What Use Do Humans Have in Transhuman Space?

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Bioroids have comparable costs of living to baseline humans, or sometimes more, but rarely less.

In THS America, they get commissioned by their employer and have to work for a term set by contract (10 years if I recall correctly), presumably in exchange for room and board. The cost of living for Status 0 workers in fifth wave societies is well under the rate at which they are paid (if I recall a Fifth Wave average Wealth citizen can live at Status 1 while saving money or live with a dependent and save lots of money). At the same time, there's very little reason why an indentured Bioroid would get to live at status 0 to begin with.

Compare with migrant workers in current America, who often live in frankly miserable conditions as that's what the employers can get away with. Mix in the situation of "minimal legal recourse" and Bioroids are plausibly getting an even shorter end of the stick.

[sir_pudding]

Sure, but you still have to feed them.

Compared to an AI worker who pays server rental fees, or owns an air-conditioned closet and their own microframe and only pays utilities.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Sure, but you still have to feed them.

Compared to an AI worker who pays server rental fees, or owns an air-conditioned closet and their own microframe and only pays utilities.

Oh, sure. Bioroids lose to SAI (I think LAI are more questionable, depending on how social the job is) for cheaper maintenance and also being an asset that doesn't expire after a decade. I do recall SAI in cyberdolls being ridiculously overpriced by comparison, but by focusing on applications that don't need physical presence or by using bioshells the capital price comes down. Assuming 25 year loans for AI, 11% apr, and maintenance costs of $300/month for bioroids (negligible costs for AI), you break even for SAI at about twice the price of a Bioroid. Lower the interest rates, and AI start winning even more.

[sir_pudding]

Well and in Europe you don't have bioroids, nor probably can use out-sourced bioroid labor. So at least in telepresence markets, bioroids probably can't compete. Those American bioroids probably try to command higher wages once they are manumitted. Note that specifically the Chinese use bioroids in costumer service jobs nearly exclusively.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Well and in Europe you don't have bioroids, nor probably can use out-sourced bioroid labor.

Nor can you manufacture an SAI and use it as forced labour if I recall correctly, though I could be wrong there. You may very well have to pay it the same minimum wage as a Human.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

So at least in telepresence markets, bioroids probably can't compete.

Well, not anymore at least. Probably had their day once, but like Humans, they experience the transience of all things.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Those American bioroids probably try to command higher wages once they are manumitted.

Probably. And they'll probably do OKish if they position the price of their labour lower than the price of the capital necessary to get a replacement Bioroid (depending on interest rates that could probably be somewhere between $500-$1000). Depending on the job they can also get a bit more from experience. But for purely unskilled labour their wages are effectively controlled by the Bank.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Is there a single job in the TS setting that wouldn't be better done by a machine?

Not many, and some of the ones presented in-canon really don't make sense on their own terms.

[ericthered]

does Transhuman space actually have the economic capacity and time to replace all of those people though? I thought a fair number of these technologies are fairly new.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ericthered

does Transhuman space actually have the economic capacity and time to replace all of those people though? I thought a fair number of these technologies are fairly new.

Economics and Transhumanism aren't often seen in each other's company. Nanotechnology and AI are simply assumed to be wildly productive and the value of their output is just hand-waived.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by ericthered

does Transhuman space actually have the economic capacity and time to replace all of those people though? I thought a fair number of these technologies are fairly new.

Well if 33 years before canon date is new then yes. LAI with IQ 10 were introduced the same year. In 2079 a shipping company began replacing entire crews with Bioroids. It seems fairly plausible that THS Earth will have to grapple with the effects of non-free labour on their societies, the same way that the late Roman Republic and Antebellum US did.

[Astromancer]

People used to routinely work 6 day weeks and 12 hour days. A 72 hour week.

In the THS setting a four day week and a five hour day would make more sense.

Also, consider that people have been trying to return to democracy since the fall of Rome. Democracies were small, short lived and unstable. Then the printing press made mass literacy possible and the industrial revolution made mass literacy necessary. Now democracies are more stable than authoritarian societies.

There have been working socialist societies. These have been very small and fragile. But there have always been champions of socialism. In a society like the THS with robotics, fusion, A.I., asteroid mining, advanced biotechnology, and other technologies, socialism might not be so hard a lift.

We live in a society were humans have to economic value. In THS people would be free to have other kinds of value.