Transcript
Title text: This is how you all fucking sound
[A smug tech bro wearing a sideways cap, watch, chain around his neck stands in front of a data center by a lake with dead fish. A smoke stack blows pollution into the air]
Tech bro: AI is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug man in a suit with cigarette in hand stands in a restaurant while two disgruntled diners cough from the smoke]
Suit: Smoking indoors is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug man in a top hat and suit stands in a factory with two sad and dirty children]
Hat: Child labor is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug plantation owner stands in front of a field with with two angry slaves]
Plantation owner: The Atlantic Slave trade is already here, there’s no going back.
AI will eventually enable a society without wage slavery. Everyone will have enough and some extra. No one will need to work.
And there literally is no other option to get a society without the need to work. AI really is the only way.
For that to happen, society needs to be structured in a way that the benefits of greater productivity is distributed to everyone, particularly those most in need.
I sure as hell don't see that happening anywhere at the moment. Productivity has grown steadily since I entered the workforce - my paycheck sure as hell hasn't reflected that.
Yes, society will adapt. If it doesn't, civil war will force it to. There is no way that 90% of the population of an industrialized nation with a second amendment will just watch their children starve to death because some rich guy sits on food he can't sell because no one has any money.
If we were to get the fantasy version of AI you're talking about, the civil war will be more like Dune.
So much wrong with this line of thinking.
First, it relies on societal progress as a given when in reality it is not. We have more slaves now than at anytime in history. We have greater wealth inequality than at any time in history. We have not ended systemic racism, sexism, or ableism.
Second, you highly overestimate the positive effects of the 2nd amendment. So far guns have not solved a single major US problem and instead have contributed to a climate of massive human suffering. From the million people dead from gun violence in the last twenty years in the US to the highest rates of child death by firearm in the world.
While most modern countries have next to zero child related deaths due to guns, in the US it has become the number one killer of children. Guns have not been an effective tool for any major human rights movements and instead have been a tool of oppression. It is important to point out most 2nd amendment gun nutters would be on the side of the government and more than willing to kill agitators demanding equality or equity.
Third, class consciousness is at an all time low as evidenced by lack of organized labor and a nearly universal rule by the wealthy in every major country. Believing that starving is going to suddenly create this instead of delivering more chaos and death is frankly ridiculous.
Lul
Not a fan of reality I see.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/slavery/modern/modern_1.shtml
https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/
Of course if you're going for absolute numbers, it's hard to beat our 8B population, but it makes more sense to be speaking in percentages.
Doesn't cover anything more than the past couple of decades. That's not 'any time in history', just a very minute and cherry picked segment of it. Go back to the medieval era and before and see what wealth inequality looked like then.
Yes absolutely absolute numbers. Furthermore, if you consider underemployed people as wage slaves this number is easily ten times the estimated 50 million modern day slaves.
Wealth inequality has been increasingly dramatically for at least the last 8 decades.
You harken back to a mythical era where we don't have actual economic data operating in an entirely different economic system. Sorry, but that is about as convincing as a wet fart.
What we do know is since we have been gathering statistical information on economies the wealth gap has continued to grow. With only a couple of eastern block countries in the post-soviet era that had a brief reprieve from an ever increasing wealth gap, which has long since gone away.
Or perhaps you just didn't bother looking.
https://wid.world/document/inequality-in-history-a-long-run-view-wid-world-working-paper-2024-05/
No disagreement there then, except for which metric is more important.
You better start including serfs and peasants, 99% of the population historically, to those slave number comparisons then. Though there's a good argument to be made they should be included anyway.
Face it, compared to the entirety of human history, we're in a golden age. Things ONLY look bleak when you're looking at recent history. And even then, only in the western world. The rest of us from outside the Anglosphere have pretty much only seen things improving in the past century.
We already talked about absolutely absolute numbers. More wealth inequality than ever before in history. We already have the first trillionaires coming on line my man. You can't make this shit up, but I am sure people are still in denial.
I will readily admit we simply don't know a lot about recent history let alone ancient history economic numbers. To be honest even primary sources can be contrived as we have seen with the US recently. I can only imagine how historians will have to interpret Trumplethinskin's economic numbers.
I could give you a strong sure saying a general statement like income inequality was worse back in the days of kings. I don't know that though empirically. What I do know empirically is it is the worse now than ever in history and it is going to get even worse in the future.
If you think industrialization made things better for the human condition then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. What I will say is currently there are a lot more people (probably a billion) from let's say 40 years ago that have access to fresh water and electricity. That is pretty amazing and perhaps some kind of silver lining to a very dark fascist cloud.
As typical of capitalism, if it is small and well regulated it can somewhat equitably distribute resources. This mythical small market capitalism invariably gives way to monopoly due to corporatism and I would argue eventually leads to a hyper capilitistic corporatocracy (aka fascism).
This is purely my opinion but why I bring it up is every single nation is a victim of this. The wealth gap is growing dramatically everywhere, even in a place like China where people thought capitalism could be tamed. China is now pumping out more billionaires per year than the US.
This is not unique to western anglosphere and frankly if you studied history you would not be looking on any nation kindly. Atrocities and genocides are universal, but I will admit the US, in particular, has outdone everyone.
The military industrial complex that sprang forth from it and subsequently spread to the whole world has caused worldwide suffering on an unimaginable scale compared to all of history. Just imagine an industry that constantly has to grow in every country and the only way they grow is through murder. I digress though.
I hate to say it, but anything past hunter and gatherer has been real shitty for humans. I don't think history shows things getting better at all and your rosy outlook is probably because your ancestors were not ruthlessly murdered in the countless human purges throughout history.
You do have a point by some metrics though. Overall violence, war, and even crime have been decreasing. That and with billions of people no longer living in abject poverty, I can see your point and it is very hopeful. if not for a lot of other unfortunate factors I could even agree to it.