For decades we moved to a knowledge based economy, now we have perversely wealthy people saying they're coming for those jobs. The thought of 10s of millions of people with nothing to do but starve to death ought to scare those wealthy people.

Especially since many of them are some of the brightest minds around.

If (1) many bright and very online people are going to lose their jobs, and (2) the response has not been mass unionization, might I rethink [1] a more likely future of work or rethink [2] the psychology of the average/collective knowledge workforce, or...

"where union" in short.

Perhaps the concept is too foreign for white collars, or on average folks think they'll be OK and it's the juniors who'll go... maybe too focused on immediate needs... a belief unionization is the wrong response... (and I'm not advocating for anything in particular btw)

Unions doesn't give you power they just help you use what power you have. Unions don't help if you don't have any power, see Detroit factory workers, they were highly unionized but that didn't help them at all. And if you have power then you can start a union, so there isn't a reason to start a union early before you need it.

To extend on what Jensson wrote:

A union has the power to organise one thing, to withdraw labour. In the industrial era, the threat of all the workers not showing up was a threat to end a business.

If AI does what is promised, to replace labour, then a threat to withdraw labour is only threatening the owners with a good time.

Yeah, the swing riots ultimately did not lead to better working conditions

Riots are very different to trade unions in the same way that a civil war is different from an electoral democracy.

Well, if riots don’t help, I don’t think peaceful strikes work better.

Yes? I'm saying unions, whose power is strikes, cannot possibly work because the strikers have zero power in the circumstance "we have decided to make you all redundant".

And I’m providing further evidence for your claim.

...and in America there are more guns than humans, and more potentially unemployed white collar workers than the police, military, and national guard combined.

Nick Hanauer understood this fourteen years ago. Very few others did. And despite him spending his own time and money to explain it in simple English, nobody in his peer group wanted to hear it -- his TED talk on the subject ... took several years before it was published. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

FA (for a decade or so) FO, I guess?

https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocr...

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfor...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8ns than humans, and more potentially unemployed white collar workers than the police, military and national guard combined.

whoh dude's awesome

Comment of the week

They're experts at divide and conquer. They'll probably be able to convince us that we did this to each other.

Just like they convinced the younger generation that "boomers" stole their future.

> The thought of 10s of millions of people with nothing to do but starve to death ought to scare those wealthy people.

It doesn't, it won't, and it shouldn't. It's not explored in game theory and criminal justice tries to conceal this but the starving will kill and eat each other long before they organize and mob the wealthy.

It plays out in every prison riot, governmental collapse, and other condition of anarchy.

This idea that the poor will mob the rich is feel-good Hollywood idealism that has been wholly undermined by identity politics. The poor will sooner kill and eat you just because you're easier to reach.