When the robot revolution happens, we need to have many supporters of efficient charity among the ruling class, at least while the ruling class still consists of humans.
When the robot revolution happens, we need to have many supporters of efficient charity among the ruling class
The problem is much worse. All the ethical sophistication in the world (as argued by e.g. Richard Rorty) can not in practice serve as a barrier to cruelty and domination if there's no underlying moral sentiment of empathy, of sharing a certain "human circle" with your fellow beings.
The ruling class needs to share some moral emotions that would allow preference-utilitarian/negative-utilitarian ethics towards the "worthless" p...
Kevin Drum has an article in Mother Jones about AI and Moore's Law:
Although he only mentions consumer goods, Drum presumably means that scarcity will end for services and consumer goods. If scarcity only ended for consumer goods, people would still have to work (most jobs are currently in the services economy).
Drum explains that our linear-thinking brains don't intuitively grasp exponential systems like Moore's law.
He also includes this nice animated .gif which illustrates the principle very clearly.
Drum continues by talking about possible economic ramifications.
Drum says the share of (US) national income going to workers was stable until about a decade ago. I think the graph he links to shows the worker's share has been declining since approximately the late 1960s/early 1970s. This is about the time US immigration levels started increasing (which raises returns to capital and lowers native worker wages).
The rest of Drum's piece isn't terribly interesting, but it is good to see mainstream pundits talking about these topics.