Ricardo's Shadow

So, this is a story by a (facebook) friend of mine, Brad Aisa.  I'm not really sure what to think of it.  The writing feels extremely clunky to me, and the entire story (inasmuch as there is one) reads like a recitation of facts.  There are a bunch of named characters but no characterization whatsoever.  I'm not really sure what Brad was trying to accomplish here.  Thinking about humans replaced by androids in the workplace?  Okay, but why this clunky jumping around?  Just makes it hard to read.

I don't really have a lot of thoughts about humans eventually being replaced by machines.  I have serious doubts as to whether true "AI" will ever actually exist.  Nor do I think having machines take over most economic tasks would be a bad thing.  That's another problem I have with this story--it talks about changes to corporate structures, sure, but what happens after that?  Sure, people lose their jobs, unemployment skyrockets, maybe, but androids don't need the products that big corporations make, and the androids don't get paid.  So that leaves the corporations eventually with no market to sell their goods while the unemployed who can't afford androids resort to manual labor and barter.  This isn't a functional setup.  It's kind of ridiculous, in fact.

So, I guess, if anything, this is a story of how the traditional corporate narrative leads to hilariously irrational decision-making in the face of certain kinds of changes.  Or maybe not.  Hard to say.