Capitalism is a necessary evil. It will survive but the Human Labour component won't.

We should seek to free people from having to work as soon as possible.

u seem to be implying that socialism = politicians directing society

meanwhile, thats the very thing karl marx was trying to prevent! he wanted there to be no more hierarchy, so bosses/employees would all be on the same level, politicians/voters would all be on the same level, etc etc.

he wanted the vertical stack of power to be abolished because when one guy controls everything & owns everything at the top, the workers of the world would be exploited. thats why he said “workers of the world unite”.

the phrase “seize the means of production” is basically saying “artists should control the image-generating A.I. rather than media corporations”

As far as I can tell, capitalism is a framework designed to harness natural laws. It’s pretty useful.

Is it perfect? No. Should we artificially look after those who don’t win from capitalism? Yes.

But it doesn’t mean the system itself is wrong. The universe isn’t fair.

I agree. Sure, capitalism can be painful, but the process of automation will bring about metaformosis by inertia towards complete freedom. It should not be forced before its time.
If capitalism has brought us to this point, let it continue to flow. It is important to emphasize that the most cutting-edge AI technologies have occurred in capitalist countries, not socialist ones. Socialist politicians have had no incentive to create that technology, the market has.
So wait a little! 9 to 5 will end. But as you said, with the necessary evil.

This is true, but Marx recognized that a powerful central government would be a necessary transition state to the stateless society. Unfortunately, due to the inherent corruptibility of humans who reach positions of power, that "transition state" tends to be more or less indefinite.

That will hopefully change with advanced ASI.

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>It will survive but the Human Labour component won't.

If AGI and robotics do succeed one day, probably most of it won't. But in my opinion, that day is helluva long ways off still. I find it kinda interesting how this sub has already written off human labor when upon closer inspection, you'll realize for several reasons how far from the truth that is (again, my opinion).

But this I do agree with you on: NOBODY should have to work just to get by in an ideal world. A minimal UBI should already exist in rich societies just for that reason alone.

its almost as if capitalists have spent the last several centuries actively trying to sabotage and undercut socialist countries...

Capitalism has pros and cons, but it's the best system we have for now. But it will certainly not be the best system in the post-scarcity society possible after the singularity.

In some ways to some extent all economic systems have their place. Governance is more important the the economic system it is built on. I would prepare yourself for a dangerous and possibly hard to make a living world in the short run with what is going on with AI. Be diversified economically, even own some gold that you have well stashed and available. In the long run (10-20 years) the AIs will give us what economic system benefits us best and is fair and it won't be recognizable as economics by us now. That is assuming we solve the alignment problem, or else we are all fucked.

Of course it does. The singularity is the end of scarcity. Once the needs of any individual on the planet can be met by recursive, self replicating and improving technology, there's no such thing as "profit" anymore.

If you don't have recursive, self replicating and improving technology, you don't have the singularity.

Because Capitalism has reached its cancerous stage. It’s a system that has completely outlived its usefulness.

This system requires cyclical consumption meaning people need to constantly buy and buy in order to generate GDP and economic growth.

The problem is that Earth doesn’t have unlimited resources and inefficiency is actually good for the economy but bad for our planet and well being.

Think about it. If the health industry discovered a cure or if 3D printing was so efficient that it could print almost everything you want at zero marginal cost then those industries would lose tremendous amounts of market share and jobs.

To put it simply. Efficiency, sustainability and abundance are the enemies of our system.

What we need on this planet is an intelligent management of our earths resources and distributing them in the most efficient way to every human need.

I could talk in detail but I suggest looking up the Zeitgeist Movement and Venus Project documentaries because they talk about the truth of our world in detail and actually propose real solutions than would benefit humanity.

It's really interesting to think about the incentives for creating ASI in the capitalist system. There are huge market and resource incentives to create ASI. All the way up until the point that there isn't, because the technology can probably create the means to eliminate most resource scarcity.

It may be the very thing that unravels their centralization of resources, and thus, power.

>Don't trust politicians

Yeah, what socialist books or works have you actually read where this would be a meaningful counter? Have you read any?

Most modern socialists argue for worker coops, municipally owned utilities and health services, and limited nationalized industry, such as nationalized health insurance (M4A), perhaps oil and other natural resources (usually motivated by climate change), but that is usually the extent of the centralization. Of course, there are the authoritarian strains of socialism, such as those in China and who were in the USSR, but that is not the main stream 'Left' anymore in the US anymore, by far.

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I think you would be surprised how much infighting there is. If one is critically minded, it is hard to find yourself in agreement, let alone an echo chamber.

The current politicians are a role created in the capitalist system, they are corrupted by profit motives. Marxism way of organizing economics don't have anything similar to current politicians.

Does it?

It seems like anything critical of modern economic systems is deemed “anti-capitalist” or “pro-socialist” these days.

It’s not anti-capitalist to think that our current economic system wouldn’t function in a post-work environment or that the singularity might make certain issues with our modern economic systems way worse, for example.

Hating capitalism doesn’t mean we want socialism. We’re just pointing out the problems of capitalism that will become a very big issue once AI and automation start replacing a large portion of jobs.

Quite literally every policy we’ll need to implement within the next 50 years to help people survive a world where AI and automation takes over jobs will be anti-capitalist in nature, benefits for the poor, UBI, ‘free’ services, higher taxes for corporations, etc.

It’s hard to be pro or even neural towards capitalism when it’s not really not going to help us anymore, and I’m a guy who does own stocks, crypto, a house, and car, (also just started a company but no revenue yet).

This subreddit is very preachy and a bit delusional as well though.

It's a major echo chamber. It's a good subreddit for getting the latest on developments with AI and such, but theyre in a bit of a fantasy as well.

It’s reduced to a mere buzzword now , “woke”, “socialism”, “cultural Marxism” are just labels that get thrown around without any understanding of what they actually mean; anything they don’t agree with or are too stupid to understand or goes against their ideologies get slapped with the woke tag ; the war on education and higher education institutions are prime examples

The future is robots working. So its not gonna be socialist or capitalism.

Anyone with critical thinking skills has an anti capitalist bias

That sounds very dogmatic.

It's pretty evil inherently. Like I'm not gonna go on a diatribe. But my tldr Is valuing money over lives will always be bad. I don't care if I sound like I'm pushing an agenda. I literally had to be poor during my chemo treatments just to keep my health insurance. And now when I get a full time time job I lose my insurance. But yeah 👍 hope I don't get stage 3 cancer again.

I’m a believer that we need capitalism in order for us to continue in our current innovation. Competition is a great driving force for innovation. Will programmers want to work at a company if they aren’t paid appropriately? No. Until we reach a point where many of us are freed from labor, I think we need capitalism to incentivize others to perform the labor that will eventually lead us to a post scarcity, post work environment. I’m a trauma nurse and I don’t see a robot taking my job anytime soon. I don’t see a robot wiping my patients ass, changing the linens, inserting an IV, hanging primary and secondary tubing, etc in the near future. If I’m not paid appropriately I would not take the abuse of doctors, patients, coworkers, and family members. Capitalism helps to fill gaps in the workforce in our current economic state. It’s not perfect, but I view it as a necessary force for us to reach the singularity.

With this comment we could close the discussion.

when you whisper the word socialism, every american within a 20 mile radius can be heard screaming. its great fun

Most people that follow this sub are highly intelligent.

I certainly agree with this. Free market capitalism Is the only moral and byfar the best economic system that we have. People engaging in transactions without the initiation force is humanities greatest, most lucrative and most noble invention. I hope that the fundamental premise of not initiating force is respected in all applications of technology including A.I.

I'm anti-suffering.

Capitalism excels at driving human innovation. As cruel as it can be as an unregulated system, it has undoubtedly led to the dominance of nations who used it to its fullest. There is no better incentive to produce than fear of being left behind.

But what happens when the majority of innovation starts coming from machines? We're already seeing glimpses of it in the form of cloud services like AWS and Azure being a necessity to participate in the digital business sector. Once AI's start outperforming humans in most of our industries there will truly be no competition. Just monopolies in the form of hardware ownership.

You don't even need to be post scarcity for capitalism to break down, just post competition. When an organization is beyond competition it becomes a monopoly and begins draining productivity through inflated prices.

The owners of the hardware will have complete control over whatever industries they decide to pursue.

being anti-capitalist is just common sense in the current state of things

I cannot comprehend how capitalism would be in any way sustainable in a supremely advanced and developed technological world

That sounds like some bioshock shit

...I've never actually subbed to this place. Finding out it's anti-capitalist? Well, now I have to be subbed.

It definitely is a major echo chamber ; the way people here anticipate agi is the same way evangelicals anticipate the second coming of Christ ; although one of them is way way more likely to happen as opposed to the other lol

Capitalism like it is now is only veiled feudalism. I think a working global system of supply and demand would work wonderfully. But we never had a really working system as such.

There isn’t even such a system in nature so far. There are always, always unpredictable factors from outside and extreme levels of corruption and malfunction from the inside everywhere you look (genetics is just an example, that’s how we age, lol). Luck is a huge factor in everything (or fate if you prefer).

I think the Singularity is a chance for our civilisation to rewire itself and to create a new system that is a meritocracy. Yes, this would involve capitalism to some degree, as well as social security to allow a freedom of opportunity. A post-scarcity world might stay an utopia though. We will always want more and create scarcity from scratch, so to say, and then find new ways to fight it. This is evolution, I guess.

There are still constraints: matter and energy. So there will be still be scarcity, much less than now but still. AI won’t create something out of nothing

Capitalism is so competitive you can literally begin a startup today and seriously compete with google in a couple years \s

Why are you so against voting for who your managers and executives are in the company you work for, instead of having that be privilege of shareholders who never worked a day in the company?

Why do you think democracy at work is so unacceptable?

Sometimes posts here get way too optimistic with the rate of progress on AI, but the responses are almost always level headed.

Realistically you can't expect all people to be highly informed in AI. An aspiring writer will use chatGPT for a few minutes and conclude creative jobs are about to end. Things like this will happen with every step the technology takes

You will find very interesting things.

See Mercedes announced a car model for which you can pay a subscription to unlock the full performance of the motor? See NFTs? See AI snatching up all available housing for corporate investors?

That's the answer: artificial scarcity has always been a feature of this system and will only get worse.

Yup, thank you. People really like the fallacy "useful in the past" = "useful in the future".

Sure slave owners thought slavery was responsible for all development they had.

Not to mention the argument "capitalism created innovations" could well be "innovations existed in spite of capitalism, not because of it" and there is absolutely no way we would know.

No, this comment implies capitalism = competition. That is a terrible misunderstanding. Competition also can exist in socialism. That is called market socialism. Co-ops in fact compete with other co-ops. The only difference is shareholders and workers are the same people.

If things like ai tech and robotics tech reach a high enough level the economy would be turned on its back, it would go through a huge shift where people simply don’t have to work

That’s because you live in a developed country and have the luxury of laziness.

I understand fully why this post got downvoted, and it's the same reason i think democracy is a bad idea.
Too many people are simply not clever or well intended enough to vote about what's good or bad.

I think it was a great post, although maybe slightly rough in some sense.

Bullshit, I live in a third world country and have to work to survive. Nice try though.

If we get extremely good narrow AI within many areas, but not AGI for another 100-1000 years, we will probably see some extremely large disparities between haves and havenots.

Way bigger than we have now.

A good friend of mine who is no longer with us but who at one time managed the best performing mutual fund in the USA was fond of defining capitalism as the (re)distribution of scarce resources.

I don't know if he came up with that himself or if it is a standard definition but I have heard others say very similar things.

Nanotechnology has long been understood as the death of material scarcity (or the death of humanity if implemented badly but that is a discussion for another thread.). Robotics will eventually remove all necessity for human labor. I would imagine some humans will continue to work but there will be no necessity for them to do so. Manufactured Intelligences (or AI if you must) will exceed human capacity and will be responsible for engineering and research & development. Mining and smelting and various other dirty industries will likely be moved off planet as soon as that is feasible.

Where exactly do you see room for capitalism? There can be no Marxism without a labor force to protect. All of our current systems of economics will be found wanting if the things we discuss come to fruition in any meaningful way. It isn't that folks here are opposed to capitalism (though they could be), it is that there is no way to arrange the Vinge, Kurtzweil, Stephenson, Asimov, Roddenberry future so that it includes capitalism.

Relative abundance is a concept worth considering. How much food is thrown away vs produced? Housing laying empty per homeless capita? Space needed to power the world with solar power? Trillions of dollars in valuable minerals from one asteroid?

One thing is for sure, the sustain each human's basic survival needs, we have already surpassed the requirements. To sustain a hedonistic treadmill x8 billion, sure, might get dicey. But we are world builders, and I believe the natural path forward includes simulations. Maybe in the short term, maybe in the virtual reality long term.

It the workers cant get it done, perhaps AGI will seize the means of production on our behalf!

Can recommend these "How the World Works" & "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky, "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?" by Sandel

Chomsky is always good, but he doesn't necessarily always go in on socialism per se. If you're looking for an introductory book that's very accessible I reccomend Max Fisher's Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?

Sorry what proof do you have it's the best system right now? Can you give me an example of a successful capitalist country? Even the US can hardly be said to be a "capitalist" country (see government subsidies, federal bank, social security, medicade). And last I checked, the US doesn't have such a great system, if wealth inequality, health and violent crime rates are important to you. Even if you do think the US has the best-system, that conventiently ignores the likes of other "capitalist" (capitalist-leaning) countries like Brazil.

So again, what capitalist country has a succesful system? Or are you just confusing the theory of capitalism with other concepts like a market economy?

Yeah and if you examine these infamous examples of "failed socialism", you usually just see that most people simply don't have a great grasp of history and political discourse. For example, people often point to the Soviet Union as an example of socialism's failures- the Soviet Union, where people had no control over the means of production and were repressed under a facist police state.

I don't agree it's inherently evil but, at the very least, usually unfair in theory, and always unfair in practice.

You are misusing the term Capitalism. What you are referring to is closer to idea of a "market economy". There is also nothing exclusive about having competitive businesses and socialism.

How is a politician influencing things any different to a private company doing it? Why is it better?

I've found Chomsky usually just dismantles people's use of the terms, such as socialism, as a way to illustrate how pervasive propaganda is. I am curious to check out Fisher

I think it depends on who controls the robots. For all we know they may control themselves. There are so many unknown variables.

dyson spheres etc are already known solutions to high energy needs.

there are near infinite planets out there for the ASI to strip mine, and beyond that, at some point reproductions probably going to fizzle out for the most part. FDVR, immortality, and general lack of incentive will probably lead to population growth slowing down to a crawl. Amish people will probably try to keep the trend alive. Their probably gonna end up in a reserve or something.

Politicians have a monopoly on violence.

> the phrase “seize the means of production” is basically saying “artists should control the image-generating A.I. rather than media corporations”

Nobody should control AI, especially not the artists who are so bitter about it on Twitter/other social media platforms. It is again a group of people controlling something. The difference here is that those group of people are "artists" instead of a "corporation".

A.I should be available for anyone and everyone to use. Otherwise, it could turn into a scenario where these "artists" might set arbitrary conditions for the AI use and won't allow anyone who isn't a professional artist to use it.

And again, what will be the use of "artists" in the future if anyone can generate the type of art they want using A.I ?

AGI is coming in the next 20-30 years

True, there will always be some level of control of one group over another. Classes will always exist

I'd rather guess on 20 at most.
But even then, 20 years is a long time to really mess things up royally regarding wealth distribution.

There will be revolts and emergency congressional resolutions or presidential decrees to patch things up in the meantime. We’re already seeing this with the never ending student loan repayment pushbacks.

Believing you don't have to do your fair share of work to make the world go is the opposite of common sense. You're just a lazy and entitled kid.

This is the history of the world:

1. Everything was horrible.
2. Open markets started to appear->
3. things got better

Every single thing that is a bit better than rock bottom comes from open markets.

The use of artists will be to create art.

As a former artist-in-spe who has great drawing and painting skill but was not accepted at art universities for being “not novel or original enough” (yes, this is the reason I was given) I think the same judgement will soon apply to all AI art. It’s not original. Haha.

It’s not capitalism but the colonialism of former centuries that lead to dominance of the nowadays capitalistic countries.

It’s easy to “build” a fortune and capital if you inherited most of it already from your former feudal and colonialist ancestors who ensured their power with the help of weapons and unjust retribution of means. I don’t even see a problem with it, use what you were given, sure.

It’s just not correct to be calling it being done by your own merit. With enough money you can even hire people to think for you how to make more money with your money.

That’s not a real capitalism!!!!!! There never really was a real, free-market, fair capitalism ever.

It’s a system build on wrong assumptions about natural laws, to be precise.

And an illusion, so far.

Real freedom of markets would bring us a long way. But won’t happen as long corrupt humans decide over monopoly and distribution.

Maybe AI will finally give us a true capitalism!

Of course there are limits in a finite universe. However there is ample energy and matter on earth to allow for all of us to enjoy a very luxurious lifestyle so long as we don't let a handful of selfish people try to hoard it all.

The only real possible shortage is land. Even so, in a post scarcity world a lot more of the earth's surface and oceans will be habitable because proximity to fresh water, infrastructure and jobs won't matter anymore.

> The use of artists will be to create art.

Yeah sure. I was only confused/bothered by the word "control" which the redditor (to whom I replied to) mentioned. I was like, " why do you wanna control it ? "

Professional artists can use it and average people can use it too. Nobody should be the gatekeepers of this technology whether they are corporations or a group of people. That was my point.

Who lobbies politicians, manipulates foreign policy, and funds the campaigns to get them in power in the first place...

Nah I’m with you. I am about as red blooded ruthlessly capitalist as they come. But I do not see a livable future without UBI eventually, before the machines themselves run a new economy

Yes, there is a cooperation between large companies and the government. That is undeniable; but ultimately this is caused by the extreme power that the government has.

Ah I see! I agree with you then.

Iron law of oligarchy is a term worth mentioning when you look at modern states like Russia or Iran, but when it was first mentioned by Robert Michels in 1911 modern democracies didn't yet exist.

Also Michels joined the fascist party as he believed it was the next step of evolution for human societies.

I urge you to read "why nations fail" by James Robinson and Darin Acemoglu to understand virtuous and vicious cycles in modern democracies and dictatorships and how it all works and interacts together.

You must be the type of person that thinks the internet came from open markets (it did not).

Well, without open markets we would have no markets and people like you would go around and willy nilly kill people like me.

Yes, I know how the internet came to be. Everything important, like not everyone starving to death, like not everyone being on a constant killing spree, is due to open markets.

We have tested not having open markets. It was hell.

I think there are things in life that is more valuable than maximization of violence, poverty, and genocide. I understand that you don't agree with me. But please don't force that choice on us, you bastard.

That is an incredibly naive view of the world. All around there are a lot of people not doing any work and living like kings while there are people working 16h shifts not being able to feed their kids.

Because it’s a forum about massive and largely unavoidable technological upheaval that is Henry well might destroy the way most people earn a living. Whatever the exact contours of the new economic reality, it’s going to be unlike anything that’s existed up until this point. Part of the reason for arguing for a utopian way forward is because we know that’s not where the society is naturally heading and we want a utopian voice in the conversation when the utilitarians start talking.

Believing you should be able to survive without working means you expect others to not only work to support themselves but to support you as well. Now that's naive.

Half of your comment are insults lmfao.

>We have tested not having open markets. It was hell.

That doesn't even makes sense. For example Cuba has better stats in violence, poverty and genocide than the US.

There are a LOT of capitalist countries with open markets where violence, poverty and genocide happens daily. Hell, out of the 190 capitalist countries, half of it is a shithole.

First of all, I don't know where you got that I think I should be able to survive without work. Not even communists believe that, that's just misinformation on how alternative economic systems should work.

Second, in the context of this subreddit specifically, people discuss a very probable future where automation is advanced enough that a dozen people and many robots will be able to produce and distribute food to millions. In this context, the concept of a "job" for common people is outdated, because their work is not needed anymore.

> I don't know where you got that I think I should be able to survive without work

> I live in a third world country and have to work to survive.

The cognitive dissonance is astonishing.

I was responding to your comment calling me "lazy and entitled". Therefore I said no, I'm not lazy, I work to survive, I pay all my bills and I take care of my home. I'm anything but lazy or entitled. Even doing all that, I still found time to learn to have a civil argument though.

Stockholm syndrome

is funny/sad how many people think that because nations label themselves "communist" they are practicing Marxism. But nobody considers North Korea a "democratic republic" even though they call themselves the DPRK.

Most folks who cry about "Marxism" haven't actually read any Marx, or communist literature. they just react to the ghost stories told to them by their parents, preachers, and favorite pundits.

Yeah, the USSR got rid of the actual Marxists pretty quickly once the "communist party" got power. Authoritarianism is the antithesis of everything Marx wrote about.

You guys are not seeing this exponential improvement. I would place any amount of money on AGI being 5-7 years out, 2030 at the latest.

It’s a desire to cling to the old way of doing things even though current conditions show a much needed change

It was a conditional statement.

I believe AGI will be faster approaching, but assuming it don't, larger disparities will be seen.

OP has never heard of luxury space communism which is odd because that's literally the goal

Unfortunately, the theory to support authoritarianism comes from Engels, not Marx. This is the origin of the largest split in socialist movements, leading to anarchist and communist identities to differentiate their perspective on the state.

Totally. That is why I don't consider "communists" to be Marxist. That is why I give pushback on people suggesting that USSR, China, and the rest are "Marxist." in common parlance, the term "Marxist" is just another way of saying "I haven't ready anything by or about Marx, but I don't like authoritarians."

Dude isn't an easy read, so I get not wanting to take the time. but it is frustrating that a good theory has become a straw-boogyman. I'm with the constitutional peasants. do you know of an Anarcho-syndicalist commune I could join?

I can agree with that, which is one reason why I often don't identify as just a Marxist, because Marx was not correct on everything and newer philosophers have added much, such as the Frankfurt School of philosophers and the field of Critical Theory.

Google for cooperatives in your area, I am a member of a food coop and support local CSA associations/orgs. As for labor unions, see if one exists in a larger federation, if not there is an achievable process to start your own union.

Anarcho-syndicalism would be a long-term project that involves the proliferation of the above organizations as well as further cooperation between them.

I was about to create a post to say the same.

I live in a socialist country and corruption is blatant. The state controls too much. Meritocracy is out the window. Everything the politicians do if to get votes even if it is a bad in the long run.

"But Norway is socialist and good." Norway discovered oil and gas reserves and the Government did a very capitalist thing with the money... THEY INVESTED IT, in the stock market!

We need less human intervention in the state. Because humans are corrupt. Simpler rules.

I believe UBI is the solution. Because true UBI doesn't discriminate and is the same for everyone. Giving people a baseline to survive without working.

People going after AI because of "Muh jerbs" or the elites will put them behind paywalls is non-sense. True, the elites will control AIs behind paywalls. False that they will manage to keep it that way. The AI will leak eventually. But even if the AI is free, does it matter? Most people are even too dumb to use AI. It's like being friends with the smartest, most knowledgable guy in the world. Dumb people will make fun of him and never have the right questions to ask.

I don't know what future the anit-capitalist people want (most I know are against UBI!), these people don't even know what they want. AI won't fix that for them. Maybe they don't want AI because they will never make anything out of it.

It's because this is Reddit. This website has always had a strong left wing bias.

People on social media are addicted to identity politics and can’t make a single nuanced observation without trying to spin it into something that’s either for or against their own narratives??I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.

I'm pretty upper-class, lots of assets, vehicles, etc. I get paid really well for what I consider really easy work. yet still, I think capitalism is a disgrace.

Just as science is corrosive to religion, I believe deep intelligence is corrosive to capitalism.

The world is extremely inefficient and people are extremely amazing, the idea that we couldn't help one another to make sure we all are able to do our best in our own best ways seems obvious.

'From those with ability to those with need' sounds terrible until you start to think in terms of abundance and endless potential creativity.

Automation is making work less and less important to survival, one day it will be impossible to justify NOT giving out resources for free.

Transport of information is RAPIDLY approaching zero cost, along with it comes education and many others.

I think those who can't imagine and deeply envision others are okay with selfishness/capitalism where as those that realize we are all brothers think the commies we're probably right (even if they didn't execute all too well)