Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum

[Agent23]

The doubling was an exaggeration to make a point.

AI should exert so much deflationary pressure as to eventually render a lot of things basically free. An UBI would be a desperate attempt by the system to inject cash and exert inflationary counter-pressure to make sure that those products remain artificially scarce and artificially expensive and protect corporate profits.

At first, corporations will be enthralled with AI and how they can maximize their ROIs by cutting out artists, programmers, et cetera. But then, their glee will turn to horror as computers continue miniaturizing and becoming more and more powerful and they finally realize that a machine that can produce creative output at zero marginal cost means that they, as the middlemen, can be cut out, too, and consumers can just directly ask AI to make them whatever the hell they want.

You will still need power, manufacturing capacity, food, etc.

Internet spam and "muh IP" is not a basic need for any human.

Most of the tech that truly made our life better was perfected 50 years ago aside for personal computers and some pharma products, and even there, you can suffice with one desktop PC for a long, long while, muh smart grids, muh intelligent devices, muh cars with 30 000 microchips and muh idiotifying cell phones are non-essential crap we would do better without.

Money is useless without purchasing power, and the average American's purchasing power has been eroded so much in fifty years as to be practically unrecognizable. People used to be able to afford a house and a car a couple years out of high school. Now, we have over-educated college grads staffing coffee shops, who give away over half of their income on rent, and most of the remainder on a bunch of subscription services, and who've done the math and determined that they won't be able to afford a down payment on a home until they're too old to start dating.

What has been done to us, I would argue, is a form of economic genocide. People who just want a nice single-family zoned house to raise kids in have been cut off from that by a hostile system. Companies today will literally do anything to avoid paying people a living wage.





Yes, but that's just a side effect. The continuing enrichment of banker cartels is always the primary goal.



Yes, it keeps Jabba's barge full of slaves flying.



Yes, indeed. It benefits both our masters and the hostages they have chained by the neck.



It's a bad thing because most people are financially illiterate, don't have a brokerage account, and don't know they can even be a small retail investor, so they just end up piling money in a savings account and watching its purchasing power shrink year by year and sinking deeper and deeper into despair.



Yes, it does, but governments don't enact policies for the benefit of everyone. They enact them for the benefit of the few, which is why they repealed Glass-Steagall and allowed commercial and investment banks to form massive conglomerates and eat up everything with their phony paper-shuffling that produced no physical products of actual utility to anyone.

What corporate banks and central banks do is basically legalized counterfeiting. If you or I did it, it would be illegal.





So, you believe that after you've worked your fingers to the bone for thirty or forty years, your company should be bought up by vulture capitalists who fire everyone, cancel everyone's pensions, and leave you to rot in a ditch with no money. That's frankly amazing. Let me know how that goes for you.

Eh, mostly agree...
Google Eurodollar system or link one of Snider's videos here.

Klaus Schwab and the WEF are a cult that represent the interests of big business. They're not "fringe commies and fascists". They're ordinary authoritarian-centrist neoliberals. All the people with WEF memberships who fly out to Davos on private jets are politicians, bankers, financiers, and Fortune 500 CEOs.

Klaus Schwab's narrative about failing governance, environmental devastation, and the need for robust safety nets is little more than a recapitulation of the Post-WWII welfare states which came about as centrist, managerial society's reaction to communism and fascism. The main people pushing DEI and ESG and all the rest of this political correctness bullshit are gigantic asset management firms like Blackrock that manage everyone's retirement money and then have the gall to turn around and enshittify our culture.

Klaus Shvab is just your standard grifter IMHO.

This is the paradox of conservatism in our time. The traditional fonts of conservative power - giant corporations that used to represent entrepreneurship and ingenuity - have been subsumed into the managerial society. Conservatives are left in a state of confusion, cheerleading for people who are trying desperately to destroy them in one minute, and then decrying "corporate communism" in the next.

Know your enemy:







1876: "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." — William Orton, President of Western Union

1889: "Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever." — Thomas Edison

1946: "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." — Darryl Zanuck

1966: "Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop." — Time Magazine.

1995: "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." — Robert Metcalfe

2024: "AI will never replace human labor. It might replace humans in some things, but not nearly everything and certainly nothing physical." — Vyor

The flip side of that proposition are all the various bubble pumpers and irrationally optimistic supporters of every technology.

It is 2024, we have neiter a moon base, not colonies on the moons of titan, after all.

The truth will likely be somewhere in between.

And from my experience, AI desn't write code as much as it regurgitates some mess that got vacuumed up from GitHub, it will certainly be hilarious when somebody demands that the derived code comes with a GPL license.

Again, if our money doesn't actually buy anything we want, then what's the point in having it?

In a few short years, most people's vacations will be replaced by VR goggles, if they can even afford VR goggles. Simulations of wealth will replace actual wealth. It'll be like one of those Leonardo of Biz shorts.

For vacations I'd already stay at home or go walk through my grandparents village, and maybe plant some fruit trees in between hikes.

 

[mrttao]

You will still need power, manufacturing capacity, food, etc.

AI helps with that too.
On the personal scale you have farmbot.

FarmBot | Open-Source CNC Farming

Farming and gardening robots for home, educational, and commercial use. Premium Hardware · Worldwide Shipping · Drag and Drop Farm Designer · Step-by-Step Assembly Instructions · Own Your Food

farm.bot

Open source automatic farming that can feed a family.

On the industrial scale you have self driving robots that kill weeds with lasers

Self-Driving Farm Robot Uses Lasers To Kill 100,000 Weeds An Hour, Saving Land And Farmers From Toxic Herbicides

The nutrient content of our vegetables is down 40% over the last two decades and our soil health is suffering due to increasingly harsh herbicide use, according to Carbon Robotics founder Paul Mikesell.

www.forbes.com

bigger competing model


As well as fruit picker robots

something that traditionally was done using illegal aliens to keep it cheap.

another one


Those various robots do not eliminate humans from the equation. but vastly reduce human labor.

 

[IndyFront]

With Stable Diffusion, I can generate a thousand insanely detailed CG paintings with about 2.2 hours of full-tilt GPU time on my 4090. If I had to pay human artists commissions for that, it would be like $300 each. Like over a quarter of a million dollars. Instead, it's 24 cents of electricity at my local prices.

The machines are taking over.

Yeah people don't realize it but at this point the only way to survive the technological singularity is to become one with it. Sadly, too many people will realize this too late, and be left behind.

 

[Carrot of Truth]

AI helps with that too.
On the personal scale you have farmbot.

FarmBot | Open-Source CNC Farming

Farming and gardening robots for home, educational, and commercial use. Premium Hardware · Worldwide Shipping · Drag and Drop Farm Designer · Step-by-Step Assembly Instructions · Own Your Food

farm.bot

Open source automatic farming that can feed a family.

On the industrial scale you have self driving robots that kill weeds with lasers

Self-Driving Farm Robot Uses Lasers To Kill 100,000 Weeds An Hour, Saving Land And Farmers From Toxic Herbicides

The nutrient content of our vegetables is down 40% over the last two decades and our soil health is suffering due to increasingly harsh herbicide use, according to Carbon Robotics founder Paul Mikesell.

www.forbes.com

bigger competing model


As well as fruit picker robots

something that traditionally was done using illegal aliens to keep it cheap.

another one


Those various robots do not eliminate humans from the equation. but vastly reduce human labor.

Those robots are trash when not used under highly controlled conditions.

 

[Agent23]

AI helps with that too.
On the personal scale you have farmbot.

FarmBot | Open-Source CNC Farming

Farming and gardening robots for home, educational, and commercial use. Premium Hardware · Worldwide Shipping · Drag and Drop Farm Designer · Step-by-Step Assembly Instructions · Own Your Food

farm.bot

Open source automatic farming that can feed a family.

On the industrial scale you have self driving robots that kill weeds with lasers

Self-Driving Farm Robot Uses Lasers To Kill 100,000 Weeds An Hour, Saving Land And Farmers From Toxic Herbicides

The nutrient content of our vegetables is down 40% over the last two decades and our soil health is suffering due to increasingly harsh herbicide use, according to Carbon Robotics founder Paul Mikesell.

www.forbes.com

bigger competing model


As well as fruit picker robots

something that traditionally was done using illegal aliens to keep it cheap.

another one


Those various robots do not eliminate humans from the equation. but vastly reduce human labor.

Press F to doubt about the ROI for these toys.

 

[DarthOne]

Yeah people don't realize it but at this point the only way to survive the technological singularity is to become one with it. Sadly, too many people will realize this too late, and be left behind.

You presume that it's inevitable. Societal collapse- or even just the imminent competency crisis- might put a major dent in it, as well as society as a whole turning away from such ideals due to be disenchanted or refusing to comply with it.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

So, you believe that after you've worked your fingers to the bone for thirty or forty years, your company should be bought up by vulture capitalists who fire everyone, cancel everyone's pensions, and leave you to rot in a ditch with no money. That's frankly amazing. Let me know how that goes for you.

I'm more of the opinion that I should be able to put that money wherever I want. I can grow that money a hell of a lot better than the Feds can.

 

[mrttao]

So, you believe that after you've worked your fingers to the bone for thirty or forty years, your company should be bought up by vulture capitalists who fire everyone, cancel everyone's pensions, and leave you to rot in a ditch with no money. That's frankly amazing. Let me know how that goes for you.

You are engaging in binary thinking. where the only 2 choices are
1. corporate retirement fund (that gets dumped when the company changes hands)
2. govt retirement fund (that is literally a ponzy scheme. and had its accounts looted repeatedly)

There are other alternatives. Like
3. letting people manage their own retirement.
4. Allowing people to reproduce so their children can care for them in their old age

Also Number 1 and 3 would do much better if you stopped the rampant inflation caused by both massive govt debt spending as well as select aristocratic bloodlines engaging in private money printing.

 

[mrttao]

You are engaging in binary thinking. where the only 2 choices are
1. corporate retirement fund (that gets dumped when the company changes hands)
2. govt retirement fund (that is literally a ponzy scheme. and had its accounts looted repeatedly)

There are other alternatives. Like
3. letting people manage their own retirement.
4. Allowing people to reproduce so their children can care for them in their old age

Also Number 1 and 3 would do much better if you stopped the rampant inflation caused by both massive govt debt spending as well as select aristocratic bloodlines engaging in private money printing.

It is a bit Ironic that, ranked from best to worst you get
4 > 3 > 2 > 1
which is literally the opposite of what you are pushed to do, with 4 being heavily suppressed.

 

[Vyor]

With Stable Diffusion, I can generate a thousand insanely detailed CG paintings with about 2.2 hours of full-tilt GPU time on my 4090. If I had to pay human artists commissions for that, it would be like $300 each. Like over a quarter of a million dollars. Instead, it's 24 cents of electricity at my local prices.

The machines are taking over.

Now look at the hands.

 

[Iconoclast]

Now look at the hands.

>AI goofs up hands
>generate characters without hands.

 

[mrttao]

shoulders are a bit goofed. but overall that is pretty impressive.

 

[Vyor]

Yeah, yeah, impressive that the AI lacks any and all creativity.

 

[Iconoclast]

Yeah, yeah, impressive that the AI lacks any and all creativity.

Creativity is not the point. Giving people what they want is the point, and what people want is to revisit all the greatest hits in pop culture from slightly different angles. About 15 to 20 years from now, nobody will buy games. They'll ask AI to make them, and most of their requests will be generic slop like, "Gimme Halo, but Steampunk or something". Art will communicate nothing, and instead be a tool for mere aesthetic indulgence alone.

 

[Vyor]

Creativity is not the point. Giving people what they want is the point, and what people want is to revisit all the greatest hits in pop culture from slightly different angles. About 15 to 20 years from now, nobody will buy games. They'll ask AI to make them, and most of their requests will be generic slop like, "Gimme Halo, but Steampunk or something". Art will communicate nothing, and instead be a tool for mere aesthetic indulgence alone.

And then they get sued because it stole concept art from someone else.

 

[mrttao]

Art will communicate nothing, and instead be a tool for mere aesthetic indulgence alone.

Which is an improvement over it being pure propaganda completely lacking in any merit

 

[LordsFire]

Those various robots do not eliminate humans from the equation. but vastly reduce human labor.

This is the crux of it, really.

Technological advancement will continue to make labor more and more efficient, until something stops technological advancement.

Particularly large jumps can be rough for people, the iconic luddites did what they did because their particular skill set had suddenly become almost worthless, but at no point has human labor become obsolete.

AI can make art now, but getting the art you want out of it takes time, and developing skill in managing the prompts it's given. Sure, that might be cheaper than paying an artist, but it still costs something.

Robots require maintenance, recalibration, and human direction in general. How much is needed can be decreased, but there'll always be something.

 

[Scottty]

Yeah people don't realize it but at this point the only way to survive the technological singularity is to become one with it. Sadly, too many people will realize this too late, and be left behind.

No, those people will be the ones left alive when the next Carrington Event fries all the electronics on which your AI stuff depends.

 

[Marduk]

No, those people will be the ones left alive when the next Carrington Event fries all the electronics on which your AI stuff depends.

Only to realize that without electronics they won't get healthcare, logistics for food and energy, and that is if they get any food because there won't be enough for 90% of people and everyone will try to be in the 10% of people, with violence if need be.

 

[Scottty]

Only to realize that without electronics they won't get healthcare, logistics for food and energy, and that is if they get any food because there won't be enough for 90% of people and everyone will try to be in the 10% of people, with violence if need be.

A good argument for being way out in the sticks and growing your own food, I suppose.