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If we reframe the problem as: How do we run an economy not based around GDP growth, ie. Not based around birthing more people to increase labour? Japan is ahead of the curve here in that it has an ageing population, they appear to have placed their bet on robotics.

Fundamentally this is an energy issue, with enough free energy everyone can have a high standard of living ie. BI becomes possible, we can automate away most mundane jobs with cheap robots (BOM goes down with cheap energy).

With a good standard of living, births drop- viz population charts globally except Africa, thus we get into a virtuous cycle.

The only issue is the environmental impact of lots of energy in the ecosystem, I'm not sure how that would pan out.



I don't buy this.

We are wasting massive amounts of energy.

20 lanes of stop-and-go SUV's all single driver traveling over an hour to jobs that they hate. Terrajules of energy to create a single piece of electronics designed to break in less than 2 years. Massive manufacturing of throw away disposable items. The list goes on.

This is Hacker news. Que's Computer Users Dictionary 5th edition defines hack:

"An inordinately clever rearrangement of existing system resources that results, as if by magic, in a stunning improvement in system performance - or an equally stunning prank."

We need to wisely use what we already have.




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