Subnostr

Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" has a fascinating section in which he defends automation and reduction of labor costs via machinery and technology:

"There is also an absolute sense in which machines may be said to have enormously increased the number of jobs. The population of the world today is four times as great as in the middle of the eighteenth century, before the Industrial Revolution had got well under way. Machines may be said to have given birth to this increased population; for without the machines, the world would not have been able to support it. Three out of every four of us, therefore, may be said to owe not only our jobs but our very lives to machines."

I wonder therefore, how he would view AI?

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Discussion

jimbocoin 🃏 2y ago

Taking the long view, AI is just another step in the chain of increasingly efficient automation. Like all steps before, it yields more output per unit labor, and thus more value.

Séimí Mac Síomón 2y ago

Hazlitt argues that this results in a surplus of capital that itself is then spent elsewhere, thus stimulating jobs anew. I get the impression reading his work, that he views economic energy as a something that can neither be created or destroyed , but rather diverted to this end or that end.

My only fear is that this surplus of capital saved from the reduction of labor from AI will not enter into the free market, but will be managed by central planners in the form of "Universal Income" , which would be a disasterous continuation of many of the economic fallacies plaguing us today, chief among them is government redistribution of capital by taxation from trustworthy individuals who have weathered the free market and have managed risk accordingly, to individuals who have not .ie giving other peoples money (taxpayers) to individuals that no private lender would.

Séimí Mac Síomón 2y ago

To further simplify : taking money from things that work and giving it to things that dont.

jimbocoin 🃏 2y ago

#Bitcoin fixes this

annica 2y ago

intuitive take.

We actually are relying on technology/machines/productivity to sustain us at a base layer.

Seems as though AI/robotics is the next step change for humanity…. Step change to exactly what remains to be seen.

Could we be on the forefront of the next renaissance of human flourishing? Allowing abundance of time/energy/necessities to flow through to the masses.

create the world we want to live in before all power and wealth are concentrated to the few.

I see a lot of building happening here and in Bitcoin at large.

Hopeful

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