Very strong disagree; a lot of people is objecting. A job on an assembly line may be "bad" for somebody, but for somebody else can be a lifeline, if they won't be able to find another job soon enough and/or in reasonable conditions. Long-term, the job market can rebalance (and if unemployed people are supported in their education, it's great), but short-term displacement is a serious issue.

"Robots" broadly defined are getting more capable and more intelligent at a significantly faster rate than humans are.

This obviously produces incredible economic surplus, but 1) that surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced, and 2) doesn't seem clear that all the negative consequences of mass obsolescence are solvable by economic surplus even in theory.

I ask you to follow your premise to it's conclusion... who's paying for it these robots and who buys the stuff the robots make? Other robots?? In this world where robot serves robot, where exactly did we disappear to?

Yes, an economy is perfectly capable of orienting itself around satisfying the wants of the few people who have a lot of capital at the expense of the many who have little capital. Why wouldn't this be possible?

It obviously creates systemic risk in the economy, which is one of many reasons it should be mitigated by policy and taxation, but I'm not sure why you're acting like it's some mathematical impossibility.

Not sure anyone said anything about humans "disappearing," just driven to extreme economic hardship despite ample overall productivity, which again we have literally hundreds of real world examples of throughout history.

Just answer my question, who's buying all the stuff the robots are making when everyones "driven to extreme economic hardship"?

No one said "everyone" is being driven to extreme economic hardship. Without that word, your implication doesn't quite work :)

Here's a rephrasing of your question using the dynamic that I actually described. Let me know if you still need me to fill in the blanks for you:

> when automated systems owned by fewer and fewer people are responsible for greater and greater proportions of economic surplus, who buys the output of those systems?

Do you need help answering that question still?

In such a scenario there are two sources of consumption: a very large low-income base and a very small high-income sliver.

This is exactly what we saw during the Middle Ages (until concluded by the Black Death and broad peasant revolts), early Modernity (until concluded by economically motivated political revolutions all over the world), and the Gilded Age (until concluded by an economic collapse followed by broad social reforms).

It's hilarious that you're just asserting the impossibility of something we have literally actually seen play out dozens of times all over the globe over thousands of years.

Productivity improvements → extreme wealth inequality → economic, political, or social collapse → repeat

The more advanced the technology and the markets in which it performs (by definition) the more levered and rapid the productivity gains are, the more extreme the inequality produced -- again as we're seeing play out in real time (https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/1125-yang-...)

The smug implication of "well that obviously wouldn't be stable!" is actually not a rebuttal to "this process will produce instability." It's clear you're working in reverse from, "this would be inconvenient if true" to "therefore it cannot be true." But history and current trajectory shows us unambiguously: it is.

Except technology has been progressing all this time, and has actually increased the lifetimes of populations.

>In such a scenario there are two sources of consumption: a very large low-income base and a very small high-income sliver.

You're describing, vaguely, a system with few rich and mostly poor people.... You think that's some kind of insight, except that's how civilised society has operated from day one. This is different from your "tech has always progressed but with robots this time it's different" idea you started out with

> It's hilarious that you're just asserting the impossibility of something we have literally actually seen play out dozens of times all over the globe over thousands of years.

See above

> The more advanced the technology and the markets in which it performs (by definition) the more levered and rapid the productivity gains are, the more extreme the inequality produced -- again as we're seeing play out in real time (https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/1125-yang-...)

You're talking about inequality, which has always existed, and not your original claim. I have no debate here. Robots making humans obsolete has not happened in history. Plenty of people (like you) believed the most recent advance in tech truly was the one that would put humans finally out of a job, but it never comes to pass. See the steam engine. See most big jumps in tech.

Try a notepad on your desk or a Markdown file, maybe an LLM for when you wish to argue against yourself.

In short, this "conundrum" is no different from the thousands of other times advances in tech made jobs obsolete. You make the same mistake your ancestors made

Now the next step is to read this sentence word for word:

> The more advanced the technology and the markets in which it performs (by definition) the more levered and rapid the productivity gains are, the more extreme the inequality produced

You and I both agree that technology is getting more advanced (where advanced == produces more leverage on human inputs), but for some reason you think this latest wave of technology is somehow different in that it won't produce inequality and therefore (left unmitigated) result in instability.

You're the one who thinks this latest wave of tech is unique, not me :)

No. I'm refuting you claiming this time is different. I never said anything about inequality.

> You're the one who thinks this latest wave of tech is unique, not me :)

Is this trolling?

You've walked your claims back slightly with this "if left unmitigated" qualifier, so now ai means possibly the end of humans having something to do, maybe...

> Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.

This was your op. This is you thinking this is unique.

Mic drop. im done here

What do you think the word "naturally" means in the following sentence: "[economic] surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced"

What do you think this sentence means?: "which is one of many reasons [tech-driven inequality] should be mitigated by policy and taxation,"

What do you think the italicized just means here?: "If you want to see what just productivity improvements (with no social innovations) naturally does"

Or for that matter, what do you think the parenthetical means?

I have been arguing what the natural, unmitigated effects of technological development is the entire time. You've been arguing against some other made up position in your head, as pointed out more than 3 or 4 times now.

Have a good night kiddo ;)

You think this is unique. You're just wrong. Not sure how to make that any simpler than it is

Even if a job is "bad", losing it creates short-term shocks; especially low-income workers can’t instantly move to better jobs.

No doubt that structural (long term) changes are profitable for everybody - but both phenomenons can hold true.