Raw LLM Responses

@fmachine86 Of course. So is labor, so are higher wages, but we saw that even through the earlier industrial revolution. As production goes up, prices tend to go down, however the government doesn't like that, so we end up with more money in the economy to prevent a recession. That then leads to people spending more, leading to improvements in living quality. The primary reason that we don't have the constant standard of living improvements right now isn't that there's suddenly less money going around- it's that it's cheaper to improve the third world than to focus on the first. The first world is starting to shift to more modern, more prestigious, and more reliable goods- the average car gets twice the miles as it did in 1950, for instance- and the market share of these goods increases in the first world. However, poorer-quality goods are still produced and sold in the third world, as they are cheaper- lower-quality radios, lower-quality clothing, etc. is still sold in nations like China and Africa, however the amount sold is increased. As the improvements in the quality of these goods increases in the first world, however, goods in the third world become uncompetitive with other goods able to be produced just as cheaply, leading to improvements in the third world goods reliability. Overall, this leads to an effect where you see massive improvements in quality of living in third world countries, as they are able to get things like refrigerators, dishwashers, etc., that first world nations take for granted, meanwhile you don't see as much of that in the First World beyond improvements on extant technologies due to the fact that things like private jets and a third car are expensive in terms of raw materials and labor. You do, however, see a refinement in the first world of more minor household chores- a robotic vacuum, for instance, only sells for 300 dollars nowadays, whereas the same model used to cost over 1000 dollars. This then saves a westerner around an hour in vacuuming each week. Same with dishwashers, cell phones, self-cleaning ovens, etc., where you have the improvements in household labor automation leading to stagnant wages with increasing goods quality and more free time over time. I'd predict that automation of office jobs would likely lead to a lot of First World jobs decreasing their work hours without a corresponding decrease in real wages, as the consumption of these first-world goods remains necessary for most of the economy to function. Rather than mass unemployment, we'd likely see mass underemployment combined with higher per-hour wages created by higher productivity, as there are only so many dishwashers one can buy. In the third world, however, I'd expect increased economic growth due to First-world wages decreasing slightly, leading to improvements in products that first-world citizens would otherwise buy being decreased in price to the point that third-world citizens can buy them. Of course, this all comes with the caveat that I grew up in an industrial town that remains industrial. GE has their dishwasher plant here, which is why I bring dishwashers up instead of things like TV, or Virtual Reality, or cars. I also see that a lot of modern office jobs don't directly produce products, rather being for the administration of production and society. If this is automated, I can see the development of mass work programs similar to the Great Depression except with things like engineering projects, and the development of a New New Deal.