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131 points Traces | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.413s | source
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myrmidon ◴[] No.44442370[source]
I think increased automation and now AI are making wealth inequality problems inherently worse.

The existence (and prevalence) of food delivery work alone is a depressing portent in my view: If delivering food for objectively shitty pay is still a viable option for a lot of people, that signals to me that human labor has become borderline worthless (even in a wealthy/developed environment).

That makes the "american dream" (=> start from nothing, do a good job, become wealthy) increasingly less realistic.

I'm also afraid that this (preventing wealth inequality from getting out-of-control) might be a "practically unsolvable" problem for democracies in general (just like managing housing and public pensions): It is too easy to "sabotage" democratic progress for the negatively affected minority (and that minority is exceedingly powerful/well-positioned, too).

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1. barney54 ◴[] No.44442463[source]
AI hasn't had an impact yet.

Automation is great and has made things undeniably better. In the 1800s, 30% of the US GDP was tree cutting. https://x.com/AlecStapp/status/1939912893102760063 Before automation, nearly everyone was involved with agriculture. Today is much better.

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2. myrmidon ◴[] No.44442609[source]
I'm not saying that things are necessarily gonna get worse-- just that human work decreasing in relative value creates huge (new!) problems for our current wealth distribution mechanisms.

Maybe there is an easy way to have our cake and eat it, too (like consistent wealth taxation like the article suggests), but I'm doubtful.

In the past, basically every form of investment used to involve human labor to some degree-- meaning that every rich industrial magnate also automatically created opportunities for zero-net-worth workers/builders/employees.

But when your big investments just become server racks and industrial robots, then you no longer have this balancing mechanism, and you probably need to do something to prevent wealth concentration without bounds (and to guarantee opportunities for "worthless" individuals).