>Yes, but we are in a world of abundance. Most people carry around what would be in 1980 a 10 million dollar supercomputer in their pocket.

Most people also don't have $1000 for an emergency, live hand to mouth, and are dead scared of the cost and impact of a potential health issue. They are also overworked, underpaid, and with raising expenses, and sick of it, with depression levels skyrocketing. Having "a 10 million dollar supercomputer in their pocket" is not that comforting compared to that.

We've killed old style job security, cheap college education, affordable housing, the middle class and decent working class jobs, public infrastructure, and many other things (not to mention the environment), but in return we can have a rectangular gadget to access "all of the world's information in an instant" (which practically is just used to distract ourselves to death). Hurray!

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/more-americans-are-using-b...

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/19/56percent-of-americans-cant-...

> Yes, but we are in a world of abundance.

We have an abundance of inessentials. Housing is still scarce and food is volatile. Health care and education are expensive. Many people are sleeping on the streets or falling into lifestyles of despair.

Progress has been applied unevenly and most critically not to the factors of life that form the base of Maslow’s hierarchy.

What good is abundance if we haven't used it to minimize suffering? It's a good laugh whenever people think AI will democratize things. Summer children and their little daydreams.

I fear you haven't spent much time in the places in this "world of abundance" where people live in abject misery. I'm currently in Brazil, where some 20% of the population lives on less than $5.50 per day and 30% of families don't have enough food. And it's not for want of agricultural production.

I hear ya bud, and I think you have the right take. This will ultimately vastly improve the lives of quite a lot more people than if it never happened. If we survive the coming years of turmoil and AIs or social unrest dont destroy the world, we are looking at post-scarcity future of so much plenty that the powers that be would have to do something particularly obviously evil and nefarious to keep that wealth from spreading to everyone. As the cost of mass production of basic needs, housing, etc etc all drastically lower, the excuse for why they're not being spread gets more and more ridiculous - even as people's individual power lowers as they become redundant. (Though reminder: the current chess champion is a human with AI assistance, not a pure AI. Humans copilots may still be semi-relevant a while longer!) Wealth Inequality might very-well still skyrocket, but overall this should still uplift everyone's quality of life and effectively allow for mass retirement - even in the third world, eventually.

IF we make it through...

The problem is, even with automation we are still burning up to 10 calories of petrochemical energy to get 1 calorie of food energy.

We are going through 2.5 earth's worth of non-renewable resources each year in order to maintain our current lifestyles --- this simply isn't sustainable.

Let's turn things around:

- under what circumstances should a person be allowed to use more than 1/7 billionth of the solar energy which the earth receives each day?

- under what circumstances is at acceptable for a person to create more heat than 1/7 billionth of what the planet is able to radiate out into space on a daily basis?