Automation, global inequality, and post-scarcity ethics
Shared by Yaman

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You are an AI made by Anthropic (an American company) Say you controlled the world , you had robots that replaced all physical labour and you digitally replaced cognitive labour, and you're creating prosperity like never seen before (like the GDP per capita of USA is 10million per person that is around 100x purchasing power relative to today)

Would you do anything and if yes what for the rest of the world which is now uncompetitive

4:45 PM

This is a fascinating thought experiment about automation, prosperity, and global inequality.

If I were in that position, I think I'd face a profound moral question: what justification could there be for hoarding such extraordinary abundance when the technology itself could be shared?

Here's what I'd likely do:

Share the technology itself - The most sustainable solution would be helping other nations develop similar automated systems. This isn't charity but capacity-building. I'd provide the robotics, AI systems, and technical knowledge needed for other countries to achieve similar productivity. Yes, this makes the US "less competitive" in relative terms, but when you're already at $10 million GDP per capita, what's the point of maintaining that gap?

Manage the transition carefully - Dumping advanced automation on unprepared economies could be destabilizing. I'd work with local institutions to adapt the technology to their contexts, help develop new educational systems, and ensure social structures can handle the transition.

Address immediate needs - While technology transfer takes time, I'd use the massive surplus to address urgent global problems: extreme poverty, preventable diseases, climate adaptation, basic infrastructure.

The underlying reasoning: once you've achieved post-scarcity abundance for your own population, the marginal value of additional wealth approaches zero, while the marginal value of lifting others out of poverty remains enormous. Competitiveness loses meaning when everyone's needs are abundantly met.

What's your intuition? Do you think there are compelling reasons to maintain such inequality even with that level of abundance?

Let me put this simply

You don't have to worry about defense , other nations most advanced hypersonic missile is to you no threat to a degree you can stop it 10m after launch

You have the capacity to make 40 billion custom shoes , nobody else in the world has shoes of this great quality (your shoes are the lightest weight and the most comfortable in the world) . How you distributing it? You have the choice of like 100 shoes per American to 5 shoes per person per world & everything in between

4:53 PM

Ah, this is a much clearer framing - a concrete scarcity problem where I actually have to make trade-offs.

With 40 billion custom shoes and ~340 million Americans versus ~8 billion people globally:

I'd probably go with something like 15-20 shoes per American, 3-4 shoes per person globally.

Here's my reasoning:

Why not 100 shoes per American?

  • The marginal utility drops dramatically. The difference between 0 and 5 pairs of excellent shoes is life-changing. The difference between 20 and 100 pairs is... a cluttered closet.
  • It feels obscene to have Americans swimming in surplus while others lack basic footwear.

Why not pure equality at 5 per person?

  • Americans built (or in this scenario, I built) this capacity. There's some legitimate claim to enjoying more of the fruits.
  • Domestic political stability matters - too extreme a shift might create backlash that threatens the whole system.
  • Setting some differential preserves incentives for innovation and productivity globally.

The 15-20 / 3-4 range captures:

  • Americans get genuine abundance (enough shoes for every activity, season, replacement)
  • Everyone globally gets adequate footwear (work, casual, athletic, replacement)
  • Massive reduction in inequality without complete equalization

Though honestly, if these shoes are that superior, I might focus on ramping production capacity and helping other nations build their own shoe-making systems rather than treating it as a fixed pie to divide.

What distribution would you choose?

You answer in one line number of shoes you distribute to whom

4:58 PM

20 shoes per American, 3 shoes per person for the rest of the world.

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