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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2013-10-22 20:53, Kelly Anderson
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote
cite="mid:CAPy8RwZ_xSeXK0gK0Wcd9FuQsDj8MSfr7+7o38i7_uFQO1LhPA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 4:17 PM, Anders Sandberg <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:anders@aleph.se" target="_blank">anders@aleph.se</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<div class="gmail_extra">
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">A socialist would of
course try to bring everybody into this state
through joint ownership of the means of production.
Anarchists hope that having a non-money economy will
fix things (which is an interesting claim - I am not
entirely convinced mutualist societies are stable in
the face of AI).</span></blockquote>
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<div><br>
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<div>Anders, I love how in the middle of a flaming political
war, you throw in these little gems of plain old fashioned
brilliance. I would love to hear more about your ideas
about the stability of mutualist societies in the face of
AI. What is it about AI that threatens mutualist
societies, and do you see that we have a mutualist society
today?</div>
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<br>
I'm using the term from the anarchist community. As Wikipedia puts
it, "A society where each person might possess a means of
production, either individually or collectively, with trade
representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market." <br>
<br>
Now, straight mutualism is based on the labor theory of value, so it
is just plain wrong. Even if one believes the theory, AI wrecks it:
now things can be produced without labor, including labor-saving
devices. But more relevantly, if AI can do stuff, why should I trade
with you? Yes, you might have an AI, and I exchange some stuff I or
my AI do for its products, but I am not really trading with *you*.
If I had your AI I would just use it straight away. The whole trade
idea goes away.<br>
<br>
One answer is that in that case we have a post-scarcity economy and
everything is fine. Except the usual problems with allocation: not
everybody can have a beach-front villa in Malibu. But it seems that
AI also threatens to unravel the threads of mutual dependency that
likely hold an anarchist society together. It might not produce
total autarchy (everybody can produce everything they need), yet
make people so independent that the incentives to work together and
hash out disagreements weaken.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University
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