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75Coog said... (original post) actually, I have a pretty good understanding of economics...and an advanced degree in economics...so, whether you agree with my post or not, saying ... show more Like the industrial revolution it would be disruptive to some sectors. Yet we know from Paul Romer which if you studied economics post 1990 you should be familar with, that the growth rate accelerated over epochs. I just don't think Musk understands economic growth. It isn't a dig to him he is a smart business man who has often been on the cutting edge of technology but he isn't seeing the big picture here. This really goes back to Say's proto general equilibrium of well some sectors decline others grow. I said you don't understand the economics of this. It is apparent here you aren't familar with the growth literature. It isn't a knock on you when I started my dissertation on growth I remember my advisor Peter Thompson claiming only a handful of people were studying this in the late 90's. Most grad students thought I was crazy getting into those models involving dynamic optimization which came from rocket science. The data are clear that growth is mean reverting in the postwar period in the long run but Romer showed over major epochs the growth rate could accelerate. So there is a period of accelerated growth that reverts to a new mean. This is a rather Luddite understanding that capital merely replaces workers. As some industries start to decline in employment and become thin margins others expand. I have seen this in the computer industry as the hardware manufacturing margins thin with competition, the big producers moved to cloud storage. It is just an example of how scarcity still exists with new products coming in as process innovation cuts the costs of producing old products. There is always something new on the horizon. This isn't an indication of the socialist idea of a post-scarcity society. They claim everything from computers to robots would lead to this and it hasn't. History argues much differently than some utopia where there is no scarcity. AI and robots can do a lot and will have large impacts on traditional manufacturing but an economy is much more than manufacturing. This is just the old Luddite idea that capital would replace the workers as they saw cottage industry die and people move from the farm and cottage industries to the city and factories. If you had studied economics prior to say 1990 you are probably only familar with Solow's ideas about capital and growth. Even under that it showed capital will reach a steady state which does imply it would not take over labor.