The marginal value of natural resources decreases with quantity, and natural resources would only have a much smaller value compared to the final products produced by the AI systems. At some point, there would be an equilibrium where tier 1 wouldn't want to increase it's consumption of natural resources w.r.t. tier 2 or if they did they'd have to trade with tier 2 at a price higher than they value the resources.
I have no idea what this equilibrium would look like, but natural resources are already of little value compared to consumer goods and services.
The US in 2023 consumed $761.4B. of oil, but the GPD for the same year was.
$27.72TThere would be another valid argument to be made about externalities. But it's not what my original argument was about.
Davidzheng|6 months ago
m4nu3l|6 months ago
You mean stealing? I'm assuming no stealing.
> But this also means probably there will be no way way for tier two to extract any of the resources which tier one needs at all bc the marginal cost is determined by tier one
If someone from tier 2 owns an oil field, tier 1 has to pay them to get it at a price that is higher than what the tier 2 person values it, so at the end of the transaction, they would have both a positive return. The price is not determined by tier 1 alone.
If tier 1 decides instead to buy the oil, then again, they'd have to pay for it.
Of course, in both these scenarios, this might make the oil price increase. So other people from tier 2 would find it harder to buy oil, but the person in tier 2 owning the field would make a lot of money, so overall, tier 2 wouldn't be poorer.
If natural resources are concentrated in some small subset of people from tier 2, then yes, those would become richer while having less purchasing power for oil.
However, as I mentioned in another comment, the value of natural resources is only a small fraction of that of goods and services.
And this is still the worst-case, unlikely scenario.