I distinctly did not get the impression that GP is happy about or approving of what he’s suggesting may be “economically rational.” It reads more as foreboding to me.
Given the current economic trajectory there will be a line to put on uniforms, I don't think I am more eligible for this task than many others who have more dependents.
It wouldn’t be economically rational to do this. Nations have a monopoly on violence (policing, military & enforcement of through force) within their own borders, and nations are in competition with one another, even during times of peace.
It does not make sense for anyone nation to start culling people who do not get onboard with some radical social engineering programme. Through the stroke of a pen these companies are under the control of the government.
Say you want to make an even more pessimistic argument, say the oligarchy in one country get control of this monopoly on its violence. That country is still in competition with other countries.
Russia still has nukes, and thanks to their little war, they lack the technological expertise to go to toe to toe with China and the US on AI. Countries wanna mobilise what resources they can to survive this strategic competition and that includes humans.
Say the oligarchs are smart enough to maintain the status quo in foreign policy, and they seek to enslave their entire country. There is no amount of resources in the world that would prevent the amount of disenfranchised people from revolting and over-throwing any such government that didn’t give them a fair social contract, especially one that’s already gone through higher levels of economic development.
Once AI can replace them, keeping the peasants around means they gobble up your energy, food, land, resources while returning nothing.
He is not advocating for exterminating people, he is just being a realist, like it or not this is the most likely outcome. Having humans is not a advantage since their usefulness is low and their resource consumption is high. The first country to get rid of them and replace them with machines will have a unassailable economic advantage. China and Russia will ultimately lose since they are nationalists dedicated to preserving the chinese and russian ethnicities. They will keep their humans around and be outcompeted.
Think through the logistics of maintaining power after a sudden transfer of institutional power to an oligarchs where humans come obsolete and are being lined up to be exterminated? Do you think those people just disappear? Do you think jobless, aimless people, or the new poor have historically accepted such reversal of economic standing?
History almost suggests this leads to a complete breakdown of society
Do you think this is gonna be enforced by robots?
Do you know how much power comes from the fact that energy come companies reliant consumption?
Think, do you think of that power they built on goods sold to consumers stays around after the consumers disappear?
Calling this economically rational probably goes hard if you have a rudimentary understanding of second-order effects, and an understanding of economics built on YouTube videos & hot takes online.
Something you learn in most introductory economic classes, is slave labour is less efficient than free salaried workers, an observation that goes as far back Adam smith & Richardo.