Discussion
AI boom risks widening wealth divide, says BlackRock’s Larry Fink
forgetfreeman: The majority of households in the US have no savings of any kind and rural suicide rates have jumped by nearly 50% in the last 25 years. Y'all have just about backed everyone into a corner already.
_pdp_: I mean this is basically the foundation of any cyberpunk novel. You don't need to read that far ... just look at the works of Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Philip K. Dick and Richard Morgan.From Neuromancer and Snow Crash to Altered Carbon the theme is that technology is not salvation but as another axis of inequality.
jart: [delayed]
jart: Says the man who actual widens the wealth divide. One of the biggest global risks right now is Larry Fink being out of prison.
bombcar: Legalize debt for all and all are in debt. Strange and surprising.
TuringNYC: Here is the letter if you want the primary source: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/presentation/...And if you dont want to read, here is the hourlong audio: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry...Those looking for a deep explanation, this isnt as much about AI as it is about societal participation in prosperity.
SilverElfin: This is obvious and not an insight.
LennyHenrysNuts: Well, he'd know I guess.
mason_mpls: doesnt larry fink need a bailout
bigcat12345678: Isn't this why this statement should be taken seriously? But your statement implies the opposite, which is to ignore Larry Fink's warning. That appears irrational.
mikestorrent: Yes, we were warned. It turns out we are not good at heeding warnings, at all.
cal_dent: Until housing is solved the wealth divide will continue to grow whether ai lives up to expectations or not. All talk about higher wealth taxing funding UBI will be largely ineffective without solving housing
madaxe_again: And that’s just the U.S. - inequality there is comparatively low compared to an awful lot of the world. Brazil, for instance, is just nuts, and resultantly spends a lot of its time teetering around a political sinkhole.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficientUnfortunately, it’s been the outcome of every system we’ve yet tried - wealth always accumulates. It has, so far, only been redistributed through violence - either direct action by the proletariat, or their mass slaughter in war, allowing redistribution amidst the survivors.I’d love to imagine that this time we can find a different path, but ten millennia of precedent is a hard trend to buck.
canyp: It's almost like they are about to rediscover taxes.
georgemcbay: > Says the man who actually widens the wealth divide.Which doesn't make him wrong about the AI boom being a huge risk in making the wealth divide (already beyond gilded age levels) much worse.Of course, because he is who he is the only solution he talks about is getting people to "invest in stocks", which, yeah that makes a ton of sense if you already have wealth since the current ruling class have shown that they will not, under any circumstances, let number go down even if none of the economics make sense. But it does nothing for the many people who are really going to get squeezed here who are already living paycheck to paycheck and watching the water rise up to about their necks at this point.
