The single biggest problem with the economy is capital misallocation resulting from private capture of positive network externalities inherent in civilization. I foresaw this back when I was responsible, in large measure, for the change in law resulting now in the spate of orbital launch services, and wrote this paper proposing to replace taxes on economic activity with a single tax on liquidation value of net assets, and to take the revenue and replace virtually all government services with a citizen's dividend.
http://ota.polyonymo.us/others-papers/NetAssetTax_Bowery.txt I also, in that paper, predicted the demographic implosion that people are still coming to grips with: The global economy, as it stands, is a malign cyborg -- an "unfriendly AGI" that consumes the genetic basis of its own components by outbidding the family for the fertile years of the most economically valuable females. The pig-in-a-poke "transhumanists" are standing in the way of correcting this AGI's malign impact on the world with their hopium. On Sun, Sep 5, 2021 at 5:02 PM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 5:57 AM Quan Tesla <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > "Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a > six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back > full employment." > > > > Would this mean that government employees would have to productively > work 2 hours extra per day? > > This would only work in a fantasy model of economics where jobs are > interchangeable and at no cost. In reality, we have both unemployment > and a labor shortage. It costs 1% of lifetime earnings to the employer > and employee to change jobs within similar fields, and much longer to > learn a new field. > > So in this fantasy world, we would already be at full employment. > Reducing hours by 25% would reduce GDP by 25%, resulting in a 3 year > decrease in life expectancy. (Each doubling of income adds 5 years). > > And we don't WANT full employment. 60% of Americans don't work now, > and we are fine with that. Some are too young or too old or busy > raising children or disabled or have low IQ or criminal records or are > addicted to drugs. Unemployment statistics only count those with job > skills who are being paid by the government to not work. > > What we want are intelligent machines that will make work easier, > safer and more productive, raising our incomes while lowering the > costs of goods and services. > > -- > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T50e86f61cc07a7b3-M80e155d16411bd937c954aa9 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
