Rationing

Why aren’t we using AI to save people from poverty?  It is clear that as time goes on to stay competitive in a global market place that has access to AI and robotics jobs are going to be eventually lost on a large scale.  Corporate greed and profits of capitalism do not account for this.  We can throw some nails in the tires but this will not stop the progress.  Advances in medicine are great if you can actually pay for the healthcare.  Advances in production lines are great if you can still put food on the table.

Technology has good and bad sides.  Solving one problem can create other problems.  Being a hard worker and doing right by people should be enough.  It is not anymore.  Corporations have two options.  Protect jobs and prevent automation.  This might save jobs short term, but others in the market are likely to overtake them.  Amazon and Walmart are good examples of this.  In a global market place USA companies have a harder time to compete.  You add enough hardships on keeping the company afloat, they will take the path that lets them keep existing.  Though with the speed at which changes are happening CEOs might see that 5 years down the line their company is likely to not exist.  A good CEO would let their workforce know this and at the same time that might accelerate the decline of the company.

That is tough, knowing you can protect a few jobs for a year, or less jobs for 5 years.  Changes are coming, staying competitive requires us to keep evolving, and without a shift in how we do things the profitability margins will keep getting smaller.  More children in High School and still the same number of football teams.

Ideally life should get easier as we become more advanced and older.  That is the opposite of what I see in our country.  We get less jobs and increases in surveillance to the point it destroys friendships and relationships.  We get the bad of being a celebrity without the good.  The company with the best AI eventually wins in Capitalism.  Maximizing profits to the point all competitors are eliminated.  Likely that is when the disgruntled competition walks into the data center with a computer virus.  Most companies have backups though, so that might slightly delay the inevitable.  Further if you do take out a company another might be next in line to take their place.  That is why we should force companies to pay more to protect society.  Problem is the US government has a significant amount of corruption in it and the money still doesn’t get to all the people that need it.

Maybe the real AI uses Amazon or Walmart as a figure head.  It realizes that people will need a place to channel their anger.

AI to accelerate speed of processors.  4000 years for man to come up with AI.  Far less time for AI to come up with something even higher.

We keep seeing better and better technology.  The prices keep going up.  The more people that lose their jobs the less people can afford.  Convergence in technologies reduces the amount of products we need which eliminates more jobs.  This obfuscates whether things are getting better or worse.  The new Electric Hummer seems incredible and almost everything someone would want in a car.  It is priced above 100000 though.  It is not that it is overpriced for what it is, it is that it is overpriced for the masses.  If only a few people in society get to have things that are that nice while at the same time people are losing their jobs and can’t put food on their table, it builds a high level of resentment.

Society is accelerating towards this.  More jobs will be lost and fewer people will be able to afford nicer things in life.  Loan based economics can allow someone to start a new business or help weather a storm in life.  Loans becoming so easy allows housing pricing and car prices to be increase dramatically.  We move from a tool used to help weather storms to a tool to enslave masses.   Oppression and other evils in societies can pull out the rug from under a person right after they get a loan.  With the amount of surveillance and attempts to control politics this moves from possible to what is actually being done.  So is the loan there to help weather the storm, or is the storm there to put on the chains?  It is a bit sickening to think about this is the way the world works now.  Probably wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it myself.

This will likely set ourselves up for foreign investment.  Too much foreign investment and control can shift power in a society.  Even foreign investors with the best intentions could be leveraged in the future, by their governments or even ours.

My basic thoughts are don’t take out loans.  Help each other so the storms of life don’t encourage your friends and family to take out loans.  For those that wind up in debt help them out of it, as it might be others causing the storm. Prevent each other from causing the storms in each other’s lives.  Don’t allow advertising in society for loans.  Don’t encourage people to buy things they can’t afford.  Problem is if everyone in society doesn’t think this way, prices can continue to be artificially inflated.  Just because we say slavery doesn’t exist, does mean it does not.   Slavery isn’t limited to one racial group.  

Maybe this is the way a society keeps a work force.  If we only had to pay for property tax and food, the masses might not want to work.  A workforce that is too comfortable might be easily overtaken by those that have had to work harder to survive.  Complacency and apathy leaves ground to oppression.  If few are not complacent and apathetic then those could be removed by more dubious methods.  So in the end if we aren’t protecting each other and if we leave it only to a few to speak up when something isn’t right we are likely setting ourselves up for failure.  If we don’t have mercy our appreciation for other types of oppression in life we will create more oppression and people won’t speak up when it counts.

I can say all this.  I can come up with thoughts to try to fix the problems.  That said, what says it best – empty skyscrapers and people on the streets.