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Comment on If everyone is fired by AI, who's going to buy the products and services made by the companies if no one has money anymore?

Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I see three possibilities if AI is able to eliminate a significant portion of jobs:

Universal basic income, that pays out based on how productive the provider side was per person. Some portion of wealth is continually transferred to the owners.
Neofeudalism, where the owners at the time of transition end up owning everything and allow people to live or not live on their land at their whim. Then they can use them for labour where needed or entertainment otherwise. Some benevolent feudal lords might generally let people live how they want, though there will always be a fear of a revolution so other more authoritarian lords might sabotage or directly war with them.
Large portions of the population are left SOL to die or do whatever while the economy doesn’t care for them. Would probably get pretty violent since people don’t generally just go off to die of starvation quietly. The main question for me is if the violence would start when the starving masses have had enough of it or earlier by those who see that coming.

I’m guessing reality will have some combination of each of those.

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DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If ONLY some smart fella had pushed a theory about collective ownership of the means of production or something

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- Telorand@reddthat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That man: Abraham Lincoln.
  
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  - Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    -Wayne Gretzky
    
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Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In the USA, it would be option 3 all the way. We would see three classes: Mega Rich, the warfighters of the mega rich, and then the rest of us left to starve.

They wouldn’t just pull the plug and leave us to our own devices, they would actively destroy farming equipment and industry to make sure life is awful

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- Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m not even sure it will be 3 classes because having a soldier class risks them deciding to just take over. This is one of the real dangers of AI, they won’t have any issue going into an area and killing everything that moves there until they are given an encrypted kill command. Or maybe the rich will even come in with an EMP (further destroying what infrastructure is left) and act like they are the heroes while secretly being the ones who give the orders to reduce the numbers in the first place.
  
  Worst part is the tech for that already exists. The complicated kill bot AI is getting it to discriminate and selectively kill. I remember seeing a video of an automated paintball turret that could hit a moving basketball with full precision 20 years ago. Not only that, it was made by a teenager (or team of teenagers).
  
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