Technology

If you mean living in rotating abandoned warehouses, doing odd jobs, hijacking robots, corporate espionage and assasin jobs... Then sure life of leisure. At our current trajectory we are going full cyberpunk.

Yes. And if that's not the case, I'm ready to burn the world, so that something better can rise.

I'm starting to think that serfdom, as an aspect of feudalism, is too modern for the new technocrat caste.

A few days ago, Sam Altman did an interview saying he no longer supported universal basic income for those put out of work by AI. Instead, he supported "shares in ownership" or "shares in compute". That is, instead of a guaranteed income, the lower classes would be gifted some sort of income producing asset based on the value of some particular tech company or the AI industry as a whole. If the industry did well, the lower classes dependent on it would thrive; if the industry failed, they would starve.

That's not serfdom. That goes even further back, to the patron-client system of ancient Rome. The patron, generally the leader of a wealthy noble family, would provide their clients with money, food, and gifts. In return, the clients would vote for the patron and his allies in elections, act as bodyguards and enforcers for the patron, intimidate/beat/kill the clients of rival patrons to keep them away from the polling booths, advertise the patron's businesses, and generally do whatever the patron wanted. The clients helped the patron maintain their wealth and political power, and the patron would share the rewards of that wealth and power with their clients.

Think about the sort of country we would have, the sort of politicians who would be elected and the sort of laws who would be passed, if Altman's idea came to fruition. Imagine if we had a significant unemployed underclass whose financial security depended solely on the success of the AI industry, and who would be rewarded by their technocrat billionaire patrons for electing AI-friendly politicians or blocking AI-friendly regulation.

Mere serfdom would be preferable.

the average person doesn't think they are working class, they think that's what poor people are.

my dad made a working class salary his entire life, but he always told us we were middle class and 'better' than those working-class idiot losers.

average people admire rich people and want to be them, and they hate working class people.

i'm a middle class person now, but i live around a lot of upper middle class people, and regularly they let me know I'm subhuman scum in their eyes. and working-class people i grew up with, think i'm a rich effete snob with my graduate degree and my expensive coffee and my compact car.

people generally are much more focused on the differences around them and feeling they are better than their neighbors is a far bigger concern than what rich people are doing. the person living across the street from you gets more upset about you getting a nicer car than them then they do about jeff bezo's wedding.

I'm with you on being against capitalism, but UBI isn't convincing as a solution to me.

UBI pre-supposes that the rich and their corporations should have a monopoly on the means of production, and you still have capitalism, just that the population are guaranteed an income via high taxes. But the power structure, and undemocratic nature of capitalist controlling everything still exists.

UBI is some dystopian stuff if you don't combine it with getting rid of the ruling class and the other tools of capitalist oppression.

But yeah, I agree with you that we certainly ought to be working less than we are (yes, even if standards of living were more fairly distributed to poor countries), and in the future I also agree with you that we ought to be working way, way less of technology allows for it.

Psychopathic capitalists don't feel like they're winning unless everyone else is losing.

They always weasel out of taxes. My idea was to give each person something like carbon coins that works like an emission permit. Give everyone the same amount each month and keep it within nature's limits. Then, if someone wants to do something polluting like run a datacenter, they'll just have to purchase the coins for that from the open market from those willing to sell. The end result is still money going to the poor but not as a tax, and hard limit on pollution.

Products are being created for rich people. Poor people are being cut out of the economy.

They will buy their products and services from each other. That can still form a working economy. It would function just like any slavery based economy of the past, just with more slaves than usual

The window in which these calculations remain relevant is rapidly closing with the development of robots and drones.

Honestly?

I think AI replacing office workers is just a pit stop till AI can operate kill drones...

Billionaires are 100% asking themselves if they really need us, and the fucked up thing is if robots can grow their food, produce their goods and shield their compounds from us...

They don't need us. At that point theyre gonna want to get rid of us for the space if we can't make them money, and where were headed we won't be able to.

They "need" a small buffer population that enjoys the oligarchs protection from us, but are loyal because they can be killed/exiled at any time.

But 99.9999% of the world population, they're probably ok with killing off already.

If not, they definitely will be once they squeeze every last ounce of resources out of us and the planet starts really dying. They'll even convince themselves it's "for the greater good" to save the planet they killed making their billions.

They're just gonna keep getting crazier, there's no logical reason to think the trajectory or acceleration will change. Eventually it'll be a literal class war unless we prevent by taking our resources back.

The "ultimate question" is: do they really just want a whole lot of people to die? They bluster around the topic like that's a question that you just don't ask, but when you boil away all the BS, what's left is: are you saying that you're going to lock people out of any possible way to feed themselves and their children and just "let them figure it out for themselves"?

Sure but the system would only work if the rich agreed to pay for our expenses via taxes. Don't expect it anytime soon.

Found Angus Podgorny's alt account

Just replace "togas" with "mass graves" and we're good to go.