You might be thinking about it in a wrong way. Societal structures follow capabilities, not wants. If you try to push for “each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs” too early, you end up with communist dystopias. If we are lucky, the AGI age will improve our capabilities enough where “to everyone according to their needs” may become feasible, aligning the incentives with well-being rather than with profit. So, to answer your questions:
It is currently impossible to “align the incentives” without causing widespread suffering.
It is undesirable if you do not want to cause suffering.
It is ineffective to try to align the incentives away from profit if your goal is making them aligned with “human well being”.
That said, there are incremental steps that are possible to take without making things worse, and they are discussed quite often by Scott Alexander and Zvi, as well as by others in the rationalist diaspora. So read them.
This is a bit of a tangent but even in an ideal future I can’t see how this wouldn’t just be shifting the problem one step away. After all, who would get to define what the ‘needs’ are?
If it’s defined by majority consensus, why wouldn’t the crowd pleasing option of shifting the baseline to more expansive ‘needs’ be predominant?
I mean, people seem to assume here when discussing an “ideal future” some kind of post-scarcity utopia in which there’s enough to satisfy anyone’s wildest needs ten times over.
I agree that I’m personally not a big believer in this being possible at all. You can have enough abundance to provide everyone with food, clothes and a house, or even more, but at some point you’ll probably have to stop. Currency might be replaced by some analogue system, but yes, at the end, you need some way to partition limited resources, and unlimited resources just aren’t physical.
I don’t think I agree that societal structures follow capabilities and not wants. I’ll agree that certain advancements in capability (long term food storage, agriculture, gunpowder, steam engines, wireless communication, etc.) can have dramatic effects on society and how it can arrange itself, but all the changes are driven by people utilizing these new capabilities to further themselves and/or their community.
The idea of scarcity in the present is a great example of this. The world currently produces so much food that about a third of it is thrown away before even being sold, more than enough to feed all those who go hungry. There are orders of magnitude more empty houses in North America than there are homeless people, not even counting apartments or hotel rooms. We don’t live in a time of scarcity, we live in a time of overproduction. People don’t go hungry or homeless because we don’t have enough production capacity to feed or house them and maintain everyone else’s quality of life, but because it would be less profitable to do so. “To each according to their needs” is feasible right now without AI or even expanding production capacity, it’s simply not incentivized.
I agree with your point that aligning incentives with well-being rather than profit is possible when we produce enough, I just see that we disagree whether or not we do actually produce enough currently.
I’d love if you could point me to any resources indicating that scarcity of necessities is currently natural instead of manufactured, or if you could expand further upon your first point about capability being the primary force driving societal change. Thanks for your response.
I agree with your analysis of the current situation. However, the technological issues arise when trying to correct it without severe unintended consequences, and that is not related to profit. You can’t transplant a house easily. You cannot easily feed only those who go hungry without affecting the economy (food banks help to some degree). There are people in need of companionship that cannot find it, even though there is a companion that would match somewhere out there. There are potential technological solutions to all those that are way outside our abilities (teleportation! replication! telepathy!) that would solve these issues. You can also probably find a few examples where what looks like profit-based incentive is in fact a technological deficiency.
2/ in what sense is it profitable to throw away food or maintain empty dwellings that is distinct from “maintaining everyone else’s quality of life”?
3/ if the evil is that some people’s needs are not valued enough could that not be remedied by giving them money and making it profitable to meet their needs?
You might be thinking about it in a wrong way. Societal structures follow capabilities, not wants. If you try to push for “each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs” too early, you end up with communist dystopias. If we are lucky, the AGI age will improve our capabilities enough where “to everyone according to their needs” may become feasible, aligning the incentives with well-being rather than with profit. So, to answer your questions:
It is currently impossible to “align the incentives” without causing widespread suffering.
It is undesirable if you do not want to cause suffering.
It is ineffective to try to align the incentives away from profit if your goal is making them aligned with “human well being”.
That said, there are incremental steps that are possible to take without making things worse, and they are discussed quite often by Scott Alexander and Zvi, as well as by others in the rationalist diaspora. So read them.
This is a bit of a tangent but even in an ideal future I can’t see how this wouldn’t just be shifting the problem one step away. After all, who would get to define what the ‘needs’ are?
If it’s defined by majority consensus, why wouldn’t the crowd pleasing option of shifting the baseline to more expansive ‘needs’ be predominant?
I’d assume that people themselves would define what they need, within the limits of what is possible given the technology of the time.
So it would be exactly the same as how ‘needs’ are recognized in present day society?
I guess my point is the standard one: in many ways even poor people live a lot better now than royalty 300 years ago.
Well, except now just saying “I need this” wouldn’t get the need satisfied if you don’t have the money for it.
How’s that different from the future?
There clearly will still be resource constraints of some kind and they will very likely need some unit of currency to carry out their activities.
I mean, people seem to assume here when discussing an “ideal future” some kind of post-scarcity utopia in which there’s enough to satisfy anyone’s wildest needs ten times over.
I agree that I’m personally not a big believer in this being possible at all. You can have enough abundance to provide everyone with food, clothes and a house, or even more, but at some point you’ll probably have to stop. Currency might be replaced by some analogue system, but yes, at the end, you need some way to partition limited resources, and unlimited resources just aren’t physical.
I don’t think I agree that societal structures follow capabilities and not wants. I’ll agree that certain advancements in capability (long term food storage, agriculture, gunpowder, steam engines, wireless communication, etc.) can have dramatic effects on society and how it can arrange itself, but all the changes are driven by people utilizing these new capabilities to further themselves and/or their community.
The idea of scarcity in the present is a great example of this. The world currently produces so much food that about a third of it is thrown away before even being sold, more than enough to feed all those who go hungry. There are orders of magnitude more empty houses in North America than there are homeless people, not even counting apartments or hotel rooms. We don’t live in a time of scarcity, we live in a time of overproduction. People don’t go hungry or homeless because we don’t have enough production capacity to feed or house them and maintain everyone else’s quality of life, but because it would be less profitable to do so. “To each according to their needs” is feasible right now without AI or even expanding production capacity, it’s simply not incentivized.
I agree with your point that aligning incentives with well-being rather than profit is possible when we produce enough, I just see that we disagree whether or not we do actually produce enough currently.
I’d love if you could point me to any resources indicating that scarcity of necessities is currently natural instead of manufactured, or if you could expand further upon your first point about capability being the primary force driving societal change. Thanks for your response.
I agree with your analysis of the current situation. However, the technological issues arise when trying to correct it without severe unintended consequences, and that is not related to profit. You can’t transplant a house easily. You cannot easily feed only those who go hungry without affecting the economy (food banks help to some degree). There are people in need of companionship that cannot find it, even though there is a companion that would match somewhere out there. There are potential technological solutions to all those that are way outside our abilities (teleportation! replication! telepathy!) that would solve these issues. You can also probably find a few examples where what looks like profit-based incentive is in fact a technological deficiency.
1/ evidence for these statements?
2/ in what sense is it profitable to throw away food or maintain empty dwellings that is distinct from “maintaining everyone else’s quality of life”?
3/ if the evil is that some people’s needs are not valued enough could that not be remedied by giving them money and making it profitable to meet their needs?