Comment by palmotea
16 hours ago
> The bio trophies don't do anything meaningful besides by existing satisfy the need their ancestors placed in the robots to take care of them. Starting to wonder if that's the best we can hope for, if these things will be, if they aren't already, better than us at anything that matters.
You wish. If humanity survives as "bio trophies," they'll be the descendants of a subset of billionaires and their groupies/harems. We live in a capitalist society, where the only ones allowed to thrive without work are the rich. The rest of us will be left to rot and die off, as we will have nothing left to sell in the market that they want.
Do you have any faith in democracy? For my reckoning, it's the great equaliser. Rich people can lobby all they like, but if the people are starving, they vote for change.
In the US, it seems pretty hard to vote for change when, for all intents and purposes, every four years, two candidates are pre-selected for voters to pick from; and primaries (1) either don't happen or (2) are objectively rigged against popular/majority vote; see 'superdelegates'.
I must admit, I think the two party system in the US is not good. The primary system in particular needs fixing. I couldn't believe when the Democrats just suspended the primary election last time - especially after the multi-year PR war about rigged elections and election interference.
Still, I think they learned their lesson and they'll have a primary next time. People will get to vote on a candidate they like. We should also remember that the Presidency is just one arm of government. Elections are also happening for the House, Senate, and local government of all shapes and sizes.
2 replies →
People hate to hear it, but Trump is the evidence that democracy is (well maybe was, 10 years ago) still working.
The republican party treated him like a joke candidate and the media did too. Similar thing with the tea baggers, a contingent of outsider congressmen elected on the back of Obama being a communist or something.
The left hasn't really had this moment because the left is closer to a catty book club than an army regiment.
I used to, but not anymore. The incentives and human behavior seem to lead to corruption. New tools have made it too easy to pervert real/honest democracy into "pseudo" democracy/idiocracy.
A well-funded minority can shape what the majority is angry about.
Democracy only exists as a suppressor of violence, the only reason why democratic institutions are upheld is because all participants could enact violence as a response to perceived threats to their group that democracy is seemingly failing.
Historically, if democratic institutions failed, refusing labor to a ruling class has been a first violent step for the laborer class and a preemption against actual physical violence if the ruling class overstepped. However, we are seeing that possibility being taken away step by step. This leaves only physically violent uprising as a means of protesting overstep, and it is not obvious how effective that will be given the massive power imbalance between the labor class and ruling class.
So to put it succinctly, no I don’t have faith that democracies will solve this issue, because democracies only work when there is some semblance of equilibrium.
> Historically, if democratic institutions failed, refusing labor to a ruling class has been a first violent step for the laborer class and a preemption against actual physical violence if the ruling class overstepped.
Basically the ruling class's need for labor gave that labor some intrinsic power, but technology like AI will likely remove that need and therefore take the common people's power away.
> This leaves only physically violent uprising as a means of protesting overstep, and it is not obvious how effective that will be given the massive power imbalance between the labor class and ruling class.
Also things like gun control and new technology like cheap anti-personnel attack drones may undermine the effectiveness of violence against the ruling class, leaving regular people oppressed (or neglected) and helpless.
1 reply →
I agree that democracy requires the bargain you imply: ceeding the right of personal violence to the state in exchange for law and order. I was with you until you framed withholding labour as violence. I think that's the opposite of violence. I also don't follow the logic that workers must use violence to enact change. Why don't they just vote for change?
3 replies →
Democracy is the only thing that can save us. But it isn't a given. In resource rich countries democracy struggles to take hold because human labor is minimally necessary and elites can mostly thrive without it. Many democracies survive, because without the people, everyone suffers. AI threatens to make all countries into petro-dicatorships.
I think government should be small enough that it fears the people. It should never have the power to prevent the people having their way. If the majority of people in a country are suffering, they should be able to vote for change, and the government should not be powerful enough to stop that.
I suppose the future you envision is that the government is a) very powerful, b) capable of physically suppressing the majority of 350M people, c) willing to do it, and d) somehow captured by an elite class. It's not impossible, but a lot of things have to go wrong to get there.
3 replies →
Nothing precludes you from reproducing except your own lack of charisma, champ
>We live in a capitalist society, where the only ones allowed to thrive without work are the rich.
You know anyone can own the means of production in a capitalist society?
The irony of the anti-capitalist crowd is their extreme distaste for capital ownership, which leads them to never partake in the most fruitful part of capitalism. What truly makes this ironic is that if the evil capitalists wanted a plan to cement their power, it would look a lot like spreading "I will never become a filthy shareholder!" mentality.
>> We live in a capitalist society, where the only ones allowed to thrive without work are the rich.
> You know anyone can own the means of production in a capitalist society?
Don't be an idiot. I'm pretty sure you know your point is dumb, but I'll spell it out for you in case you don't:
Sure, "anyone" can own some of means of production in the current system, but not in large enough quantities to thrive without work. The vast majority of people aren't that rich.
> The irony of the anti-capitalist crowd is their extreme distaste for capital ownership, which leads them to never partake in the most fruitful part of capitalism. What truly makes this ironic is that if the evil capitalists wanted a plan to cement their power, it would look a lot like spreading "I will never become a filthy shareholder!" mentality.
What kind of idiocy is that? You're almost certainly talking about some imagined straw-man in your head, but pretty much all the "anti-capitalist" ideas I'm aware of are about distributing ownership of "shares" differently than in our current system.
I'm sure you think you're being very clever and making very powerful points, but stuff like what you've written actually makes the anti-capitalist case more appealing. I used to be a libertarian, but sustained contact with attitudes like yours changed my mind.
If you visit bogleheads, you'll see countless stories of people with modest middle class incomes (teachers even) who steadily saved and invested in the US stock market over 30 years and are now sitting on a comfortable nest egg of a couple of million in their 50's.
1 reply →
Ok, sure, it's dumb. Go spend your money on shiny new things instead. I mean, as you certainly know and complain about, it just lines shareholder's pockets.