>8 billion people, 6 billion jobs.

[rcjordan]

AI could affect 40% of jobs, widen inequality between nations: UN

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/04/ai-could-affect-40percent-of-jobs-widen-inequality-between-nations-un.html

[rcjordan]

bump.  thread got a lot right

[rcjordan]

Henry Ford Dilemma mentioned. Worth a read.

TLDR;
"Every investor presentation of an AI agent "doing the work of ten analysts" is telling you the same thing: the product is labor replacement. The gentler language ("copilot," "assistant," "augmentation") is marketing. The financial model underneath requires the elimination of human cost centers at civilizational scale. If it doesn't do that, these companies are the most overvalued assets in the history of capitalism. The people writing the checks are not in the habit of lighting trillions of dollars on fire for a better autocomplete and an endless proliferation of longer and longer memos that nobody reads."

The Dead Economy Theory - by Owen McGrann
https://www.owenmcgrann.com/p/the-dead-economy-theory

[ergophobe]

> What is rarely noted is that the short run can be a lifetime

This is a think I would try to teach: chronological foreshortening. People talking about the Middle Ages will sometimes discuss a "radical transformation" that took place in "just 120 years."

> This dependency is the source of democratic leverage.

I don't think I've seen that stated explicitly before. It's often implicit in the discussions of labor displacement or wealth inequality, but not stated so baldly and I honestly hadn't quite thought through the limit case. Although, it's more or less stated explicitly in Vonnegut's Player Piano back in 1952.

[rcjordan]

"at civilizational scale"

Loved that phrase. It works great for writing but maybe not so well verbally.