Surur t1_jczvy39 wrote
Reply to comment by 2cimarafa in A technical, non-moralist breakdown of why the rich will not, and cannot, kill off the poor via a robot army. by Eleganos
How much would Elon Musk be worth when 720 million potential customers are dead and only 80 million people, who prefer to be driven in Bentleys, are left.
How rich will the Walmart heirs be when their store customers are rotting in the aisles?
The wealth of the 1% of based on business with the 99%.
greatdrams23 t1_jd03mr8 wrote
What is wealth?
Ownership of land, many luxury houses, cars, gold, Jewellery, entertainment, good food and drink, tags l yachts, the best healthcare.
And all of these in greater amounts than the less wealthy.
Why do you need the 99% to provide these when a robot can?
Surur t1_jd04mt7 wrote
Some of those are intrinsic (like health) but most other things depend on society to give them value.
Say for example you are a property tycoon with numerous skyscrapers in New York. When most of Manhatten is dead, your property is worthless.
Or say you have a mega-yacht like Bezos, you sail it to Tahiti, but when you get there the local population and tourist attractions are empty, because everyone is dead.
And who are you impressing with your gigantic yatch when 99% of people are dead, and the other 1% can just get their robots to build a similarly sized boat?
xt-89 t1_jd0tifr wrote
Given how most tech billionaires seem to be sci fi nerds, it seems more likely that the rich would incentivize is to move to Mars or something rather than just kill everyone
Spreadwarnotlove t1_jd24ykz wrote
Pretty much. The rich will push for the human colonization of the galaxy and they are going to need trillions upon trillions of people just to properly colonize the solar system.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2lgbt wrote
Because you are feeling nervous about the popular anti-inequality sentiments of the late 2030's and after that big monopoly crackdown last year you realise that the private wealth of trillionaiers is going to be American's next target.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2kly3 wrote
He could sell off his shares to lock in his wealth, then help cull the poor.
Surur t1_jd2kxwg wrote
But then the money would be in the bank, and the bank's assets would depreciate in the same way, and he could lose every single cent. Just look at SVB.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2q010 wrote
Rich people don't leave their money in banks, or very little of it as a percentage, and SVB's failure was not the result of poor people.
Imagine if earth got twice as much habitable land and resources suddenly, you wouldn't expect this to make rich people lose all their wealth. The discovery of the new world didn't make Europe's Kings get poor.
Neither would reducing the population necessarily do that. Anyway, it doesn't so much matter what would happen as what they expect to happen,
Surur t1_jd2qg4v wrote
> Rich people don't leave their money in banks
You were suggesting Elon Musk sell all their shares. Where would the liquid money go? Under his bed?
> Imagine if earth got twice as much habitable land and resources suddenly, you wouldn't expect this to make rich people lose all their wealth.
Strangely enough this is the logic of the flat earth movement lol
Lots of people's wealth is tied up in their property, and it is believed that this is why they resist the creation of more housing which would lower their property value.
In a simpler form - say someone presses a button and new land appears next to old land, free to claim - people would not need to buy the old land, they could just claim the new land, which would crash the price of the old land.
Or if we land an astroid, and your wealth was tied up in gold, you may suddenly find yourself much less wealthy.
So yes, if you suddenly increase supply, you will lose wealth.
> The discovery of the new world didn't make Europe's Kings get poor.
That's probably because it made one of them very rich.
Smart-Tomato-4984 t1_jd2s5r1 wrote
If Elon Musk couldn't sell his shares off, then he would not be in any sense wealthy. They have value only because he can sell them off.
Anyway, it goes without saying that to kill of poor people would make the rich less rich by definition, since there would be no poor people around for them to be rich in comparison to.
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