[ExI] ai and job loss

[Adrian Tymes]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 10:50 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> John, your post seems too pessimistic by a factor of 2pi.

Actually, a brief glance over the Wikipedia page backs John's case up.

> Hmm, I didn’t ask that question very clearly.  I meant, who took hammer in
> hand, who placed bricks, who pulled the wire and wielded the paint brushes?
> Did Ambani do any of that?  Or did he hire local builders?

He hired an Australian company, that may well have imported their
labor - and certainly did not leave nearly as much improvement in the
neighborhood as if he had hired locally.

> Since we are on the topic, what do you suppose are the attitudes of those in
> the part of the neighborhood next to the castle?

They object, but are powerless.  He openly bribed every level of
government needed to make the complaints go away.

No, seriously.  Every time a government agency was thinking of
objecting, he handed them a large amount of money, and they issued a
certification saying they had no objections.

He tried to hide the fact that he and his family were actually living
there, for years.

> I would imagine that big place requires plenty of hired help,
> grounds-keepers, a platoon of ladies who do nothing but go around dusting
> things, maintenance people for all the equipment.  With a place that size,
> that once guy probably supplies hundreds of jobs.  That money filters out
> through the neighborhood, raising home values, making it a nicer, safer
> place to live.

Not so much.  It is true that the hired help there is a few hundred -
out of millions in the neighborhood.  The pay isn't that good, and
even if it does filter out (which is questionable), it amounts to
negligible per capita.

> That’s one way to look at it, but consider wealth on a logarithmic scale
> rather than linear.  If seen that way, the wealth gap is not increasing but
> rather is closing.  For instance, the world’s richest people are at
> magnitude about 11.  None of these guys are anywhere close to 1E12 dollars.
> Consider all the people with net worth that puts them at magnitude about 5.
> There are a lot of people who are worth about 100k, all over the globe.
> Sure plenty of people worldwide bounce around at magnitude 0 to 2, but down
> that far, one can rise a magnitude or two pretty easily.  But the dozen or
> so 11s can’t get to 12 most likely.  Conclusion: in some important ways, the
> wealth gap is closing.

The 11s are working on becoming 12s.  Meanwhile, the 5s are struggling
not to become 4s.  And this is opposed to the 8s vs. 4s of yesteryear.
Even logarithmically, the wealth gap has grown.

>>…My favorite political party is the Libertarian Party, or rather it was
>> before their disgraceful behavior in 2018…
>
> Indeed?  He didn’t know Allepo, and this is disgraceful behavior?  Compared
> to what?

I'm more interested in that 2018.  What will they have done?

> I am happy
> with my choice: California is a good state.

There's talk of denying federal money to states with sanctuary cities.
I'd like to see what happens if Trump and Congress seriously attempt
to shut off all federal money - including Social Security and Medicare
- to California because of San Francisco and other cities.

> John you are really almost on it here, what I am thinking about a lot for I
> have seen it firsthand in my own chosen industry, aerospace.  There is not
> enough work in that industry by an order of magnitude, and the amount of
> work available there is dropping.

Yeah...wait until we have affordable DIY space.  Which will take a
while, granted.

> Before I criticize Mukesh Ambani or claim he failed to set up a school for
> the poor, I would want to verify he does not broadcast internet with
> sufficient bandwidth to download Khan Academy and all the other cool stuff
> available online.  If he is doing that, he has set up a school for the poor,
> far more effectively than any building.

While I doubt anyone on this list can readily verify this, it does not
appear to be the case.  And even if it were, you would then need
devices for all the people withn range.  Even $100 for a laptop is a
lot of money to these folks, and if they had it they would most likely
spend it on short term needs: it is nearly impossible to learn job
skills when you are starving.