Self-defeating hypotheses

[fare]

"If AIs become better and cheaper than humans at EVERYTHING, humans will stop interacting with each other. Pan-human catastrophe!"

"If foreigners become better and cheaper than nationals at EVERYTHING, nationals will stop buying from each other. National catastrophe!"

Yeah, right. And if people outside your immediate family do everything

Comments

[randallsquared]

"if the AIs respect property rights, they won't violate those of humans"

But what's the probability of AIs respecting (human) property rights? If we examine how humans treat the territories of entities far less capable than we are, the chances don't look good. It isn't really that I'm arguing that there's anything to be done about this -- I've never heard a plausible argument for something that could fix it -- but I do expect humanity's run to be effectively over as soon as superintelligent AI is built.

As for price control, other regulation, and taxes being the answer to why we have 15-50 million people who want to work and can't find jobs, it's not so clear to me. Even after the huge hit to the economy that the federal, state, and local governments represent, the average USian is far wealthier in real terms than the average USian in, say, the 1950s, which was a boom time, mostly. Further, the highest tax rates then were far higher than now, too. Government interference in the usual way is certainly one piece of the puzzle, but I don't see how it can be all of it, since technology has provided more growth of real wealth than the US government has soaked up. This isn't to say I have any other answer, though. I'm pretty confused about it.

Unemployment

[fare]

Add to direct, known taxes the unknown taxes tied to the current future "health insurance" regime. Add disincentives to work from work loss "insurance", dole, and various aids to the poor. Add the certainty of a tax regime change for the worse, but a complete uncertainty as to the details. Add a trillion dollar of "stimulus" distortion in the economy that completely skews supply and demand so that productive ventures cannot find customers, whereas unproductive ventures are funded.

There are lots of reasons today to not be either hired or hiring.

Libertarian AIs

[fare]

AIs, with their even greater and more obvious inequalities, and faster interactions, will need rules to avoid conflict even more so than humans. They may quickly come to adopt property rights as the natural way to minimize and resolve conflict with each other. The mechanism trivially extends to humans, who can petition for rights and respect the rights of others. AIs who trample on the rights of humans may be seen as dangerous by other AIs, and may forfeit their own rights wrt their better and faster AIs -- a very bad signal to send.

Re: Libertarian AIs

[fare]

I'm preparing another essay on Evolution and Law, Immunity and Identity on the Rapacious Hardscrapple Frontier.

[fare]

Identity, Immunity, Law and Aggression on the Rapacious Hardscrapple Frontier