Resetting? Is that like taking all the money back and then dishing it out equally?
Well before we answer that question, you answer this one: do you think that:
-
Huge numbers of people will be rendered unemployed as a result of advances in machine technology and AI? If the answer is no, why not?
-
If the answer is “yes” do you think capitalists will be moved to set up robust social safety nets for the unemployed (and remember, we are talking worldwide, not just in America)?
-
If you do NOT believe capitalists will do so, what do you think they will do? What do you think they SHOULD do?
Bear in mind, the calamity we are contemplating is that the ownership of almost all the necessities for keeping human beings fed, clothed, sheltered and energized (virtually all manufacturing/mining/agriculture, etc. will be machine/capital intensive with little or no human labor involved) is owned by a very small percentage of human beings, and the rest of us will have VERY little to offer them in return, other than the aforementioned personal services jobs and whatever discretionary art/music/design stuff we can dream up.
What emacknight and other free trade/capitalism true believers don’t realize is that trend is happening right now; we’re headed in that direction.
No one has an answer for that, except “those people will be considered redundant”.
I think capitalism should be replaced with CAPITALISM.
Long long ago I came to this board under the handle Dal Timgar and posted an essay titled
Economic Wargames
It’s still out there: Economic Wargames
You can Google
economic wargames
or
“economic wargames”
and it shows up near the top either way.
Now this nonsense that we keep calling capitalism began changing around 1900. This was largely the fault of the second industrial revolution. The skyrocketing productivity made consumerism possible. The real debate is whether or not consumerism is capitalism. Consumerism is STUPID.
Consumerism is about wasting natural resources with planned obsolescence and producing lots of marketing to brainwash the consumers into being STUPID.
But all of the junk depreciates. The Laws of Physics don’t care whether a machine is a capital good or a consumer good. The cars owned by Hertz are capital goods but cars owned by consumers wear out the same way. So for economists to add all of the cars to GDP but not subtract the depreciation of cars owned by consumers to compute NET DOMESTIC PRODUCT is just a BIG LIE besides being defective grade school algebra.
Curious how economists don’t talk about Net Domestic Product much.
Then there is the little matter of double-entry accounting being 700 years old. How hard can it be? Why hasn’t it been mandatory in the schools for the last 50 years. NO, consumerism needs for most people to be STUPID. The schools are designed to produce worker/consumers. They are only supposed to know enough to make rich people richer.
http://www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,-1019-11714,00.html
Consumerism ain’t capitalism it is just a complicated form of psychological slavery.
We need CAPITALISM.
psik
PS - Aren’t you glad to have me back? The economy is a bit different since 2000. :smack:
Physics and algebra have not changed though. BYE
.
As the rich get richer, the poor stay… well… poor. Eventually our menial labour will be replaced by machinery. It will get to the point where:
- We will have nothing to offer.
- They will have no reason to keep us around.
Hopefully, the rich be SO rich, that they won’t mind tossing the bottom 99% maybe 1% of the world’s wealth, just to keep us fed and sheltered, for humanitarian reasons (to ease their consciences).
The thing is, if the capital-less classes want to have a revolution and redistribute the wealth, it better be soon. In the past, 10000 people could overrun a few rich men and their estates… but as time goes on, and as the rich get more powerful (financially, and technologically), this will become more and more difficult to accomplish.
My only hope is that AI will become more intelligent than we, and will realize that we are a threat to ourselves, and to the planet as a whole. They’ll immediately take us out of the equation (both the poor and the rich). Of course, they won’t have the burden of guilt on their shoulders to help keep us alive. But perhaps our needs will be minimal, and they’ll let’s us live out our simple lives in peace.
Capitalism is just the market economy running unimpeded. So your real question is what should replace the free market.
General reciprocity.
It only works when there’s no discernable scarcity. But it may be a possibility where scarcity is not a major concern.
Actually it would only take the sabotage of a few computers to do far more damage than any rebellion. The rich are NEVER outside of the reach of the poor; it’s the sycophants that they use to protect themselves - the (Republicans) workers (Tea Party, etc.) who are willing to vote against their own self-interest and sacrifice themselves for their rich lords. But the sycophants are declining along with the white majority in the United States: by 2050 when America becomes more racially multi-lateral, the party may well be over for the plutocrats.
I think it would be more complicated than that. I mean, what would a few computer crashes do? I suppose a market crash could devalue the rich’s wealth, but how exactly would the poor take it away from them and redistribute it? The government, and it’s protection of property, would have to collapse as well (since the government protects that property of the super rich through the police and military if necessary.). I can’t see the rich giving up their riches without a violent fight, though I’m curious what other means you have in mind, exactly.
The key for hackers is asymmetric warfare; and to force the rich to spend a billion dollars building a reactor only to see it melted down months later. Or to have water supplies poisoned by filter-equivalents being shut down. The task is to cause billions of dollars in damage and a lot of deaths with only a flurry of keystrokes. Everyone suffers in such a situation, of course. You keep doing this to the rich and they’ll simply run out of cash to keep rebuilding. The real fun comes when or if hackers can hijack military hardware.
The object there is not to redistribute the wealth, but to destroy it and destabilize the system.
Also, going a bit off-topic, the United States Military, in a large-scale poor people’s rebellion, is going to divide. Most soldiers are poor and many have poor families. They’re not going to stand around and let their families be endangered by other troops. Ain’t gonna happen. Expect a lot of sabotage to come from them; along with defections. AFAIK, defections are what sustained the Libya uprising until the bombings started, and which totally brought down Egypt’s regime.
Anyone else find this is going a bit too far?
Of course another option is to flee countries that are ruled by capitalism.
Unfortunately those options are shrinking.
When you have 200 million jobless worldwide and disappearing safety nets, and no way to escape the capitalism and exploitation that goes with it… revolution and taking the system down is preferable to dying quietly.
I’m not trolling - this is exactly what is playing out in the Middle East. It would be nice to see it worldwide, until humanity realizes the dire consequences of capitalism and is forced to replace it with social democracy.
Yes… Until we the little people run out of food, electricity, water, and are staring death in the face because we allowed the rich to hoard it all to themselves.
The value of labour will go down so far, eventually, that food, electricity, and water might be beyond the average “middle class” person’s means. We may lose our property too, just like those in developing countries have, and then we won’t be able to grow our own food either.
The key is to reset the system before it goes too far. Luckily Americans have guns.
Look, I don’t mean to be blunt, but the US doesn’t have a caste system. You aren’t born into your situation, and you aren’t stuck there. There are worse places in the world right now.
Sell the guns and use the capital to improve your lot in life. At the very least get some seeds, grow some food, enjoy the summer.
Can anyone provide a list of countries we should flee to?
Off the top of my head I can’t think of any countries that aren’t capitalist that I’d really enjoy living in.
You aren’t born into your situation? Are you sure? Not everyone has the resources to live the American Dream of working for yourself and getting rich. Some people really are outta luck and have no opportunities whatsoever, through no fault of their own. There are worse places, true, but America has the potential to become just like them in 20-40 years.
How does a person make money/wealth now? Most do so through 2 means:
- Invest capital.
- Sell labour.
Labour is worth less and less as time passes, and may eventually become completely worthless. Machinery will eventually replace all forms of labour. So… how exactly will the vast majority of people - who have no capital to invest - make any money?
There will come a time in the near future where the only way to make any money, will be to invest money. For that, of course, you’ll need money to begin with. I assume the state will take care of the vast unemployed masses… but I wouldn’t be certain in that future. If the rich won’t want to share, the rest of society will have to take back their wealth, or face extinction.
I’m not sure what your referencing with regards to getting seeds and growing food… but obviously that requires the ownership of land … precisely what the poor are without.
No, we are looking at potential outcomes, of course violent revolution is one of them. Hopefully, not one that will occur.
Pretty much. Emacknight doesn’t realize, or doesn’t want to, that unemployment is now a global problem. 200 million people out of work and even more who are being paid a dollar a day doesn’t make for a stable system.
The rich 1% cannot hold the line forever against this. They need someone to enforce the control over their capital. Egypt was one wake-up call that this is not a guaranteed luxury for them. Wisconsin was also a wakeup call.
The rich can only sustain themselves by screwing over the guardians of their wealth. Or the families of said guardians. That is part of what makes their plutocratic dreams unsustainable.
Out of seven billion? That ain’t bad.
Not quite, but America is one of the least social mobile industrialized nations.
Capitalism’s fine. It’s the U.S. that’s fucked.