You're completely omitting externalised cost, though. As it stands, all this production requires gargantuan amounts of energy that have to come from somewhere, and cause pollution and waste that must be accounted for. As long as these factors aren't solved—if they can be solved in the first place—either the prices for consumers or the manufacturing cost must reflect this, I don't see the increased degree automation affecting prices much.
That has nothing to do with this, those are things that should still be solved at a much higher level of abstraction. Tax the energy, pollution, waste - those have problems regardless of what caused them.
The point I am making is that the reason artefacts of highly automated production (even with minimal human labor required) will never become accessible for very low human labor, because all that automation has its own cost. We can externalise that as long as possible and defer the bill to somewhere or someone else, but it will have to be paid eventually.
> […] those are things that should still be solved at a much higher level of abstraction […]
I don't think that makes much sense. If a data center consumes all available electricity in a given municipality, it may provide AI services at a very low cost, but thereby makes the region uninhabitable. There is no way to "solve" this at a higher abstraction level. Or alternatively, consider a factory producing consumer goods, which emits toxic fumes; we can limit the amount of fumes the vicinity of the factory is exposed to by implementing very expensive filters—thus increasing the final price of the goods—or externalise all the negative effects—such as health risks in the population, ecological demise, and subsequently lower property values—to society, achieving a lower final price.
Currently, we often pick the latter option, because it usually has the better profit margin. I agree that it's a systemic issue that must be addressed holistically, but the actual solutions have to be implemented at all levels of the production chain. And this means the cost attached will have to be included in the price of all goods.
> The point I am making is that the reason artefacts of highly automated production (even with minimal human labor required) will never become accessible for very low human labor, because all that automation has its own cost
While I'm not sure I agree, this is not solved by tackling things at a low level and should be done at a higher level of abstraction - that's what they were saying.
> don't think that makes much sense. If a data center consumes all available electricity in a given municipality, it may provide AI services at a very low cost, but thereby makes the region uninhabitable.
If the data center was providing streaming services would you want to manage that differently? Imagine you had a data center that solved some user problem X, and another one that solves the same problem. Data center A uses AI, B does not but uses more power. Would you want to tax B less? Given what you've said so far I'd assume the answer is no - you'd want to tax that more because it's not really the AI part you care about, it's the power usage/emissions/local impact/externality X you want to avoid.
> I agree that it's a systemic issue that must be addressed holistically, but the actual solutions have to be implemented at all levels of the production chain.
Actually the more abstract sometimes the fewer places you have to deal with it. You don't have to figure out what cars everyone has, the specific MPG of each, driving patterns, how far your delivery driver went, whether they had other packages, etc - you can tax gasoline. This automatically flows through and avoids lots of wrangling about details and loopholes.
> Currently, we often pick the latter option, because it usually has the better profit margin.
Yes - and this drive makes it hard to manage when you put very precise rules around it. Tax AI and watch things rebrand as whatever falls just outside the limits of AI. See how products are built, deconstructed and remade exactly based on specific tariffs. Ford used to ship vans with windows and seats installed, then take them out again after they arrived!
How does more pollution/waste equal higher consumer cost? Do you mean because we'll have to pay more taxes because we'll need more publicly funded resources to clean up the excess waste? Or because corporations would pass the price of the fines for violating environmental regulations onto consumers?
It doesn't matter much how exactly those costs are passed on; someone has to eventually pay for them. That includes the energy itself, which doesn't come for free, but also the bill for environmental damage and resource exhaustion that we will have to pay at some point. You can argue that that'll be the case only in the far future, but then you're just externalising the cost—again—to future generations. It's all moot: Someone will pay for it eventually.
I'm not omitting anything, it's included. If the total sum of human labor required to produce food (which includes energy production and pollution mitigation) goes down by 90%, then the total sum of human labor required to buy food should go down by 90% as well.
My point is simply this: As automation advances, the vast majority of that value (e.g. 98%) should flow back to society. Right now it's being soaked up by capitalists. There should be a reward for improving efficiency but it should be sensible.
