
From rust belt to robot belt: Turning AI into jobs in the US heartland - jedwhite
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611412/ai-could-wreak-economic-havoc-we-need-more-of-it/
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jillesvangurp
The industrial revolution already made a lot of work meaningless. Mostly,
we're not working. And when we are working, the work we do is comparatively
meaningless; as in not directly related to esssential things such as producing
food or other goods people need to survive.

The tacit deal is that we all pretend to be 'productive' and in exchange we
receive cash which we use to spend on stuff we never really needed but are
sort of nice to have. Things like restaurants, dog walking services, netflix,
etc.

So AI is just rubbing our noses into just how shallow and meaningless most
jobs really are. So, your life's achievement was moving things around in some
production line in some factory? Well, machines can do that faster than
humans. Maintaining the machines is of course going to be a thing, until we
automate that as well.

The real question is what will drive the economy when nobody has any money to
spend because we are all out of jobs. All those automated factories will be
pointless if nobody is buying the output.

The answer is very simple: print money and hand it out. That is in fact how
economies work for the last century or so. You may think you have a meaningful
job but it is just the illusion of productivity. In all likelihood what you do
is not nearly as important (if it matters at all) for the economy as how you
spend what you earn. Do the math: how much of your life in hours will you
spend actually 'working'. In most western societies, the answer is about less
than 5% on average since your productive life is only about 50% of your life
span, of which you only work 20-25%. The rest is free time, weekends,
vacations. And that is assuming you have a job and are actually part of the
working force at all, which is not necessarily true for more than half the
population.

~~~
raducu
Money is a voting system on how natural resources and the time of others is
spent.

The non-democratic component of money is good for innovation.

How will we find a money-distribution process that: prevents 1% of people to
accumulate 90% of the wealth, allows individual mobility across social
classes, incentives innovation and correct allocation of resources?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Printing money devalues it a little. It hits harder when you have millions or
billions, than when you have little. So printing money seems to be on the side
of redistributing wealth, not concentrating it?

~~~
Nasrudith
Putting aside complete currency crashes it devalues savings. In addition to
the top capturing more revenue assets like real estate don't depricate with
inflation and may receive a post adjustment boost in value.

