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Comment by jakeinspace | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure I’m looking forward to the politics that would come out of 10-20% of the previously middle class becoming instantly redundant and out of (middle-salary) work. That’s the fast path to fascism, unless we’re able to quickly implement UBI and other major societal overhauls.

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Yeah I share these concerns as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35305791).

My hope is that some countries will see this as an opportunity to expand their safety nets and reduce the work burden on their citizens, which might convince citizens of countries that don't to demand similar policies.

> unless we’re able to quickly implement UBI and other major societal overhauls.

Which are not going to happen.

Something more approachable would be dropping payroll taxes to zero, or even making them negative for some positions, and significantly increasing corporate and capital gains.

The problem isn't the specific policy, the problem is that right now the people who will be empowered and enriched the most by any theoretical "good at stuff" AI are the same people who already spend mountains of cash and effort stopping those things.

How will a functional AI model do anything other than make them better at getting the outcomes they want? CEOs and the megarich have never had any problems watching people burn for their bank account.

How would we keep it as low as 10-20%? 60% of employees in the US are knowledge workers. That number is similar for most wealthy nations.

This is isn't speculating, this is truthing.

Truthing as in theory quakery, not backed by evidence?

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