2cimarafa t1_jczoq2q wrote
I agree, there's no really viable scenario for a tiny number of rich people to preserve all their wealth and power while exterminating the rest of the population through some covert scheme. The vast majority of wealth is in any case tied to productive capital, which mass automation of labor sans UBI would destroy in a catastrophic deflationary spiral, meaning most of the rich would lose their wealth too as asset prices fell through the floor.
What is more possible is UBI, but even in such a case people will ask questions about why those who happened to be rich in 2025 get to stay rich forever, while everyone else has to be poor on welfare forever.
Surur t1_jczvy39 wrote
How much would Elon Musk be worth when 720 million potential customers are dead and only 80 million people, who prefer to be driven in Bentleys, are left.
How rich will the Walmart heirs be when their store customers are rotting in the aisles?
The wealth of the 1% of based on business with the 99%.
greatdrams23 t1_jd03mr8 wrote
What is wealth?
Ownership of land, many luxury houses, cars, gold, Jewellery, entertainment, good food and drink, tags l yachts, the best healthcare.
And all of these in greater amounts than the less wealthy.
Why do you need the 99% to provide these when a robot can?
Surur t1_jd04mt7 wrote
Some of those are intrinsic (like health) but most other things depend on society to give them value.
Say for example you are a property tycoon with numerous skyscrapers in New York. When most of Manhatten is dead, your property is worthless.
Or say you have a mega-yacht like Bezos, you sail it to Tahiti, but when you get there the local population and tourist attractions are empty, because everyone is dead.
And who are you impressing with your gigantic yatch when 99% of people are dead, and the other 1% can just get their robots to build a similarly sized boat?
xt-89 t1_jd0tifr wrote
Given how most tech billionaires seem to be sci fi nerds, it seems more likely that the rich would incentivize is to move to Mars or something rather than just kill everyone
Spreadwarnotlove t1_jd24ykz wrote
Pretty much. The rich will push for the human colonization of the galaxy and they are going to need trillions upon trillions of people just to properly colonize the solar system.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2lgbt wrote
Because you are feeling nervous about the popular anti-inequality sentiments of the late 2030's and after that big monopoly crackdown last year you realise that the private wealth of trillionaiers is going to be American's next target.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2kly3 wrote
He could sell off his shares to lock in his wealth, then help cull the poor.
Surur t1_jd2kxwg wrote
But then the money would be in the bank, and the bank's assets would depreciate in the same way, and he could lose every single cent. Just look at SVB.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2q010 wrote
Rich people don't leave their money in banks, or very little of it as a percentage, and SVB's failure was not the result of poor people.
Imagine if earth got twice as much habitable land and resources suddenly, you wouldn't expect this to make rich people lose all their wealth. The discovery of the new world didn't make Europe's Kings get poor.
Neither would reducing the population necessarily do that. Anyway, it doesn't so much matter what would happen as what they expect to happen,
Surur t1_jd2qg4v wrote
> Rich people don't leave their money in banks
You were suggesting Elon Musk sell all their shares. Where would the liquid money go? Under his bed?
> Imagine if earth got twice as much habitable land and resources suddenly, you wouldn't expect this to make rich people lose all their wealth.
Strangely enough this is the logic of the flat earth movement lol
Lots of people's wealth is tied up in their property, and it is believed that this is why they resist the creation of more housing which would lower their property value.
In a simpler form - say someone presses a button and new land appears next to old land, free to claim - people would not need to buy the old land, they could just claim the new land, which would crash the price of the old land.
Or if we land an astroid, and your wealth was tied up in gold, you may suddenly find yourself much less wealthy.
So yes, if you suddenly increase supply, you will lose wealth.
> The discovery of the new world didn't make Europe's Kings get poor.
That's probably because it made one of them very rich.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2s5r1 wrote
If Elon Musk couldn't sell his shares off, then he would not be in any sense wealthy. They have value only because he can sell them off.
Anyway, it goes without saying that to kill of poor people would make the rich less rich by definition, since there would be no poor people around for them to be rich in comparison to.
SteppenAxolotl t1_jd0b7do wrote
>there's no really viable scenario for a tiny number of rich people to preserve all their wealth and power while exterminating the rest of the population through some covert scheme
Sounds like a failure of imagination.
Let’s err on the side of generosity and assume that countries won’t be building gas chambers to solve the problem of unwanted former labor, whether due to the exigencies of realpolitik or for first-order moral reasons. There are many ways to accomplish the same result without the burdens associated with such deliberate actions.
What would happen to the birth rate if the state provided a free unlimited supply of birria nachos, VR video games, three kinds of double IPA and 12 kinds of drugs?
>those who happened to be rich in 2025 get to stay rich forever
It always struck me as a kind of trap that you'll never be able to escape if you're poor due to the dynamics, the only off ramp is extinction.
EddgeLord666 t1_jd0ekbo wrote
Who cares if people stop breeding? All we need to do is invent longevity medicine and we can perpetuate human civilization with the humans alive now, no inherent reason for spawning more babies.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2kdp9 wrote
The point is how the rich might be able to get rid of the poor. So presumably not by sharing such medical advancements either. Also, the hypothetical kill-off of the poor could proceed the discovery of any such medical discoveries.
EddgeLord666 t1_jd2lxkt wrote
There was already a post yesterday on why those ideas wouldn’t happen.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2q4mu wrote
With which everyone agreed, of course.
EddgeLord666 t1_jd2qao4 wrote
Well do you have counterarguments? Perhaps many people disagreed but simply didn’t know how to refute the points.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2rnf2 wrote
Killing people is technologically possible now, but human biological immortality is not. The latter is simply a harder problem than figuring out how to kill even large numbers of people. So probably medical advancements are not relevant to this debate about whether the rich might kill off the poor.
Also, biological immortality wouldn't make poor people un-kill-able. So again, it doesn't seem to be relevant.
EddgeLord666 t1_jd2rztr wrote
If biological immortality becomes possible, it will be more cost efficient to simply make it more widely available than to kill off massive numbers of people who will undoubtedly fight back (and as mentioned before it would lead to a civil war among the rich as well). You didn't address most of the other points though, whether the poor could theoretically be killed or not isn't really relevant.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2v5xe wrote
Biological immortality is irrelevant. It won't exist any time soon and we aren't debating if the rich might kill off the poor 150 years from now, but in the near-term future.
Also, you can't fight back if you are dead. This is about advanced AI and robotics. Presumably the responsible party would kill everyone on the same day.
EddgeLord666 t1_jd2vb5c wrote
Again you're not responding to the points being made in the post. Also, it could easily exist by like 2050, we really don't know.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2yykr wrote
I don't have to spend my time responding to all the points in your post.
EddgeLord666 t1_jd2z8lb wrote
It's not even my post lol, whoever wrote it is way more knowledgeable than me. My last word is this, if you don't have any counterarguments then stop bitching.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd335my wrote
Shhh
FusionRocketsPlease t1_jd3dupv wrote
Who are these rich monsters you're talking about?
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd3pcty wrote
It probably won't happen but if it does, perhaps people who haven't been born yet or who are children now, since societal change is often the province of young people and the technology isn't quite there yet.
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