[ExI] ai and job loss

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
...

>> ... who took hammer in hand, who placed bricks...

>...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...

Sure but this was a big project, so it took time, so the Australian builders had to live somewhere during the construction project, and good chance they chose to live close by.  We are told that diversity is a good thing and immigration is a good thing, so... he accomplished both, along with improving the neighborhood, since Australian construction workers are unlikely to accept the living conditions available in the area.

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

Sure but that is the fault of the government official, rather than the guy who was buying them.  What you and I see as a bribe might be seen by the politicians as a donation to their family charity, which is perfectly legal, moral, ethical and can even be arranged to be anonymous.  Canada has a number of charities that arrange this kind of thing.

>...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...

Did he hand THEM money, or was it their family charity, and he offered a generous donation?

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

What's wrong with that?  Wouldn't you do likewise?  I would.

>...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...

When I look around me, this isn't clear at all.


>>... 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...

Social Security and Medicare are not welfare; they are entitlements.  The fed does not have the authority to withhold that based on sanctuary cities.


>>... Before I criticize Mukesh Ambani or claim he failed to set up a school ...

>... it does not appear to be the case...it is nearly impossible to learn job skills when you are starving.  Adrian


Ja, the fact that the masses are starving in Mumbai is not the rich guy's fault and he can do little to fix it.  Overbreeding and overcrowding caused that.  His building a castle in the middle of it didn't make it worse, it is the start of making it better.  If for instance, the local officials decided to build there a school for the poor, that would make the overcrowding and poverty even worse, which is why I commented the locals, plenty of whom have no children of school age, probably love the guy: the castle did improve their condition and their neighborhood, by reducing poverty and overcrowding.

My theory is that the rich guy didn't slay the orphans who once terrorized the local streets, but rather made arrangements for them to be relocated to a safer neighborhood.  I can imagine their landing spot was way better than where they left.  I don't expect the locals resent the rich guy.  I have no doubt one can find locals who do resent the rich guy and offer interviews to outsiders, but I expect most of them realize he didn't take away their wealth or their jobs.

The whole notion of urban renewal leads to so many entertaining self-contradictory arguments.  This is but one of them.  An even better one is the continual debate on urban renewal in the cities of San Francisco and Palo Alto.  In San Francisco, Google and Facebook employees are buying up homes that once housed a dozen people and living in them alone, riding a bus to their workplace.  The locals are sure this must be illegal or immoral somehow, but cannot put together a coherent argument for why.  Those older neighborhoods have insufficient places to park.  Plenty of the newcomers have no cars, so that problem is solved.  Do explain to me what is bad about software skerjillionaires are buying up homes in San Francisco.

Consider Mark Zuckerberg's buying four homes in Palo Alto.  The locals hate it; they don't want a billionaire neighbor.  He is putting a parking structure under his house!  That would relieve crowding on the street, horrors.  Every time I hear this debated on NPR it gets funnier.  He isn't displacing poor people in that case, he is displacing multi-millionaires who made a cool fortune on the sale of those Palo Alto properties. 

In my own neighborhood out here in the suburbs, we have been seeing it for years: rich Chinese businessmen are quietly buying up residential housing, but no one lives there.  The places are maintained perfectly and it isn't at all obvious unless you live there and note that the cars in the driveway blocking the garage haven't moved in ten years.  I can show you one: I put a pebble on the top of the tire a decade ago and it is still there.  No one lives in that house, and only seldom visits.  So... the neighborhood gradually gets quieter, crime rates drop, demand for services drop, but tax money still comes in just the same.  It's all good.

Urban renewal will eventually come to India too.  It takes money to do that.

spike