logoalt Hacker News

2ndorderthoughttoday at 11:15 AM1 replyview on HN

Out of curiosity. How can you explain to a Gen z fresh graduate with 50k in student loans, 5 dollar gasoline (and rising), no healthcare, housing prices at an all time high, and competing with their entire age group for the honor of holding multiple minimum wage jobs that are below the survivability wage that they should feel a collective sense of achievement? UBI isn't coming and we have multiple individuals who own measurable percentages of all of the worlds wealth. Those same people are investing heavily in automating all work these young people could hope to provide while waxing poetic about changing laws and owning media companies with cold hard cash.

It's not an anomalous sense of cynicism, hundreds of thousands of people are looking at their options and feeling hopeless. I'm glad I am not in that camp. The reason I'm not is because I was born sooner than they were. I don't blame them at all, it's looking a lot like the generation after them is cannon fodder if things trend the way they are now.


Replies

solenoid0937today at 11:23 AM

> UBI isn't coming

I would tell them this is the problem to fix. Taking your anger out on AI is the most shortsighted thing. When faced with a powerful new capability, disavowing the capability instead of enabling society to leverage it is absurd.

AI is fundamentally the automation of labor, and we can all see the incredible fruits we all reap from similar past leaps in capability.

Structure your society for a post-labor world. Don't halt the progress that has dramatically improved the human condition. To do so is a disservice to the species and all future humans - concretely, your own loved ones and especially your children.

show 3 replies