[baincs]

> The history lesson is that when the most of the GDP generation doesn't need without the help of the population, the result is a regime. Scalable and cost efficient AGI will do the same to countries that do not make most of their GDP from extracting natural resources because once the citizen is not needed for wealth generation, territorial control, etc., their political representation goes away.

That's a great insight

[kalavan]

Doesn't Norway bring that conclusion in doubt? The state gets massive revenue from oil as well as oil-financed investments, but is still very much a democracy.[0]

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu?tab=t...

[iambateman]

Sure. It’s also possible Norway is just an outlier and not the coming norm.

I personally - as an American of Norwegian descent - am proud of how they’ve built much of their country…and I hope we can learn from it.

[mxkopy]

The differentiating factor is that Norway wasn’t colonized.

[29athrowaway]

Because they need they still need the favor of the populace for collective defense and territorial control.

The regional military powers have more population.

[29athrowaway]

It is possible that in a future where territorial control is done by robots and drones that are mass produced and maybe even self-replicating, and the scientific and economic output comes from AGI, there won't be ballot boxes anymore. There will be also no food stamps, hospitals, a justice system or anything that benefits the common person. Everyone will just be building power plants and datacenters and robot factories while being supervised a robot or being implanted with a motor control chip, or being processed into Soylent green to be fed to a chemical reactor to power a data center with the same level of indifference we currently have for animals in industrial farming. All while the people running the dystopia party all day and take selfies while not caring at all.

[Retric]

At that point human leadership and wealth becomes just as superfluous as the rest of humanity. However it isn’t necessarily a stable system.

[schainks]

Rachel Maddow's "Blowout" is a must read related to this insight.