[ExI] Johnson has ANOTHER "Aleppo moment"!

Fri Sep 30 15:59:21 UTC 2016

On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 10:31 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>> >
>> …If the government is ever going to borrow money, as its been doing
>> nearly every year since 1835, then now is certainly the time to do it when
>> interest rates are almost zero...John K Clark
>
>
> > 
> What happens when interest rates go back up?
>

When circumstances change the correct course of action also changes. If
rates are are almost zero as they are now, then borrowing money is a very
good idea because a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in ten years.
If rates get high again, as they will, then not so much.

> > 
> Who loses when the inevitable default happens?
>

Why on earth is default inevitable? The government of the USA has never
defaulted on its debt and has only come close to doing so once, the USA
came within minutes of default on 
October 16, 2013
 due to a Republican stunt in the congress. Incidentally I changed my
lifelong party affiliation from Republican to Democrat on October 17 2013.

> > 
> There is something we as optimistic future-thinkers really fail to admit:
> the future holds fewer jobs.  Control theory is advancing to the point
> where all our robot dreams will happen.

That is very true, advances in AI will vastly decrease the number of jobs,
but it will also vastly increase the wealth generating capacity that exists
on this planet.  
And although I know Libertarians don't want to hear this, that means if you
expect to have any sort of social stability in the future, that is to say
if rich people expect their necks not to be chopped off, there is going to
have to be some sort of massive wealth redistribution scheme. In
2014 the richest 85 people had as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion, in
2015 the richest 80 did, in 2016 the richest 62 did.
The rise of robots and AI will enormously amplify this trend toward
inequality, or it would if there wasn't a revolution first, and there
certainly will be unless measures are taken to give some of that wealth to
the poor and unemployed; after all it's only a matter of time before
EVERYBODY is unemployed because no matter what your job is a machine can do
it better. And yes I know wellfare runs contrary to the ideology of most on
this list, me too,  but facts are facts and as Richard Feynman said "
*reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be
fooled*
**"
.

> > 
> What happens when we have fewer and fewer workers to pay the bills?

When everybody is on welfare (and I don't mean almost everybody I mean
everybody) then the robots will pay the bills. And if there is not to be a
French style revolution complete with guillotines you'd better not have the
payments to 62 welfare queens equal the payments to 3.5 billion people.

  John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160930/2501e9ed/attachment.html>