Non-snarky hypothesis?

Increasing wealth concentration in certain desirable areas where prices will continue to skyrocket because the people there can afford it (those that receive the most return on capital vs. those just working on return on their own labor). Meanwhile the majority of the population decays alongside them, but at a distance that can be kept by well paid security forces.

There is the possibility of some philanthropy, perhaps. Maybe even some government policies that help change this, but I'm not sure if those are the most likely outcomes.

I guess there's always the guillotine / riot approach to bring things into check if it gets really bad, but typically that requires some sort of middle class to get things going. We also have not seen this occur at large scale in places where this already happens on earth.

EDIT: Please do not mistake my use of the word "labor" and "capital" for me identifying as some form of communist. Those are actual terms used by reasonable people (including economists!) I'd say most students of history and present day sociology might agree that this is a possibility for how wealth manifests in the future given large scale automation and no public policy changes.

It'll be used by Bezos to control and manipulate policies that benefit him and Amazon.

Bezos’ pockets.

And from there?

Is this where you try to claim trickle down economics works despite the top 20% of people owning more than 80% of the financial assets?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

'trickle down' implies a watershed, where water/wealth collects in small tributaries that come together to form a main River where wealth/water is most concentrated.

Actual trickle down economics is trickle up economics, so no shit it doesn't work. Let's just dump a bunch of water here at the mouth of the Amazon and watch it flow up into the Andes.

You didn't answer the question.

Into investment assets that get swapped amongst the wealthy ad-infinitum, and generate enough capital on their own to feed the poor.

The 20/80 rule applies in all aspects of life. Like 20% of the soccer players account for 80% of the goals. So why wouldn't we expect it to apply to money as well? This is like a law of gravity. You can attempt to fight against it artificially but eventually it will come crashing down

And from there to fund already rich parties to continue to enforce control in a way that washes Bezos' hands clean of any wrongdoing. Outsourcing the task of maintaining inequality, per se. (Billionares funding millionares springs to mind).

Or, stated with less emotional rhetoric: Funding 1$ to the wealthy returns 0.7$ to the economy. So, from 'there' nothing, because Bezos' pocket is keeping it.

> Funding 1$ to the wealthy returns 0.7$ to the economy.

So going solely by that figure, as long as the gain in efficiency from automating a job is > 42% it's a net positive for the economy? And that's even _if_ you assume 100% of the savings goes directly into the company owner's pockets and isn't simply being re-invested somewhere else.

> So going solely by that figure, as long as the gain in efficiency from automating a job is > 42% it's a net positive for the economy?

No, because 1$ to a poor person is actually 1.12$ returned to the economy. It gets even bigger when you go into 1$ to education.

>And that's even _if_ you assume 100% of the savings goes directly into the company owner's pockets and isn't simply being re-invested somewhere else.

Well that's the thing. Even if you give money to wealthy people they're not going to invest more than a poor person will with it. A person in poverty has immediate needs to spend the money on where a wealthy person does not.

> No, because 1$ to a poor person is actually 1.12$ returned to the economy.

Okay, so >60% then, assuming the average worker at an Amazon warehouse meets your definition of "poor". Still a totally achievable figure.

> Even if you give money to wealthy people

We're not talking about _giving_ money to anyone here, we're talking about automation. Automation means efficiency gains for _Amazon_ (the corporation) not Bezos personally, so you can't just make the lazy assumption that 100% of any savings made by Amazon goes directly into Bezos' pockets (as egypturnash did earlier in this thread).

But even if you do make that ridiculous assumption, _and_ we assume your figures are correct, it still only takes a >60% efficiency gain for the economy to break even on the transaction, correct?

A >60% efficiency gain is not small at scale, and part of the reason why automation is succeeding but not exactly in all the spaces we expect. Even the article covers that jobs are being lost, but not many jobs as one would intuitively believe.

Furthermore, someone who is out of work as a result of automation will also be a loss in the broader economy (as they will need services, the government loses income tax where applicable). The math I assume gets very complicated very quickly. But claiming "and from bezos' pocket, where?" is a reductionist statement that can be met with an equally reductionist "nowhere because we know rich people don't invest as much in the economy as they take".

I think the reason automation isn't taking over as quickly as expected isn't because the efficiency gains are small, but because the capital investment required to automate is often large, and because many of the jobs that haven't yet been automated are complicated to solve in the general case. (This machine, for example, only handles boxing; it can't actually pick products off the shelves because that's a very general problem that's more difficult to solve.)

There are also numerous other economic effects to consider, such as the increased activity from capital spending on automation equipment and software, and (as you pointed out) the economic losses from higher short-term unemployment.

My initial question was only made in reply to a reductionist and intellectually lazy statement implying that the company owner is the only one who benefits from automation. I asked that question in an attempt to get the other commenter to think more carefully about their position (the answer isn't "nowhere" by the way, as the very figures you yourself provided indicate that 70% of it goes directly back into the economy). Unfortunately it doesn't look like they ever replied, but nonetheless I think I've made my point.

He will horde most of it. Occasionally he will spend on lobbying efforts, purchase insane luxury items (ie yachts), or vanity projects. Sometimes, he will splurge on a business that employee a few people. When he is feeling particularly generous, he may contribute to some project that makes home look good while putting his name on something (ie new opera house).

Where does the money for the yachet go?

To the yacht builders of course. There happens to be only a few of those however.

I think if that money were to be spent by 10,000 people buying everyday groceries, cars, clothing the economic benefit would be far greater.

What do the yacht builders do with the money?

Launched in to space for Bezos's Scrooge McDuck gold pool on his moon colony.

But don't worry, nobody needs to get paid for this. The rockets will be built by robots, and the robots will be built by more robots.

This may come across as a total joke, so I should clarify.

Do I really think Bezos will do this? No.

Would I be surprised if he did? Also no.

Pretty much nowhere given my experience as a non-software person living in Seattle.

Well, nowhere except fighting attempts to do things like “make big businesses pay their fair share of taxes for once”.

Probably gone due to social unrest.