With machines replacing human labour, people draw idyllic visions of a future where no one has to work, because they get UBI and live care-free, long and happy lives.
But what if the following vision materializes?
There are essentially only bitcoiners and machines. Most people have starved, because they had nothing to offer to the world.
These days the have-nots are kept alive by the elites for two reasons:
- labour value
- as an electorate (in a democracy) / the monarch's way to maintain peace and stay out of the guillotine
This is done through fiat wealth redistribution. But with the rise of AI, 1. will disappear, and with the demise of fiat it may become impossible to achieve anyway.
We don't maintain horses when we can have cars, unless it's for the therapeutic / pet / cuteness factor. Similarly, the bitcoiners of the future may keep human have-nots for the retro / cuteness or the status value, but it would be mostly non-economic.
As the have-nots' headcount drops due to incentive 1. disappearing and we head towards a society of mostly sovereign individuals (and their occasional human pets), government (which is a herding business after all) will disappear too, destroying incentive 2. as well.
Ray Kurzweil predicts we'll reach immortality by 2030. Perhaps human lifespan will be limited by and proportionate to the size of one's stack.
For those who own sats, the future may be a game of "To make my sats go the longest way possible, should I buy this machine or rent/hire that one?"