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V_Shtrum t1_ja7w2yu wrote

Reply to comment by CertainMiddle2382 in Is style the next revolution? by nitebear

This

Money is just influence, the ability to influence others and make them do what you want. Looked at this way, it's totally unsurprising that we still work long hours in jobs even though almost all our material needs can be met through automation. People will always want money because they want to influence others.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja82o2r wrote

Indeed, it is the abstraction of value.

It seems that the set of all the different representations of what money could buy, is just influence…

Funny thing is that, you don’t have to spend money to gain influence, just to show it.

I find it quite ironic :-)

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V_Shtrum t1_ja8ed3m wrote

Have you read Yuval Noah Harari's books? He talks about this:

He makes the point that throughout history, human beings have been exploited: feudalism, communism, capitalism, slavery etc etc. However unpleasant it is to be exploited, no-one could deny that human beings had value, economic and otherwise.

With developments in biotech, infotech and robotics, we're fast approaching a point where humans have no value, there's literally no need to exploit them, and nothing to gain by doing so.

Globalisation and offshoring have already rendered the manual classes in the West essentially obsolete, and the arguement goes: this is behind the recent resurgence in authoritarianism and xenophobia. We're likely going to see another wave of this - only this time of all classes and all countries simultaneously.

I think that a lot of people on this sub have a utopian view of these developments. Why would our governments and corporations be interested in providing us a utopia? What do they gain by providing it? What can we exchange with them when we have no value?

Having a job is having value in the economic system - however small; to hope that all work becomes obsolete is to hope that we all lose our value.

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