As software developers, we know what getting workers to have better lives while working less looks like. There's some sleight of hand at play, though, in the employer/employee relationship (favoring the employer).
> Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?"
It's not just AI, but technology generally. And it's because when it comes to managing people, organizations for the most part don't actually concern themselves with getting their employees to produce value—that is, whether they are, and how much, and at what cost (to the business) it comes at, and where that measure of productivity lies (objectively) when scored against some rubric. Instead what they make their most immediate concern is whether their employees are exposed to sufficient toil. Look at any example that involves someone accepting a new job with a set of work duties/expectations where they proceed to automate part of their workload and thus provide the same value (or more) in comparison to what they were doing before, or in comparison to their coworkers, or in comparison to whomever would have ended up with the job if the person who did accept and automate it had accepted an offer elsewhere instead: they end up soliciting feedback (or opining themselves) about whether what they're doing is unethical.
This is the mechanism that wealth disparity through concentration of wealth comes from, but everyone (the employer and the employee alike) walks around as if they either don't notice it or—if they do—as if it's wrong when there's a known path for the concentration to flow upward but it isn't happening.
> their most immediate concern is whether their employees are exposed to sufficient toil.
Protestant work ethic, twisted and disfigured through late capitalism
has become a sadistic and wholly disgusting human trait. To impose
moral, intellectual and physical labour on others, not of necessity,
nor to create value, but to serve a system rooted in guilt and a
craving for validation in the eyes of others is about as un-Christian
as can be.
Only until your business is targetted by big corp and goes bust/bankrupt.
Or acquired. Then the wealth flows upwards, employees are cut, to make things more profitable, and the people who originally created something great are not getting much for it. Instead, if they are not let go, they are under new lords, who take a big chunk of the profits.
Or a competitor gets VC funded and by means of marketting and sales, instead of actually making a better product and your business' product's adoption is dwarfed.
I think there are many reasons why some business can fail, and most of them are not about the amount of created value. The free market is not a rationally acting person.
You haven't responded (clearly) here to anything I actually said. You just posted two short, dismissive comments consisting of glib non-specifics.
If you want to dispute what I'm saying, how about starting with the example I gave (an employee figures out how to automate part of their job, enabling them to either 1. deliver the same amount of value to their employer at a fraction of the effort, or 2. deliver something like 2x–10x or more value, owing to the fact that they've been able to automate it)?
If you automate part of your job resulting in a 2x improvement of your productivity, you have demonstrated a skill that you can sell for more money. That's how you realize the value you created.
> The wealth didn't "flow" to you. You created it.
Er, right. The "flow" here refers to what happens to the wealth after creation.
If after you create it you or your employer then undertake some change to the work arrangement (e.g. imposing a higher quota on productivity—thus allowing your employer to capture the additional value that you created while keeping your net wealth constant, along with the day-to-day toil you the worker are subjected to, probably—or maybe even increasing it), that would be an example of wealth flowing upward.
You created outsized value relative to needs of the employer. Your (wealthier) employer captured it and enriched themselves. That's wealth concentration.
When buying lunch are you paying the (fixed) price asked by its creator or are you sharing (some of) the future value that hamburger is providing you in nourishment and work energy for the rest of the afternoon?
Listening to and reading books by economists. If you think about it, you'll see it in action all the time. After all, consider yourself. Does wealth "flow" to you? Or do you create value at your job, and exchange that value for your paycheck?
> Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?"
It's not just AI, but technology generally. And it's because when it comes to managing people, organizations for the most part don't actually concern themselves with getting their employees to produce value—that is, whether they are, and how much, and at what cost (to the business) it comes at, and where that measure of productivity lies (objectively) when scored against some rubric. Instead what they make their most immediate concern is whether their employees are exposed to sufficient toil. Look at any example that involves someone accepting a new job with a set of work duties/expectations where they proceed to automate part of their workload and thus provide the same value (or more) in comparison to what they were doing before, or in comparison to their coworkers, or in comparison to whomever would have ended up with the job if the person who did accept and automate it had accepted an offer elsewhere instead: they end up soliciting feedback (or opining themselves) about whether what they're doing is unethical.
This is the mechanism that wealth disparity through concentration of wealth comes from, but everyone (the employer and the employee alike) walks around as if they either don't notice it or—if they do—as if it's wrong when there's a known path for the concentration to flow upward but it isn't happening.