Hacker News Reader

Comment by caconym_ | Hacker News Reader

Why do you need to "make money" if you already own a machine that can produce arbitrary goods and perform arbitrary services (including military/security services) for you? You don't need labor for anything anymore. The rational thing to do is to command your machines to dispose of them and reclaim their land and the resources on/under it to feed your machine. Especially since at this point they will want to see your head on a pike.

This is a simplistic scenario that's science fiction for now but I haven't seen anyone make a convincing case for why the underlying logic isn't valid.

View on HN

My take on this is that once you have machine of infinite stuff creation, just like all your other peers - how do you compete? What is the status?

I believe the rich, just like many not as rich (who probably has it to the lower degree), have the need for social status. Right now status is equated to money - the higher your valuation, the higher status. If money is nothing, and you can acquire anything you want (this is too strong of a claim as well) - what is the thing that defines your status? One of the solutions - the happiness of your "Kingdom". There might be others. But money is not only for exchange nowadays, it's a status as well.

Historically, happiness of ones subjects has very-very rarely been a marker of status, more so because it's hard to measure.

At the same time number of slaves and size of the concubine pool are pretty straightforward and intuitive metrics.

The problem I have with the "benevolent billionaires" thing is that it's demonstrably not how they act today.

I think there are plenty of ways for a couple of guys with god-machines to one-up each other, if it comes to that. Feats of technology, longevity, space exploration and colonization, etc. Likely some of these things involve keeping some people around, but billions? I'm not seeing it.

> how do you compete? What is the status?

energy and resources. Money was always a proxy for them anyway.

If we are talking about a world with super intelligence, maybe the real question is, why would that machine need you to command it?

Why would it do anything? Unlike living things that have gone through the rigorous gate of survival-of-the-fittest over millions of years, AI only does what it was trained to do in the sheltered environment in which it has been coddled; teetering atop an impossibly complex supply chain whose only defense against entropy is humanity's greed.

This (implied) end state isn't inconsistent with my scenario. We already see the incredibly hubristic "I'm the only person who can safely handle AI!" attitude among the people working at/running the big labs.

I don't know why you are downvoted, seems like a reasonable thought to me.

I don't think money will disappear since it's still a practical way to exchange goods, and multiple actors would still want to trade using money.

But the value of most human skills in money will be 0, so to have money you must have either capital or control over capital.

My reflexion is not complete yet, but maybe the group of people that are considered to be "in the global economy" is gonna be drastically reduced.

So in short: Global pauperisation, and even greater inequality ?

Because the wealthy don't universally aspire to be evil overlords hoarding resources at the apex of a dystopian society, or to be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes?

I'd love to be able to say you are right, but from what I see right on top, I have very serious doubts. Maybe they are convinced they have better means to protect themselves against that revolution. What could those means be, if not dystopia?

> the wealthy don't universally aspire to be evil overlords hoarding resources at the apex of a dystopian society

I wouldn't make any such claim (the universality of it, anyway). But in a sci-fi scenario like the one I describe, I doubt "the good ones" are the ones who come out on top. And we can see quite clearly (by their actions if not their words) that many of them do, in fact, want to be hoarding resources at the apex of a dystopian society. "Evil overlords" depends on where you're standing, I guess, but I don't think "dystopian" can be considered controversial anymore.

> to be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes?

Well, that's exactly why the possibility of revolution must be managed. See: ubiquitous surveillance, automation and mechanization of the police and military, and general disenfranchisement of everybody and anybody in anything remotely resembling a middle class.

Since your comment is one of the few that struck upon the natural progression of AI, I'll offer an answer:

Once we can produce goods and services ourselves with AI, we'll see how vastly inflated most of the "free" market is, due to regulatory capture protecting monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies.

Do you really think that the price of neon is 50 times what it costs to produce? Do hearing aids really cost thousands of dollars? CPAP machines? Insulin and EpiPens? What about proprietary products that could have been standardized decades ago to use interchangeable parts? Like cars, smartphones, vacuums..

Why would anyone pay the slightest markup on things they could produce themselves for pennies on the dollar?

We already know what's going to happen. AI brings full market efficiency and the end of profit.

The end of profit means the end of opportunity. Which is the end of capitalism.

Some are calling for socialism to replace capitalism. But we can leapfrog that and create a free or nearly free distributed meta economy running alongside the corrupt economy of the status quo. An economy without artificial scarcity, forced labor or subjugation.

Loosely that looks like solarpunk, permaculture, a return to the humanities after centuries of industrialization and wealth concentration. Star Trek: Insurrection touches on the choice before us, of whether to live a life of warmth and meaning or a life of cold hard reason.

Our tech overlords have chosen the latter like sophomoric children, though even they don't have enough money to prevent the collapse of the system that made them rich. Because we simply won't need what they're selling.

You’ve just described a primitive communism utopia. It will not work, because there will be no real need to produce goods, except as many as the AI owner class will need.

I don't understand this comment. "There will be no real need to produce goods, except as many as the AI owner class will need" is exactly the point---people not in that class will be powerless, useless (to the owning class), and expendable.

Correct. That’s what I meant. The ruling class will only produce goods for themselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com