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Also, what do you prefer WFH or WFO?
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Going in house is the move, right?
What’s the best social media hack campaign ?
Any tips from social media managers?
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Like most things, it benefits a small number of people in the short term, and they pull the strings so we're forced to go along with it.
The rich are driving the economy now, middle and lower class spending doesn’t matter when all the wealth is concentrated at the top. Labor is the only cost left to cut so if they can continue to fire and rehire at lower wages and eliminate other roles with automation. The cost savings will be passed onto investors and shareholders who will have even more income to spend on expensive products to keep the economy going while the rest of us fade into obscurity
AI is a virus that kills its host. Even things enjoyed by the idle rich. There are fewer really rich people, and catering to only them destroys most industries.
Take the restaurant industry. When there’s a robust middle class, they eat at lots of cheap(er) restaurants. They also spend $$$ on special occasions, so they overlap with the rich sometimes. If they can’t afford to eat at any restaurants, the restaurants catering to the middle class go out of business. That’s the bulk of restaurants. Their suppliers lose most of their business, eventually causing them to scale back, increase prices, and it’s just a downward spiral. That then hurts the farmers, so there are fewer farmers, even industrial farms. It hurts everyone.
The other side of that coin is that rich people can only spend so much money on so many goods and services. There are fewer rich families, so they spend at fewer places. The disuse compounds. If restaurants are only serving the wealthy, only a few will make it, and only until they go out of style. Or more realistically, you’ll be stuck with the same handful of restaurants that will never close, because with the startup cost so exorbitant, they will have little competition.
At the end of the day, unless you completely remove people and free will from the system, AI will eat itself. Now, if you subscribe to some Peter Thiel dark enlightenment stuff, all industries are going away, along with the people who used to work in them.
It’s dark out here folks.
I would love for literally any journalist to ask this question when they’re interviewing the AI bros and CEOs who are thrilled about labor cuts. Its been painful watching these interactions the last couple of years and seeing no one ask or offer answers. Because the glimpses of answers you do get from the self disclosure of people at the top seem to indicate they are dreaming of a future of reinvented company towns and techno feudalism, but that isnt making it into the big media profiles of these dudes.
Many do! And you get some really dark answers. “Post truth” bs and tech bros unable to answer the simple question “should the human race continue?”
Pro
Who is this “they” that says ai will make things cheaper? It won’t.
Pro
I’ll believe it when I see it. These companies have to recoup incredible amounts of money to reach or maintain profitability and services have to continue to get more expensive to maintain margins. There will be a short term top line cost reduction by removing bodies, but thats not a sustainable reduction in costs.
There is a real world situation where unemployment starts to get higher and higher, which means tax revenue to city, state and federal governments drop. The government now has less money and higher entitlement costs, which they will then have to cut. That results in less money circulating in the economy, which means more companies have to reduce costs. Unemployment rises and on and on and on…
Is this the future we are all racing toward?
Basically. It will have to bottom out at some point, but we’ll all be living in compounds or shanty towns by then. UBI will be just enough for us to buy our VR headsets to escape how bleak it all is. [And hate on it all you like but that is the actual setup for Ready Player One. Prescient.]
Capitalism only destroys. Everything. 🇺🇸