PALO ALTO, CA - With Silicon Valley boasting that artificial intelligence could replace millions of jobs around the world, currently laid-off workers have reported having more free time to form angry mobs dedicated to storming and torching the homes of the tech billionaires responsible.
I get the impression we’re in the final stages of “money” as we’ve known it and heading to some sort of digital feudalism where most people don’t own much of anything and rent, lease, or pay a subscription to access everything else. You don’t need to buy a smart fridge that analyzes your behavior because it was supplied by your landlord. Can’t tamper with it, can’t replace it, and older models are no longer supported. Can’t repair the 40yo car you own because it’s no longer considered “safe”, plus they quit making replacement parts so you have to get a new one. I would not at all be surprised to watch them shift to an all digital money market where your rent, bills, and subscriptions are withheld and distributed as a convenience and when you go shopping the retailer adjusts the price based on your ability and willingness to pay more. You might make 10% more than your coworker but WalMart knows that and gouges you for every last cent of discretionary income they can pull. Can’t shop anywhere else, it’s all the same because the same people own everything. Jobs will exist, the illusion of “work hard/climb the ladder” will be abandoned and the tasks it’s cheaper/more efficient to use human labor in will be your career options. If you cannot find a mate one will be assigned to you and the expenses of your children (obligated to provide) will be deducted from your wages, after taxes of course.
Dystopian and dark, probably a bit of a stretch, but I do think there’s an effort to make private property and capitalism as we’ve known it a thing of the past. Not in a socialist, collectivist way, but to get to some perpetual indentured servitude.
What to do about it? Sink the ship. Yeah, we’re on it; so are they. Some of us won’t survive, there’s no guarantee we’ll win, but we’re constantly patching up a 250yo vessel that has some parts worth saving but is mostly rotten. We sleep in the bilge while they enjoy the cabin. Scuttle it and start again. I get why people still aren’t ready to do that, but I guess we’ll see what they think of our prospects when elections start getting cancelled, suppressed, or ignored.
That’s the key thing I was kinda talking about. Work will always exist - but there won’t be enough for everyone. At this rate there’s quickly going to be millions of “useless” people with no market value, no jobs, no nothing - this has already started to happen in China for example. What will they do then, when the mass of people gets big enough? The systems aren’t capable of getting rid of all of us quickly enough either, since this problem is already rising way faster than even fascists can build death camps, as the real cause is companies trying to maximize their short-term profits without caring about anything else, and not some carefully orchestrated plan aiming for this scenario.
And yeah, the ships are on the way to sink themselves right now. Societies with safety nets will likely fare a bit longer than ones with no social security, since the options are either taxing the AI etc. companies enough to pay sort of general income to everyone, or the total collapse with the figurative (or literal) guillotines being build