Nobody wants to live in a mining economy. Human slavery, extraordinary taxes, no public infrastructure. Conceivably you only need two roads total: one from the palace to the airport and another from the mine to the docks. Any more and someone might try to build a school.
It seems to me that human quality of life is really tightly coupled to economic systems where there is a high ROI in investing in the public.
This is what spooks me about AI. A slow but observable descent on the continuum from knowledge economy to diamond mine economy. The rust belt metastasizes and oversupply of human laborers is such a problem things get really hunger games about which libraries and universities get their bills paid.
It seems to me that human quality of life is really tightly coupled to economic systems where there is a high ROI in investing in the public.
This is what spooks me about AI. A slow but observable descent on the continuum from knowledge economy to diamond mine economy. The rust belt metastasizes and oversupply of human laborers is such a problem things get really hunger games about which libraries and universities get their bills paid.