this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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Long ago I learned in an economics class that business is all about exploitation of underprivileged populations. From indigenous people to slaves to poor citizens to “third-world” countries.
Corporations are running out of people to exploit globally, so the idea of infinite artificial labor is the holy grail of cost optimization.
Most of the shit going on right now can be explained by fatcats in the West, having run out of Economic growth to capture as the West's growth rate pretty much collapsed (quite possible due to the very actions those fatcats during the Neoliberal era, were amongst other things Social Mobility collapsed), have increasingly started pillaging the wealth and productive capacity of the rest of society, or in other words, exploiting everybody else.
It's a vicious cycle were the tightening of the screws on everybody else leads to lower productivity and higher discontent which in turn leads to further tightening of the screws on everybody else in order for the elites to keep on getting wealthier at the same rate.
AI was supposed to be a way for the fatcats to be able to extract even more wealth from the rest whist having less exposure to all those pesky natural human and societal responses to that.
Its a problem, don't get me wrong, but the real fuck up was they decided they decided they needed gains on the wealth increase rate also. It wasn't enough to just "make money", they HAVE to constantly make MORE making money every turn.
Making 10% profits (or whateber) ever quarter was no longer good enough, they needed to increase profits every quarter too, 10%, 11%, 13%, the line going up, must also go up at a going up rate.
They just accelerated it and fucked everyone.
and what will likely happen is when they finally develop it, suddenly that thing deserves to not be exploited.
Nah. I haven't seen a convincing argument that gen AI is going to coalesce from this shit show.
"AI" is going to coalesce into a single mass before it implodes.
never said it would. I'm asserting that by the time AI gets to the point where its as useful as humans, it'll inherently be as deserving of autonomy and freedom as we are. which brings you back to being required to pay a living wage.
My point is, I don't believe the current AI tech is going to get to the point where it's as useful as humans.
We have long since reached the point where diminishing returns make significant improvements or advancement unfeasible.
yes, we're talking about different things.