Elon Musk has spent the last few weeks outlining a future with Optimus — one that will "eliminate" poverty, work, and require a universal income.

Indulge me for the coming delusion, but if we ignore who this is, forget all the reasons we know that we can’t trust him, and allow ourselves just a few moments to hope that we could live in such a world.

A world where manual labor is no longer needed, where people can just exist as large mammals are meant to exist. Robots will handle it all and we can just do as we please… and the robots are going to be plentiful because once enough of the process of making a robot becomes automated, the cost of it will go to zero. But to get there it is going to require a ton of money… these robots are going to be way too expensive for people to actually buy them, so investors and governments will help out. The investors will eventually lose everything, but that will put us on the way to having everything we need to be created through completely automated systems.

Of course, there will still be jobs for those who really want them - or more likely, who want them and are good at them - or even more likely, who knows the right people… but if we can get our basic needs taken care of it night not fully end poverty but it would be a step in the right direction.

But, alas… It’s Musk saying it so it’s only to further enrich himself and won’t actually happen.

  • Spacehooks@reddthat.comEnglish
    1·
    6 hours ago

    Sure but then why stop them from taking BCs? I HATE mosquitoes. If they actively taking BCs to reduce their long term numbers id be happy. It makes more sense to lean into it.

    • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      The short answer is that the wrong people are seeing decreased birth rates.

      Religious and poor? To them that equals easily led under-educated, and easily controlled. They need this subset of the population in order to continue to extract wealth.

      Wealth from the private prison system, wealth from the military industrial complex, wealth from the predominantly labor supported industries that prop up energy, housing, transportation, and other blue collar jobs. To them, more poor babies means more essentially slave or low wage labor.

      The only value poor people have to the rich elite is to do the labor, make the money (so that the wealthy can take the lions share), and spend what little money they have left so that the wealthy can take most of what’s left by selling baubles.