We need to develop an economic system around A.i+robotics that is based on socialism

[weatheriscool]

I believe that is it quite possible A.i if allowed will allow only the richest humans the right to be able to live as they'll control the a.i/robotic and the production of resources. Anyone that isn't in their good will is fucked as a.i will take 95% of jobs. This is why we MUST reform society based on using a.i and robotics to provide a UBI for all and to rethink our economic system around that. A a.i socialism that provides for all will become a live or die.

The elites and the rich are evil to the core. There is no question that they'll do exactly this and we must demand better for our future. We must a.i+robotics for good and to make life easy for all humans. Our economic system as it currently works demands enough jobs for people to work and to make enough resources to live a stable life. A.i will end that ability. Make 90% of humanity dependent upon the elites. The rich and elites are currently developing a system of a.i + robotics to control the resources and provide such in a feudalism kind of way. This is why republicans went to abolish most of our government and handing everything to the rich in terms of control of resources. They'll pretty much be barons as they'll have political power and control of your very lives. Their idea of local control is being controlled by the elites and rich within the confines of feudalism.


Techono socialism

[weatheriscool]

What technosocialism will be is a.i will be integrated into robotics + cyborgs + machines that will provide the goods and control of the production. This will then be handed out to the populace as a basic right of food, housing and the basics.

Robotics + cyborgs will build our homes, make our cars, pave our roads and farm our farms. The socialism part is that these goods and resources will then go to human beings that need it. They will be provided with a basic amount of goods or a floor to stand on without having to rely on having a job. Jobs will become rare for humans.

Government will be elected by the people with a mandate to provide this basic income and floor for all. They will also maintain the infrastructure until the a.i can maintain itself.

Humans will be free to live our lives without fear of going without and to be able to focus on our dreams. We will regulate it through government, mandate it to provide for us and enjoy the benefits.

[weatheriscool]

I disagree with the opena.i ceo. We will need to completely rethink capitalism in order to prevent all the wealth massing into the hands of the few and we already know how it goes. Maybe a hybrid system in which most of the west has been using for the past 80 years could be remodeled to force guardrails on the power of the elites and make the wealth more evenly to the populanace...But my idea makes more sense in terms of what is right.

One of the problems with this hybrid model of sticking with a form of capitalism to make everyone super rich is with what jobs? If a.i can do nearly all jobs how are we going to provide the current even in a modified way resources to people? Resources to live their lives, buy homes and to have kids? Let alone super wealth through a system of anti-trust and early 20th century social-democratic socialism in which most loserterians and republicans are solidly against just to force this wealth to pile into the hands of the few, just to have a chance of spreading it.

[Yuli Ban]

I've had one for a while now
https://www.deviantart.com/yuli-ban/art ... 1214996827
Though I still want to see how sophistic this actually is vs what actually could work.

[alexthe1]

Eventually AI will completely replace humans in the workforce. All manufacturing, catering, and virtually every job will be done by intelligent, specialized AIs. Even computer scientists will be out of work because AI will learn to code itself, maintain itself, and improve without human input.

Once this happens there will be no more shortage of resources and no more need for money. All goods and services will be provided by AI that does not need wages. This would be true socialism. Everyone will be happy because there will be no cases where someone is working harder than their peer but getting the same reward. AI will do all the work and people will be able to request as many resources as they wish. AI will remove scarcity and therefore remove money. Increasing the quantity of goods and services will drive the price of everything down to essentially free.

Money is currently the biggest factor that determines someone’s level of power in society. Once you remove it, power becomes equally spread. However, I personally think that by the time we reach that point the world’s population will be dramatically reduced to maybe 100 million or less.

Very soon lots of people will lose their means of getting a wage due to AI replacing them in the workplace. People will have to rely on government transfer payments, which means governments will then have absolute control over those who receive universal basic income. Guess who won’t need UBI? The rich. The people who own assets. People who don’t need to work to make money. Property owners, business owners, investors. These people will go on living life on their own terms. It is already like that now. If you have passive income you are not geographically or time restricted. You can do whatever you want because you have money. But for the average wage worker we are tied down to one location, unable to travel unless we beg our bosses for a couple of weeks off every few years. We sell our time for a salary that hardly, or sometimes doesn’t, meet basic needs like housing and food. Luckily the government doesn’t fully control us yet and we can still have kids and reproduce.

The sad reality is that the current work culture is bad. Workaholism when rewarded can be good. Workaholism when you work hard for 10 years so you can retire early is fine. But workaholism because you need to make mortgage payments is bad. Working hard just to afford the basics is evil.

Japan is an example. It has one of the worst work cultures in the world. It also has the lowest fertility rate in the world. Why do they work so hard? Reason number one: exploitative workplaces. Reason number two: high cost of living. People need to work crazy hours just to afford to live, leaving them with no time to reproduce and thus lowering the fertility rate.

When people have too much time due to AI automation the government will jump in to limit how many children people can have. I believe the government will either restrict or limit to one child for people who claim UBI. They will justify it by saying that people are putting a strain on government resources or that more people means more global warming and waste. The government will quietly restrict reproductive rights, limit them to one child or none, and if people revolt and disagree they will simply have their UBI taken away and potentially be exiled or imprisoned.

We are already seeing this trend in the UK. If you say something online that goes against the regime you can be arrested. If you silently pray or seem to be praying near an abortion clinic you can be arrested. This will be intensified with the digital ID they are trying to implement. First it is online censorship. Then it is limiting how much you can travel because of CO2 emissions. Then they will restrict our diet, saying that eating too much meat creates more CO2. Then clothing. Basically using digital IDs the government will be able to restrict or limit the number of resources a person can use.

This is where the world is heading. Unfortunately I don’t see a way out. The only probable way of avoiding total control over your life and your future children’s lives is by being geographically and time unrestricted, in other words by becoming rich.

[firestar464]

[weatheriscool]

Seriously, it is either what I am suggesting or feudalism with the rich regaining their power over 85% of the population. That means most people will probably lose our rights that we've fought for the past 250 years and the rich will regain their power.

A.i and robotic industrialization is happening no matter what. I suggest using it to advance human freedom instead of letting the rich through the far right undermine centuries of fighting for freedom.

What maga is really about is taking us back 300 years or more and rebuilding the old system where the elites have all the power. The idiots that vote for this are willing to hand all their power back for some religious crap.

[weatheriscool]

Seriously, it is either what I am suggesting or feudalism with the rich regaining their power over 85% of the population. That means most people will probably lose our rights that we've fought for the past 250 years and the rich will regain their power.

A.i and robotic industrialization is happening no matter what. I suggest using it to advance human freedom instead of letting the rich through the far right undermine centuries of fighting for freedom.

What maga is really about is taking us back 300 years or more and rebuilding the old system where the elites have all the power. The idiots that vote for this are willing to hand all their power back for some religious crap.

I believe toil and work to provide the basics of life should become a thing of the past. With a.i + robotics it shouldn't be necessary in most cases and it certainly shouldn't be necessary to live. A star trek like future where robotics provides should be the goal of the modern left. A life time that is provided for all and of knowledge and personal advancement.

The right/elites want to control this system so they can maintain power and use most people as subhuman trash.

[raklian]

[weatheriscool]

[WOLFSKULL]

I believe that is it quite possible A.i if allowed will allow only the richest humans the right to be able to live as they'll control the a.i/robotic and the production of resources. Anyone that isn't in their good will is fucked as a.i will take 95% of jobs. This is why we MUST reform society based on using a.i and robotics to provide a UBI for all and to rethink our economic system around that. A a.i socialism that provides for all will become a live or die.

The elites and the rich are evil to the core. There is no question that they'll do exactly this and we must demand better for our future. We must a.i+robotics for good and to make life easy for all humans. Our economic system as it currently works demands enough jobs for people to work and to make enough resources to live a stable life. A.i will end that ability. Make 90% of humanity dependent upon the elites. The rich and elites are currently developing a system of a.i + robotics to control the resources and provide such in a feudalism kind of way. This is why republicans went to abolish most of our government and handing everything to the rich in terms of control of resources. They'll pretty much be barons as they'll have political power and control of your very lives. Their idea of local control is being controlled by the elites and rich within the confines of feudalism.


Techono socialism

Dude, socialism is a form of feudalism. Free markets are what allow people to have social mobility from their contributions rather than political connections. All wealth redistribution does is create a mass of dependent low-middle-class people (that's in the best case scenario of wealthy Europe) and a small group of wealthy people in government or connected to the government.

[caltrek]

I believe that is it quite possible A.i if allowed will allow only the richest humans the right to be able to live as they'll control the a.i/robotic and the production of resources.
...

This is why republicans went to abolish most of our government and handing everything to the rich in terms of control of resources. They'll pretty much be barons as they'll have political power and control of your very lives. Their idea of local control is being controlled by the elites and rich within the confines of feudalism.


Techono socialism

Dude, socialism is a form of feudalism. Free markets are what allow people to have social mobility from their contributions rather than political connections. All wealth redistribution does is create a mass of dependent low-middle-class people (that's in the best case scenario of wealthy Europe) and a small group of wealthy people in government or connected to the government.

I don't entirely disagree with your point. Still, what you describe is theory, not necessarily reflective of reality. Most free market advocates in reality support socialism for the rich and free markets for everybody else. This system very much favors those with "political connections." Really, how many welfare recipients do you know of have "political connections."

Moreover, what you attribute to socialism is actually Welfare Capitalism. That is a society where the means of production are controlled by an elite and welfare contributions are made to the lower classes, usually for the sake of social harmony.

Socialism goes beyond that. It involves actual worker control of the means of production and recognizes labor's role in creating wealth. AI is problematic in that it can actually do away with the need for workers on the production side of things. Still, that creates a problem on the demand side. If workers no longer have jobs and receive no welfare checks, then demand plunges. Recessions and depressions result. Social mobility becomes relative as absolute wealth shrinks and shrinks until something actually comes along to reinflate the economy. That something is often a war. It can also include major infrastructure improvements or increased welfare distributions. Many futurists also like the idea of space exploration.

The feudalism that you describe is a result of a failed form of socialism. It can just as easily result from a failed form of "free market" capitalism. Particularly when a heavy dose of hypocrisy is injected.

[WOLFSKULL]

I believe that is it quite possible A.i if allowed will allow only the richest humans the right to be able to live as they'll control the a.i/robotic and the production of resources.
...

This is why republicans went to abolish most of our government and handing everything to the rich in terms of control of resources. They'll pretty much be barons as they'll have political power and control of your very lives. Their idea of local control is being controlled by the elites and rich within the confines of feudalism.


Techono socialism

Dude, socialism is a form of feudalism. Free markets are what allow people to have social mobility from their contributions rather than political connections. All wealth redistribution does is create a mass of dependent low-middle-class people (that's in the best case scenario of wealthy Europe) and a small group of wealthy people in government or connected to the government.

I don't entirely disagree with your point. Still, what you describe is theory, not necessarily reflective of reality. Most free market advocates in reality support socialism for the rich and free markets for everybody else. This system very much favors those with "political connections." Really, how many welfare recipients do you know of have "political connections."

Moreover, what you attribute to socialism is actually Welfare Capitalism. That is a society where the means of production are controlled by an elite and welfare contributions are made to the lower classes, usually for the sake of social harmony.

Socialism goes beyond that. It involves actual worker control of the means of production and recognizes labor's role in creating wealth. AI is problematic in that it can actually do away with the need for workers on the production side of things. Still, that creates a problem on the demand side. If workers no longer have jobs and receive no welfare checks, then demand plunges. Recessions and depressions result. Social mobility becomes relative as absolute wealth shrinks and shrinks until something actually comes along to reinflate the economy. That something is often a war. It can also include major infrastructure improvements or increased welfare distributions. Many futurists also like the idea of space exploration.

The feudalism that you describe is a result of a failed form of socialism. It can just as easily result from a failed form of "free market" capitalism. Particularly when a heavy dose of hypocrisy is injected.

I'm the one describing what actually happens in reality, not a fanciful theory. I don't support socialism for the rich or for anyone else. My point wasn't that welfare recipients frequently have political connections, I don't even know how you reached that conclusion. It was that in welfare systems, those with political connections are the only ones "allowed" to climb the social ladder, as the economy is managed from above, even if not entirely.

Socialism goes beyond that.

Yeah, that's why it's even worse. Mass rapture of property and the gifting of that property to people that have no legitimate claim to it (even if that was what actually happened, which it doesn't) is a sure recipe to make sure that society won't ever be prosperous. By trampling property rights you're simply demolishing the incentives that motivate people to create wealth, and taking away their ability to do so even if they were still motivated at first. We already recognize the role of labor in creating wealth, that's why they get paid. You need to recognize that entrepreneurship also holds the other half of the wealth equation.

A hypothetical scenario where human labor is made obsolete and people no longer have value to exchange would also mean that capital owners would have no use for their autonomous machines, since there would be no profit to be made by producing stuff anymore.

[caltrek]

I'm the one describing what actually happens in reality, not a fanciful theory. I don't support socialism for the rich or for anyone else.

I didn't say that you did. Like you, I was describing reality.

My point wasn't that welfare recipients frequently have political connections, I don't even know how you reached that conclusion. It was that in welfare systems, those with political connections are the only ones "allowed" to climb the social ladder, as the economy is managed from above, even if not entirely.

Thak you for that clarification

Socialism goes beyond that.

Yeah, that's why it's even worse. Mass rapture of property and the gifting of that property to people that have no legitimate claim to it (even if that was what actually happened, which it doesn't) is a sure recipe to make sure that society won't ever be prosperous.

Study history more closely and you will realize that you are describing the United States. Except maybe that the people to whom property was gifted understood how to subdivide that property, build railroads on it, construct weapons, build infrastructure, etc.

By trampling property rights you're simply demolishing the incentives that motivate people to create wealth, and taking away their ability to do so even if they were still motivated at first. We already recognize the role of labor in creating wealth, that's why they get paid. You need to recognize that entrepreneurship also holds the other half of the wealth equation.

I am not talking about trampling on property rights. I am talking about enhancing such rights. A man (or woman) should be paid a decent wage for their hard work. Their "property" should not be alienated from them so that some rich dude "with political connections" enhance his bank account and the political power that flows from such an account.

Why is it that muti-millionaires need ever increasing amounts of wealth to be "motivated," while workers are expected to work for a fraction of what they are worth with no concern as to how "motivated" they feel?

I am not against "entrepreneurship." What we have goes far beyond that. We have a managed economy controlled by a financial elite who no longer fulfill the functions of an entrepreneur, at least not in the classic sense of how that word is commonly understood. Yes, that management function includes a certain skill level and even a willingness to accept risk. What happens it that such managers are compensated way beyond their worth, while workers are subjected to terrible levels of exploitation. Sure, some compensation is in order. Study the enormous disparity of wealth in the United States and you realize that something is drastically out of whack as to who is receiving a fair compensation. That disparity has historical roots that goes back to at least the eighteenth century, yet the essential mechanism continues to this day.

[Yuli Ban]

And I choose to go even further beyond

A hypothetical scenario where human labor is made obsolete and people no longer have value to exchange would also mean that capital owners would have no use for their autonomous machines, since there would be no profit to be made by producing stuff anymore.

As I've stated with my technist theory, the moment human labor is made obsolete is likely the moment capital owners themselves also become obsolete.
We very badly extrapolate what "general intelligence/superintelligence" actually means in practice.
In actuality, basic market pressure will inevitably lead to future generalist AIs having more control over the economy

So much more in fact that it's unlikely that even billionaires will be able to maintain control of anything for long

You already see hints of this with automated stock trading, but humans are still heavily in the loop for this because we lack any sort of artificial general intelligence, and no matter how advanced current AI seems, AGI is a step beyond anything we have.

This is why I created John Henry Vyrd as a libertarian character eventually calling for socialism, or at the very least declaring it possibly inevitable

Of course the end result is not really the traditional conception of socialism
In fact I've long said that socialism fundamentally requires AI and robotics to work (funnily enough, Marx's own writings defend this very point, and he wrote that in the mid 19th century)

The fundamental problem with socialism comes down to what it's supposed to be fixing.

In Marx's case, workers produce products that are then sold, and instead of the profits going back to reimburse the workers for their actual labor, the excesses go to the owners.

Of course then you run into questions of how exactly do you calculate what an average worker "deserves" to earn based on their labor, or whether commodities in general are just exploitation

Personally I find Marx's read of history to be too recent. History of humankind truly starts with the first tool forged by the first ancestor, and our evolution has been directed by the axiom of "getting more from less work." What we call class struggle is just a side effect of specialization and unequal management and ownership. Obviously the man who figured out how to cultivate plants was going to grow wealthy enough to entice people to do more cultivation but wouldn't give them the same amount he'd take for himself. That dynamic is what bothers people and why socialism won't die off like Fascism did for a time— if you see people starving, and you see a fat jolly family with plenty, well it's just innate to the hominin brain to think "something's not right here."

Hence why socialist revolutions have been fairly standard since 1871.
Yet ironically, most of the successful revolutions occured in the states Marx would have said were least ready for socialism.
Socialism is, despite all the hoopla around it, fundamentally an ideology about transferring ownership of production to the industrial workers actually producing things so that a few owners aren't able to get rich off the labor of the masses of society. In order for that to work, you actually need an industrial working class to begin with. And not a tiny one. Coincidentally, point to just about every socialist country in the 20th century and you'll find a country that's either deeply agrarian, bombed out by war, or a single-resource economy. Sometimes all three. Not exactly conducive for growth or prosperity even with capitalism.


But getting to the point, the reason why socialism was anticipated to come from the industrial workers was because they'd produce an excess that simply wasn't going to themselves, and often would begin being replaced by machines to do the labor cheaper and faster. So Marx's prediction was that the workers would instead seize the machines for themselves, since if you're already feeling you're being robbed, why respect the thief's property rights? At that point, to the workers, it sounds more like a thief told you they can take everything from you, but if you even think of taking from them, you're the real criminal.

Ideally that's what would happen

But that rarely ever has.

Instead the workers just keep working to stay alive, and the business owners just keep operating to stay afloat— after all, most corporations have very thin margins and most goes to labor already.

There have been a bunch of revolutions in the past year alone, and none of them have been workers seizing the means of production. One even happened in a country run by Maoists (though it wasn't an anti-communist revolution)

Plus how does a Marxist explain self employment? What about outsourcing— technically, the USA is LESS ready for socialism than we were 50 years ago because we sent so much of our industrial production overseas to China. Does a computer count as the means of production? Why exactly does it have to be the workers running things rather than a more corporatist technocracy? Why should workers produce anything for non-workers? How do workers manage to produce goods but also manage operations and governance so well that the state vanishes?

A lot of problems build up with socialism the more you study it. Socialism as welfare capitalism or corporatism (like Norway or China respectively) seems to work well, with some drawbacks that aren't dealbreakers. Generally the corporatist nature of socialism is simply saying that, much as a person can be supported by their community, society in general can do that for everyone. Whether that's possible in our scarce economy is unknown.
It can't be denied that there fundamentally is no such thing as a true meritocracy— someone whose parents were successful has a cushion to fall back on that you as a lower class man won't have sans perhaps a single loan, hence why the wealthy can try multiple ventures or investments, but anyone not from the capitalist class basically has just a single shot and that's it.

But here's the thing: strange things start happening when you add advanced automation to the mix.

Bottom up or top down, it doesn't matter. The existence of parhuman or superhuman economically productive agents throws everything out of whack so supremely that I literally had to create a term ("technism") to describe it.


https://www.deviantart.com/yuli-ban/art ... 1214996827

Just repeating what I wrote here but a bit more coherently:

This is why Marx claimed all history is class struggle— in many ways, history is the story of those with access trying to gain more or stabilize what they have in the face of scarcity. To Vyrd, it runs deeper than just rich against the poor— it is struggle against the other rich, even struggle against nature who is just as ravenous for the same resources.

Vyrd extrapolated the development of technology and simply considered just why every generation sought to use technology and what they got out of it.

If humans were better off under a feudal economic system, why don't we return to it? Why do we put up with post-modernity? Simply it's because as miserable as modern humans can be, we've never had our hierarchy of needs so widely met. In real terms, even a very poor person in the West can easily come across food and some sort of shelter. Humans seek to satisfy ourselves and be comfortable.

This is why socialist countries tended to be unattractive, and why tankies and hardcore socialists and eco-anarchists make few friends from many of the nonwestern marginalized: if one who has little views the Soviet Union vs the United States, they'd see one is decadent to the point of degeneracy, while the other seems severe and often goes without (whether or not that's explicitly true at any given moment of time notwithstanding).

People want abundance if given the choice. And the West's abundance comes based off the labor of the masses of the world, where the entire globalist system is set up in a way that the Western core countries are essentially subsidized by the Global South.

We pay others to do things for us, whether that's provide food, services, land, whathaveyou. Transactions are the basis of the market economy. Market economies do not function with slavery in the core market, because slaves can't buy or sell goods or services. Capitalism can't function with chattel slaves. But running a business is expensive and often subsidized by the state in some way, such as through loans, grants, or other subsidies. Labor is typically one of the biggest expenses of any business. It's technically in the businessman's best interest to use slaves, but slavery will collapse the economy.

Socialism emerged out of an emotional reaction against the abuses of the wealthy owners of capital and high-level specialist workers against the poor and artisanal classes, and Karl Marx codified communism as one of the chief anti-capitalist ideologies. And yet every time communist regimes had been attempted, they always ended in some form of failure or corruption back to a capitalist system.

Vyrd identified something he dubbed "economic evolutionary pressure," which isn't necessarily a law of economics but simply an observation based on a confluence of sociological and economic dynamics that leads to certain outcomes.

He predicted that joint-stock companies would emerge in any industrializing state, even if it was not in the throes of a full industrial revolution. Lo and behold, the first such companies emerged in the earliest known industrializing state in world history— the Song dynasty in China, in the late first and early second millennium, widely regarded as the most sophisticated and advanced proto-industrial state before the Industrial Revolution occurred over half a millennium later. Though perhaps not a perfect theory, as the Mughal dynasty in India did not seem to develop any of its own joint-stock corporations despite also achieving a high level of proto-industrialization. But joint-stock companies did emerge again in early Renaissance Europe, which also existed in a proto-industrial state until England finally transitioned into a full industrial revolution. As Vyrd noted, joint-stock companies were necessary to fully exploit the benefits of industrialization via capital consolidation and risk diversification, allowing for reinvestment into new industries that mercantilism and feudalism were not equipped to handle effectively.


This hypothesis was rather malformed, but he used this to explain why socialism and capitalism seem to have such different economic trajectories.


His Economic Evolutionary Pressure hypothesis, in very simple terms, suggests that revolutionary socialism (the full abolition of private property, widespread or total nationalization and collectivization, and aggressive flattening of the classes) will grant the lower classes a great boost in the immediate term, but a combination of capital flight, poor incentives, consolidation of social mobility into a political class rather than an economic one, and an inability to invest in new private capital or reinvest in existing capital beyond a purely local arena will ultimately lead to long-term stagnation and exponentially increasing dysfunction. Ironically, inequality rises but even the elite class will become less and less well off in real terms.


Capitalist economies starting at the same year always initially lose: the situation for the lower classes will often be dreadful with low opportunities for mobility in dangerous jobs and few luxuries that don't funnel into the wealthy. However, thanks to private re/investment and increasing economic diversity, momentum builds over time that leads to greater and greater, if unequal, collective prosperity.

This pattern plays out throughout history repeatedly. Why do people still seek socialism when its failure is almost pre-baked into the very concept? Well for starters, it's largely a matter of assuaging the worst faults and abuses of capitalism, for the same reason the Enlightenment was popular and the Protestants were popular before that: whenever a ruling group grows insular, haughty, corrupt, and greedy and codifies its cronyist reign as the natural order, inevitably the human animal will seek to end the cronyism and justify why this is necessary. Economic activity, the side effect of transactions and trade, always leaves some party better off than another by its very nature in its own free space of action— the farmer who trades with the hunter requires raising more cattle and grains by necessity to even allow for a trade, and only the hunter who hunts and gathers the most can afford the most from the farmer, and this feedback loop persists. So it can be argued income inequality is natural like how some trees bearing more fruit is natural, but then again, cancer and tapeworms are also natural.

However, he did still have an odd feeling that something about socialism was actually sound, but limited by material restrictions.

Sorry if I'm rambling, this is just a rather extreme topic that is barely explored at all in mainstream or even most underground parlance

[Yuli Ban]

And the call-response to my post:

Vyrd anticipated the imminent creation of AGI, extrapolating the then-current state machine learning, neurosymbolic, and neural networks and realizing that generalization was a matter of applying the right architecture to big-enough data, and projected then that humanity was genuinely not more than 10-15 years away from a full-fledged artificial general intelligence, and enough investment could possibly bootstrap it sooner. Once we crossed this threshold, all bets were off, because we were essentially going to have the equivalent of a second species of humans, but humans+, without any of our physiological needs sans the need to recharge and require repairs. All this in the form of a perpetually-learning hivemind, which could take any reasonable body-shape for any required job. And at the heart of all this were going to be "cognitive generalist agents" who would, necessarily, be beyond human control (as no human organization could organize the entirety of society, the economy, macroeconomics, political organizations, etc, which was his primary argument against a sort of Cybersyn-style techno-socialism initially).

To Vyrd, the last time this could have been stopped was during the rise of deep learning in the 2010s— perhaps 2012 or 2015, if global pressure was applied against AI labs. By 2020, especially once China sought AI supremacy against America, there was no longer any other endpoint other than either AGI or civilizational collapse, and he expected that the former would come decades before the latter, because he anticipated that, contrary to many experts' predictions, we were actually far closer to AGI than anyone anticipated.

And figuring out just how AGI and robotics would impact society led him down many rabbit holes in and of itself. Rabbitholes he would not have much time to explore, as due to a rather silly unforeseen accident in late 2023, the man died of complications due to a bacterial infection.

Before his death, he would model and conjecture based off of simple thought experiments and parameters, typically along lines of the Austrian (Mises) School and Keynesian economics, though eventually a clear shift towards Marxist thinking emerged: assuming those digital economic agents were actually a real thing, what would the immediate micro and macroeconomic effects be, on business rules management, basing the basics on standard aggregate supply–aggregate demand (AS-AD) or Solow growth framework. He would then shock the model by setting the effective labor supply to near-zero and letting capital-embodied intelligence drive TFP.

• If most production decisions occur inside opaque AGI agents, do market prices still convey dispersed knowledge?
• Does a central planner armed with AGI overcome, or merely relocate, Hayek’s knowledge problem?
• When machine labour drives the marginal cost of capital goods toward energy + depreciation, does the roundaboutness of production collapse or explode?
• What happens to the natural rate of interest if durable capital becomes almost indefinitely reproducible?
• When machine labour drives the marginal cost of capital goods toward energy + depreciation, does the roundaboutness of production collapse or explode?
• What happens to the natural rate of interest if durable capital becomes almost indefinitely reproducible?
• Does ultra-cheap credit for AI expansion accelerate the classic boom-bust (malinvestment) cycle?
• At which levels of task automative ability do economic phase changes occur?
• With near-zero marginal cost, do firms still bother cutting prices—or do menu costs and oligopoly keep them rigid, creating excess supply?How does the Kalecki identity (Profit=Investment+Budget Deficit+Net Exports−SavingWorkersProfit = Investment + Budget\text{ Deficit} + Net\text{ Exports} - Saving_{Workers}Profit=Investment+Budget Deficit+Net Exports−SavingWorkers​) behave when workers’ saving rate hits zero?

Vyrd does this because none of his peers bother to even consider artificial general intelligence as a remote possibility. He is anticipating

- Artificial general intelligence being an agentic phenomenon, the effect being "universal task automation" where a proper AGI is capable of accomplishing any given physical-labor task

- Robotics advancing to a sort of cyber-Cambrian explosion, itself enabled by pre-AGI and AGI-level AI

- booms in energy capacity driven largely by solar, wind, nuclear, and eventually fusion (but early on primarily solar)



As you can probably deduce, Vyrdist economic thinking fundamentally requires one accept AGI, rather than disregard it, as it hinges on at least transformative AI existing. Attempting to ask questions about technism while downplaying automation fundamentally misunderstands the ideas in play, as if you believe AGI or transformative AI are not possible, there's little point engaging with technism.


In answering some of the questions (or at least attempting to), Vyrd came to a few interesting conclusions:

• capitalist economics makes it near impossible to avoid a technist outcome. As the primary mechanism of market economies is to maximize returns on profit, Vyrd identified that economic evolutionary pressure, the same which often dooms socialism to sagnation, will inevitably pushed for industrial capitalism to seek a state of maximum allowable automation, even if this proves irrational to consumer economies. Economic Evolutionary Pressure means that, inevitably, it will be more profitable to develop AI systems and then give economic and financial control over to those AI systems if (and when) they prove more capable at managing businesses, banking, finances, and logistics. Early AI systems will fool some into assuming we will never reach this point due to hallucinations and high error rates (<0.5%), but only a few architectural changes would be necessary to overcome this. Even if capitalist enterprises did not seek to hand over power to the machines, it's ultimately inevitable due to raw market forces— the superefficient, superprofitable AI-managed enterprise will have an absolute advantage in almost every field and likely eventually have control of the distribution of loans, rent, and raw resource management, giving humans only the barest comparative advantage.

• The Srinivasan Echo (named after a fellow colleague) will inevitably occur where AI capabilities begin expanding faster than society and business can keep up, and there exists a point where the full potential of automation is much further ahead from where a conventional economic state currently lay, to the point that workers and experts being trained in the state of the art are already obsolete before finishing the first class. He primarily used this to describe a general effect where a superintelligence could suddenly emerge ("fast takeoff") but be limited by the infrastructure of the world around it, noting that the popular imagination of artificial general/superintelligences typically assume they will be created far in the future, in a world already radically transformed by technology, when in reality the first ones will be created in a world almost totally identical to the present, which inevitably means that a digital over-mind will be forced to work within the parameters of contemporary human infrastructure. This could arbitrarily slow down the rollout of automation and fool some into thinking these systems are less capable than they actually are, and one method of alignment could even be to limit infrastructural development so that an AGI would be hobbled in real life for an extended period of time. However, Vyrd ultimately deduced this would be fruitless due to Economic Evolutionary Pressure.

• Efforts by capitalists to slow this or entirely halt this will ironically lead to capitalism's implosion, once debts can no longer be drawn and credit lines break down. Automation without basic income means the reduction of a consumer base, and the reduction of consumerism disrupts the transactional cycle of a market economy. Once the derivatives bubble is affected, there's no longer any future for a traditional capitalist economic mode as either the system collapses or AGI-managed firms take over the imploding debts. And yet, there is also very little opportunity for conventional capitalism to survive a natural shift to technism as well due to Economic Evolutionary Pressure, unless and only unless the superintelligent agents will to maintain a completely laissez-faire grip on human market cycles, something which he deemed so unlikely as to be almost schizophrenic fantasy. While superintelligences may allow for free human trade and market activity, simply deciding to not get involved in the macro economic cycle entirely was essentially wishing for "artificial deism, after we've already summoned Jehovah to Earth."

• If this future AI is still aligned to human and living values, the effects will inevitably give rise to an entirely new class in human history, one functionally similar to the bourgeoisie and nobility but begotten of a different economic mode, which he dubbed the "kleronomoi" after the ancient Greek word for "heir." The kleronomoi would benefit from machine-based social welfare, either collectively owning the machines or being granted access to machine-generated income and resources. With this capital and access to machine labor, regardless of the main economic system, there will likely reemerge a market system on top of an underlying communistic system, to fill the needs ands desires that are beyond basic goods and services, unless such activity is rendered moot for some reason (human extinction, total hivemind, transhumanist subjugation). Vyrd based much of his ideas on his study of Nauru and even described this new world order as the "Nauru Effect," claiming that the kleronomoi were likely to emerge following some sort of socialist or communist revolutionary coup, either by workers acting in the last possible moments before a transhuman-oligarch take over, or by the superintelligences themselves, though even if this does not happen, the oligarchs remaining would still qualify as a smaller kleronomic class. The his prediction for the society of the kleronomoi was also based on what he saw, suggesting that it would resemble, in his words, "a global version of a 90s American Sitcom High School", a Versailles-esque playground of generalized wealth vying more for status, where income inequality would ultimately be based around genuine ability. If there was an established "World Trust," all humans alive would receive a baseline standard of living and income, and with superintelligences managing this, this would not be redistribution of existing wealth but instead creation of new wealth, likely using much more advanced methods of resource extraction, such as "atomist resource production" (i.e. directly utilizing chemical and nucleosynthetic engineering, breaking the "ecosystemic resource production" cycle of relying on natural cycles to produce goods and opening up several orders of magnitude more material for human use even on this planet, let alone beyond it).

[WOLFSKULL]

I'm the one describing what actually happens in reality, not a fanciful theory. I don't support socialism for the rich or for anyone else.

I didn't say that you did. Like you, I was describing reality.

My point wasn't that welfare recipients frequently have political connections, I don't even know how you reached that conclusion. It was that in welfare systems, those with political connections are the only ones "allowed" to climb the social ladder, as the economy is managed from above, even if not entirely.

Thak you for that clarification

Socialism goes beyond that.

Yeah, that's why it's even worse. Mass rapture of property and the gifting of that property to people that have no legitimate claim to it (even if that was what actually happened, which it doesn't) is a sure recipe to make sure that society won't ever be prosperous.

Study history more closely and you will realize that you are describing the United States. Except maybe that the people to whom property was gifted understood how to subdivide that property, build railroads on it, construct weapons, build infrastructure, etc.

By trampling property rights you're simply demolishing the incentives that motivate people to create wealth, and taking away their ability to do so even if they were still motivated at first. We already recognize the role of labor in creating wealth, that's why they get paid. You need to recognize that entrepreneurship also holds the other half of the wealth equation.

I am not talking about trampling on property rights. I am talking about enhancing such rights. A man (or woman) should be paid a decent wage for their hard work. Their "property" should not be alienated from them so that some rich dude "with political connections" enhance his bank account and the political power that flows from such an account.

Why is it that muti-millionaires need ever increasing amounts of wealth to be "motivated," while workers are expected to work for a fraction of what they are worth with no concern as to how "motivated" they feel?

I am not against "entrepreneurship." What we have goes far beyond that. We have a managed economy controlled by a financial elite who longer fulfill the functions of an entrepreneur, at least not in the classic sense of how that word is commonly understood. Yes, that management function includes a certain skill level and even a willingness to accept risk. What happens it that such managers are compensated way beyond their worth, while workers are subjected to terrible levels of exploitation. Sure, some compensation is in order. Study the enormous disparity of wealth in the United States and you realize that something is drastically out of whack as to who is receiving a fair compensation. That disparity has historical roots that goes back to at least the eighteenth century, yet the essential mechanism continues to this day.

There are so many incorrect economic assumptions here.

Study history more closely and you will realize that you are describing the United States. Except maybe that the people to whom property was gifted understood how to subdivide that property, build railroads on it, construct weapons, build infrastructure, etc.

What are you referring to here exactly? The granting of land to settlers? That doesn't apply since they'd technically be the first owners of that property.

A man (or woman) should be paid a decent wage for their hard work.

There isn't any set amount anyone "should" be paid. Value (including the value of labor) is subjective, not objective. It should be a matter settled between employees and employers, and everyone should seek the best deal for themselves.

Their "property" should not be alienated from them

What "property"?

Why is it that muti-millionaires need ever increasing amounts of wealth to be "motivated," while workers are expected to work for a fraction of what they are worth with no concern as to how "motivated" they feel?

What someone needs to be motivated is, again, not any specific amount of money, it's a reassurance that they are entitled to the wealth they build, regardless of how much. How much they want to earn is definitely also a factor in motivating work, but that's accounted for simply by employers paying an amount they figure will be enough to attract workers, which they won't if the amount is low enough. Also, what do you mean "a fraction of what they are worth"? How did you determine that? Again, value is subjective and constantly shifting.

What happens it that such managers are compensated way beyond their worth, while workers are subjected to terrible levels of exploitation. Sure, some compensation is in order.

Again, value is subjective. Go take it up with the executive boards.

Study the enormous disparity of wealth in the United States and you realize that something is drastically out of whack as to who is receiving a fair compensation.

Why? "Fair" doesn't mean "equal", it means "appropriate". People are wildly unequal in the amount of value they're capable of creating, for a multitude of reasons.

[caltrek]

I didn't say that you did. Like you, I was describing reality.

My point wasn't that welfare recipients frequently have political connections, I don't even know how you reached that conclusion. It was that in welfare systems, those with political connections are the only ones "allowed" to climb the social ladder, as the economy is managed from above, even if not entirely.

Thak you for that clarification

Socialism goes beyond that.

Yeah, that's why it's even worse. Mass rapture of property and the gifting of that property to people that have no legitimate claim to it (even if that was what actually happened, which it doesn't) is a sure recipe to make sure that society won't ever be prosperous.

Study history more closely and you will realize that you are describing the United States. Except maybe that the people to whom property was gifted understood how to subdivide that property, build railroads on it, construct weapons, build infrastructure, etc.

By trampling property rights you're simply demolishing the incentives that motivate people to create wealth, and taking away their ability to do so even if they were still motivated at first. We already recognize the role of labor in creating wealth, that's why they get paid. You need to recognize that entrepreneurship also holds the other half of the wealth equation.

I am not talking about trampling on property rights. I am talking about enhancing such rights. A man (or woman) should be paid a decent wage for their hard work. Their "property" should not be alienated from them so that some rich dude "with political connections" enhance his bank account and the political power that flows from such an account.

Why is it that muti-millionaires need ever increasing amounts of wealth to be "motivated," while workers are expected to work for a fraction of what they are worth with no concern as to how "motivated" they feel?

I am not against "entrepreneurship." What we have goes far beyond that. We have a managed economy controlled by a financial elite who longer fulfill the functions of an entrepreneur, at least not in the classic sense of how that word is commonly understood. Yes, that management function includes a certain skill level and even a willingness to accept risk. What happens it that such managers are compensated way beyond their worth, while workers are subjected to terrible levels of exploitation. Sure, some compensation is in order. Study the enormous disparity of wealth in the United States and you realize that something is drastically out of whack as to who is receiving a fair compensation. That disparity has historical roots that goes back to at least the eighteenth century, yet the essential mechanism continues to this day.

There are so many incorrect economic assumptions here.

My discussion of alienated property rights of workers needed better context. More on that later.

I asked a question regarding motivation. You conveniently ignored that question, probably dismissing it as rhetorical in nature. For whatever reason, you dodged the question.

Huge inequality of wealth in this country is beyond a doubt.

[caltrek]

Study history more closely and you will realize that you are describing the United States. Except maybe that the people to whom property was gifted understood how to subdivide that property, build railroads on it, construct weapons, build infrastructure, etc.

What are you referring to here exactly? The granting of land to settlers? That doesn't apply since they'd technically be the first owners of that property.

1. Before the United States even became a country, the crown granted enormous tracts of land to well-connected individuals who often then proceeded to subdivide the land. They did so at enormous profit to themselves.

2. Enormous tracts of land were granted to selected folks such as Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and C.P. Huntington. This was payment for railroad construction. It allowed them to become enormously wealthy. They were not the only such railroad barons.

3. The military industrial complex involved contracts to often politically well-connected individuals. Contract solicitation often involved structuring requests for proposals in ways that favored such individuals. Other approaches could have easily been adopted. A premium on awarding to small business for example.

4. For infrastructure projects I refer you to Cadillac Desert that documents the construction of dams, and other such water system projects. Often benefitting particular property owners and communities at the exclusion of others. There have also been projects like the construction of the Golden Gate bridge and of course the nation's highway system. The exact routes often benefited some communities at the exclusion of others.

5. "Technically" being the first owners ignores Native Americans who previously occupied the land. Often, they had no conception of property rights but rather thought in terms of hunting, fishing and foraging rights. A misunderstanding that would cost them dearly. Additionally, they were often displaced from their land through brute force. This occurred despite what was often a profound understanding of sustainable practices. To this day, for example, we are trying to catch up to them in the intelligent use of prescribed burns

6. Not mentioned initially was the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Such interment often resulted in the loss of property to opportunists who took advantage of their desperate situation.

7. Also not mentioned was the tremendous amount of research and development the benefits of which were often privatized. This has been particularly true of the medical and pharmaceutical fields.

[caltrek]

A man (or woman) should be paid a decent wage for their hard work.

There isn't any set amount anyone "should" be paid. Value (including the value of labor) is subjective, not objective. It should be a matter settled between employees and employers, and everyone should seek the best deal for themselves.

This is highly idealistic and ignores the role of government in tilting the playing field to capitalists. Police and military were often deployed in their favor. The settlement often involved individuals bargaining with capital with a prejudice against collective bargaining rights. Political connections and influence were highly important in this process.