Like most of us I go back and forth between sheer optimism and fear for the future that AI may usher in. Recently I started vibe coding a fun video game with my ten year old. The experience is different than my work because it’s been such a joy to basically have a personal genie in a bottle help me make some personal art with a loved one regardless of either of our skill sets. The concept the author of this post is arguing now resonates with me more than it would have a few weeks ago. The sheer surface area that AI can create in our intellectual life is limitless and needs humans to explore. There can never be enough of us in that sense. Whether it’s as validators or creators.
If AI leads to an era of abundance, then the economic system has to change. The system it transitions to and what that transition looks like will need to be fought for, and I imagine it’ll be done better in some places than others. Yet I think the parallel existential question of meaning in this world is one that is inherently optimistic. Humans decide meaning, it is not something imposed on us or taken away by the existence of something else.
How do you think this will work? Do you think the whole of the rest of the world, about 7 billion people, will agree to give up on wanting to reach the western life standard that is currently consuming 4 Earth's of resources every year?
Will all rich people in all countries collectively agree to be moved into tiny apts same size and give up their luxuries?
If not, how do you define who gets what? Who gets to live in the fancy house, etc?
The distribution of goods will probably be maintained until others lower the gap over time.
Using the metric of “4 earths of resources” is confusing and easily misunderstood. What that metric means is that if everyone were to have the same consumption as the average U.S. person tomorrow, we wouldn’t have enough renewable resources to meet demand.
This is not an insurmountable problem. It just requires increasing production everywhere else. Your cited metric isn’t a stat on the theoretical limit of global production, it’s one that describes its current limits.
The stat also factors in carbon emissions, but this is also easily addressable in a world where labor and maintenance is cheap.
Land, energy infrastructure, mineral deposits, grid capacity, etc.
Who gets to live in the nice parts of the world? Who has a national park as a neighbour? Who gets to be ravaged by hurricanes every year?
Who gets to have more energy production closer to then? Who will own the land that has the finite resources that are used to create abundance? Where will people with the most power live?
There are so many reasons beyond production why certain areas fare better than others inherently, I have not seen any answer to this apart from that all rich people will just fold and we will all be moved into soviet skyscrapers which I find improbable.
I think everyone having the same standard of living any time soon is an unrealistic expectation. I expect standards to be sustainably raised, not for people to have all their problems solved.
This is more an organizational/political problem than a technology problem.
Our current oligarch-capitalist system (wherein most of the world is dictatorship or plutocratic) is not capable of equitable resource distribution. However, future, better systems of organization will likely provide better mechanisms for distrubtion.
Capitalism is an old and dying system. It is clearly unfit for the 21st century. It's best thought of as anachronistic, like feudalism. Once it's been excised from our societies, we'll be able to answer your questions.
Any planned economy is inherently built upon a bias and ideology that is culturally specific to the creators of it. There is no way that the US will accept a planned economy ran by China, or by India. However these countries followed by Africa will be the most populated areas of the world, so some would argue they should have more to say about this planned economy.
Meanwhile capitalism bases itself on game-theory and evolutionary selection. You compete with power, sexual selection and resources. It's sadly a system more aligned with the natural order of things. If you strip away all banks, hedge funds, etc, you are again going to get people who want to mate with the hottest fit partner, get the most resources to ensure survival of their offspring, etc.
The organizational/political problem I mention above with the land use land in the same bucket. Who gets the best land, etc. Historically this has just been decided by war and killing each other. Maybe you're right and that's where we end up, but that is very far from the utopias talked about in the comments above.
There’s no reason a priori to think capitalism more efficient or better for common utility functions (growth, human wellbeing, planetary sustainability).
A “planned economy” is very vague. Usually people imply a central committee deciding what to do. Our economy relies on plutocrats to decide what to do. At what point of plutocratic concentration would you call the US economy planned? My point is all these terms are fuzzy.
My point is that capitalism as is practiced in America is a failed ideology. From the vantage of the present day, it appears painfully antiquated. A pathetic vestige of a less civilized world.
It’s interesting because America had the opportunity to lead the journey to the next organizing principle for socio-economic, but instead decided to get stuck in the past. Pathetic, but standard course. I think it’s because our leadership is in their 80s.
When making this statement, you need to provide answers for the resource allocation question that both comment above didn't answer. What concrete institutions/principles would allocate resources better while remaining robust to the same human incentives that undermine capitalism today?
While you can't do this, capitalism is not failed, outdated, or antiquated. Which country gets what, who gets to live where, why, etc.
> When making this statement, you need to provide answers for the resource allocation question that both comment above didn't answer.
Why? Do movie critics need to be directors to critique? Obviously not.
> While you can't do this, capitalism is not failed, outdated, or antiquated.
Why? Capitalism is clearly failing the world. Being outdated is I suppose a relative perspective. I view it as outdated because it doesn't meet the needs of our current technology. Remember that economic systems are a function of available technology: they exist only in a social context. Our technology has already reached the point where capitalism is counter-productive.
I would love to have a replacement system ready to go. My hunch is it will require a lot of compute.
I don't think "abundance" is a stable state. There are always ways to use more resources and more energy, so no matter how much we have, it will never be "enough" -- abundance is just a transition state where a population or system has not yet figured out how to grind the surplus. The faster the progress, the shorter I would expect these periods to be.
We could feed the whole population of the world if we decided to, we definitely have enough production[1]. If we pretend AI-assisted automation can do most work - which still currently is an highly dubious claim - we could just provide food and shelter for free to everyone, if we so desired. It would require quite a lot of restructuring and dietary changes, but it is possible.
You're right that we could already feed everyone with a different distribution of produced wealth. That part is not something that AI will change (although it would raise the resulting standard of living).
What it does change is the basic equation underlying capitalism as an economic system: a few people concentrate capital in their hands, but capital by itself is useless without labor, so they have to hire workers to produce something useful with all that capital that they own. The workers get a shit sandwich, comparatively speaking (given the amount of wealth they generate), but they do get something out of it. The system is stable overall because, while a better arrangement is possible, most people - even low-wage workers - have too much to lose to riot.
With AI that can do most work, the capital no longer needs labor. People who own all the robots can just have them produce whatever they need. Everybody else is then "economically redundant", and the whole system collapses because people aren't going to sit around and starve because there are no longer jobs to be had - and at this point they have nothing left to lose and everything to gain by rebelling and taking over the capital.
> Everybody else is then "economically redundant", and the whole system collapses because people aren't going to sit around and starve because there are no longer jobs to be had
This is a non sequitur. People being economically redundant doesn’t necessitate a system collapse. It assumes our existing systems can’t handle an increase (assuming we have economically redundant people today) in those who are economically redundant.
Capitalism defines who owns the means of production scoped to the definition of ownership in a particular governance structure. In the U.S., for example, full ownership gives people the right to produce as much as they want with rules in place to seize the rights of ownership if broken.
One rule of ownership is that taxes must be levied on the positive return of capital. This today is what helps funds the welfare state. The idea that the system collapses implies we won’t be able to scale this welfare state up which seems unlikely to me.
There’s already a deficit caused by welfare spending. An increase in abundance (of work, resources, etc.) can reasonably alleviate this if we consider the possibilities in removing inefficiencies within the government itself and their biggest cost drivers like public health.
If this is true, you would think that companies would be opening shops in the middle of (some shithole country) so they can make money (or someone else would grab it). But they don’t, why is that?
Referring to countries as "shithole countries" does not help in understanding the current dynamic between rich and poor nations. So perhaps it is helpful to understand what that is, without the pejoratives.
Firstly, each country is different. So the relationship between say the USA and Mexico is different to the relationship between the USA and say Ethiopia.
By "richness" we might also be better off thinking as less "spare cash" and more "standard of living". Which includes food, housing etc but also security, safety etc.
In truth much of the US "richness" depends on other nations. If there was no Latin labor the US would have a fresh produce problem. Indeed the very premise of DJT is that the US has a trade deficit with just about everyone. Much of US "richness" is thus dependent on the "poorness" of others.
Yes automation, cheaper energy, AI can reduce the labor content of goods and make them universally cheaper. Yes I believe in a future where the overall standard of living increases.
But it would be a mistake to believe the US is "leading" US there. The US achieved its current position at the barrel of a gun, and uses the military (and threat of military) to interfere with countries and regions either overtly or covertly. The entire premise of the cold war (outside of western europe) was premised on interventions to resist countries switching their political model to something the locals preferred.
And yes, maybe the locals preferred wrong. But the US didn't promote democracy, they promoted "willingness to keep supplying us". Countries which were leaning away from the US had to be punished. (Shah in Iran, Vietnam etc.)
I could go on, but I'll stop there. Suffice to say that an equitable standard of living is not in the (current) interest of most US citizens.
Exactly, it is already priced in. Try setting up shop in the middle of some really bad country and you will soon realize why food is not getting there.
The companies do not do this, because equal distribution of resources is poison to capitalism. The world where everyone are fed, and their basic needs - shelter, medication etc. - are taken care of, does not have trillionaires. Possibly not even billionaires.
It is not profitable to give people humane standards of living. You work a lot harder when you see the homeless on the street on your way to work.
Money will become unnecessary. The future Anthro Park will no doubt provide a safe enclosure, feeding at regular intervals, and an enriching environment for you and your fellow semi-evolved simians.
The current approach to resource distribution worked so far. When it stops working because we have too much abundance, we'll settle on another one.
That doesn't mean the transition will be smooth. It doesn't mean that certain classes won't be worse off. I can certainly imagine programmers being among the losers. And there certainly are futures where we slide in dystopia. So let's try building the good futures. Alea iacta est.
I would kind of disagree for personal projects like that. If it’s such a personal project with your young-in, shouldn’t the journey be the treasure? Also, with vibe coding out, custom vibe software/games, and already a lot of games, I would hope you’re not looking for a pay day.
> The sheer surface area that AI can create in our intellectual life is limitless
I agree with this statement, though I think this Brave New World is incredibly exciting to some and dystopian to others. The former group might include those that value the intellectual process above financial reward and status.
The flip side is there are many people, especially in tech, where their area of expertise has evaporated along with their lucrative and previously high status careers. It used to be possible to have a technical job by essentially following recipes and it turns out AI is far better at that than a human.
The linked article lays out why human understanding of mathematical models remains essential and I think the same applies to software. We're gonna need more software engineers who are able to think critically.
I think the most realistic analogy I can think of is the financial sector. A few large banks/hedge funds blow up due to unregulated greed/ambition, damage is socialized, regulations are put in place, and then chipped away at over a few years and everyones back to where they started.
Maybe code owners? I'm not sure if it'll do exactly what you want; but you can say that "such and such" files must be edited, or reviewed, by specific users.
Then, if someone opens a PR who isn't one of those people listed, it requires them to be a reviewer.
We use it for .editorconfig; specifically, we don't want a newcomer to come in, not like a style rule, and slip in a change.
and they will become obsolete much slower if at all compared to when the mac will be barely usable once macos stop supporting it in 8 years or so. although maybe by that time there will be local models that you could run straight on the same mac that will reverse engineer it for you and write linux drivers
Ten years ago, around the time Instagram started allowing influencers to monetize their posts, I remember thinking that the bar for “selling out” had suddenly been drastically lowered. In the past, companies had to weigh a lot of factors before selling out, usually for millions of dollars. Now, an individual gig worker may, out of economic necessity, have to sell out for $500.
As people become brands—or aspire to become brands—every meaningful aspect of life, from intimate family moments to vacations, is pushed toward commodification and monetization. The craving for fame becomes intertwined with that process, with each reinforcing the other. And when you're a modern equivalent to a hunter and gatherer, there's little time or (incentive) to step back and reflect on the system that led you and your cohort to this bleak place.
I think you're conflating productivity growth with distribution. Technology increased wealth, but whether workers shared in those gains depended heavily on bargaining power and institutions.
The Robber Barons were able to r>g their empires just fine in gold-backed currency.
The Cantillon Pump is only one of several major "rich get richer" mechanisms in the economy. It is not the most important, and it does not consistently run in the same direction (wages can inflate faster than assets).
It can be caused by deficit spending. It can also be caused by supply shocks. For example, if you restrict building new housing, the price of housing will increase, both rents and house prices. If you tariff imports, a basket including those goods will rise in price to the degree those imports are not substituable. If you start a war in the Middle East, oil prices will rise, and increased energy costs can feed into lots of different things, raising prices.
Sigh. It is always the result of deficit spending.
Bob earns $20 every day. He buys 5 eggs $2/ea and 5 apples $2/ea every day. Now, due to supply shocks, egg prices double. He still has only $20, and so he now buys fewer eggs and fewer apples.
What happens when he buys fewer apples? The price of apples goes down, due to the Law of Supply and Demand. There is no inflation.
What happens when this economy is flooded with dollars? The Law of Supply and Demand again, meaning the value of each dollar drops. That means the dollar price of eggs and apples rise, as well as his wages.
Oil prices rising means people have less money to spend meaning prices of other things drop.
Another way to look at it is the US had zero net inflation from 1800-1914. From 1914 to today a dollar is worth 3 cents of a 1914 dollar. That isn't due to supply shocks, and there certainly were plenty of supply shocks before 1914.
1914 is when the Fed was created and empowered to print money with no backing.
People had to put up with deflationary shocks and yet robber barons built their empires all the same. Hard money doesn't stop r>g, it doesn't stop expected returns from growing increasingly burdensome, and it doesn't stop assets from appreciating relative to wages. It doesn't actually deliver the things we care about.
It delivers plenty of things we don't care for, though. History provides the most lurid examples, but we have modern ones too. In the US, Clinton balanced the budget and the macroeconomic consequences broke something very important (audience participation: what was it? Hint: we call them "dual deficits" for a reason). We quickly took our finger off the stove, though, so it was only a lesson for the observant. Germany on the other hand kept its debt brake in place, which mechanically suppressed investment (macro 101 quiz time again: why?) with staggering consequences, leading to one of the most underinvested economies in Europe and almost completely shutting them out of the digital revolution, in which I privately suspect they'd have otherwise participated fabulously. In any case, had Clinton installed a debt brake, that would have been us. HackerNews, YCombinator, and all the ZIRP babies around these parts would have been among the most affected. The Magnificent 7 would not have all been in the US.
So no, deficits aren't the root of all evil and the appropriate deficit is considerably north of 0. That said, it's south of where we have it. Interest rates are the gauge. Is money being pushed in (low rates) or pulled in (high rates)? We are transitioning from the former regime to the latter regime, partly due to imperial retreat, partly due to crisis-level spending in a time of no crisis which is wildly irresponsible. The US is clearly headed for a debt crisis. But the answer is belt-tightening and either gentle-repression-over-time like we did after WWII (fat chance) or an inflation spike followed by a rate hike (probably several) until the bond market is happy again. It's going to be bumpy, but not as bumpy as the hard money counterfactual.
Louis Brandeis would like a word. In particular: no, the fact that tech advances and economies of scale dropped oil prices at the same time Rockefeller was building his monopoly does not make that monopoly harmless or good or justify it into perpetuity.
More importantly, after Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork brought us back to robber-baron era antitrust policy, we've seen robber-baron level corporate consolidation and corporate profits. We've exceeded them in most regards, in fact. It has been terrible for consumers and excellent for shareholders.
Printing money without backing is not deficit spending!
We're all well aware of the money supply, M1 / M2 / M3, velocity of money, etc. It's important for money to not get tight when the economy slows down, and it's important to tighten up the amount of money when the velocity increases again. But this is neither deficit spending nor printing money without backing!
Inflation is can come from a social psychological phenomenon around expectations. If the cost of living goes up in a surprising way, you feel the pinch. You want more money. Maybe your employer gives you a raise, and raises prices to compensate, reasoning that other things are also going up in price. The risk is this creates a self-propagating loop (which in turn does to a degree depend on accommodating institutions that don't restrict monetary supply).
You can trigger inflation through loose monetary policy, sure, and you can dampen the cycle by restricting the supply of money, and that's been the main function of independent central banks for most of the latter 20th and 21st century.
But inflation is literally just increase in the cost of living. It's a symptom, not a disease. It admits multiple explanations.
One of the better comments I've heard is from philosopher Bernardo Kastrup: if you build a computationally perfect simulation of a human kidney on your computer, no one expects it to start producing urine on your desk.
Probably about ~35-40 apartments in Barcelona. Going out to Spanish rural areas, you could probably buy ~4-6 abandoned villages with that, you'll get multiple houses, municipal buildings and whatever administrative stuff they had too.
You can definitely get a decent jet in that budget, there's a popular tech youtuber who recently bought one for considerably less. I'm pretty sure you could get like 6 houses in mountain view and still have money left over for a jet.
I think if you take a selfie with your phone at just the right angle and don't show your forked tail, you might pull it off. It's a tried and true internet technique.
It's not just the acquisition costs, it's the employee payroll--two pilots, one flight attendant, engine overhauls every six months, other maintenance. See the Amalfi Jets video on costs.
There should also be a counter article titled the real cost of NOT owning a home. At least in the macro sense, there are consequences for a generation spanning the global that is willing but unable to afford to purchase a home.
I’ve disabled YouTube recommendations does anyone have a good resource for discovering things based on interest or even better a one time dump of some form of my recent watch history?
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