In other news
In the current news climate we see that some figures and events tend to dominate the front-pages heavily. Still, there a
I don’t disagree that concentrated power is dangerous. History gives us plenty of examples of elites using power badly, and there’s no guarantee future elites would be saints. But that’s a different claim from “automation makes human labor economically irrelevant,” and I think those two things keep getting conflated.
There two separate points. It's just that the creation of 'Kings' is an inevitable consequence of labour losing it's value unless we take other systemic measure to control inequality.
On the labor point: my view is basically the one Marx sketched. Capital’s value comes from its ability to command labor. As technology replaces labor, it’s not labor that becomes worthless.... it’s capital. Once automated labor can genuinely self-replicate, everything it produces trends toward abundance, and abundance erodes price. In that world, owning machines doesn’t give you the same leverage owning factories once did, because anyone can reproduce what you have at near-zero marginal cost.
That's capital consuming itself. But that’s not a future where a small group controls everyone else through economic necessity; it’s a future where economic necessity itself is eroded.
That doesn’t mean power disappears. It just means it shifts away from production and toward coordination, coercion, politics, culture, and violence. And that is where the real danger you’re pointing to lives. Epstein, Musk, Trump, Thiel, etc. aren’t scary because they produce things efficiently. They’re dangerous to us because of influence, state capture, narrative control, institutional leverage, etc.
So when people say “the rich won’t need us anymore,” I really think that’s the wrong framing. They won’t need our labor in the narrow industrial sense... but the thing is neither will anyone else. That doesn’t make humans useless; it makes production cheap. The question then isn’t “what happens to labor value?” but instead “how do power and coordination work in a post-scarcity or low-scarcity world?”
That’s a real problem and its unprecedented in human existence at least at this scale. I just don’t think it’s solved or even better framed by treating automation as if it recreates a sort of feudal dependency rather than dissolving it.
I mostly agree with that except that ownership of assets and intellectual property will really matter unless we tackle it. I often point out that labour will become increasingly valueless at the same time that human wealth is exploding which will be fantastic if we don't allow that wealth/power to become controlled by 'kings' who wont even need us to build their pyramids.
That’s a real problem and its unprecedented in human existence at least at this scale. I just don’t think it’s solved or even better framed by treating automation as if it recreates a sort of feudal dependency rather than dissolving it.
It's up to politics. if we allow kings then there will be serf. I suggest we don't. I also claim this is a very serious current political problem. It is not a future problem.
Yes to the bolded, efficiency has nothing to do with it.
If abundance is technologically possible but artifical scarcity is politically enforced by the wealthy, then the remedy isn’t resisting automation; it’s breaking the mechanisms that let power harden around it. That means limiting IP monopolies, treating core automation and ai platforms as public infrastructure, redistributing access to them, etc.
I think that process starts with getting everyone on page that we want the abundance and we're not going to fall for the self-imposed scarcity rhetoric that factions on both sides of the aisle are arguing for. Instead I would argue that our energy grid isn't "a means of production" but rather the condition or prerequisite for production. So it's not immune from seizure or monopolistic governmental control by the people and for the people's prosperity. That nips a lot problems further downstream in the bud.
If you think any of that is possible without preventing the existence of kings' then we totally disagree. If you mean what some call god damn socialism then we're on the same page.
Otherwise I do think we may be very rich serfs by historical standards. That's not enough.
If you think any of that is possible without preventing the existence of kings' then we totally disagree. If you mean what some call god damn socialism then we're on the same page.
Otherwise I do think we may be very rich serfs by historical standards. That's not enough.
I'm not into actual socialism, nor do I believe most of the people who identify as or are calling for it are either. Actual socialism would require the removal of the entire inaliable rights apparatus as an independent pillar. With socialism your rights are what the party (or the people with democratic socialism) say they are. Ah... no. A few tyrants are bad enough.
Come to think of it, I'd rather get pulled over by a drone.
I think we may mostly be talking past each other, because I don’t actually deny the intervention cases you mention. So if someone hoarded the entire food supply and threatened mass starvation, of course we’d declare martial law and intervene. That’s a clear case of deprivation like damning a river upstream, and I don’t think my view commits me to biting that bullet.That’s the e
Define whatever you think is an opportunity cost. I’m sure that whatever that is, if you agree with intervening in some cases, then you’d have to accept that given an arbitrarily large enough utility drain or an arbitrarily low enough inconvenience, you would accept intervention even in the case of opportunity cost. Importantly, we don’t always get the counterfactual if it involves some kind of extinction risk, which I think that someone being given disproportionate control over the labor bots would be.
But it sounds like baked into your use of the term “opportunity cost” might be that it would be the type of thing that would not reach your utility drain threshold. If that’s the case, then by definition they are not morally equivalent to deprivation because they are defined as not producing a large enough utility drain. That would just be trivial at that point.
The very idea of intervening after we have allowed a few to accumulate so much power and wealth has a small flaw.
If abundance is technologically possible but artifical scarcity is politically enforced by the wealthy, then the remedy isn’t resisting automation; it’s breaking the mechanisms that let power harden around it. That means limiting IP monopolies, treating core automation and ai platforms as public infrastructure, redistributing access to them, etc. I think that proces
While I am no fan of socialism, it is a rather diverse selection of political philosophies. Not all of them favours authoritarianism. The anarchism of Bakunin is pretty much the anti-thesis of rigid party control, which is also why he and his peers were thrown out of the International at the behest of Marx.
It is in fact so diverse, that when push comes to show and the revolution gets real, the various socialist groups become political enemies. There is a reason the communist purges always start with the killing of other socialists.
While I am no fan of socialism, it is a rather diverse selection of political philosophies. Not all of them favours authoritarianism. The anarchism of Bakunin is pretty much the anti-thesis of rigid party control, which is also why he and his peers were thrown out of the International at the behest of Marx.It is in fact so diverse, that when push comes to show and the revolutio
In philosophy, Existentialism cuts a similar wide swath. Although the violence is mostly limited to scathing reviews in academic journals.
The very idea of intervening after we have allowed a few to accumulate so much power and wealth has a small flaw.
As your "very rich serfs" comment implies, consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of very few is not a new phenomenon. To the contrary, even now, it is probably less extreme than it was 500 years.
The bigger problem imo is our diminishing ability to do anything about it.
While I am no fan of socialism, it is a rather diverse selection of political philosophies. Not all of them favours authoritarianism. The anarchism of Bakunin is pretty much the anti-thesis of rigid party control, which is also why he and his peers were thrown out of the International at the behest of Marx.It is in fact so diverse, that when push comes to show and the revolutio
and theres a reason why Western Capitalist elites tolerate and often elevate these "anti-authoritarian anarchists" (ahem Chomsky).
Define whatever you think is an opportunity cost. I’m sure that whatever that is, if you agree with intervening in some cases, then you’d have to accept that given an arbitrarily large enough utility drain or an arbitrarily low enough inconvenience, you would accept intervention even in the case of opportunity cost. Importantly, we don’t always get the counterfactual if it invo
I don't consider my line arbitrary. Take a commodity with less volume like caviar. If the fisherman wants to spend the rest of his life stuffing his face with his surplus caviar, nobody cares. So if he gains enjoyment from that or letting it rot it shouldn't be a factor that others lost the opportunity.
If a shipwreck scenario developed where the people had no other means to survive than his caviar, we have emergency powers baked in to deal with that, which I'm fine with. When push comes to shove like that I treat life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as a kind of heirarchy. So I guess you can treat that as my threshold but I don't consider it arbitrary.
As your "very rich serfs" comment implies, consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of very few is not a new phenomenon. To the contrary, even now, it is probably less extreme than it was 500 years.
The bigger problem imo is our diminishing ability to do anything about it.
Our diminishing ability to anything about is part and parcel of the problem.
I'm not at all saying it's worse now, I'm saying we're at the start of an era where it's going to worse very fast. Decades maybe a few generations if we're lucky
Currently our inability to do anything about it is in large part in our minds but increasingly it becomes brute reality.
While I am no fan of socialism, it is a rather diverse selection of political philosophies. Not all of them favours authoritarianism. The anarchism of Bakunin is pretty much the anti-thesis of rigid party control, which is also why he and his peers were thrown out of the International at the behest of Marx.It is in fact so diverse, that when push comes to show and the revolutio
There's a big difference between how socialism is managed and what socialism actually is or entails. As I alluded to with Victor, I'm not handing the two total power over me.
Pretty much zero chance Victor or any of the other self-identifying socialists would sign onto a socialist constitution with only two of me or two from the religous crowd, either. That's because they don't really want genuine democracy, either.
Nancy Guthrie's door camera catches armed and masked suspect
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/liv...
Nancy Guthrie's door camera catches armed and masked suspect
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/liv...
Looks like ICE.
and theres a reason why Western Capitalist elites tolerate and often elevate these "anti-authoritarian anarchists" (ahem Chomsky).
I don't claim to know any of these folks, but I doubt there are many (if any) 'Capitalist elites' who elevate Chomsky.
Could you please name names for us? Thanks.
I don't claim to know any of these folks, but I doubt there are many (if any) 'Capitalist elites' who elevate Chomsky.
Could you please name names for us? Thanks.
he was doing business deals with Epstein for one.
Chomsky held cushy academic positions for his whole life and made millions of dollars. he was never censored or canceled. even leaving aside the Epstein stuff, if the ruling class viewed him as a threat then he never would have reached such positions.
It appears he successfully kidnapped the elderly woman instead of just shooting her, so I'm going to say similar to ICE but more competent.
As your "very rich serfs" comment implies, consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of very few is not a new phenomenon. To the contrary, even now, it is probably less extreme than it was 500 years.
The bigger problem imo is our diminishing ability to do anything about it.
Still ends up with people get their heads chopped off and the cycle resets.
he was doing business deals with Epstein for one.
Chomsky held cushy academic positions for his whole life and made millions of dollars. he was never censored or canceled. even leaving aside the Epstein stuff, if the ruling class viewed him as a threat then he never would have reached such positions.
so if anyone makes any money and then keeps it they are compromised and evil and only due to the hidden hand of imperialism positioning them to achieve it
jfc vic
12% of all american men 75 or older have a net worth 2 million dollars or more
you really think you can't reach a 1/8 outcome without being part of the machine?
you're so lost i feel bad for you
