AI is going to help those at the top, while making almost 100 million jobs vanish:
Since 1973, there has been an explosion in technology and a massive increase in worker productivity. But the resulting economic gains have gone almost exclusively to those at the top. While productivity has risen by 150% and corporate profits have increased more than 370%, real wages have gone down for the average American worker by nearly $30 a week.
The Pareto or Power Law Distribution at work:
AI will create the same effect. It’s not that the rich are nasty people, it’s how nature works, it’s how evolution works. Most if not all attempts to even the playing field have failed and the reason is nature, the Pareto or Power Law Distribution at work.
The Captain
This (pareto, power “law”) is an observation (at best) not an explanation.
Pretty sure the union movement helped even the voices of the underdogs, at least for a while. From a fractured society of the Gilded Age came the growth of a great middle class - at least for half a century. Going, going, gone now, I guess.
The Russian Revolution evened things out, although not by raising the low, but by bringing everyone down to the same starvation levels. I don’t think that counts as progress, but it also isn’t “Pareto”.
The efforts need to be ongoing. You can’t just run the A/C once and say “Ok now it’s nice and cool. “ It needs to run, even if intermittently, on on ongoing basis to get the temperature you want. Ok we we tried to fix it once and it didn’t take. See, there’s nothing we can do.” Is not the cure
Does that make it any less real?
A palliative at best as you yourself are admitting “at least for a while.”
They have been ongoing since Biblical times, in the Old Testament, the New Testament, in laws against usury, the prohibition of interest, the forgiveness of debt, ease of getting into Heaven, etc., etc. But it doesn’t stick.
It’s been Capitalism that lifts everyone while increasing inequality, the Pareto Distribution at work. As @mostlylong says, it’s an observation of how nature works. We can work at it but after several millennia we still have not been able to do it.
The Captain
No, I said “it’s an observation that doesn’t explain how nature works (it’s not an explanation).”
Tides are an observation of coastal water movement.
Gravity is an explanation of said movement.