In fact, we avoid a lot of difficult moral dilemmas because we accept the systems are crappy and just a necessary evil. The closest you claim to be to perfection, the more you have to acknowledge that some moral questions are just impossible to settle to everyone's satisfaction.
Is the life of child X more important than the life of child X because of a score calculated based on their grades, parents' income, etc? The system we have today may implicitly result in such outcomes, but at least it's not intentional.
It really misses the forrest from the trees. You're transported into a world in which efficiencies mean that much fewer people need to work, but somehow government services and entitlements are unchanged and we need to hit roughly the same percent federal tax receipts or ... what exactly?
Just saying ....
That's the problem. AI has the same tax problems as corporations. But US corporate taxes are historically very low and easy to evade.
Worrying about a hypothetical T-1000 future seems less urgent than reducing the homelessness that exists right in front of us.
Either way, I'm so sick and tired of people talking about the effect on GDP. GDP is a terrible way to measure anything remotely meaningful. GDP has gone up and up and things have gotten worse and worse for more and more people; GDP could go down a lot and things could still get better for many people. Without some kind of (in)equality adjustment, GDP is meaningless at best and misleading at worst.
bofadeez•1h ago
Why would taking scarce resources away from productive businesses and allocating to unproductive things be good for anyone other than government bureaucrats?
varenc•52m ago
But feels like we're a long way from that right now.
bofadeez•40m ago
If "every country" is in debt, who owns the debt exactly? ... (it's not real debt)
WillAdams•35m ago
For an example of what unlimited borrowing and money printing results in, look up Germany in 1921--1923
lovich•29m ago
Money is a nations currency. It’s actually the people of that nations property and you only get a lease on it.
If you disagree then try to do something like ceding the land that you “own” to another nations and see how that goes
harimau777•20m ago
If we took Elon Musk's money away and simply burnt it, that would still be a net win for society as a whole.
smallmancontrov•2m ago
(It was piss.)
BurningFrog•38m ago
Until you understand how something that counter intuitive happened, you should not speculate on how AI replacing current jobs will play out!
the-mitr•16m ago
harimau777•15m ago
smallmancontrov•11m ago
No?
Hmmmmmm.
CrossVR•52m ago
bofadeez•43m ago
t-writescode•25m ago
nemomarx•43m ago
xg15•42m ago
bofadeez•39m ago
smallmancontrov•38m ago
According to the economic notion of value, which is unique among definitions of "value" in being wealth-weighted, enshrining "mega gainz in brokerage accounts" as the ultimate social good while shrugging its shoulders at the plight of the ahem low-weight individual.
bofadeez•37m ago
smallmancontrov•26m ago
That's not really the problem, though. The problem is that rich people have most of the money and rich people care mostly about one thing: getting paid for being rich. That happens when assets go up.
Assets have a counterparty, so policy that pumps assets can do so by encouring genuine growth (difficult, unreliable) or by whacking the counterparty over the head (easy, reliable). Anti-consumer and anti-labor policy makes stocks go up, for example. NIMY policies make real-estate go up. Allowing cross-border labor and environmental arbitrage makes bonds go up.
Once rich people get all of the money (US gini is 0.83, are we there yet?) the objective function of the entire system shifts away from satisfying the needs of people and towards whacking counterparties of assets over the head. It's an ugly thing to see, once you know how to see it.
> bofadeez
Your name and arguments are both young-libertarian coded so let me take a shot in the dark at a personal appeal: the reason why houses are so damn difficult for you to afford is that you are the counterparty.
harimau777•22m ago
The purpose of a system is what it does.
harimau777•22m ago