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First-Translator966 t1_ivspsas wrote

The bigger issue is population DECLINE. We’ll be paying people to HAVE kids, not the other way around. If automation and AI displace blue and white collar workers in droves, they won’t be able to afford children. And this problem is already baked into the cake. Every developed country has this problem. Immigration is a bandaid, because they too stop having kids after a generation or two ascending into the middle class. The ones that can’t do that… well, they’re basically the extras from Idiocracy.

Just look at the population structures and fertility rates of North America, Europe, China, Japan, Australia, etc. global population is going to peak in 50 years, give or take, and then it’s a terminal decline unless people are incentivized to reproduce.

The other issue is that you can’t force people to learn jobs that they don’t have the cognitive ability to perform. You can’t force people to learn advanced physics if they have a 100 IQ. They just don’t have the intellectual horsepower. Likewise, you can’t force someone to learn basic skills if they’re on the left end of the bell curve.

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Ambiwlans t1_ivtpcui wrote

Pop decline is only bad for the stock market. It is good for people and the environment.

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First-Translator966 t1_ivu441x wrote

No, it is absolutely horrible for people. First, “people” will cease to exist if these demographic trends don’t change. We will literally just go extinct.

Secondly, everything from basic civilizational support to the mental health of society is based on family formation. Wide swaths of jobless, childless people is a recipe for catastrophe.

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Ambiwlans t1_ivu91qg wrote

Lol... you're concerned that humanity will cease due to child birth reductions? You think that we'll fall from 10 billion to 0 because of not enough babies?

Hahahahahhahahahaaaaa

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First-Translator966 t1_ivwzgfy wrote

“If they don’t change.”

Yes, it’s called math.

In any case, plenty of civilizations have been destroyed by collapsing populations. The precedent is pretty clear. And the math of replacing humans with robots is pretty clear as well: input and maintenance costs are far less economical for a lot of labor than relatively cheap humans.

So as the human population declines it becomes more and more expensive to upkeep the complex systems that allow for modern society. We can see this vulnerability today with the strain on the logistical system and supply chains and energy costs. A hypothetical future of robot workers will be exponentially more complex and exponentially more vulnerable to disruption.

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TheUmgawa t1_ivsqei7 wrote

And those people are just going to be jobless and will have to survive on the subsistence income that is UBI. Short of a mental defect, stupidity is 100 percent curable; most people are just the living representation of, “Ignorance is bliss.”

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