Comment by palmotea

>> our global material abundance would be truly unprecedented, nigh unlimited.

> There always seems to be this kind of Underpants Gnomes logic about this where 1. We can do things cheaply 2. ??? 3. Material abundance! where step 2 is actually "very rich people give things away for free!". Which requires people like Altman/Thiel/Zuck whoever to have care for other humans and empathy and actual feelings other than a blind Will to Power.

Exactly. The thing keeping us from "global material abundance" isn't really technology, it's ideology. The (by far) dominant global ideology is capitalism, and that simply does not permit "global material abundance" in conditions of extreme automation.

And it's fucking crazy to think the "step 2" is these business-kings will all the suddenly have a change of heart and share their wealth widely and freely, after their entire lives have probably taught them not to do anything of the sort. You can see it with UBI: it's not generosity, its some kind of minimum viable bribe to diffuse the threat of revolt against their wealth.

IMHO, the real "step 2" is some kind of communism. And I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader how likely that is going to happen in our lifetimes [1].

[1] As an aside, I actually see a path to some kind of twisted to communism from highly-automated capitalism over the long term, just not for me or anyone like me. It'll be for the nepo-babies of billionaires, after all the working people have died off or been pushed to the margins. The survivors would be so wealthy that maybe money ceases to have meaning and nepo-baby would own enough "means of production" to support themselves comfortably.