Technology is set to double our aggregate productivity once again — but in a totally unprecedented and upside down way. We know what to do about this. We just can't bring ourselves to think about it.
Very thoughtful post. Up until now I've thought UBI was a clear answer, but the way you describe it is it's basically too late for UBI. What this makes me imagine is the "fix" is essentially a collective campaign to raise everyone's quality of life. UBI + affordable housing + free health insurance + access to cheap high quality food, internet, and community spaces + far better public transportation. Basically what I've seen China looks like on rednote. Otherwise, once the revolutionary momentum gets going, it's not going to accept anything less.
You write "We need to reconfigure our economy to pay employees what they currently earn — in exchange for half the work. "
Are you referring to ALL workers or just the affected workers? If the former, that is exactly what FDR did in his initial efforts to build the widely-shared prosperity of postwar era.
If you are suggesting only the affected workers, coders and knowledge workers in general (i.e. they get a doubling of their wage while the others get nothing) that would likely lead to more Trumps or revolution.
A key feature that I believe is necessary is for AI to be taxes on its productivity at the rate you would tax the labor that task previously took, or more simply, higher corporate, capital gains, dividends, rent and other investment taxes.
If you did all that the expected result would be rising wages for people who do physical jobs and stagnant wages for knowledge workers. You would expect to see a massive shift to trades, driving their wage growth down, while the wages of unskilled workers would rise.
It would be the return of the "loser-friendly" economy we used to have (working on a post on this) and a more human economy.
The stumbling block is the "bro-ligarchs" who will own this AI tech and who are going to want to use it to achieve a form of neo-feudalism as Elon Musk may even now be in the early stages of doing in preparation for this eventuality.
An error in your thinking might be that if knowledge workers lose their jobs, their demand goes away. What these AIs do only has value in an economy where there is demand for their work product. A possible outcome of introduction of AI would be a shrinking of the economy. Much of what AI starts to do would become stuff we don't need anymore because we are in a deep depression do to all the laid-off knowledge workers.
Very thoughtful post. Up until now I've thought UBI was a clear answer, but the way you describe it is it's basically too late for UBI. What this makes me imagine is the "fix" is essentially a collective campaign to raise everyone's quality of life. UBI + affordable housing + free health insurance + access to cheap high quality food, internet, and community spaces + far better public transportation. Basically what I've seen China looks like on rednote. Otherwise, once the revolutionary momentum gets going, it's not going to accept anything less.
You write "We need to reconfigure our economy to pay employees what they currently earn — in exchange for half the work. "
Are you referring to ALL workers or just the affected workers? If the former, that is exactly what FDR did in his initial efforts to build the widely-shared prosperity of postwar era.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-the-new-dealers-gained-the-ability
If you are suggesting only the affected workers, coders and knowledge workers in general (i.e. they get a doubling of their wage while the others get nothing) that would likely lead to more Trumps or revolution.
A key feature that I believe is necessary is for AI to be taxes on its productivity at the rate you would tax the labor that task previously took, or more simply, higher corporate, capital gains, dividends, rent and other investment taxes.
If you did all that the expected result would be rising wages for people who do physical jobs and stagnant wages for knowledge workers. You would expect to see a massive shift to trades, driving their wage growth down, while the wages of unskilled workers would rise.
It would be the return of the "loser-friendly" economy we used to have (working on a post on this) and a more human economy.
The stumbling block is the "bro-ligarchs" who will own this AI tech and who are going to want to use it to achieve a form of neo-feudalism as Elon Musk may even now be in the early stages of doing in preparation for this eventuality.
An error in your thinking might be that if knowledge workers lose their jobs, their demand goes away. What these AIs do only has value in an economy where there is demand for their work product. A possible outcome of introduction of AI would be a shrinking of the economy. Much of what AI starts to do would become stuff we don't need anymore because we are in a deep depression do to all the laid-off knowledge workers.