I don’t give a fuck how cheap you make bread and circuses. The only goods and services I give a fuck about anymore are the ones that won’t be made cheaper with automation.
Speak for yourself. I want cheaper building costs so we can build more housing, cheaper and safer vehicles, higher quality food so we can all be healthier, better medical technology and medicines so we can solve more diseases, and new washing-machine-like technologies so I can spend more time with friends/family. That’s not to mention that greater leverage on my labour would give me even more flexibility to choose the work I want to do, and how much I want to work.
Bread is already so cheap as to not notice the price most of the time. But other goods and services are absolutely not that cheap. And there’s certainly higher quality that could be achieved, especially in areas like medicine. It is a lack of imagination to not see all the ways in which cheaper goods and services could improve our lives.
Making all of those things cheaper is great, as long the automation isn't also making everyone poorer at an equal or faster rate. It doesn't really help if house prices and food prices are cut in half if most people lose their employment because of automation.
I think the concern is that true human+ AGI and advanced robotics would obsolete so many roles that it doesn't matter if things can be made more efficiently, because nobody will have any money at all. If/when AI can do my job better than me, it isn't giving me leverage, it is removing all leverage I have as someone who puts food on the table through labor.
In the interim period before that happens then sure, the automation is great for some people who can best leverage it.
On the path to “AGI” I would expect a lot of short-term pain as people lose their jobs while unemployment is still around normal levels. But if unemployment rises too much, we would pass laws to protect people, like greater corporate taxes to fund things like UBI.
But honestly, if we have this level of automation it feels like it would be very hard to predict how society will evolve. I would expect our current model of work-to-live to become untenable, and we’d move to something else. I doubt that transition will be easy.
It's never going to go down like that as long as companies are required to serve shareholder interests above customers' or employees'.
Instead all these automation tools are and will be used to cut corners and optimize on cost. Quality, peace-of-mind, and increased free time will be the sales pitch used to placate us plebes. But we all know what the executive dipshits will really care about.
Most people here could choose to work less than full-time hours if they wanted to. I already do (although I do it so I can work more on my own projects, to be fair).
Although, maybe going against the hedonic treadmill is against our nature. There’s always a nicer house in a better neighbourhood to work for. But I at least want more people to have the choice to work fewer hours through higher wages. That might not come for free with economic growth, but it certainly won’t come without it.
