Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

The vast majority of jobs that sustain our standard of living are blue-collar: farmers who grow our food, textile workers who make our clothes, construction workers who build our homes, plumbers, electricians, waste disposal workers, etc. I'd say it's white-collar work that became overinflated this past century, largely as a reaction to the automation and outsourcing of many traditional blue-collar roles.

Now, with white-collar jobs themselves increasingly at risk, it's unclear where people will turn. The economic pie continues to shrink, and I don't see that trend reversing.

It appears to me that our socio-economic model simply doesn't scale with technology. We need to have a constructive conversation about how to adapt.

The way I see it you only have two real choices:

1. Raise wages to match global increased productivity

2. Democratize ownership

That's it.

Democratize ownership it is.

Imagine an early human group of 40 people. If one person hoarded the food of 37 others and employed the remaining two just to guard it, it wasn't long before the ruse was up and there was a revolt and the food reclaimed.

Now, only because of scale and abstraction, basically the same setup is possible (0.1% owns as much as 50% of the population).

Our time is perverted ownership-wise, and it's time to go back to a truly cooperative society.

Cooperation, not hoarding, was the foundation of the beginning of civilisation.

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My ideal future resembles Star Trek: a world where money is obsolete (at least on Earth), and people pursue exploration, science, and the arts purely out of passion and curiosity.

A society driven by innovation, not profit.

I don't think the world where a mob of people can gang up on a person and take their stuff is as idyllic as you think it is. If the person who has figured out how to earn a lot of food doesn't get to "hoard" it, it'll just get hoarded by a person with the biggest stick.

What's worse (for the society), is that in this world nobody has an incentive to create wealth, because they know it'll just be taken away. When rich people aren't in power, people with political capital and big guns are. I don't think that's better.

If AGI takes over, that changes things, somewhat. If it creates unlimited abundance, then it shouldn't matter who has the most (if everyone has plenty). Yes, it would create power disparity, but the thing is, there'll always be SOMEBODY at the top of the social hierarchy, with most of the money and power - in the AGI scenario, that is someone who is in charge of AGI's actions.

Either it's AGI itself (in which case all bets are off, since it's an alien god we cannot control), or the people who have developed AGI, or the politicians who have nationalized it.

Personally, I'm uncomfortable with anyone having that much power, but if I had to pick the lesser evil - I'd prefer it to be a CEO of an AI company (who, at least, had the competence and skill to create it), instead of the AGI itself (who has no reason to care about us unless we solve alignment), or one of the political world leaders (all of whom seem actively insane and/or evil).

Most hunter gather societies have big differences in productivity between members. I remember reading one example where one man did all of the hunting for a tribe of about 40 people. He really enjoyed both the hunting and the status of being the best hunter. He shared the meat freely. No one was taking it away.

Nothing about the current system (capitalism) prevents people from sharing freely, that's just charity. I think it's wonderful and admirable when people do that, and I fully support that, as long as it's voluntary.

I'd be happy to live in a version of society where there's enough abundance and good will that people just give to charity, and that is enough to support everyone, and nobody is being forced to do anything they don't want.

I only dislike it when people advocate for involuntary redistribution of wealth, because it has a lot of negative side effects people aren't thinking through. Also, because I think that it's evil and results in the sort of society and culture where it would be a nightmare to live in.

Isn't "involuntary redistribution of wealth" literally every country on earth though (aside from a few that have such a lack of rule of law that the state can't tax the population)? Do you consider the entire developed world (and most of the rest) a nightmare to live in?

I live in Germany where we have taxes & don't consider it a nightmare.

I think it's a gradient. When I think about the "nightmare to live in", I think Soviet Union or North Korea. Those are the places who went all-in on redistribution.

Most western countries mostly respect individual freedom and property, taxes being an exception to that, somewhat limited and controlled. I see that as a necessary evil - something we can't fully avoid (at least, I can't figure out how we'd do that), but should try to minimize, to avoid sliding down the spectrum towards more and more evil versions of that.

I think most western countries are nice to live in because they do comparatively good job at respecting people's freedom, property, and the right to keep the stuff they earn.

Advocating for more redistribution is taking steps away from that, in the direction people don't realize they don't want to go in.