[ExI] ai and job loss

Mon Jan 16 16:50:08 UTC 2017

On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 1:50 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>John, your post seems too pessimistic by a factor of 2pi.

Spike, I sincerely hope you're right and I'm wrong, but recent actions of
a certain billionaire after the election has not increased my confidence
that I will still be alive in 4 years. I'm optimistic in that I still think
the odds of me being above ground in 2021 are somewhat better than 50%, but
if I were a honest impartial actuary I'd have to say the odds have fallen
significantly since November 7. After all
,
an

ignorant m
a
n

with a hair trigger temper

who refuses to learn

will have his finger on the nuclear button for the next 4 years and that
can't be

a

good

thing

.

Yes I know some will call me an alarmist but read some of Trump's recent
tweets with their apparent disregard of reality and tell me why I should be
scared to death. Politicians can fool other people but when they try to
fool reality itself it always bites them in the ass, and it usually ends up
biting us too.

> >
> 
> 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?

No Ambani never touched a hammer, and the
 Pharaoh
s didn't personally move any stones to build the pyramids, but neither
the pyramids nor the billion dollar house iss a good example of a
civilization using its finite resources wisely.

By the way, I think the Romans with their aqueducts roads public baths and
harbors were the first to make large structures that were actually worth
building, before them it was just tombs, temples, palaces and walls that
failed to keep out the people they were designed to keep out.

> >
>  
> The shortage that worries me about the future is not insufficient wealth

I agree,
 in
sufficient wealth
 will not be a problem.

> >
>  
> but rather insufficient work.

Today work is a way wealth gets distributed, 
for the poor and middle class it is the only way but the rich have other
means of gelling a slice of the pie. Human work will be needed less and
less in the future to generate wealth, so if the poor and middle class
aren't given another way to get some of that wealth they're going to start
chopping off heads. I'm not saying that's what should happen, I'm saying
that's what will happen.  

> >
>  
> The masses do not want a handout, they want work.

I know, but you can't always get what you want. Excess leisure time might
be a problem but starving to death is a worse one.  It's ironic that during
Trump's Nuremberg style rallies he used, without their permission, the
Rolling Stone's song  "You can't always get what you want".

> >
>  
> However, there might not be enough left to do in the future.

Exactly, and strict libertarian doctrine don't take that into account so
libertarian doctrine needs to be modified if we are to survive. 

> >
>> > 
>> …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?
>

That was a typo, I meant 2016 not 2018. 

Mr. Whatisaleppo  was obviously not ready to be president but that's OK
because the Libertarian Party must have known from the very beginning that
no candidate of theirs was going to win
in 
this election cycle, my beef with them
wasn't  that, it was
 in treating 2016 as just another election year when clearly it was not.

With the possible exception of

Charles Manson

I can't think of any
native

 born American citizen over 35 that is less libertarian than Donald Trump,
or more ignorant, or less willing to be educated, or who place
s
 more weight on what the National Enquirer
 says
 than what the

President's Daily Brief
 says. If the Libertarian Party was more dedicated to advancing
libertarian principles than advancing the Libertarian Party itself then
they would have done everything in their power to ensure that Donald Trump
will never become President, but they didn't do that. Instead they did the
exact opposite and that's why I can never trust the Libertarian Party
again. Just because something has "Libertarian" in the name doesn't make
them libertarian anymore than the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
 was democratic or a republic.

As for me I think libertarian principles are more important than the
Libertarian Party, and the survival of Civilization is more important than
libertarian principles.

> >
>  
>  the alleged billionaire did win a majority of states.

If he isn't a billionaire now he certainly will be in 4 years, he will be
the richest man on Earth, assuming of course civilization still exists.

> >  In any case, look at the bright side.  Perhaps Americans will stop
> looking to their government for help.

The trouble is I am convinced the worldwide acceleration 
of the wealth gap can not continue indefinitely without grave consequences,
if governments don't slow it down I can think of only one other thing that
might, and it won't be one bit fun.

> > Governments aren’t really about helping the people, they are really
> about helping themselves.

There is a enormous amount of truth in that and if we were starting from
scratch I think we could do a lot better with Privately Produced Law and
Private Protection Agencies, but we're about as far from scratch as you can
get. I hate to say it but like it or not I think we're stuck with
governments. And it's not like we have all the time in the world to wait
around for something better to show up because thing are about to happen
*FAST*.

John K Clark
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