In a post-scarcity society, having a meagre policy to keep people alive and not-unruly is cheap. It's also getting way ahead of ourselves, since it's nowhere in sight. Software hiring was up this year.
Not really. The planet is crowded, currently with mostly productive members of society.
For the ultra rich psychos who run the show, do you really think they want poor people hanging around? When we can be wiped out in a few months?
Consider the pure greed Donald Trump is displaying. Now imagine that the 1000 most powerful people are the same, except they are smart enough to at least not rub it in peoples faces on live television.
> do you really think they want poor people hanging around?
Which by your rationale would include everyone who isn't rich (and tautologically would mean "no one is rich anymore"). They do not care whether we're hanging around, the same way they do not care now whether poor people exist. It has no bearing. All that does is whether they remain rich and powerful, and last I checked, that's relative. Being the only one left on the planet won't make you feel rich, and there being poors on a piece of land won't have any bearing on you.
> When we can be wiped out in a few months?
Lol
Also, on the population front, growth is poised to completely stall in less than 100 years. The fertility rate is terrible in developed countries, and falling quickly in developing ones as they get richer
want to believe it? mon ami have you looked at any labor history?
they used to send 9 year olds to the mines. mortality rates were as high as 50% before they turned 20.
why do you think the AI robber barons are any nicer? it is painfully obvious they're not. and all of this is set to a backdrop of global ecological collapse.
Yeah, at the advent of the industrial revolution. And prior to that 80% of people had to work the land, with no ammonia, just horses and manure.
Labor conditions from over a century ago, before the laws were written, have no bearing on whether wealthy people would try their best to kill you "just because". That's nonsensical.
The only reason any of us can read is because industrialists a long time ago decided we would be more productive if we would. The labour standards in the US today established by FDR and the New Deal were done under duress, with a very popular effectively holding a gun to the ownership class's head. They've been working to claw it all back ever since.
The whole reason trillions are being spent on AI and not making thing better for little people is because we don't want to have to depend on them anymore for anything... you know, so we can get rid of them. Having 8 billion people alive at once is a huge liability.
Their wealth is more contingent on our consumption than employment status. If that goes, then you're looking at a zero-sum society where no new wealth is generated.
Ultimately people will remain enterprising status-seekers. Rich people can already sit around with their wealth doing fuck-all excepting consuming, and they don't.
> Their wealth is more contingent on our consumption than employment status.
Is it? Or is it dependent on the consumption of someone much greater than you.
For example: I was reading something the other day about dining experiences in Las Vegas. Really though, the video was about how recently Vegas has abandoned the traditional middle class patrons in favor of providing experiences to a smaller, but much wealthier clientele. This seems to be a trend across many industries. In some cases your consumption is even a cost center to be eliminated in favor of a more successful customer base.
lol well the majority of the top 1% globally didn't make their fortune serving food, to other wealthy patrons no less (how's that for circular reasoning). We're in a consumer society, B2B sales is a thing but it's a side-effect of that.
They wealthy will be buying islands (as big as Australia) get high on cocaine and do safari, shooting humans there as the ultimate fun [1]. The prey underestimates how the mind of predator works, and that's why it is a prey.
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” —- John Maynard Keynes
What does the data and observations tell us so far, in this context?
That’s certainly a component, but I think the biggest issue is that people have this religious fervor that capitalism is the only way to structure a socioeconomic system, even when the data shows it is exceptionally bad at ensuring a good quality of life for the majority of citizens.
It’s changing in the US with Democratic Socialists over performing, and with high support for them with the under 35 cohort, the question is if this momentum can be sustained for years through various election cycles (as ~2M 55+ voters age out every year, and ~3M voters turn 18 and age into the electorate every year).
“Progress occurs one funeral at a time.” — Max Planck
>So the theory is bait, and hard to take seriously.
There are people who believe that Trump won in 2020, that vaccines cause autism, and that the Holocaust is a hoax. You cannot reason people out of an idea they didn't use reason to arrive at.
Many of the people I know that believe odd things do use reason, but they only accept certain things as facts and discard other things as dysfactual.
Sometimes the things they accept is facts are merely delusions, of course, but that doesn't mean they don't reason. It just means that their reason is based on delusions.
Otoh, I also have met a number of people that when you ask "because why" freeze up as they simply have no basis at all and don't understand themselves why they came to hold a position.
And we can't forget that wood and witches are the only things that float because Science.
My favorite conspiracy of the moment is that Trump won in 2020 and lost in 2024, but they switched them because he needed more time. People truly are regrettable.
"The negationist proposition, in the age in which it is being advanced, cannot therefore be truly denied, since everything, all of us, including those who reject it, have passed over, whether we like it or not, into an age where there is no longer any objective recourse. The proposition, therefore, can be rejected only by a kind of mirror denial. And that is where its victory lies - though in fact it is not its victory, but the victory of real time over the present, over the past, over any form whatsoever of logical articulation of reality." - Jean Baudrillard
Homeless people are a better way to keep cowardly minions (I mean, valuable employees) in line than cops. The homeless are an important part of capitalist power structures. They are a visible reminder of the consequences for not meeting quarterly goals.
There's a bit of Mad Libs in there as well, you can for example add your own conversation topics or draw your own food items or pets which the characters will then talk to each other about.
A real artificial intelligence would be capable of independent and original thought. What we have today are mere plagiarism factories. They need to be called out for what they are.
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