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Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

I just fundamentally do not understand the economics of why everybody is so worried about aging and depopulation. TECHNOLOGY. ROBOTS. We us technology to increase production. We create more with less. Automation and technology should create an environment where less people can care for more more efficiently than ever before. Food production should require less people than ever before. Shipping. And not even just mechanical robots. Sunlight and yeast -> food.

The problem becomes the banks financing private ownership of the robots. Maybe the populations livelihood shouldn't be a profit center. Or in the case of the modern economy, where consistent profit is failure, an wealth extraction growth center.

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I think we are on the same page actually - I'm not dismissing the notion that we might engineer ourselves out of a declining work force. But then the question is, if human labor (me, you, us) is -gradually- becoming unwanted, then how do I make a living?

Maybe there is a Star-Trek utopia at the far end, but in the meantime we are looking at potentially several years where me and a chunk of other white-collar workers are unemployable. I'm not sure UBI will be enacted before a large chunk of the general population is unemployable. And how will we fund UBI? Taxing the automators? They can just move their business to a tax haven.

Maybe I can find a job in some sector that's hard to automate, but I imagine a lot of people will be looking for those jobs. And that would probably lead to a pay cut.

So, what then if we want to maintain or even improve our standard of living? Invest in tech stocks? Sure. But we will still need to pick out winners or spread our bets. Will the gains in the stock market be enough to cancel out job loss?

Technosalvation is being promised constantly, yet so far the signs don't bring much hope. Current trends rather point to technodamnation.

and making more people to take care of the old ones is the solution? can they be trusted more than the robots?

Robots can wipe asses or whatever, but they cannot provide care, because care requires more than mechanical actions.

The future you hope for is not less bleak and dystopian than what you try to avoid this way. As always when technology is supposed to bring salvation.

Tech does useful stuff like cure smallpox, provide ample food, central heating and so on. Salvation is more of a Jesus thing - I'm not sure tech is really promising to deliver our souls from sin but might be ok for food and shelter.

> I'm not sure tech is really promising to deliver our souls from sin but might be ok for food and shelter.

Tech cannot promise anything. That's silly! There are people, on the other hand, that go around and preach their gospel, where technology is placed in the center.

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