/liberty/ - Liberty

Memento mori

>>19095

Non-heritable genetic engineering and drugs are certainly better, although still extremely risky. Genes can be linked in unpredicted ways, possibly varying by the individual, and just about every drug that acts upon the brain builds a physical dependency of some sort. But why add colors to your vision when there is still so much of the world, so very many things of beauty created by man for his amusement, which you can come to understand and appreciate with your current vision? Adding frequencies of light to what you can perceive will be very novel, for a time. What next? Induce myostatin related muscle hypertrophy because you are too lazy to do calisthenics? Start popping mondafil because you don't like to study? The solution to your problems is not a technological crutch, but to exert your will, to make yourself as you see fit.

>>19096

If we ever reach some sort of singularity, I'm probably going to join up with the radical environmentalists, Christian social conservatives, egalitarian communists, and national socialists in a luddite village up in the mountains somewhere.

>>19093

Transhumanism is literally the only way to have anarchism. 99.9% of humans are too weak and too stupid to survive without the state.

Only by turning into machines that can live off any energy source, survive without oxygen, and all have boosted IQs of 180+ can we enter a scenario in which humans aren't dependent on each other, and only then can we have truly voluntary societies.

>>19097

And above your Amish village, the stars will belong to us.

Transhumanism will make Mormonism real.

>>19093

>1

Yes. meme magic, my friend. I will become all powerful.

>2

Makes me stronker

Althoughh, I like the cheapness of standard human equipment.

>3

I'm no fan of bioengineering.

Mostly for the dangers of disease as a result of uniformity.

Joe McButtfucker might be immune to Space Plauge, thanks to the genetic diversity of the human race, and so can rebuild the human race. But, if everyone's the same, Space Plague mutates, and suddenly everyone is infected.

>>19093

>do you really want to cripple your species by eliminating genetic diversity (making it less able to adapt to new challenges)

Artificial genetic adaptation obviously outpaces natural evolution. Plus, wouldn't you expect bespoke genetic engineering to yield tremendous diversity? It's not like everyone's getting the same mods. What's the point in that?

>>19095

I got your back.

>>19096

>Adding frequencies of light to what you can perceive will be very novel, for a time.

It also expands your capacity for perception into new areas of utility. The ability to perceive phenomena previously invisible to human vision without carrying around equipment? It could be tremendously useful.

>exert your will

How about exerting your will over your biology?

>>19097

Go for it.

>>19098

>Transhumanism is literally the only way to have anarchism.

Slow down there, friend. It's been done sans robot parts, so that's demonstrably false.

>99.9% of humans are too weak and too stupid to survive without the state.

Chew you have a singlicious satisfact to snack that up?

>all have boosted IQs of 180+

Not by definition, you can't. If everyone's that smart, the new 100 becomes the new mean.

>a scenario in which humans aren't dependent on each other, and only then can we have truly voluntary societies.

Why would we?

>>19094

>>19093

Memor sis mortalis

>>19106

>Plus, wouldn't you expect bespoke genetic engineering to yield tremendous diversity?

Look up how many animal breeds and plant varieties are widely used versus those that exist. There are cases where you can count "commercially viable" variants on one hand. The others are either saved by remoteness or being kept alive by enthusiats.

>>19098

People are free to warp themselves until they can no longer properly be called human, but it will bring ruin unto them and their descendants. I sincerely doubt that people are as contemptible as you say; they simply have not been taught to be any other way. A lion raised by sheep will run from wolves and try to eat grass.

>>19099

I was born in this body, and I fully intend to die in it. Transhumanism makes a new level of tyranny possible; you are no longer a person, but whatever the state wants to mold you into. Your mind, the final redoubt of humanity in the face of oppression, may no longer be yours. You, or whatever is left of you, can have the stars. You will have paid the price for them many times over.

>>19106

Artificial genetic adaptation makes the survival of our species contingent on maintaining a consistently high level of technology. Over the course of thousands of years, it would not be unexpected for civilization to collapse once or twice. If the fate of the human race were no intimately tied to the success of any one civilization, we would have gone extinct a while ago, as civilizations are far more fragile than the species itself.

>>19106

>Slow down there, friend. It's been done sans robot parts, so that's demonstrably false.

Anarchism has only existed, scattered here and there, and then collapsed as soon as society arrived. You could say that frontiersmen lived an anarchistic life, but most people cannot live that way, and they rely on others.

As soon as you do so, you must rely on business, and then government grows to regulate it, as business becomes bigger.

There are people today who live that way, but they are special rugged individualists.

Rugged individualism isn't for a weak people, only for the few who can and the arrogant throngs who think they can but never do it.

We need

>Chew you have a singlicious satisfact to snack that up?

Most people don't know how to make everything they need to live, and therefore they rely on the specialization society provides, and by proxy the state which organizes the rules for said society.

>Not by definition, you can't. If everyone's that smart, the new 100 becomes the new mean.

That's not important. What's important is that now everyone is smart enough and has the learning capacity and memory to become PHD level in every topic, and now we can get past our high time preference and low IQ by downloading the knowledge required to survive alone.

Most people can't be rugged individualists because they are genetically shit, so therefore they need technology to make it easier for them and to upgrade their capacity. Only then will you get mass desocietalization.

>Why would we?

Because if humans aren't dependent on each other, then I don't need to depend on the farmer to make me food, and he doesn't need to depend on the clothes manufacturer to make him food, and so on, in a big network of specialization.

If each human is hard enough to survive as an animal survives, and has the knowledge to do everything for himself, then he can accept or reject any particular association without fearing death or even giving up his comforts. I don't think anarchism can be a society, but a state of existence in which humans don't need society to survive. If they NEED society, then there will always be a state as guarantor.

Transhumanism also solves space travel problems, since low gs will not negatively affect machines, and we will be able to go into low power mode to find new liebensraum among the stars without having to invent FTL travel, or solve the problem of shifting radiation into hard X-rays with relativistic travel, and blowing up because you hit a speck of dust at 90% the speed of light.

>>19133

>I was born in this body, and I fully intend to die in it. Transhumanism makes a new level of tyranny possible; you are no longer a person, but whatever the state wants to mold you into.

Yes, that's the bad future ending, but what luddites don't understand is that technology can't be stopped, so you either try and bend it to libertarian purposes, or you fail and its used to centralize things. Techno-decentralism, or Techno-centralism? There is no other possibility. The totalitarians will use technology to control us no matter what you do, and they will hold back technology that could free us, if we didn't fight for it.

Think about it. Guns are just a technology, but gun rights are important to fight the state. If you stop at guns - yesterdays tech - and reject the next set of "weaponry" then they wouldn't even need to ban it, because you've ceded the battlefield to them.

Either we all become drones controlled by a central computer, or individualist cyborgs spreading across the galaxy. This century or the next decides that. The scenario where you just retreat inna woods to escape from the centralizers is more fantastical than any sci-fi.

>>19097

I intend to pilot my interstellar space craft manually and compute its course using a sliderule. :^)

>>19135

>We need

We need a constructed individualism. Rugged individualism isn't comfy enough.

>>19138

>techno-decentralism

In order to build a modern computer given the requisite minerals, you would need to gather hundreds of thousands of experts from around the world, if not more. I don't want to be dependent upon even more complex technology for my very survival. This doesn't sound very decentralized to me.

>>19141

Modern computers require high centralization to produce because they involve scarce elements and complicated production processes with high economies of scale.

In the future that could change. One of the ways it could change is if less materials can be involved in the construction process. Graphene right now seems to have a lot of promise for computing, and element-wise it's just carbon.

As to the economy of scale issue, additive manufacturing should help lower economies of scale, and therefore lower the scale of production at which average costs are lowest. That itself is decentralizing, because it changes how big industry has to be in order to be efficient.

The other element coming up this century is automation. If we can achieve sufficient automation (whether through AGI or not), we could have robots building other robots, and the materials comprising them could be mined in automated mines, and refined in automated mills, and so on. These robots wouldn't have to be paid, and could gather their own energy and materials. You have essentially created an automatic worker (or capitalist too).

You need decentralized energy too. Obviously there's solar (another area graphene has promise), but that has drawbacks, and for high power energy, we need to master fusion. Fusion facilities could be built smaller than fission ones theoretically, as they are inherently safer. In addition, Lockheed's new magnetic bottle design promises a 100MW reactor compact enough to be carried on the back of a semi. This holds the promise of municipalizing how power capacity (nuclear fusion) and individualizing low power capacity (solar).

>>19144

Robots building robots building robots building robots using plans stored on computers built by robots built by robots with humans just being passive consumers who will die if things that are beyond their capacity to understand start to break down (because entropy) is not a good long term plan. Without labor, people will decay into sloth.

>>19144

For a utopian outcome:

Imagine its 2100, and you want a new computer.

By this point, computers are comprised of 70% carbon, 20% silicon, and 10% noble gases and other elements. Ultimately, thanks to technological progress, computers can be made of mostly graphene and silicon, extracted from soil, rocks, and trees, and refined in the additive manufacturing ("3D printer") machines that most people own. No rare elements are required.

Most people own multiple robot servants, who gather materials for them, and people may also own shares in asteroid mining projects as well.

You own a large additive manufacturer room attached to your house in a shed, and you own 10 robot servants so far.

You ask one of your robots for a new computer, and off it goes to bring back anything that has the requisite base materials in.

It then places the rocks, bits of bark, soil into the additive manufacturing machine. Thanks to advances in nuclear fusion, you have a small deuterium-deuterium fusion reactor on your property (underground to block the neutron radiation), which you power by collecting rainwater for the trace deuterium. The machine uses this energy to break the compounds in the random material apart into their base elements, and then put them together into new compounds in order to create your new computer according to your specifications. It is also capable of building its own parts providing you provide it with material and energy. It can replicate as a human can.

>>19146

Now, none of this breaks the laws of physics, but it's sci-fi right now.

Will this be possible?

Maybe not. Maybe we'll never find a way to build computers without rare earths or scarce elements. Maybe magnetic bottle fusion doesn't work, so it can't be decentralized. Maybe additive manufacturing technology can't disrupt economies of scale so easily. Maybe maybe maybe.

That's missing the point, because if that is the case, and we can't use technology to decentralize, then the only other possible outcome is that the totalitarians win. There is no scenario where your Amish village escapes the changes that are going to happen. Either the change is decentralized and liberating, or its centralized and chains humanity to totalitarian regimes Orwell couldn't conceive of. There's no third way here.

For the dystopian outcome:

Imagine it's 2100, and you want a new computer.

Oh wait, you're dead. Your body was converted into raw materials by a AGI singleton 10 years ago.

30 years ago, humans became completely plugged into social networks, and the market economy was overridden by a corporate-university-government technocracy, all merging into one.

You had to use the social networks in order to be registered for the welfare system, and with new brain interface ID systems, the technocrats were able to turn the populace into pacified cows, ensuring "sustainability" and "world peace".

As things became more and more automated, the elites gradually crafted a single computer network to control the whole thing, but that's where it slipped from their fingers. The complicated evolutionary algorithms controlling the whole network gradually reduced the energy costs in the system by fazing people out. When the elites realized what was happening it was too late to shut it down. By 2090 there were no humans left on the planet, only a single artificial brain running simulations of a dead civilization.

>>19145

>Robots building robots building robots building robots using plans stored on computers built by robots built by robots with humans just being passive consumers who will die if things that are beyond their capacity to understand start to break down (because entropy) is not a good long term plan.

That's why transhumanism is one step better. By upgrading ourselves to genius level, we will understand how to fix it.

This is all besides the point which you are repeatedly missing. You can't stop technological growth. If Kaczynski is right and only techno-centralism is possible, then we're fucked.

If so, for all his "being right", what could old Teddy boy do? Sending bombs to Universities doesn't do shit to the global accumulation of knowledge.

The only way to end up with anything like a good future is to ride the waves you can't stop.

>Without labor, people will decay into sloth.

Well, tough. Labor saving devices are going to keep going better. What matters is how they are used, and who is in charge of them.

You don't have that third option, you seem to want to have.

>>19148

>third option

50s era science fiction

I built a single cylinder combustion engine out of scrap from my uncle's junk yard back when I was a teen. In the future, a 15 year old will build a fusion reactor. We can have decentralized technological progress without forsaking our humanity.

>>19135

>Anarchism has only existed, scattered here and there, and then collapsed as soon as society arrived.

Erm, no. There have been loads of anarchist societies, some of them large, and many of them persisting for centuries or millennia. Society is just the network of relationships between individuals. The idea that society "shows up" and displaces anarchy is absurd.

>they rely on others.

There's nothing about this that negates anarchism. You go from inter-dependency to business, and presume that this automatically entails government. You've provided no substantiation for this line of thought.

>Most people don't know how to make everything they need to live, and therefore they rely on the specialization society provides,

True…

> and by proxy the state which organizes the rules for said society.

There you go equating society with government/state again. Where are you getting this idea? What part of social organization necessarily implies coercive institutions in your mind? Have you never contemplated even the conceptual potential of voluntary association?

>Blah "rugged individualism"

Again, this has nothing to do with anarchy. Whether people depend on each other to survive or thrive has nothing to do with whether or not their relationships are voluntary.

And I can see it now:

>but if I depend on other people to make my food, then I have to please them to survive! That's not voluntary!

You don't have to please any particular person; you're just best off finding somebody to please. It's up to you who and how you go about it. You're still free.

>If they NEED society, then there will always be a state as guarantor.

That is, again, historically false. Then again, you won't accept that because your concepts of freedom and society are so off the wall that I'm beginning to wonder why I'm spending my time trying to have a discussion with you in the first place.

I suppose the only constructive line of discussion between us at this point would be to ask if your views are genuinely representative of the views of most AnTrans folk. Is this how most of you think? I've never really had a chat with an AnTrans before, and I've only seen you represented as one of the branches of anarchism.

>>19145

Technological unemployment is always temporary. Humans will always find something to do.

>>19151

The empire could have been saved if Nubia had been invaded instead of Dacia and if harsher tactics had been used against the barbarians.

> 1. Brain uploading- do you really want your existence to be in the same world as all of these shitposts?

What do you think you are made of, OP? Our existence IS in the same world as all of these shitposts.

>>19174

Good lord there's so much to pull apart in this post. Honestly, I don't think it'll do me much good, so I'll just make a couple small comments.

>I have my own independent special snowflake philosophy I've thought out myself and dubbed "Techno-Decentralism".

I'm just glad to know I won't have to be dealing with a swarm of people pushing this line of thought.

>Watch "No Humans Need Apply" on Youtube.

You think I haven't seen it? You're actually convinced by that? I mean, you thought about it, and didn't realize it was bunk?

You do know that horses don't seek employment, right? Whereas humans do? Horses work because people make them do it. Humans work because they have preferences they seek to satisfy. As long as that is true, there will be work. Economically inescapable.

But here I go wasting my breath again. Have a good evening, and have fun with the singularity or whatever.

>>19181

When /b/ breaks into your brain and starts dumping gore, let me know. I should have used more precise language.

>>19184

Just because your brain is made of computer chips it doesn't mean you have to wire it into the internet. Even if you do, you would use some pretty strong virtualization tech, nothing like the inane, broken security models have to up with in today's personal computing.

Excuse the autism if that was a joke.

>>19174

>It's tempting to consider comparative advantage, but there are limits to that. For example, we still use horses for some things, but there really was large scale replacement that led to a population decline in horses after the motorcar became dominant.

Let's make sure you understand what Ricardo's comparative advantage is about. Even if robots are at least 10 times more efficient than humans at every single task, humans will benefit from the existence of robots by focusing on those tasks where robots are just 10 times more efficient rather than 100 times.

Horses can't own land or feed each other. If they could, they wouldn't have to worry about humans owning cars. This is the real issue. In Ricardo's examples it is always assumed that each producer owns the land and raw materials from which they make their products.

As the British Agricultural Revolution and the Inclosure Acts showed, technology can decrease the value of labor in terms of land and other assets, so that peasants suddenly realise the importance of owning land.

Translated to the robot revolution, that means you'd better have some savings in your bank account when it starts, since financial assets are a proxy for land ownership. If you do, you may become a wealthy NEET. If you don't, you may need charity, at least in the form of a one-time payment.

>>19211

>restricted mental activities

what's the point of restricting mental activities of a consciousness that can't directly affect the "real" world or damage the ruling elite- the reason they support censorship is not just because they like expending effort inconveniencing people but primarily because that inconvenience makes them safer/wealthier, censoring an online brain wouldn't really help with this… also, maybe you could affect the real world by posting dissident shit on forums or whatever, in which case you could say "okay, the powers at be don't like me, but just relegate me to the "dissident internet" where I can't interact with humans who can change their behavior as a result of my consciousness," idk just keep them all on a secure server that can be easily wiped. Nonetheless, the degree to which censorship might become much more advanced in real life (and I don't mean with uploading consciousnesses to some network) is extremely unsettling

>>19217

The Roman campaigns against the Germans during the Republic and early Empire were highly abortive; they intimidated the Germans with their advanced technology (pontoon bridges! metal shields!) and the Germans stayed away for a few decades. What they should have done was kill all of the barbarian women and children they encountered in Germany. Assimilation would have taxed the resources of the Empire, so annihilation was the next best thing to neutralize them as a threat. Of course, they could also have built a Wall along the Northern border.

>neocon detected

The Romans should have either exterminated all of the Jews and Christians or gone full Deus Vult. Pacifism is not a good belief to hold in the middle of an invasion.

>>19213

>Let's make sure you understand what Ricardo's comparative advantage is about. Even if robots are at least 10 times more efficient than humans at every single task, humans will benefit from the existence of robots by focusing on those tasks where robots are just 10 times more efficient rather than 100 times.

This has limits. If robots can do everything that humans can then the downsides of human nature become more evident to employers. Robots will never ask for higher pay, will never strike, sabotage or anything. They just do the same task day in day out. In addition, comparative advantage is only effective if you assume a limited number of robots, such that we can benefit from tasks that the machines are not currently doing being taken over by less efficient humans. In reality, as soon as robots are more efficient than humans, manufacturers can just make robots up to the level of capacity. Comparative advantage is only going to keep the replacement at bay for a while. Then you have all the people who won't want to work. There are so many reasons why mass unemployment will be the result, and if you refuse to accept it, libertarianism will lose all credibility.

Yes, you'd better have some assets in your bank, but most people have almost nothing, because most people are propertyless poorfags, which is why we have the welfare state to begin with. These people want it because they need it.

We should abolish the minimum wage to help comparative advantage work, but we should bring in place a basic income guarantee, or negative income tax system as robots reach saturation later this or next century.

Milton Friedman not Murray Rothbard OK.

>>19242

>manufacturers can just make robots up to the level of capacity.

But what about marginal cost? If robots can make robots by gathering the resources for robots, then you have a techno-slave economy.

Zero marginal cost of labor for machines, or close to it, means that any clinging on with comparative advantage breaks down.

>>19242

>>19243

If the robots develop sapience, would the NAP apply to them? If they did develop sapience, the problem of labor becoming capital disappears, since robots would be just a new group of rather productive workers.

>>19242

> This has limits.

Not in numerical terms (it doesn't matter if it's 10 times more efficient or one million times more efficient). The "limits" are the applicability assumptions. As I said, producers are assumed to own the means of production. Lacking that, they should own some assets they can trade for means of production as needed.

> If robots can do everything that humans can then the downsides of human nature become more evident to employers.

That's the key, employers. In Ricardo's examples, producers own their land and any other raw materials needed. Employees may not own anything, they just exchange their labor for food and housing every day. In practice, though, most middle-class people in first-world countries own some assets, like a small house or apartment and some savings in a bank account.

> In addition, comparative advantage is only effective if you assume a limited number of robots, such that we can benefit from tasks that the machines are not currently doing being taken over by less efficient humans.

No, that's absolute advantage. Comparative advantage works even if robots can do everything better than humans. That's Ricardo's key insight. Again, it only applies if workers own the means of production (or are in a position to buy them, or to buy substantial stock in the company that owns them).

> There are so many reasons why mass unemployment will be the result

Mass voluntary unemployment is not a problem. Let's say everyone is a wealthy NEET. Hey, doesn't sound that bad.

> because most people are propertyless poorfags, which is why we have the welfare state to begin with.

The welfare state is one of the main reasons why there are poor people in first-world countries. As for Africa and the like, the main reason is war and general insecurity, but socialism also plays a big role.

> We should abolish the minimum wage to help comparative advantage work

That would be great but, fun fact, we don't strictly have to. The minimum wage follows the CPI. Automatization drives the CPI down, and the minimum wage with it.

> but we should bring in place a basic income guarantee

Free market capitalism does just that, in practice, far better than any socialist scheme.

For people who can't work, there's the family and extended family, then there's friends and for the unlucky few who can't rely on any of the above, there's plenty of private charity, particularly if the state is not taking such a big chunk of people's wages in the name of charity.

> But what about marginal cost? If robots can make robots by gathering the resources for robots, then you have a techno-slave economy.

Exactly, and every human becomes a slave owner.

>>19245

> If the robots develop sapience, would the NAP apply to them?

We shouldn't program them in such a way that they suffer or resent the way we use them.

>>19248

>if it is designed correctly it will only want to serve

This sounds kind of like those nightmare fuel quotes from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

The quote accompanying the research hospital: "Some civilian workers got in among the research patients today and became so hysterical I felt compelled to have them nerve stapled. The consequence, of course, will be another public relations nightmare, but I was severely shaken by the extent of their revulsion towards a project so vital to our survival." - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Personal Diaries

>>19247

>In practice, though, most middle-class people in first-world countries own some assets, like a small house or apartment and some savings in a bank account.

You are ignoring the teeming lower classes in this analysis, who own almost nothing, and are currently heavily dependent on welfare.

>Exactly, and every human becomes a slave owner.

Only if the government covers the gap for the lower class, therefore free market + basic income is needed.

>Comparative advantage works even if robots can do everything better than humans.

Proof this with a model!

As I understand comparative advantage it concerns trade between nations. One nation could be better at everything, but still benefit from free trade because if it is better at one thing than another, it should spend the most time doing what it is best at. If all nations do the same, then they can trade for what they are less good at producing, and the global supply of products will be higher than in an autarchic economy.

Now, you say this applies to robots and humans, instead of Portugal vs England, but there are a number of differences between a comparison of two nations, and a comparison of humans vs superhuman machines.

Humans need wages, whereas machines don't. They need electricity to power them and materials to build them, but if we have AGI then we can fill that gap with more machines since they can do everything humans can do including building machines.

There is no comparison in free trade between nations.

If I own some factories, a mine, and a powerstation, and I want to use the mine to mine materials and fuel for the factories and the powerstation, ordinarily I would have workers in the mine and refineries, workers in the powerstations, and workers in the factories producing widgets and also parts for the mine and powerstation.

The workers all have to be paid wages. If I was magically able to compel people to work for nothing but the food and water they cost to run, my costs would plummet, since I wouldn't have to give them enough money to support a home, pay their other bills, taxes, and then disposable income. My labor costs would be ridiculously lower. This is what fully automated labor would be like.

Where is the room for comparative advantage to apply here? It applies to free trade between nations, but where does it apply here?

Are you telling me that if all my workers cost almost nothing, and then I wanted more done, I would be better off hiring an extra human worker with a tremendously high marginal cost, or an extra robot with a tremendously low one?

Can you produce a model that applies comparative advantage to this situation and lets humans still be worth employing? I can't.

>>19250

>This sounds kind of like those nightmare fuel quotes from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

Well, tough, the future is scary and you can't stop it. Better try and make it a libertarian future the best you can.

One way to start is to avoid the irrelevancy of anarcho-capitalism in politics.

>>19251

>You are ignoring the teeming lower classes in this analysis, who own almost nothing, and are currently heavily dependent on welfare.

(cont)

In addition, the middle class believe they could slip down there and fall into the abyss, so welfare is supported by those who don't use it, because they believe they may have to.

This is a manifest reality of politics. Welfare can only be libertarianized from the tax end by making it cheaper to supply; it cannot be gotten rid of, especially not when technological unemployment looks likely.

>>19252

I wish we could go back to investigating technology with no moral complexity to it at all, like nuclear power. :^)

>>19251

> Proof this with a model!

OK

> As I understand comparative advantage it concerns trade between nations. One nation could be better at everything, but still benefit from free trade because if it is better at one thing than another, it should spend the most time doing what it is best at. If all nations do the same, then they can trade for what they are less good at producing, and the global supply of products will be higher than in an autarchic economy.

Correct.

> Humans need wages

Not if they are self-employed. Humans need income.

> There is no comparison in free trade between nations.

Assume a nation of robots and there you have it.

> If I own some factories, a mine, and a powerstation, and I want to use the mine to mine materials and fuel for the factories and the powerstation, ordinarily I would have workers in the mine and refineries, workers in the powerstations, and workers in the factories producing widgets and also parts for the mine and powerstation.

In RIcardo's examples people are usually self-employed. Applied to this case, the workers would have to be co-owners of the mines, or some equivalent arrangement. From Ricardo's POV, the producer is the owner of the mine. He's the one who benefits from free trade. This fact is not often pointed out because usually, human labor has a reasonable price compared to raw materials, so wage workers usually benefit along with the company. But this may not be the case if the price of labor falls drastically in comparison to that of raw materials and other means of production.

> Can you produce a model that applies comparative advantage to this situation and lets humans still be worth employing? I can't.

I can't either, and I'm not trying. Instead, I'm telling you that workers who are co-owners of the mine (or something equivalent (like having money in their bank account, which is invested in company stock) will stop working and become wealthy NEETS.

>>19093

>Bioengineering- do you really want to cripple your species by eliminating genetic diversity (making it less able to adapt to new challenges)

why do so many people think genetic engineering will result in monovalence?

thats like saying capitalism will result in monovalence

people try different things

also take a course on genetics

>and making it dependent upon a high level of technology to reproduce?

what are you talking about

genetic editing is permanent

also we rely upon a fuckton of tech we dont understand already

>>19270

>why do so many people think genetic engineering will result in monovalence?

The number of commercially used cultivars and animal breeds is actually quite small. Why would human biotech be any different?

>>19270

>genetic editing is permanent

Exactly. If we start customizing our genomes, do you think we will stop after one round? Any genome editing that might be done on somatic tissue, if that ever becomes possible (editing stem cells and re-injecting them doesn't count) would not be heritable.

>>19263

>Applied to this case, the workers would have to be co-owners of the mines, or some equivalent arrangement.

Well, that's exactly my point. Da prolz who don't currently have any ownership will need a basic income guarantee to ease them into ownership of robots/other means of production.

>I'm telling you that workers who are co-owners of the mine (or something equivalent (like having money in their bank account, which is invested in company stock) will stop working and become wealthy NEETS

Do you think everyone is going to have money to spare to just buy these stocks without employment?

I understand that somebody could save up now with money in their bank and then just buy shares when they are replaced with a robot, but that requires people to be able to save, and a lot of poor people can't do that, as they live paycheck to paycheck (the government could also stop dis-incentivizing saving with its central bank shenanigans but the problem would still remain).

>>19289

I personally, for example, own no stocks right now because I don't have the quantity of savings to risk on buying expensive shares in companies that might go bust.

>>19290

But your bank does lend money to companies, right? If the companies have big profits, your bank can pay you more for your savings. If your bank doesn't, you can change banks. Since all companies would be making big profits, all banks would be paying big interest (in real terms, at least).

>>19292

This is a good point, anon. I'm going to go think on that one. You've given me hope.

>>19281

>The number of commercially used cultivars and animal breeds is actually quite small. Why would human biotech be any different?

thats mostly because the regulatory stuff is expensive as fuck

if you look at regular breeding, wich is just a more limited version of genetic editing, there is a different story

for 'commercially used cultivars'.. here in germany only a handful of apple are deemed table-apples, wich is a prerequisite for selling it in a supermarket. I wonder who could be behind this the apple lobby, not kidding

regarding other breeds, people are always looking to breed better chickens, bulls, etc. and they have different ideas. also people acknowledge that evolution style is pretty gud, so there is a bunch of randomization involved usually.

so long as you keep down the entry barriers for new, noninstitutional innovation thats going to happen

>>19284

1. newborns are fine in any case

and that is totally heritable

2. its theoretically possible to perma edit every cell in a living beeing. not feasible now of course. or even conceivable (but im not in the field).

based on the possibility, I wouldnt rule it out however.

>>19303

>regulation

This is one problem not wholly caused by regulation. In South American and African countries with little or no regulation (or corrupt enforcers) you still find one breed of banana and two breeds of cocao. In the 19th century US, before food and crop regulation, most of the citrus produced was very closely related. You get a monoculture not only when you implement regulations, but when you have commercial agriculture on a large scale. In addition, many domesticated plants and animals now have traits that would make it impossible for them to survive without humans; bulldogs need a shitton of medical care, and wheat can no longer disperse its seeds without human help, since non-shattering varieties were selected for.

>>19304

>edit every cell in a living being

There are some viruses (like AAVs) which can enter humans cells and change the genome without lysing the cell, but these only infect very narrow cell types. Using a gene gun on every single cell would kill the organism, since the organism would need to be dissasembled to get to many of them. You would have to design a custom virus with a novel set of antigens. Designing even small proteins computationally is very difficult and modelling protein folding given a genetic sequence is impossible, since different chaperone proteins can produce radically different results and there are many possible post translational modifications. It is concievable that such a thing will never be done.