I’m not sure I understand. Capitalism is impossible without government action, or perhaps some other method of social control that is so strong it might as well be government regulation. Without the rule of law, enforcement of contracts, protection from theft, and protection from violence you can’t have capitalism. If a so-called capitalist can violently steal from people, have them killed at his whim, and disregard any contracts he signs and if you don’t like it you get whacked, what you have is not capitalism but feudalism, where the aristocracy has the literal power of life and death over the commoners.
I suppose you believe that the inherent contradictions of capitalism will inevitably cause it to destroy itself as the capitalists put themselves beyond the rule of law. But of course, the capitalist himself has an interest in protecting the rule of law, since he needs the rule of law to protect him from the other capitalists. And I mean protect him on a very basic level, so that his competitors can’t come over to his factory and shoot him in the head. And why exactly would that so-called capitalist open a factory to produce goods that he intends to sell, if he is powerful enough to simply take what he wants from others?
That’s why the generic science fiction dytstopia where corporations rule the world makes no sense. If corporations really ruled the world they wouldn’t act like corporations do today, they’d act like third world dictators. Why should the CEO of OmniMegaCorp make money by producing widgets and selling them to you, when he can just come over to your house and take your money without giving you anything in return? And at that point the whole concept of “money” breaks down, and money becomes worthless and we return to a feudal barter/tribute economy. The CEO of OmniMegaCorp can’t steal your money, since you don’t have any money, instead he enserfs you and takes a cut of everything you produce. And your only protection against violence is that you are OmniMegaCorp property and will be protected because you are valuable to them.
And why should organized labor be incompatible with a capitalist economy? If your point is that better working conditions and higher wages and benefits were forced on unwilling capitalists by the labor unions you are certainly correct. Just as the capitalist tries to sell his product for the highest return and with the lowest costs, the workers try to sell their labor at the highest possible price. I have no more problem with labor unions than I do with other professional organizations like, say, the AMA. Employers should have to compete with each other for workers, just like they compete with each other for customers. So explain again why labor unions forcing a price increase on their customers aren’t part of a capitalist economy. Personally I think unions might be better served by thinking of themselves more as worker-owned companies providing a service to various other companies, and that many of the functions that unions used to provide for their members might be more efficiently provide in other ways.
Anyway, here’s my take on why completely automated factories won’t be a civilization wrecker. The thing is, even today the labor costs of the guys down on the production floor are a very small part of the total costs of production. A company probably spends much more on legal, design, HR, administration, marketing, advertising, shipping, cleaning staff, etc. In other words, white collar and pink collar jobs. Are we imagining that automation will replace the legal department, the design department, the marketing department, the IT department? Are we imagining that we will be able to automate maintence of the automated production equipment? Can we automate the factories that produce automated factories? Are we automating resource extraction industries?
Of course to some extent some of these jobs can be “automated”, even if they aren’t done in the same way. We won’t have anthropomorphic robot receptionists sitting at the front desk and answering phones, we’ll have voice mail and key cards. The legal department can use computer searches and the internet rather than file clerks. So fewer people can get more done, and yes the most replaceable jobs are the low-end low-pay unskilled jobs.
But there are lots of jobs that simply cannot be done by machines, unless we imagine some sort of strong AI, which may happen some day but is not predicted to happen any time soon. And if we have strong AI that is about as smart as a human being, by Moore’s law 18 months later you have a machine twice as smart as a human being. If we have artificial intelligences that are much more intelligent than human beings it becomes pointless to speculate about the future any more, because we’ll have hit a Vingean technological singularity where the old rules. If strong AI can automate the marketing department, surely we can also automate the board of directors and the CEOs, the writers and artists, the banks and the venture capitalists, the shareholders and financial advisors, the courts, the legislature, and the presidency. We can impose whatever rules we like in our brave new world of unlimited wealth and prosperity, as long as our new silicon overlords agree. In either case, it certainly means the end of capitalism for the vast vast majority of goods and services that now cost money to provide.
And if you argue that the guys who built the AIs (assuming that the AIs are tame) will now own everything and everyone, I suppose we could use the last tiny remaining bit of goverment taxation authority left to scrape up enough money to build one (just one) publicly owned automated factory. Then tell the factory to build automated factory machinery. Once the new automated factory machinery is finished, tell it to build more automated factory machinery. Once you got a few billion small automated factories produced, tell them to build shipping units, load themselves in, and mail themselves, one for every human being on the planet.
Step 9999999: PROFIT!