Comment by arcticfox
3 days ago
And what's your solution to mass unemployment due to AI?
If you play this out, UBI or some near variant is inevitable.
3 days ago
And what's your solution to mass unemployment due to AI?
If you play this out, UBI or some near variant is inevitable.
The US currently has over 100 million people over the age of 16 who are unemployed.
What point do you think you’re making about mass unemployment, exactly? It’s been here for half a decade already.
That’s mostly normal and fine though. For example my parents are retired and spouse takes care of our kid.
Now imagine 200 million unemployed people over the age of 16.
Why are you correct even though the early Marxists (who posited that capitalism would inevitably lead to socialism) were wrong? We have had mass production for a hundred years without any hint of socialism.
And I would like you to be right, by the way. But why should I believe you?
Doesn’t most of the developed world already have various forms of socialism? The U.S. is an outlier here, which is due a number of factors unique to this country.
Fair, but as an American I’m still interested in this more limited question. Why were the early American Marxists wrong and why are the new Americans saying similar things right this time?
4 replies →
We have state supported pension plans in most developed countries, unemplyment insurance, these large welfare states with extensive public education, national health and so on, so while the means of production mostly haven't been socialized, the fruits often have, through taxation. Now, some of this existed before the Industrial Revolution -- I wasn't aware how much until I read Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, which is a more important book now than ever, I humbly propose, but the scale is dwarfed by what we have now. And as Polanyi points out, we did get socialism as a response, as well as fascism, which was often btw called corporatism (as in the nation as a single body, not having to do with companies). Liberal democratic capitalism won out, for a while, and in large part because it became social democracy, or so goes a claim to which I subscribe. Without the social welfare aspects of modern democracy, the system would likely have broken politically.
> without any hint of socialism.
You don't seem to know your history.
The US was on track to enact UBI. The US was socialist directly after the great depression.
Some of the most successful capitalist societies (the Nordic countries) have socialist elements.
I do know that history actually. The UK went for it and we did not.