@emmadavidson you'd think this was a strange mismatch, until you realize that they also think there are to many humans on the planet, and starvation is a clean way to get rid of a reasonable percentage.

@emmadavidson From what I can tell, we are a lot further from everyone becoming redundant than many proponents of #AI are saying. However, we should start planning for the possibility, now. And a UBI would be a good idea, anyway.

@emmadavidson

After the billionaires "win," there will be no need for them of customers, no need for them of people, save for a few slaves, or however many they want.

@emmadavidson They don't need customers. They've got all the assets they can possibly want, and far more than they actually need. They'll set up a servile elite that they provide a comfortable quality of life for, and let everyone else hang.

Which is pretty much what happened for a lot of human history anyway.

@emmadavidson This is the key question. Who owns the country's resources? Are we all entitled to a share of the spoils? Universal Basic Income is the best answer imo, and the sooner the better, with so many now being affected by weather disasters. #auspol

@emmadavidson Also I think the billionaires have failed to factor in the inevitable appearance of torches, pitchforks, and guillotines.

@emmadavidson While this is a concern, & higher minimum wages do lead to higher aggregate demand (notably in US states with very low minimum wages), businesses that chose to have substantially higher costs thank competitors lose customers & fail.
Fortunately,
a) so far we have found other useful work for humans. Much of it "service economy".
b) machines aren't that clever - AI is over hyped. Incremental improvements are more common than successful full replacement of people. 18 months ago I saw an LLM being used largely as a rapid programming language to integrate snippets written in other languages and it was expensive to run. The project failed.

Rural towns have faded because machines do 99% of the work that was done by humans & horses ... except picking fruit & some vegetables. Road trains move twice as much per driver as semi trailers that moved twice as much as earlier trucks. Mechanisation & automation produces less expensive food.
Hacking and ransomware is a big growth industry ☹️

@emmadavidson totally agree but I don’t think they are planning that far ahead. I still hold a dream that national infrastructure would be used to bust these power imbalances, even though Aussies are now allergic to state owned stuff.

@anne_twain @keira_reckons it’s on my wish list when I finish Omar Musa’s latest novel, Fierceland, which deals with capitalism and climate change and violence

https://www.anu.edu.au/events/meet-the-author-omar-musa

(By the way, if you listen to the podcast from this event, I asked the question about what music he listens to while he writes)

@keira_reckons @emmadavidson Have you read Tim Winton's novel "Juice"?

@keira_reckons I think you’re expressing what a lot of people worry about

@emmadavidson I realise I sound a bit OTT

@emmadavidson basically, they don't want or need cash, exactly, just most of whatever resource exists at any given time.

It's cash now. But if they tank everything and the rest of us starve/fight/die in climate fires, they still "win" if they have the most food, safety and comfort. I think the plan to is coast out of the end of capitalism and into the new feudal system.

If we acted while there was still some rule of law and they hadn't fully built up the militia situation, it might stop. But we won't. There are no majority-party politicians with a willingness to notice that capitalism is a little bit bad, let alone that these guys are tying to usher in something worse.

There are quite a few SciFi stories that go this way, these guys just got confused about who the heroes of those stories were.