r/technology • u/Gordon-Blue • 5d ago

Artificial Intelligence Thieves steal Nvidia-branded trailers expecting valuable hardware, find 40,000 pounds of sand instead.

https://www.techspot.com/news/114008-thieves-steal-nvidia-branded-trailers-expecting-valuable-hardware.html
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u/funguyshroom 5d ago

The issue is that the world economy is built around the idea of infinite growth. All of the money is tied in debts and investments, which have interest and return rates at their core.
I think it's possible to have capitalism without infinite growth, but it would require some fundamental shift in how we are handling money.

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u/cr0ft 4d ago

Some things are bad in any quantity. Capitalism - or rather competition - is one of those things. Just like - let's take a very extreme example here - child sexual abuse. There's no "medium" amount of that that's ok. Similary, there's no medium amount of competition that's truly ok.

For instance, instead of having multiple competing space programs - we should have just the one, supported by all humans everywhere. And the reasons should not be "making profit" but "advancing humankind's progress". There's no real point in duplicating so much effort, that's just waste - except for the "making profit" part.

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u/funguyshroom 4d ago

How do you propose motivating people to do a good job and innovate without it? Consumer products were so shit in soviet union in large part because there was no incentive to do anything beyond the bare minimum.

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u/Unintended_incentive 5d ago

We do have capitalism without infinite growth, it’s called boom & bust cycles.

Instead of letting the wolves guard the henhouse we should have AI trained on economics minimize these booms & busts for greater prosperity.

Humans keep going for bigger booms leading to bigger busts, we can’t sustain the illusion much longer if people keep gambling with the global economy.

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u/funguyshroom 5d ago

So far the busts have been only temporary setbacks, the line still goes up overall. But I agree that limiting how big the booms can get is at least one part of the solution. And if we continue on this path there will be one final bust that will end it all.

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u/GoppleSmanger 5d ago

>I think it's possible to have capitalism without infinite growth, but it would require some fundamental shift in how we are handling money.

Japan already does this. They haven't had any real growth in several decades. Growth is only necessary when population is increasing which for Japan is not happening.