Submitted by Phoenix5869 t3_125s4mc in Futurology
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Submitted by Phoenix5869 t3_125s4mc in Futurology
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I just can’t imagine how capitalism will be replaced. What could possibly be better? I can’t think of anything
Something existed before. Something will exist after.
It doesn't have to be better to survive.
Better? It is literally the worst, most destructive thing humanity has ever developed.
Well according to sy fy the only thing wrong with socialism is humans take out the greed factor and it works.
A heavily regulated capitalism where workers are required to get a fairer share for their labor.
This idea that all the money should go to everyone involved except the people who do all the work just isn’t functional.
Working full-time should guarantee a person all the necessities for a pretty good life. It did for the boomers.
Bill Clinton “attempted” this whist also shooting its twin in the back to allowing the congress critters to murder, rape, and kill Glass-Stegall in a dark D.C. alleyway…
I'd recommend checking out the works of Jacque Fresco.
While I am not really a fan of 'the' Venus Project, I am all for 'a' Venus Project.
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you first need to spend some time understanding what capitalism actually is.
do education us
i mean in a very broad term that won't offend anyone it is the mode of production that begun around the 16th or 17th century. by mode of production you can also think of it as a way to organise the economy.
biggest parts of this system are centred around which private property, markets and firms. And principally capital.
everything after that is partly controversial. i have my own thoughts. that i'll mostly keep to myself. but i just want to justify why i said what i said.
>Companies will still sell products, bills will still have to be paid, money will still have to be exchanged (for example, for robotaxis). All of these will cost money and require capitalism in order to operate
there are still ways to bend or break capitalism (depending on your viewpoint) and keep these things. that's partly why i bring this up. people sometimes believe using money == capitalism. which is obviously not true as we've had money much longer than capitalism.
capitalism is a specific system defined by all its parts and their relationship. it's a complicated moving system.
>before anyone says “the government will provide everything” planned / government run economies don’t work and history shows that
history shows that robots do not work. every attempt so far has failed. i'm not putting forward this argument to say that a completely panned economy is the way. just to show how the logic is faulty.
>if everything was run by the government that would basically stifle innovation
this is a pretty clear indicator that the poster is presenting his understanding of a dichotomy that just does not really exist. that is either we have a non-capitalist mode of production where the government runs everything or we have what we have now.
personally i don't even disagree with the overall point OP is making. there's nothing incompatible with a real abundance in everything including labour and market dynamics. it's just i'm pretty pessimistic about what that would entail.
we're already seeing the ever-shrinking pool of ownership. i don't see why that wouldn't continue until even our last illusionary safety ladder of labour and hard work is taken away.
Capitalism requires a strong consumer base to buy the products produced by capitalists. As robots take over more work in more industries companies fire more employees, eroding the financial strength of the consumer base and decreasing sales. Each company will keep trying to increase its own profits this way with no regard for the economy as a whole. I don't know where this will end but there will be a lot of suffering and poverty along the way.
Under a socialist system, more robots should result in employees working less hours while receiving the same pay, maintaining their ability to contribute to the economy.
It's not going to disappear. But we do have complications, like monopolization and automation.
AI is an interesting new facet. It will likely disrupt more and more fields as it progresses. But this isn't a problem for capitalism. AI will either eliminate fields or simply change them. The quickest people to adapt to this will come out on top.
The real problems, in my opinion, are monopolization and regulations. Huge companies aren't kept in check well enough. They play politics and game the system. They're allowed to pollute the environment and nearly monopolize industries. Capitalism works when there's competition. I think it's safer at smaller scales when companies aren't too powerful.
If abundance keeps increasing at an increasing rate, we will eventually reach a post-scarcity society. While I personally think there will always be a market for whatever rare luxuries there are, I can understand the idea that banking and currency will struggle to survive in a post-scarcity society.
Why wouldn’t currency survive? Products, bills, services etc will still have to be paid for. And banking is essential for currency.
and the idea that a post scarcity society will end capitalism is silly. We grow enough food to feed the entire world at least twice over and food still costs money.
What is currency but a proxy for time spent/labor? Today, different peoples labor is exchanged for different values of currency.
If we reach the era where labor isn't necessary for the majority of daily life, what value does labor/time offer anymore? Why would a seemingly very low value commodity (labor/time) be used as a value exchange medium?
There may be a new thing that is developed as a pseudo-currency, based on some other intangible-value-made-tangible, but it wouldn't be a stand in for labor/time in this entire very made up, very simplistic scenario.
Something else would carry value, assuming the entire society is into personal possessions at that point. This may evolve into a communal situation for all we know. Post-need generations would have no need to accumulate. There surely may be some experience, travel, etc that may drive some, but even that may be trivial.
There is zero reason to apply your personal beliefs about the past to future societies that don't have the same restrictions or priorities.
Food has also never been cheaper in human history AND a very sizeable percentage of the world do *not* pay for it.. they are fed through pricing supports, direct subsidy and food aid. That's reality, right now.
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You can bet that we will use the full force of the bourgeoise state to resist. The average American isn't a hardened Bolshevik. The average American has internalized liberalism as a value system. The moment you guys start committing acts of terrorism like a suicide bombing, our Congress will clamp down hard. There will be no proletarian revolution in America or anywhere else in the imperial core or periphery.
“Disgusting wealth hoarders“? You mean people like bezos who is the reason you can order items online and get them delivered the next day, or the ceo of apple which made the iphone your typing on?
Does Tim Cook actually manufacture the phones? Engineer the phones? Sell the phones via retail? Does Bezos pick and sort packaging? Do customer service? Distribute the packages? No. The wealth of those companies should be distributed amongst the employees doing the real work with real productivity that actually makes the company valuable. One man doesn’t make the company work. Wages should be higher and each employee should have more vested shares in the company. One man doesn’t need half or more of the shares of the company and a large majority all of the wealth of its successes.
“employees should have shares in the company”? Im sorry but this made me laugh. So every small business is just supposed to hand over shares, which could be bought by shareholders and benefit the business through the money paid for said shares, and just… hand them over for free? No small or even medium sized business could afford to hire workers if that was the case. And what happens when the employee(s) leave the company? What happens to the shares? What happens if the workers save up / get enough money from the shares to no longer require employment?
and if wages were higher, that would hurt small businesses, and the price of everything would just go up.
It wouldn't be for free. Those employees are doing the work that is making the business run so why shouldn't they have some ownership in their work. Why should the person that started it reap all the profit from it when they are doing it on the backs of the workers?
So they should be paid in shares and dividends, and when the company does poorly they can eat less, right?
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They should get wages and shares. Why not? There are lots of companies that are "employee owned" and usually they do better because people will care more if they have some ownership of what they are creating.
> They should get wages and shares
As you note, that is not a new thing, in fact its a normal thing. So the reason Bezos is so rich is that he works for Amazon and was given the biggest allocation of shares.
Do you have a problem with that?
What if early Apple workers became billionaires (like early Microsoft employees).
Do you have a problem with that?
Or early Tesla factory workers?
Do you have a problem with people getting rich from their shares?
And CEO’s have a lot of responsibilities. Without Tim Cook making the right desicions, there would be no apple.
If your business can’t sustain a living wage with cost of living increases it shouldn’t exist, plain and simple truth. Also you seem to put too much emphasis on what someone like Tim Cook does when in reality any experienced, competent individual in the company could make similar good and bad decisions. CEOs aren’t bastions of only the best ideas. Many of them make decisions that get themselves fired or kill the company and they pull their multi-million golden parachutes at the regular workers expense.
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>Companies will still sell products, bills will still have to be paid, money will still have to be exchanged (for example, for robotaxis)
Why? Further, how? You just said 'no one is working', so who is going to be buying these products? Do you feel that people will still be able to acquire new products without being paid for labor? If 'bills need to be paid', fine, paid by whom? If money exists as a means of exchange then surely that money/value must be created, how? Do you feel as though innovation would simply cease if people stopped being paid for it? The question game can go both ways and I don't see how any answers you'd be able to provide would be any less disastrous than an attempt to transition away from a growth/capitalist economic paradigm. Your failure of imagination doesn't change the underlying fatal flaws building in capitalism, namely AGI, environmental degradation, a post-fossil fuel energy economy and a globally shrinking population.
Before i answer, i just want to thank you for actually taking the time to try and present an argument. That’s more than i can say about the other responses.
>Why? Further, how? You just said 'no one is working', so who is going to be buying these products?
Because landlords, companies, the government etc are not just going to give away everything for free just because all jobs are automated. There will still be demand, for example, for MTG cards. Wizards / Hasbro is not just going to stop selling them just because no one is working. UBI is a common theme on this sub and others, and i agree that it will be nessecary once jobs start being automated, otherwise how else will people get money? If everyone recieves, lets say $1250 a month on average, landlords still have a mortgage to pay and aren’t just going to say “i guess you can stop paying rent now”. They are going to see that their tenants have the ability to pay and if anything increase rent prices If UBI results in the tenants having more disposable income.
>Do you feel that people will still be able to acquire new products without being paid for labor?
yes, because as i said earlier, UBI will have to be in place (to stop mass homelessness and starvation, if not the collapse of the economy).
>If 'bills need to be paid', fine, paid by whom?
by those that live in houses. Again, landlords aren’t going to allow tenants to live for free because there are no jobs.
>If money exists as a means of exchange then surely that money/value must be created, how?
how its always been created, by the government printing money and people receiving money, in this case with UBI.
>Do you feel as though innovation would simply cease if people stopped being paid for it?
yes. Profit incentivises innovation. for example, there would be no new drugs if it wasn’t for pharma companies making a profit from said drugs.
>The question game can go both ways and I don't see how any answers you'd be able to provide would be any less disastrous than an attempt to transition away from a growth/capitalist economic paradigm. Your failure of imagination doesn't change the underlying fatal flaws building in capitalism, namely AGI, environmental degradation, a post-fossil fuel energy economy and a globally shrinking population.
i don‘t see any other alternative. Communism and socialism have been tried and don’t work. Feudalism obviously doesn’t work. businesses need to exist, a planned / government economy also doesn’t work.
We centrally plan huge sectors though
It stems from people having no clue what capitalism is. Automation has the potential to make things so cheap that no one cares about money outside of luxury products. It was hoped in the 50s that this would happen with nuclear energy (though it fizzled out for several reasons).
It’ll probably change to something else if we can attain post-scarcity (or at least very low scarcity). It’s hard to say what that will be.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s not like capitalism just came out of nowhere. Economists didn’t go to the economics factory and design capitalism, it was the progression of other economic systems and the result of various societal changes. Someone in the century before what we now call capitalism came about probably had no idea that it was coming, and I’m sure the average person in Adam Smith’s time simply knew it as the way the world worked without putting much of a title on it.
It's a big assumption that most jobs will be automated, and even if they do there will simply be new jobs. For example, see what happened when ATMs became a thing.
For capitalism to succeed, The government has to be an opposing force. Capitalists are encouraged to prosper while the government rides on their back and makes sure it benefits the country as a whole.
When capitalism owns the government, it goes bad.
The US was built on the idea that you could come here and get filthy rich, and you would damn sure chip in to that government that allowed you to become so rich.
Income tax for the wealthy was traditionally very high, they benefited the most, they paid the most. Rockefeller became the richest man in the world while paying more than 75% income tax.
That worked. This doesn’t.
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"Capitalism" is a complex mix of a lot of economic, social and political ideas
Economic systems will change and adapt to the new technologies. I'm hopeful that the new AI tools will allow us to improve economic systems to make them work better for all. Some may use the old names to describe the new ideas, or maybe a new name will be invented
You have your cause and effect mixed up. The people making that argument aren't afraid that automation will end capitalism. Rather they're afraid of capitalism and are using speculation about automation to try to end it.
From a purely logistical standpoint, capitalism is the system of economic management that has occupied the transitional period from low-state capacity polities which required a decentralised structure to develop productivity through markets to a stage of high scale economic production which naturally is incompatible with markets. Capitalism today stalls productivity through the law of value and overaccumulation / savings glut, which means enhanced shit for workers. It will keep dragging us through economic mud until we end up with socialism if lucky or a transnational despotic monopoly royalty if not. Pretty sure you can see which one is on the lead
In a post scarcity economy, capitalism won't be very relevant. We've already reached post-scarcity in many areas. You can have as much clean water for a nominal cost, read as much books as you want, consume netflix, youtube, learn basically anything you want. Tesla is introducing a program that allows you to charge as much as you want overnight in Texas for a flat fee. Renewables will help get us closer to post-scarcity, as well as AI and 3d printing.
Your Tesla example - well, all of your examples, really - is far from any kind of illustration of capitalism losing relevance. Capitalism is the underpinning of the everpresent costs of all of those all of those things.
Submission statement: this post is aiming to promote a healthy debate about wether or not capitalism will disappear as a result of automation of jobs, while giving the viewpoint that it will not and explaining my reasoning. I am more than open to any counter arguments and welcome the possibility that i am partially or completely wrong.
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A key thing to remember when critically thinking about capitalism is to remember that maintaining capitalism is a conscious choice. Remember when you are thinking about alternative systems that we are actively making the choice to stay in the system that Isn't doing what anyone except the rich wants it to do. Even if something like, say, communism isn't perfect, its still better than continuing to let the planet, and humanity, die.
Altman said break not disappear. You think people want to give up their rights and ownership to properties? In any case, it will test our system until we need reforms. It will test us to show us that if we don't adapt chaos will manifest.
Capitalism is a system that requires infinite growth so in the long run is unsustainable because we have finite resources.
You clearly don’t understand what capitalism is. Selling and buying products, money being exchanged, is market that precede capitalism in thousands of years and it exist where capitalism is no more.
> planned / government run economies don’t work and history shows that, and if everything was run by the government that would basically stifle innovation and destroy the middle and upper classes.
That’s not true at all. GPS, cellphone, internet, computers, cars, etc was created using government funding, sometimes private companies do create something but it’s rarely without government money because innovation it’s risky and a lot of times unprofitable.
Soviet Union went from a heavy agricultural country to launch a man in space in 30 years while being invaded by nazis and being the vanguard of modern labor rights.
The British empire was strong because their government used it’s funding to conquer and pillage on foreign territory. US is strong because it’s government use their budget to fuel the most powerful military the world has ever seen, a tool used to invade other countries to steal resources and fuel their economy. It’s called imperialism.
I recommend you to go to the world bank website and look at the GPD growth, hunger and unemployment rate of the socialist countries that exist today (Cuba, China, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam). You will see how a planned economy run.
I invite you chat with me and ask questions about it. See I didn’t use any opinion here just verifiable facts.
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>No it doesn’t. The world GDP grows year after year without needing “infinite growth”.
What happen when it stop to grow? Recession, 2008 crisis is a example.
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>that IS capitalism. Thats like saying “cooking food isn’t cooking, it’s making the food hotter”
So by your definition capitalism existed in ancient Rome, Greece Egypt, etc? And Soviet Union was capitalist too since those things existed there right? So tell me what the Soviet Union was?
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>the soviet union is the go to example for human rights abuses, poverty,
corruption, and starvation. if the soviet union / communism is so great
why did all the former soviet satelite states have widespread majority
support for ending communism? Ask anyone who grew up in a former
communist / socialist country and they’ll tell you horror stories all
day. i have heard stories of people who grew up in former communist
countries and were doctors, nurses, firefighters, etc and had to wait
15 YEARS for a landline. And that was the priority queue.
I never claimed Soviet Union was perfect but human right abuses, poverty, corruption and starvation are happening right now in capitalist countries. What do you call a invasion on sovereign soil based on false claim? Or the use of chemical weapons like white phosphorus and agent orange against a civilian population?
What do you call a country that invaded more than 28 countries since ww2 and organized multiple coups around the world to change the government to a more suitable one to their interests?
Soviet Union had a lot of problems and most of them come from the invasion from Nazi Germany that heavy desestabilize it. After SU fell poverty, unemployment and hunger skyrocketed in all of it's members in just 10 years, but hey, they can buy a Iphone now!
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>im not sure what your point is. These were / are both capitalist countries and grew there economies with a free market economy
If you call conquering countries and waging wars against the it's inhabitants "free market economy", sure. England literally waged two wars to have the right to sell opium in China, they destroyed India cloth industry so they could sell their own. You must have herd the say "The sun never set on the British Empire", where do you think it came from?
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>cuba - one of the most authoritarian regimes on the planet. those that
leave cuba are banned from ever returning. Poverty rates in the country
are well above the global average last time i checked.
Please tell me how Cuba is a authoritarian regime, just read how their political system works. Cuba have a lot of problems, most from the crushing embargo from US, but hey still have low hunger, unemployment and homelessness, with good education and healthcare.
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>china - arguably authoritarian country with widespread censorship. freedom of expression In china isn’t exactly great.
Yeah, sure. The country with most strikes per capita worldwide who's government rolled back Covid 0 police after 1 week of protesting from their population, btw the police didn't arrested 300 people like in France or shot them like in US. Btw, China police don't use guns. Sad they can't use Google(banned by US government itself) and Facebook(banned because didn't want to share data with China government).
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>laos - poor country, high poverty rates.
And why is that? US literally dropped more bombs there than the whole ww2 campaign, Laos is the most bombed country in the history between 50 and 300 people die from those bombs every year since the end of war, they even build houses with bombs parts since it's the most abundant material to build.
Even with this, they have 6% GPD growth average since 1990 and poverty and hunger in steady decline also. Vietnam suffered the same fate by the hand of US and enjoy similar breakthrough in human development with even more GPD growth.
NK is another country bombed to hell by US(it's incredible how often that happens), with 4 million deaths during the war. US destroyed dams, hospitals, schools, they stop bombing because there was nothing left to destroy. That's why they built nuclear weapons so US can't wreck havoc unpunished. Btw the heaviest embargo on Earth is currently on NK.
If socialism/communism is faded to fail, why try so hard to destroy it? Let them fail. UN voted to lift embargo on Cuba and all countries beside US and Israel voted against. Even the CIA say the embargo is to starve cubans so they revolt against the government which didn't happened.
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>and a planned economy / communism / socialism is basically saying “im
jealous that other people are rich, therefore everyone should be poor”.
I don't have a problem with rich people, I have a problem with a sytem that need people misery to exist so a little few can have luxury. You see, hunger, extreme poverty, unemployment will never cease to exist in capitalism because it's profitable.
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>ancient rome etc had free markets, did they not? And the SU was a dictatorship.
So you don't know what capitalism is. Capitalism started in late 19th century in Europe.
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>they had to assume that “they have WMD’s“ was true. Would you risk
getting nuked? The coups were against dictatorships / authoritarian
regimes.
You can't be serious or that naive. US never cared about WMD, they cared about oil. And even if they did. If the CIA create a false claim again saying Mexico have WMD hey have the right to invade? If someone claim your country holds something dangerous they have the right to invade and destroy it and kills its people? I truly cannot believe you are covering-up US in this matter. It was no Iraq, Saudi Arabia or NK who launched two nuclear bombs against civilians.
No man, one of the coups happened in my country and destroyed democracy and installed a military dictatorship that killed and tortured their political adversaries.
And who the fuck US think they are they can get in other country and change it's government? Everything you saying can be used the other way around and would you accept it? If China rehearse a coup in US using the same excuse, would you be cool with it? This thinking disgust me. Americans think they are the chosen one to bring peace and democracy in the world. Guess what? They bring only pain and suffering.
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>the british empire overall improved living standards and gave them
proper houses, buildings, medicine etc. the slavery part was terrible,
il give you that.
So it's ok to invade and kill the native to give the illusion of a better place? China suffered for decades with opium addicted citizens because of England and saw no improvments. India was a colony who's only purpose was to explore, sell goods from their factories and steal resources, everything bad or good was done to achieve this purpose. Africa was looted and left to rot, they are only now starting to recover. Imperialism is a cancer to those who suffered it and a blessing for those who do it. I think France and other Europe nations didn't liked it when Hitler did to them what they had done to others.
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>of course they were bombed, ever heard of the cold war? They were / are
hostile to the US and their allies. Did you expect the west to just roll
over and die? And the embargo is because those countries are enemies of
the US and want to destroy the west.
Laos wasn't in the war, their frontier was being used to transport goods to the front line and Vietnam was a french colony fighting for independence just like US did against Britain.
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>”hunger, extreme poverty, and unemployment” are the lowest they have ever been globally.
Not because of capitalism, China alone raised 800 million people out of extreme poverty.
I'm glad US is losing it's power to a nation that don't need to bomb the shit out of their "enemies" or conquer other to extract their resources to be the biggest economy worldwide. A multipolar world where US can't humiliate other just for the sake of profit is the world I want to live in.
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Although I myself dislike Capitalism and grew up myself in USSR, and agree that USSR did achieve quite a bit of successes in a short period of time, the same can be said about Asian "miracles" of 1970s and 1980s. USSR has never been a Socialist country, the whole purpose of its existence was to sustain the Russian Empire. USSR was Russian Empire, with different decorations,some sprinkles of ideology and not much more to it. All the other Asian "socialist" countries countries you brought are just good old corrupt kingdoms of their leader, or in case of China an Empire in disguise.
Capitalism is like any other religion, it had its use before we got to this point in civilization, but now is no longer serviceable to our society and can/should be phased out.
When it was nothing to go into a village and rape and murder without any recourse, scaring “the unescapable fear of God” was pretty much the most society could use to mitigate the pure, unhinged chaos that was our species.
In the same light, when resources were scarce and our species was trying to build an optimal functional society, capitalism was a fantastic tool for getting our society on track. However, with nearly every one of our resource needs being automated in the near future and not much need for actual human labor, capitalism, at least in its current form, is completely unsustainable.
Now that both have less and less use in the future and seem to be vehicles for corruption and misuse of power over others, the time has come for our society to gradually move on from both.
An interesting observation I’ve noticed is that the more developed a nation becomes, the more this sentiment is backed up and supported. The most developed countries are recognizing more and more than religion serves less and less of a purpose in our everyday lives, and the implementation of UBI and similar ideas grows in support.
If we don’t kill off the planet (temporarily) it’s going to be one interesting century.
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The Industrial Revolution and automated production lines didn’t stop capitalism. It just adapted. I see it doing the same here.
Of course not. Maybe the better question is how much the states will intervene and regulate facing heavy turbulence moving forward. If we were to extrapolate recent time the simple answer is: A lot.
Capitalism will never die. It will always be with us, regardless of name or form. It is here to stay…
"just because no one is working"
if no one is working, no one will have money
no one will buy anything.
there wont be a middle class
in capitalism if you do not work you die in the streets.
"just because no one is working" = everyone dying in the streets because of capitalism
Robots contributing to social security? I don't know, just an idea.
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Nobody knows. The complexity of the systems at this scale are inhertiently unpredictible. But capitalism is the primary driver behind AI. I doubt it will disappear, change maybe.
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You clearly have literally no clue what capitalism is or how it came to be the dominate market. Before you worry more about this I sugest you educate yourself a bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMxazanoEVg&t=10s
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This is a good start
if you were educated you would make a statement not post a link.
but you don't because you can't
Its not my job to educate you, Im just trying to help you out.
how are you trying help me out?
By helping you realize youve been lied to your whole life. Capitalism is not some natural state of markets. Its not the default.
i don't what you are talking about and you don't know what i believe
if you have something to say then say it
Capitalism is a scam thats robbing you and your kids of their futures. Watch that video to get started on learning why.
Idk… they don’t have enough resources to replace every human with a robot and have a space race.
Capitalism will disappear when the induvial loses their freedom.
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How am i being an asshole? I’m responding in (Imo) a nice way to the responses i recieved.
kenlasalle t1_je5lg6b wrote
I think that, if we ever do lose capitalism, the system will do everything it can to survive and any change will be incredibly painful, even if necessary.