301
submitted 1 year ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] jarfil@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I think we just live in an era when population doubles every 50 years, which means more demand, more production, and more currency needed to represent the value being transferred, which lead to more money being created.

We got used to that, to a point where it's become a kind of an act of faith. It's not going to be like that forever, though:

We're way past "peak population" growth, and if nothing else were to change, eventually demand would go down, production would go down, and the amount of transferred value would also go down, with a rampant inflation and a need to drastically reduce the amount of money.

But of course, it's not the only change on the table. The AI revolution is right upon us, which will not reduce human demand, but will shift a bunch of production from humans to AIs, which is likely to increase the rate of value production several-fold, at the same time as increased interest rates are stifling the creation of money to combat the recent inflation.

I'm afraid we might be coming into a perfect storm where a slightly slower growing demand, will be met with a much faster growing production from a much lower number of people, causing on one hand a sudden deflation, and at the same time an impoverishment of a large part of society unable to afford that value even at the deflated cost.

[-] Gsus4@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ok, fine, I hadn't considered that and it's a factor. None of the demographically declining countries like Italy, Japan, Portugal is doing great in terms of growth...but they don't have deflation either. You also have the productivity growth factor into account with automation (meaning each citizen produces more but also uses more resources)

this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
301 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37708 readers
168 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS