Here’s a Jan 25th 2025 quote on X/Twitter (which his firm helped Musk buy) from Marc Anderessen, head of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz/a16z.
“A world in which human wages crash from AI – logically, necessarily – is a world in which productivity growth goes through the roof, and prices for goods and services crash to near zero. Consumer cornucopia. Everything you need and want for pennies.”
This is the world Big Tech is building for us. Given their hold over the current US administration, barring a political revolution - there’s not much to stop them for the next 4 years.
If their power to create that world via AI & robotics is seemingly unstoppable, what about a counter-intuitive idea? Engage them on it seriously. At the very least the transition to this world might need the kind of emergency economic supports the Covid era had.
It seems strange Big Tech is so open about what it intends to do, yet we are still not taking it seriously, despite them saying it all out loud.
“And then I told them getting paid less is a good thing! Prices will go down!”
Prices for things are already divorced from the price of labour, because pretty much every sector is an oligopoly where no real competition happens to drive the prices down to begin with. Corporations are cutting wages because they want to increase profit margins, not because competition is forcing them to cut prices.
My friends are not into tech and are not interested in office politics. They believe what they read in newspapers: that AI can write full applications and will revolutionize the world by summarizing emails. The truth is that it can’t write good code, and it will most likely fire people who have regular jobs because it’s cost effective (even if the result is bad). Altman says it will change our life and we’ll have 24 hours a day of free time, and people don’t see beyond that.
As for this quote:
productivity growth goes through the roof
He’s an idiot but he’s most likely selling something, and someone somewhere is listening.
He’s an idiot
He may be, but he’s also voicing standard economic ideas shared by the world’s government and business elites.
That’s the problem. All the people who are creating a world where AI & robots can do most work, think this is how it will work out.
Who knows, we may eventually get Star Trek style communism - maybe the problem is no one is taking Big Tech seriously, when they come right out and say what they are doing.
Rant:
I agree with you but I’m very tired with all this. I’m becoming old now and I don’t think I can care anymore. Politicians and billionaires have been fucking with us for a long time. With AI they can AND they will create chaos with unemployment and fucking over artists and workers in all the industries. There will not be a futuristic communism where we are all happy. At most we’ll have some kind of crippled UBI where all you can do is buy the crappiest food every month. Our grifting overlords won’t accept anything else and the governments will agree.
Most people around me are literally amazed that ChatGPT can reduce an email to a few words even if done by dropping random words. They don’t want to talk about all the details or what this shit will bring. I say fuck them, I am too old to accept all that crap. I’ll keep on learning while all the people who use ChatGPT or Claude won’t understand what happens. I don’t see anything positive from this. The technical details of all those models are interesting but inapplicable right now, yet everyone fall for the trap of using it at all cost.
ChatGPT is like Facebook: they have money because they have users. The users are guilty too. Humanity has always been lazy, but LLMs gives them the ultimate reason to be lazy, and it won’t end well. At least Idiocracy was funny.
Sorry for the rant.
Star Trek style communism requires a radically different approach to material scarcity. Current economic policy is to exploit and promote it, whereas in the Federation utopian ideal it would require that we attempt to solve scarcity. Provide for those who need, instead of exploiting that need for maximum profit.
It’s a VC firm. All they want is to turn their money into more money.
Consumer cornucopia. Everything you need and want for pennies.
That is objectively awesome. Also an argument for making energy/EVs/Steel cheaper with removal of tariffs from China, and utility monopoly regulatory power to make home solar expensive.
Where the problem comes up, is political power to make CIA champions get all of the profits from that world, and CIA champions quid pro quo support for US militarism, including limiting AI’s ability to criticize how awesome US militarism, or oligarchy concentration, is for you.
Tax funded UBI not only makes the awesome abundance affordable for people, taxing those who are enriched by productivity gains, encouraging more abundance than the genocidal extermination of the poors, UBI is also the only path to disempowering US empire from ensuring its CIA champions oppress Americans and world through “nebulous national security” goals that always involve gifting all the money to oligarchs.
That is objectively awesome.
Yeah. That is, if it were true.
In reality, the difference gained from productivity gains and/or wages saved will just be pocketed by shareholders/company owners, with prices remaining largely the same. Just like it’s been done for the past 100+ years, y’know?
I mention that in 2nd paragraph, along with only solution in last paragraph.
Not only will those companies elect a rulership that supports their wealth concentration, the AI itself will be programmed to validate anti-human behaviour and militarism to oppress both citizens and rest of world to that wealth concentration.
Parasite tells the host to accept it.
Has anyone else played this? https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
It simulates a paperclip factory that becomes increasingly automated. What happens is that yes the price goes down and production goes up (and profits go way up) but also raw material consumption goes exponential. In the game the world has infinite raw materials. IRL, not so much…
in my view : workers are increasingly competing
againagainst billionaires + AI-driven industries for limited resources, especially energy. Devaluated wages and job insecurity infuriates workers against CEO + the ultra richs who prioritize profit and efficiency through a.i + automation. These advancements further displace labor, exacerbating the wealth gap and undermining job stability. This escalating conflict destabilizes social structures and deepen economic inequality, leading to social collapse, notably in the USA.edited
againagainstThe odd thing I find in statements like this from the likes of Marc Anderessen, is that if prices tend towards zero that means ALL prices. Stocks, property, 401K portfolios.
I’m sure if challenged on that, he would say he doesn’t support any such thing, but the economic logic seems inescapable.
Zero / zero is mathematically undefined. Zero price with zero wages is undefined and it creates instability.
Such dead ends shows that these questions should be adressed in other ways.P.S. : in my previous comment, to avoid this uncertainty, i look at the relative value of human work versus energy value.
Zero / zero is mathematically undefined.
I should have been more accurate. What I meant was the economics term - zero marginal cost.
There’s an excellent book by Jeremy Rifkin speculating on what an AI/robotics automation zero marginal cost society might be like.
notably in the USA
All Europe will follow. CEOs all over the world don’t have a lot of imagination, they mimick what they see.
who prioritize profit and efficiency through a.i + automation.
These are not even true… They will waste money on stupid shit for themselves.
And if you think corpos are efficient, you clearly don’t have the experience within the system lol
Sounds like he could be one of those people who gets their job taken away. AI can blow steam out their ass for aot cheaper than that guy ever could. Save the company money by replacing all CEOs with AI.
Marc Anderessen,
A plauge upon your house sir. Lying piece of shit.
