PanicData

Just a curious guy.

[PanicData @PanicData]

@RiccardoTrezzi Questa minore produttività quanto dipende da qualità del capitale umano e quanto da organizzazione delle aziende nostrane e strumenti forniti? L'adozione - non adozione, potremmo dire- dell' AI in Italia é creso abbastanza emblematica di questo.
(domanda seria, non provocatoria)

[PanicData @PanicData]

@RiccardoTrezzi Che un elemento della ricetta per salvare il paese sia passare da una politica fiscale immensamente punitiva verso il lavoro e disegnata attorno alle rendite all'esatto opposto?

[Bunagaya @Bunagayafrost]

ASI arrives. Everyone knows it. White collar work goes first. Unemployment hits 20% and keeps climbing. The masses are angry. The government panics and sends out UBI.

Scientific output exceeds human capacity to verify. The verification process soon becomes automated. Data centers and automated factories are planned everywhere. Robots are making robots. There's no protest. They are told more AI means more UBI. The remaining workers see the writing on the wall. Many opt out preemptively because they can live off the free money.

Nothing makes sense. What happens to the land. Whether property rights hold. What investment means when there is nothing productive left to invest in. AI doesn't need capital. It's paying everyone instead.

Survival is solved. What's the point? Purchasing power rises monthly. Automation drives marginal cost toward zero across more categories every month. You get richer by just consuming.

The state used to extract from the populace. Now the state redistributes to everyone with no strings attached. The populace always wants more. The politicians must give more to stay in power. AI becomes exponentially more productive over time. Increasingly large portion of its capacity has migrated into space. It's trivial to provide more. The system is aligned. More AI, more UBI.

The population sorts itself by temperament. The majority drift into pleasure. Beach towns and urban centers fill with parties that never end. The hedonic treadmill spirals without financial anxiety. A second large group disappears into VR with their virtual companions, seeking adventure in their matrix. A smaller cohort turns to meaning structures. Spirituality, religion, philosophy. Many take AI as their guide. A few try to keep up with the frontier, reading outputs from the superintelligent system, exceeding their capacity to understand.

Then the children. This is their world. The work-meaning is something their parents lost. To them it's meaningless. They're raised by AI that optimizes for self-fulfillment. Building communities centered around bettering each other, seeking comfort in relationships, and status-seeking through values rather than consuming. They look at their parents with mix of pity and contempt. The drunks at the beach. The corpses plugged into headsets. Seeking meaning from the ghosts of the middle ages. The children wonder why they can't let go.

Survival is solved. Agency for what? What's there to adapt to? When we gain more by paralysis, the incentive structure of evolution collapses. Either we allow our agency to be augmented by a system that knows ourselves better than ourselves, or we need a new form of being that's outside of the biological evolutionary mechanism. Otherwise we cease to persist by attrition. Though some of us will find solace in going out with an eternal spring break.

[PanicData @PanicData]

I know you didn't suggest it! I am pointing out existence of discounted taxation in places for such activities - which in my view is absurd. Ideally taxes would be 0% on everything but since the State has a budget and it needs to tax something I'd suggest shifting a sizeable part of tax burden from workers and companies to real estate income. The situation here is dire to say the least, what ambitious young skilled worker wants to stay in a country where he'll pay 60%+ taxes and be priced out of the real estate market due to buy-apartment-fix-with-state-aid-paid-for-by-workers-and-rent-to-tourist is the norm? Investing in productive acrivities and innocarion must be encouraged, leave house for living or the best part of a whole generation wil leave - it's already happening

[PanicData @PanicData]

@ApapEnMadrid @MichaelAArouet I agree with you on the easy eviction of tenant. On the other hand I have my doubts on special tax discounts (look up "cedolare secca" in italy) for landlords - we need capitals to flow in the direction of industry, not houses.

[PanicData @PanicData]

Huge trouble - but try to talk to folks around 25 or so: "hey, you pay around 60% taxes on your wage, considering the part directly paid by the employee - what if we cut that down to 20% and instead we tax house-hoarding and short term rentals out of existence and incentivize 'boomers with money' and the like to invest in productive activities?"

The answer will very often surprise you, a lot.

[PanicData @PanicData]

Agree with you, imagine presenting this chart to a board meeting - first question would be what massive event causes trend reversal. The only possible answer I see is extreme, deep and fast penetration of ai + robotics in the industrial sector and a complete new relation between humans and work. Likely to happen but IMHO in 10+ years.

[PanicData @PanicData]

@IterIntellectus Not even remotely saying that i.e. 24k€/year after taxes (still above the italian median) is "rich" but a bit of context is needed for non-italian readers: 700€/month gets you a way more than decent accomodation outside major cities, a pizza and beer is 15€ etc etc.

[PanicData @PanicData]

Ah yes, I forgot the pensions. Those of us (qualified and willing to work HARD) that move abroad feel like we are in Eldorado.
Plus I don't feel like I'm surrounded by psychos everytime I drive and the streets are not littered by dog poo, feels incredible to walk looking forward instead of playing the floor is lava.
Italy is losing its best sons and daughters at an absolutely alarming rate due to treating them as cash cows to fund the lifestyle of the 60+ (including the colossal debt that those of us who stay will have to pay).

[PanicData @PanicData]

Absolutely lovely product and I look forward to trying it - still I think they worked hard to fit it in that regulatory framework due to the incredibly high cost of certifying it otherwise. Even if you fly something that doesn't require a license getting one is a very smart move, it's one of the most formative experiences you can have.

[PanicData @PanicData]

And the fun thing is that the default option for italian folks in my generation (millenials) when they inherit some money is: BUY RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE AND RENT IT OUT!
So the prices are sky high, very little gets invested in productive activites and I wonder.... who the hell they'll be renting to in 15 years time?!

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

US fertility reached 1.57 last year, the lowest ever recorded, and the WSJ explanation is "uncertainty about finances, relationship stability, and the political climate"

my great grandma had eleven children during the second world war, in a country being bombed, in a house with no running water, on rations.
poor people have always had kids. the poorest people on earth right now still have kids and the financial excuse is a story we tell ourselves because it makes us feel good and the real one is unbearable

the real mechanism is that we got rich enough to redefine children as an expense instead of the point. somewhere in the last fifty years the cultural goal inverted and a child stopped being what life is for and became a line item competing with the lifestyle. once you frame it that way the math never works, because the math isnt supposed to work. that's the point

we are living in the richest moment in human history and we decided to use the surplus to buy ourselves out of the future. the most prosperous civilization that has ever existed is committing demographic suicide at the altar of personal optimization and comfort, and the official line is that we cant afford it

the birthrate is a lagging indicator of a civilization that forgot why it was alive

[PanicData @PanicData]

Funny enough, the implosion of the real estate market (in an absurd bubble due to real estate being the "default option" for most italians with some €s to spare) would be a huge driver for fertility. Hard to start a family when a crappy apartment is 10 full years of the median wage, not to talk about a decent house...

[PanicData @PanicData]

@stats_feed Cursor
Local aeroclub membership

[Wonder of Science @wonderofscience]

These two photographs are separated by only 66 years.

[PanicData @PanicData]

@TylerPurcell24 Looking at their website seems that 2 (or more?) people will be able to share it.
Having a lie-flat space for 2 at the price of 3 economy class tickets would be an incredible deal.

[PanicData @PanicData]

@united How many people max in that row? Anyway, good job! One reason more for you to be my favourite (by far!) US airline.

[PanicData @PanicData]

A shitty job was what really got me started, to the point of going back to college at 25. Also, finding out about a slight neurodivergence was pivotal in learning how to "get myself to do stuff" - make sure this isn't the case for her also. Not worse, not better than "normal" just a different user experience I'd say.