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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.
For those of us who grew up in such conditions, going "My five year old and three year old have to share a room instead of having a room each? I'm living in slum conditions!" evokes a wry smile.
Not even close to what I wrote. But hey, if you want to relive your childhood, I'm sure you can find a retirement home with small rooms and a roommate to share.
Oh no, I'm going to pin you down on this, no wiggling out with "I never said that!" You said exactly that: "cramming 4+ kids with kids sharing rooms in bunk beds".
If we're going to stroll down Memory Lane, yeah I spent the first fifteen years of my life as one of four kids, two parents, and a bedridden grandmother in a house with (for the first seven years of my life) no running water. Yes, we shared bedrooms, the horror! No, we didn't have bunk beds, because bunk beds would have been a luxury item.
By modern standards where "you put your newborn baby into a room on its own and leave it abandoned there in the dark overnight, no that's normal childrearing, what do you mean that's abusive?", that is probably "oh, the humanity!" By 1959 standards, that would have been pretty okay.
I don't know how you grew up, but there are always worse things and better things whatever era you pick. Right now, there are people trying to cram kids into rooms where they are in emergency accommodation without a home of their own. So yeah, going on about "oh my god, kids in bunk beds, two or even more to a room" as the utmost in horrible awful living conditions? Not anywhere fucking close.
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