T - which still makes them bigger than all but 16 countries...
After all, a company buying A for $100 and selling A for $100 will boost revenue, but will not see profit rise. A country in which companies buy A for $100 and sell A for $100 will not see GDP rise.
That's apples and oranges. More apt is the comparison of FAANG revenue to GDP.
Better yet, if you harvest at the right time your product will taste way better because it wasn't shipped across the continent!
Lots of people are still getting into farming these days, you can make a full time salary on as low as 1 acre, especially if you do microgreens. See this fellow's content for far more detail than you might ever want https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbHwAfHQA9M
I guess that depends on your perspective. As a small farmer, the per-hour income is incredible, putting my earning potential as a developer to shame. But it doesn't require many hours of my time.
> Many also need to work another job.
Since it doesn't require many hours of my time, it seems reasonable to spend that time doing something else. Sitting around watching TV all day would get old pretty fast.
Ever tried selling 50 tons of wheat at the farmer's market? Its a minor side-income at best
> "you can make a full time salary on as low as 1 acre,"
Thats total wishfull thinking. - you can only do that in specific niches, with significant capital outlay, near a city. You are not going ti make any money off an average 1-acre field in the countryside
Maybe a few for lettuce, but for cereal grains... we're talking guy on a combine (part of) 3 days a year.
As a side note, the labor is generally migratory so they move the the next crop that needs harvesting.
If you intend to sell it, well the differences of economy of scale of a small farm versus a large farm and the resulting cost difference alone should have been obvious. You wouldn't have been competing well in that market either, right?
The idea is to produce higher margin products, such as organics, honey, ir niche products.
You don't need a ton of equipment to feed yourself. You might WANT some to make life easier, but even then, I'm pretty sure you don't need to pay yearly tax on a tractor in most states...
Also, you can't grow more than an acre of wheat for self-use legally in the US anyways.
I find this very surprising, especially considering this should vary by state (although I know this might be the kind of thing the Commerce Clause could get up into).
I can't find any information that there's a cap on wheat production in the US. Got a source?
The whole concept of retiring is that you've factored those things into your savings. If you can't afford to pay property taxes for the rest of your life you can't retire.
Edit: looks like some others have upvoted.
If we have automated manufacturing and food production why does the average person really need to do anything?
It's always a competion. That's just life. Darwin has laid that out before pretty clearly.
Furthermore as our society evolves the hierarchy of needs can and should shift to demphasize employment.
What you are describing is the result of industrialized societies needing workers, soon that will not be the case.
Kinda like Pompeii back in the day?
So long as there is work, the people who have a smaller share always have the opportunity of improving their lot by working harder and smarter than others.
A society with no work is basically one in which everyone lives off their assets, in which wealth primarily comes through inheritance. A society with even more inequality than today, but with far less social mobility.
I hope that isn't your worldview, it sounds lonely.