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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3576 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022

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Any thoughts on what stock one ought to buy right now, as someone whose gradual getting spooked by AI advances has finally passed a critical threshold, in order to be in a good position in the specific subspace of possible futures where most humans have become economically worthless but the current system of contracts and titles remains intact?

Specifically, the "the vast majority of the economy is one or a handful of AI conglomerates, plus whatever industry is required to keep them running; whoever has a share may be less screwed" scenario. I can just about think of Google (for DeepMind) and Microsoft (who seem to be OpenAI's closest openly traded partner), and maybe Nvidia if one expects their GPUs to continue being unrivaled as hardware platforms.

I don't know, is it inconceivable that UBI+light wireheading through superstimuli could keep the vast majority of people sufficiently placid to prevent widespread upheaval until the problem solves itself through birthrate collapse? This would have the same effect as a genocide of the poor, but not involve a lot of violence or even generally offense to revealed ethical preference.

Capitalism relies on a social contract in which people have the opportunity to better their situation. The end of employment takes away that opportunity.

I'm not so convinced of this, insofar as my impression is that over the past 1000 years, most societies were sufficiently "capitalist" in the sense that private property and ownership stakes were mostly honoured most of the time, but in the majority of them most people did not have a meaningful opportunity to significantly better their situation.

In practice most states historically undertook massive spending as a share of GDP by using government monopolies or significant state owned property as either direct sources of funding, or collateral on debt, rather than through taxes.

So, is it possible that the government will choose to nationalize large chunks of the economy to fund enormous welfare programs, rather than raise taxes?

And, BTW, Argentina, Russia, and Lebanon have all seen declines in middle class standard of living without massive political instability within living memory, haven’t they?

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