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KatjaGrace comments on Superintelligence 17: Multipolar scenarios - Less Wrong Discussion
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Are you convinced that absent a singleton or some other powerful forces, human wages will go below subsistance in the long run? (p160-161)
One question is the derivative of fertility with respect to falling wages. If we start to enter a Malthusian society, will people react by reducing fertility because they "can't afford kids", or increase, as many historically did?
In the limit as time goes to infinity?
Yes. The evolutionary arguments seem clear enough. That isn't very interesting, though; how soon is it going to happen?
I'm inclined to think "relatively quickly", but I have little evidence for that, either way.
The only reason it might not be interesting is because it's clear; the limit case is certainly more important than the timeline.
That said, I mostly agree. The only reasonably likely third (not-singleton, not-human-wages-through-the-floor) outcome I see would be a destruction of our economy by a non-singleton existential catastrophe; for instance, the human species could kill itself off through an engineered plague, which would also avoid this scenario.
Not necessarily, there may be not enough economic stability enough to avoid constant stealing, which would redistribute resources in dynamical ways. The limit case could never be reached if forces are sufficiently dynamic. If the "temperature" is high enough.
Why? If humans are spreading out through the universe faster than the population is growing, then everyone can stay just ahead of the Malthusian trap.
That's not a realistic outcome. The accessible volume grows as t^3, at most, while population can grow exponentially with a fairly short doubling period. An exponential will always outrun a polynomial.
I could mention other reasons, but this one will do.
We too readily extrapolate our past into our future. Bostrom talks a lot about the vast wealth AI will bring, turning even the poor into trillionaires. But he doesn't connect this with the natural world, which, however much it once seemed to, does not expand no matter how much money is made. Wealth only comes from two sources: nature and human creativity. Wealth will do little to squeeze more resources out of a limited planet. Even so you maybe bring home an asteroid of pure diamond. Wealth is not the same as life well-lived! Looks to me like without a rapid social maturation the wealthy will employ a few peasants at slave wages (yes, trillionaires perhaps, but in a world where a cup of clean water costs a million), snap up most of the resources, and the rest of humanity will be rendered for glue. The quality of our future will be a direct reflection of our moral maturity and sophistication.