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Notes -
Consider the following thought experiment, courtesy of Scott Summer
I think this is a good counterpart to the AGI questions below. There is a massive conceptual gap in defining welfare across vastly different levels of technological mastery.
It also highlights that some of the analysis misses the largest factor here -- that AGI (if it happens, sadly not if it doesn't pan out) will greatly increase the quality and personalization of a large set of goods & services. If that does happen, it will dwarf the distributional aspects.
Scott Summer (Sumner?) is making a valid point here, but this is like the least convincing way he could put it if he wants to persuade the MAGA right, which I presume is what he's trying to do. They'll tend to read this argument as "You'd be 8 times richer but think of all the processed goyslop and TikToks you'd miss out on!!!"
I certainly prefer living in 2025 to 1959 all things considered, but I'm something of a futurist. I wish I could live in 2125.
Right? This is the sort of argument that makes economists look like crazy people. Or rather, like ivory tower academics who have no idea what the real world is like. It's almost like a strawman version of an economist, where the only thing he cares about is maximizing GDP and ignores anything else.
There's plenty of other things you could point to in the 1950s that would horrify a modern person though. For example, most of their jobs were terrible, and families were cramming 4+ kids into a tiny home, with kids sharing rooms in bunk beds. Also very limited heat or AC, and you'd waste a lot of time on menial household chores if you weren't rich enough to afford servants.
What's wrong with that? Plenty of kids still share rooms and they don't really mind bunk beds.
I dont think its like, objectively morally wrong or anything. I just think most people find it uncomfortable and would prefer not to live that way. At least past the age of, like, 6.
My brothers and I shared rooms (2 per room) until they were 18 and went off to college. Only my sister had her own room until then.
that sounds uh... awkward. i mean. I'm glad that you're family was so close. you're probably happy in many ways, and I envy the close family relationship you have. but wasn't it uh... awkward...?
Not at all? We each had our own beds, and we each had our own "half" of the room that we wouldn't go into (other than passing through on our way in/out of the room). Really nothing awkward at all. The brother I shared a room with was 5 years older than me so I had my own room from age 13 onward.
Yeah, this is one of those Universal Human Experience things; having post-puberty children of the same gender (and sometimes even opposite gender) sharing rooms is either unspeakably verbotten or absolutely normal, sometimes within the same social class just fifty miles away from each other.
It was kinda awkward for me and my brother, even (maybe especially) because neither of us had come out, but it's also just something you deal with and it's not that big a deal.
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