> Last I checked, the tractor and plow are doing a lot more work than 3 farmers, yet we've got more jobs and grow more food.

We do not have more jobs for horses.

In this context we are the horses.

> they're paying for someone to _figure out_ their exact needs,

Back in the 1980s this was called "systems analysis". The role disappeared a bit before the web came along, and coders were tasked with the job or told to just guess what the exact needs are, which is why so much software is trash.

I don't know, though, Claude Opus is most of the way to being a good systems analyst, and early reports say that having an AI provide descriptions/requirements to a fleet of code-writing AIs gives better results than having a human do it.

> jobs destroyed will be replaced with new jobs

Not for horses though, or at least not the majority of them. Some were kept as pets or essentially status objects. In this case we are the horses.

And glue, you forgot glue. Maybe we'll get the Matrix plot line where we become human glue. Or, uh, batteries.

95% of human farmers lost their jobs because of industrial revolution. What happened then? No jobs were created and we still have 95% unemployment, right?

> In this case we are the horses.

This is assuming the conclusion. The entire question is whether we are the horses or every other example of humans in the past who found other employment that was inconceivable previous to the technological revolution that rendered their old job irrelevant.

But you are ignoring the substantial difference between previous technical revolutions, this time technology not replacing a mechanical operation.

Horses don't pay tax. The reason we have jobs is to pay tax.

Horses couldn't revolt.

And we won’t. Uber Eats Burger Reich and all.

They are getting cheap electricity from PV and batteries and cheap air conditioners to run on the electricity.

They are being denied their predecessor's ability to spend hours of the day outside comfortably. That is a travesty.

At least hundreds of millions, if not billions, can't afford airtight walls and a ceiling. Their homes are made of sheet metal and other scraps. They can buy a few panels for the family which rest on dirt to power their phones.

Everyone is a climate skeptic.

"To know, and not yet to do, is not to know" - Aristotle.

Everyone still flies on planes. Ceasing burning kerosene is the easiest possible thing you could do to reduce your climate impact, but no-one does it.

Everyone hates being called out on it, but it is true. No-one really cares, because no-one is prepared to make a socially costly signal, costly in prestige or relationships or group membership. It's all posturing.

Speak for yourself. I can count the times I flied in my whole life on one hand, and I have never flied domestically. It's not some unachievable ideal, and majority != everyone.

It's a funny business. I'm a bit skeptical how much of a problem it will be but am up for fixing things. But me not flying will make no difference. The kind of thing that could is a global carbon tax but hardly anyone seems up for that.

Down from 700,000. Not good news.

"... and another 6.3 million people across Sudan face extreme levels of hunger".

Exactly. If the political class no longer needs healthy, literate soldiers and workers, it's going to stop paying for them.

Even worse, without use for them, they’re a liability. Having a boatload of now useless probably angry is a dangerous scenario. Peasant rebellion are rare, but too happen, particularly when starvation is on the table.

So the play will be to boil the frog so to say. Find a way to make it acceptable to get rid of these “extra” people without too much noise. Consider the current rhetoric around homeless people.

This time actually is different, though.

If everything that a human can do, a robot can do better and cheaper, then humans are completely shut out of the production function. Humans have a minimum level of consumption that they need to stay alive whether or not they earn a wage; robots do not.

Since most humans live off wages which they get from work, they are then shut out of life. The only humans left alive are those who fund their consumption from capital rents.

If humans who don't own robots are not producing and therefore not earning, then they're also not buying. Who are the robot owners selling their products to?

Other robot owners?

See: "build me a bigger yacht", building moon bases, researching immortality medicine, and building higher walls and better killbots to manage any peasant attacks

Why would other robot owners need to buy anything? They can just get their AIs to figure out how to make the things they're buying so they can not buy them anymore.

I think it's likely that there'll still be specialization - some robots/AI will be better at some tasks than others. On top of that, physical/natural resources may be owned by different people. So maybe you need tungsten and I need someone to build a space elevator, so we trade.

Robots consume resources