I think we'll have post-scarcity before the singularity because of the nanofactory which doesn't even require AGI (but AGI will significantly accelerate the advent of the nanofactory).

We already have post-scarcity telecommunications, and the cost of raw materials is decreasing towards zero marginal cost, so even on our current technological trajectory, we will inevitably become near post-scarcity. But AGI will take our current technological progress and accelerate it. Do you think the nanofactory will be usable on all known materials? We can't develop post-scarcity if some resources are still literally scarce.

That possible future transition isn't guaranteed. A few broadly capable AGIs in the world that are tightly controlled would make that transition less likely. Many easily replicated AGI systems in the world would make it more likely, but it would also make it more likely you would not survive long enough to enjoy it.

The Economics of Automation: What Does Our Machine Future Look Like?

Something really bad will happen, perhaps a nuclear war, perhaps a giant vulcano. We will need to stick togeter as humans or perish like animals.

So, are you saying that to transition into a post-scarcity system, that we will need to democratize AGI? And thus, make AGI available for everyone? But also, doing so would doom us?

It's either we all eventually find a way to live together in harmony on Earth or we will all die.

I don't see how resources could realistically be scarce with the technologies in the pipeline, not only the nanofactory, but also perovskite solar cells; such technologies will enable everyone to become entirely self-sustaining.

could, yes.

Resources could become scarce if technologies are not used properly. If we keep using the current economic system of growth and environmental destruction, we could irreversibly destroy our habitat and fail to reverse climate change. If everyone on Earth can agree to overcome capitalism and declare the world's resources as the common ownership of all humans, as well as overcome our stupidities and differences, then we have a chance to appropriately use those solar cells, nanofactories, and all other fantastic technologies to provide resource abundance.

That's a bit defeatist don't you think? You're saying that we really have no chance to peacefully transition into a sustainable and peaceful future.

Painfully most likely, but quickly.

I share that thought. The transition will cause an immense amount of social chaos at first. The longer that chaos persists, the longer the transition.

The thing is that there will be a paradigm shift in everything (including global warming), meaning change will definitely occur, an example of which is that nuclear fusion will enable unlimited energy, so I see a golden future for everyone.

I think we are too dumb to make it work. It's going to be bad but luckily I don't think it will last long

I fully expect the transition to be bad. But, bad enough to the point that we go extinct? I have more faith in humanity than that.

Messily. Based on previous economic crises I expect politicians to run around like headless chickens in response to the cratering labor force participation rate before eventually implementing UBI to handle the transition.

I think you're right. The politicians, and the government, will not know what to do. Regulators around the world are already struggling to figure out how to regulate artificial intelligence. When unemployment is 30% and rising, and economic growth has stopped, and masses of people in poverty who have no purpose other than their job, the governments of the world will almost certainly collapse too.

Chaos, famine and death.

I think transition can be gradual or quick, painful. I think we as a species can make the choice of how we want the future to be manifested because the future is in a state of superposition that can be affected by our collective observation.

The future is certainly in a state of superposition, no doubt about that. But I disagree, the reality of the situation will be more complicated than "gradual or quick". In the future, 8+ billion people learning to live together that are all from different backgrounds and understandings will be hell.

If we can't, perhaps someday other species will be able to.

Not no chance, just unlikely.

That seems very dubious. Why in the world would the government collapse? It isn't in keeping in any way with either previous behavior or any of the implications of the situation. If anything, even in regards to concern over results you are likely looking at the opposite of what you might want to be concerned about (there's a reason for the sayings about government increases in authority during crisis). More practically it's likely they'll be rather useless until they gradually fumble their way to things that work.

I think we’ll have an economic collapse caused by automation destroying jobs.

Society will stratify into a very small number of insanely wealthy, a small working class, and a very large number of unemployed poor.

Post scarcity will be the very small number of insanely wealthy as the new social structure solidifies into a feudal society and the unemployed poor are discouraged from reproducing.

On the subject of nanofactories, here is a thread from just a little while ago that is required for nanofactories

https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/zfii7t/the_smallest_robotic_arm_you_can_imagine_is/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

In a capitalist society, either the capitalists don't let it happen, creating artificial scarcity or:

abundance based non profits will form and out compete for profit enterprises, because they can sell without a profit motive.

this will drive the prices of abundant goods way down, and drive for-profit endeavors in the sector out of business, but before that happens they will try to make it illegal to do so.

there will be political strife. maybe violence. for abundance to flourish capitalism must suffer. it is zero sum in this sense.

by its nature abundant goods are not profitable.

We have been post-scarcity for about a century. We're currently living under what is known as artificial scarcity.

Slaps button on desk

"You should read Conquest of Bread"

Or prevented outright. The robots will keep the poor in line too.

There isn't really scarcity now. Most scarcity is artificial. Business destroy pounds of perfectly good food and goods to keep prices up. Planned obsolescence is another form of artificial scarcity.

The system is truly fucked-up. I don't see AGI or ASI changing that as long as it is under human control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t18cfqMbTw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE

>This is possibly the most tumultuous and uncertain period of human history

this is pure ignorance. 13th century was the worst, the mongols genocided many nations wiping them off completely (all central asian cities were wiped out), killed off estimated 90% of northern chinese and Persians. and could threaten western europe and ultimately entire human civilization if they succeeded since the mongols wanted to reach the great western sea (Atlantic) but failed in hungary and poland in their second invasions.

scarcity will never be gone. its physics.

and look at food scarcity. nowadays American poor are associated with obesity. 100 years ago fatness was associated with wealth.

so food scarcity on the absolutely level is totally gone in America, but do you see everyone in US happy about food? nope. just as much bitching and complaining.

a couple months ago i saw some privilleged upper middle class complaining on redit about having to "downgrade their lifestyle" from rib eye to porterhouse because muuuuuuuh inflation, something like that.

then you have the poor in US bitching about can "only" afford fast food and not veges. lmao. meanwhile 3rd worlders would craze over such lifestyle coz they cant even afford meat every day

humans are naturally ungrateful and entitled. scarcity will never go away even on this psychological level, let alone phyisical level (travel cant be faster be speed of light, for instance).

Designed Digital Scarcity

You think people can live to face their true non delusional selves without all their egotistical power grabs to help them forget that they haven’t spent time developing as human beings whatsoever and can’t stand each other, or even their own company?????

Will it transition? I mean most opportunities in the past to reflect diminishing have been taken advantage of by the already wealthy- who often get to control how the new surplus society creates is distributed. Why would this be any different? The material wealth of the industrial revolution wasn’t brought to the masses before actual revolution in some cases and then conciliation by the rich to buy off revolution in others, like in the new deal.

We’ll see a massive decrease in the purchasing power of the working classes due to the increased leverage ownership of AI and manufacturing technology gives to the wealthy, probably a new flood of people to the “gig” economy and informal economy, and further bloated budgets for defense and policing to crack down on increasing unrest brought by economic uncertainty as well as the impacts of climate change. Now more goods than ever will be produced, so when I say purchasing power will decrease dramatically for those not already wealthy, I want to elaborate: many goods will decrease in price dramatically, but the benefit of this will, for the lowest portions of the population, be outweighed by dramatic increases in prices of things like housing, as well as the massive downward pressure on wages a more competitive labor pool will experience as mass unemployment takes hold. We’ll likely see some incremental reform, say a Universal basic income or something similar, but not to any degree to change the fundamental shift in power dynamics a singularity would cause.

This much seems certain, but what happens from there is a question we’ll have to wait on. I for one am hopeful that age of peace and unprecedented prosperity is on the other side of this, but with the institutional structures of our day where they stand, it will take significant struggle to see this through even when the technology advanced to a point where it’s possible to live post scarcity, and the outcome of that struggle is not inevitable.

I often hear people argue against this by saying more goods than ever will be produced, how can the working class see a loss in wealth?

I think people fail to account for the immense lack of jobs this will cause, as well as the relative power gain the wealthy will experience by controlling even more of the manufacturing process than they already do. Any downward pressure on the price of goods would be totally offset for the working classes by the immense downward pressure also caused on wages, and the inflationary pressure that would happen on a good like housing or food- not because they are more scarce, but because the people in control of them can afford to take relatively more of your income

I think you’re minimizing problems like food deserts here, and it seems quite disingenuous to say “the poor are becoming fat, so any complaints about scarcity of food in America is invalid”- they’re growing fat because the only food they can afford are nutritionally null processed foods. In spite of the abundance of calories, they’re not getting enough nutrients necessary for survival. And then you have the fact that an immense number of children in this country are not fat and are not well fed- and are skipping meals consistently. Sure there are fewer cases of this happening today, yet still only a little over half of American children consistently eat 3 meals a day. I for one know if I didn’t have a school lunch program when I was child, I would’ve been skipping two meals a day rather than just one. But sure, people are just bitching about nothing. Those uppity poors must be well fed, I mean look at the size of them.

Discouraging reproduction is the nice side. Genocide is another option.

With carnage and pain

co-ops?

We are already in post-scarcity with regard to many information based services - there's so much music, literature, scientific papers, online courses, free Encyclopedia for all languages, open source software, open source models - more than we could ever consume. So many hobby communities and YT channels, with great people showing their work. Millions of software problems solved on StackOverflow, you can find almost any fix there. The internet itself exceedes our bandwidth and is post scarcity. This is how post-scarcity feels like. Everything is available but you got to make the first move.

But if we think about industry, even if we had 100% free energy and 100% perfect automation it would not mean we are post scarcity yet. We need to ensure the raw materials, either locally or from remote sources, or we got to recycle perfectly, or invent smart materials that can be produced locally. Economy is going to look like ecology, everything recycled and efficient.

NFT

Always good to remember UBI needs to be accompanied by universal wealth limit. Limit the low end and limit the high end. Otherwise regulatory capture and consolidation all over again (all UBIs flow to the corporations as you spend to survive, prices increase just enough to avoid UBI being enough to save money).

People like to think they are good.

Even in a dystopia, the wealthy would want to be able to claim they took care of the poor, unfortunate, dispossessed.

The genocide option is more likely if climate change disrupts global food supplies before technology takes vertical farming to scale.

I sympathize with anyone who can't afford to provide proper nutrition for his or her children due to poverty or food deserts. However, is it generally true that "the only food they can afford are nutritionally null processed foods"? At my grocery store I buy fresh fruit that's already washed, peeled, cut, and ready to eat. The cost is $6 per pound, which is less than a Big Mac with fries.

If I walk into McDonald's and see an obese mom buying her obese son a combo meal, my first thought isn't "she can't afford to provide proper nutrition for him," but rather "perhaps she doesn't know better or perhaps her son refuses to eat nutritious food." If the mom were offered fresh fruit and vegetables instead of the burger, would she and her son accept the healthier choice?

In many (most?) cases in the US today, it's not as simple as "healthy food is too expensive for poor people." Perhaps once we can create food using a nanofactory, we can make spinach and broccoli that tastes like a cheeseburger and French fries. Till then we will have the problem of trying to convince people to eat what's good for them.

Oh no we will definitely survive it, and will prosper, it will just be very painful in the short term I think.

If we lived in a true post-scarcity society, managing the distribution of wealth would be easy. Politicians have shown that they are good at this, as seen during the coronavirus crisis when they provided generous compensation packages to companies that had to close. In a post-scarcity society, we could simply print more money and distribute it as needed. However, the current crisis is not a post-scarcity crisis and politicians know that printing more money would not help. If the current crisis (inflation/energy crisis) turns into a depression or recession, we may see new compensation packages and possibly even universal basic income.

My concern with the singularity is not the potential for a post-scarcity environment, but the disruptions that could occur on the way there. For example, white collar jobs may become redundant before manual labor jobs. This could happen both within and between countries. In the case of manual labor within a country, the solution is simple: distribute the remaining work among the workers who have been made redundant so everyone has to do some amount of the work not yet automated. However, if commodities are still scarce in this environment, Western countries may have difficulty trading their white collar hours for these commodities. Some countries are better positioned than others to deal with this problem. For example, the United States has a lot of natural resources it could exploit, while some European countries have practically none.

It is important to note that these concerns are not meant to be alarmist. They are just the potential "extreme endpoint" of a world where things become unbalanced and what was valuable before suddenly isn't, and white-collar jobs are lost before manual labor jobs. Hopefully, in practice, this will not happen all at once and AI will also make manual labor redundant in parallel as well as improve our ability to find and use commodities, allowing for a more gradual adjustment. But it's hard to say. The AIs seem to be really good at white collar work.

Marx explained this.

the hell of capitalism is the firm, not that the firm has a boss.

I believe our only way out is moneyless economy which we can simulate even right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberStasis/

The transition will not be easy whatsoever.

The monetary-market system aka capitalism has to fail in order for vast amounts of people to lose faith in their so called leaders.

And unfortunately mass suffering is usually the main initiator for social change.

So don’t be surprised if we see a steep rise in poverty, homelessness, crime and other negative public health factors.

It doesn’t have to be this way. But our moron politicians (besides Yang) are stuck in the 18th century and have no idea how to adapt to an ever changing world.

Ideas like UBI are good short term solutions to at least decrease instability and improve public health somewhat. But ultimately we need a new radical idea that would tremendously benefit humanity forever.

A resource based economy (RBE) as advocated by the Zeitgeist Movement and Venus Project is the true goal.

A society based on the intelligent management of earths resources to benefit every human needs and raise the standard of living so high that people in the long future will look back at us in disgust at how stupid and how primitive we were.

If you are afraid, democracy is your friend, because nothing can happen without a majority.

If you are afraid democracy will fail, voting is your friend.

If you are afraid of guns and autarky, the state is your friend... because the state can coordinate responses.

If you are afraid of being useless and poor, then having land/agriculture/gardens is your friend.

The transition will be long and arduous. I also follow TVP and TZM. But there are billions of people on the Earth and practically no one is prepared or will understand what to do.

By corporations creating false scarcity so they don't have to change their business practices.

Oh, hey look, we're already there...

I expect the changes in use of AI that precede this to happen surprisingly quickly and in a snowballing fashion where as more people realize the capabilities of AI and more jobs humans work become obsolete, more businesses will continue to increasingly deploy and improve AI systems, creating networking effects of increasing productivity.

The policy response will inevitably move much more slowly, but it will become clear that there has to be a UBI and other services as people are without jobs and production continues to reach sky-high levels, from which something like a UBI would be self-sustaining.

Beyond that, the real question is how does our traditional concept of private ownership of companies and wealth even figure into a world that is operated by exponentially-improving AI systems running nonstop that exceed the capacity of any human to be understood?

If there really is post-scarcity though, that means there is an unlimited amount to go around. I severely doubt an economic collapse like the Great Depression could occur. Production will be sky-high because the labor previously done by humans that work slowly, require breaks, have to be paid, etc, will be done by AI that can work nonstop and improve at unfathomable rates without all that much cost.

Edit: To be clear, I don't disagree that this could absolutely widen wealth disparity, at the very least for some short time before that reverses, but I think that effect would mostly hinge on land ownership (the real economic creator of inequality that no one seems to discuss -- those who "own" land (literally nature, part of the Earth) profit from those who don't without doing anything, widening inequality in a way that AI can do little to fix.

That was an entire century and still limited to one region of the globe operating on basic, longstanding ideas of warfare not experienced as particularly special compared to other conflicts by most of the humans involved continuing to do their basic things to survive (only retrospectively by us).

All that we describe with AI here could happen in a year or a few years with unbelievable ramifications that we cannot even fathom. It really is the most uncertain period of human civilization (in a good way, I think).

I very much agree that this encapsulates the mechanism by which humans think and expect and scarcity is inevitable, but at a point AI's increasing production does actually outmatch satisfiable human desires.

And we will literally just be able to alter our nervous systems to be satisfied with what we have. That's the simplest answer lol.

As other commenters said, it is very likely to be painful, since politicians needs votes to be elected and this is associated to creating (bullshit) jobs.

Here's a proposal to handle the transition and soften the blow coming from automation: https://lorenzopieri.com/post_scarcity/

the mongol conquests have been described by historians as "medieval nuclear war". it's scale was unprecedented, not even surpassed by world war 2.

the mongols destroyed the biggest cities at that time, such as Merv, Nishapur, Herat, Baghdad, Beijing/Zhongdu, Chengdu, Kiev/Kyiv

Nothing came close later on except in china such as Taiping Rebellion in 19th century. Or the bombing of Dresden. But even in those cases, the perpetrators didn't kill every single one they got hands on. Mongols made sure not to leave survivors. Kiev for example had 99% death rate, only around 1000 were "spared" and became slaves. Merv, Herat each only had 400 artisans spared while rest all slaughtered.

UBI and socialized housing along with a rapid expansion of the social safety net and shortening of the work week would likely have to be implemented in order to transition to a post scarcity economy. A transition would likely happen over the course of decades as opposed to rapidly over 5-10 years.

I completely agree that in a big-picture historical sense that was unprecedented for its time and there may never be such a widescale and total destruction of so many cities again, but those kinds of things (mass killing in warfare, expansion of power over land, pillaging of cities) were not particularly new or unprecedented to the humans who experienced them and as they ultimately unfolded over a relatively much longer period of time than things occur in the modern age.

Over the next few decades with the development of AI and post-scarcity, we will experience things we literally could not have imagined, and these changes will come at an unprecedented rate. We will interact with things that push the boundaries of existence and completely flip long-understood economic and societal principles on their head.

> UBI and socialized housing along with a rapid expansion of the social safety net and shortening of the work week

Dear lord, what a shit show... Are you some kind of WEF shill? Paid or not?

If it's a sufficiently powerful AI then it will have its own plan for the transition, I think we're gonna be ok

There will be starvation and civil unrest the machines will be destroyed to save capitalism.

The capitalist firm. Doing things in GROUPS is still necessary. Loads of things people can't do as standalone professionals. What's your suggestion if not co-ops? Every time I had to make this question the answer was co-ops but with a different name, so think hard.

Yang is a hack and grifter.

co-operative labour is not a co-op. A co-op is a worker owned capitalist business. The boss has been removed yet all the vital laws of capital still remain.

The vital law of spreading capital among workers instead of shareholders? Because those are also gone.

Use your goddamn brain. Co-op is wealth distribution. Co-op is workers owning their means of production. How are those vital laws of capitalism?

Mind articulating your proposal a little further?

Commodity production, exchange and circulation still exist. The means of production should not be worker owned, but socially owned. A co-op will not cease to have a capitalist nature because of the owner being the workers, but the workers will take up all the necessary roles of the capitalist.

Look, you seem to have your heart in the right place but right now you are in contrarian mode and you only care about winning the internet argument and won't hear. So I won't bother. Spend more time thinking about this and good luck there.

alr, whatever, I guess Marxism is contrarianism then..

Again, heart in the right place.

Co-ops are very much marxism.

If you think Marx suggested central ownership you never read Marx.

"To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character."

Literally in the communist manifesto. I could start quoting capital if you'd like, I have all three volumes at my desk right now.

And you read that as government ownership?

no? Who said anything about governments?

What do you mean by social ownership? Who exactly owns what exactly, and through what institutions?

I thought you were supposed to be the Marx expert, considering you said I haven't read him. So why don't you tell me, since Marx has given the answer to that question so many times.

Right. You don't know how to answer the question. I thought you were supposed to be the Marx expert.

You have already called me stupid, said I haven't read Marx, that I'm just a contrarian, etc etc. You've also said you were going to give up talking to me, yet you're still here. I have already understood you don't want to listen to me, so I'm just having fun for as long as you'll let me.

You are literally answering me in seconds when I take multiple hours between the convo because I enjoy wasting my employer's time during work. Who do you think is having fun?

You want social ownership without co-ops and without government. So when your gotcha must be either small communities (that is still government but small), or anarchist (that is delusional borderline libertarian unless you have co-ops) I don't know what else to do but laugh really hard

You keep putting words in my mouth it's fucking hilarious

Hi kid, you think you sound clever but the problem for you is everyone reading this knows what the options are, you don't need to reveal your "secret sauce" for social ownership.

You say it is social ownership but: it isn't central government, it isn't community governments, it isn't co-ops, it isn't capitalist and it isn't delusional anarcho-goodwill-pipedream.

Your problem: there is no other option.

You can't sit there and attempt to pretend you hold another answer for a debate which is literally centuries old, with hundreds of authors already having published the well known alternatives.

This is exactly why your "uh oh I won't say what it is and then just claim you are putting words in my mouth" can't work in this context: because nobody will give 2 seconds credit to the idea that you may be some genius who came up with an yet unknown and highly plausible solution for this problem yet spends time on Reddit instead of publishing a best selling book.

I will not get a notification from you so don't even bother writing.

[deleted]

Suggestion for what? We will not live a post-scarcity society as you guys are debating and Communism never worked and never will.

The future may be corporations owning AI and robots and we having an option to participate in it buying a robot ourselves as we did with slaves in the past. But as in the past, not everything will be done by slaves.

Also, robots and AI have a cost and maintenance cost which we can’t predict yet in mass scale.

The way this question is framed is already geared towards some humanitarian ideal of unity and equity. I don't want that, it's unfair, and it probably won't happen. Post-scarcity is also something very questionable, since there will always be limits to certain things, including natural ressources.

A quick question about automation - why is it moving so chaotically towards consumer markets instead of replacing the most dangerous jobs first? Wouldn't it make more sense to automate professions like miners, nuclear power workers, road construction workers first rather than the kitchen, the vacuum cleaner or cashiers? Is it all driven by where the most profit can be extracted rather than where it's most needed?

Both are happening, but dangerous jobs automation get less news coverage.