The problems listed in the article are real. we’ve built a system:
Where a lot of economic growth stems from an increasing supply of (cheap) labour
That relies on people of working age being able to financially support a retiree class.
Both of these are going to fall apart if the population stops growing. The smaller group of working age people won’t be enough to support the amount of retirees, and without population growth there’s no economic growth.
It’s sad that economists correctly see all this coming but then conclude that the only solution is “make more babies.” It’s short term thinking almost by definition, because in the limit it’s rather obvious that at some point we will not have the resources to support any more people. And the closer we get to that limit the less each individual person will have (even worse when wealth is not equally distributed).
Unfortunately I don’t see any economist putting forth a plan that accepts population decline and alters the system to account for it. It wouldn’t be easy but it seems no one is even trying.
How is it not easy? 90% of all jobs are automated or are going to be automated away in the next few years. I only see one social class that holds us back from de facto post-scarcity. We just need to get rid of it.
I commend your optimism, but personally I’m not sure automation is actually going to carry us through this in the time frames that we need. This population problem is going to hit really hard in the next twenty to thirty years. I don’t think we’re going to fully automate the world economy in that time.
the level of automation we have right now is enough to produce most of the stuff we need with very little assistance, as most of the useful stuff has been automated 30-40 years ago; while i agree that we are missing some important things, i think the real problem is the cleptocracy at the top
the stuff that is being automated now is really a problem more than a solution, and is going to stop progress by putting out of work software developers and other creative professions. I’m not saying it’s going to replace them all, but if it replaces enough job positions, it’s going to make the profession a risky choice for new students and that’s going to slow down the engine a lot
Not even close. Despite the hype being pushed by tech companies the latest wave of AI has extremely niche use cases and it’s already beginning to plateau.
The problems listed in the article are real. we’ve built a system:
Both of these are going to fall apart if the population stops growing. The smaller group of working age people won’t be enough to support the amount of retirees, and without population growth there’s no economic growth.
It’s sad that economists correctly see all this coming but then conclude that the only solution is “make more babies.” It’s short term thinking almost by definition, because in the limit it’s rather obvious that at some point we will not have the resources to support any more people. And the closer we get to that limit the less each individual person will have (even worse when wealth is not equally distributed).
Unfortunately I don’t see any economist putting forth a plan that accepts population decline and alters the system to account for it. It wouldn’t be easy but it seems no one is even trying.
How is it not easy? 90% of all jobs are automated or are going to be automated away in the next few years. I only see one social class that holds us back from de facto post-scarcity. We just need to get rid of it.
I commend your optimism, but personally I’m not sure automation is actually going to carry us through this in the time frames that we need. This population problem is going to hit really hard in the next twenty to thirty years. I don’t think we’re going to fully automate the world economy in that time.
2 thoughts:
Not even close. Despite the hype being pushed by tech companies the latest wave of AI has extremely niche use cases and it’s already beginning to plateau.