Majority rule

Curt Welch wrote:
Tim Tyler <seemysig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The same "us" that currently fills the world
with automobiles and factories? Lots of people regard them as
pretty nasty and dangerous - but those are not the people who are
in charge of manufacturing and development.

Well, that's just a question of how the society assigns decision making.
In general, the bulk of decisions get made by majority rule which is not
known for being very "intelligent" in most cases.

The people who will push to build AIs will not be the same people
who are made unemployed by them. This is an old conflict of
interests - the technophile companies vs the luddite workers. So
far, the luddite score is pretty miserable - and the government
and the law are consistently on the side of the companies.

They are generally on the side of a rough measure of majority where the
companies gain their power by serving a majority or vote for them with
their money. People mostly ignore who they are "voting" for when they buy
stuff, and just buy what they want, so the system tends to be driven by
forces that no one is actually in control of. (except our DNA which created
the needs of the people doing all the mindless "voting").

Economics is not majority rule. E.g. look at TV adverts.
A /tiny/ number of people get rich from them, while /most/
people are mildly inconvenienced. Look at copyright.
One agent gets rich by screwing everyone else. Look at
patents. One agent gets rich by screwing everyone else.

Politics is not majority rule either - elections are
only concerned with a few figureheads - while most
government infrastructure rumbles on unaffected by
the inconvenience of election day.
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