Comment by causal
1 month ago
No, we come up with a serious plan for a post-labor future.
In the USA you can't even get healthcare without a job. Meanwhile tech companies are dumping billions into the race to make humans unemployable. So yeah, until people feel like their leaders can be trusted to have their back, they're going to be anxious.
This is absolutely the ideal. We need more people talking about a post-labor future.
It's fast approaching, and the sooner it gets here the sooner the masses turn to a Butlerian Jihad.
I honestly think that we'll start to see a movement where people diagnosed with terminal illnesses like a brain tumour that leave them functional for a few weeks or months before dying within a year will start kamikazing against the ultra wealthy.
People with nothing to lose will feel empowered by taking everything from the people who they feel are responsible for taking everything from them.
There's a chance this kind of thing becomes a social contagion that spreads, much like suicide or school shootings.
I'm not sure what the solution is to it once it starts. I guess people like Thiel won't be able to do antichrist talks at the Vatican anymore.
This is why totalitarian surveillance and increased police power is also part of the billionaires' agenda: When 99.99% of us are economically irrelevant, they'll need to more and more insulate themselves from the "Nothing To Lose" people.
That's a pretty extreme take on the current situation IMO, I don't think we're anywhere near things being that bad. But I certainly want to avoid that.
As an outsider looking in I'm pretty sure that these were the kinds of conversations that took place in social media companies after that Health CEO got Luigi'd.
I think that's why you saw the extreme moderation on even the word 'Luigi' or pictures of the character on Reddit -- They were trying to prevent a social contagion scenario.
With that said I'm curious what you think would have to happen in Westernsociety for this kind of thing to take off? The person above paints a pretty bleak picture of AMerica where healthcare is tied to employment and people are facing the prospect of mass unemployment.
Are people just going to sit there and die? Or sit there and watch their family members die while they see the ultra wealthy flaunt their wealth on social media?
Someone just filmed themselves setting fire to a warehouse because they were underpaid.
Post-labor? There’s a huge gap between slop and Star Trek that we have to bridge first.
That "huge gap" is probably 3-10 years.
A relatively tiny percent of mortgages not getting paid in 2007 & 2008 caused a global financial crisis. If even just 10% of current office workers lose their jobs and quit paying their mortgages, their car loans, their car insurance, etc things will go bad fast. And realistically, it's going to be more like 80% of office jobs gone in the next 10 years.
> a huge gap between slop and Star Trek that we have to bridge first
Fixing politics is first otherwise you'll never get to anything like Star Trek, not even close, not even externally resembling it.
> first
Priorities in the wrong order.