Technology

If you mean living in rotating abandoned warehouses, doing odd jobs, hijacking robots, corporate espionage and assasin jobs... Then sure life of leisure. At our current trajectory we are going full cyberpunk.

Yes. And if that's not the case, I'm ready to burn the world, so that something better can rise.

I'm starting to think that serfdom, as an aspect of feudalism, is too modern for the new technocrat caste.

A few days ago, Sam Altman did an interview saying he no longer supported universal basic income for those put out of work by AI. Instead, he supported "shares in ownership" or "shares in compute". That is, instead of a guaranteed income, the lower classes would be gifted some sort of income producing asset based on the value of some particular tech company or the AI industry as a whole. If the industry did well, the lower classes dependent on it would thrive; if the industry failed, they would starve.

That's not serfdom. That goes even further back, to the patron-client system of ancient Rome. The patron, generally the leader of a wealthy noble family, would provide their clients with money, food, and gifts. In return, the clients would vote for the patron and his allies in elections, act as bodyguards and enforcers for the patron, intimidate/beat/kill the clients of rival patrons to keep them away from the polling booths, advertise the patron's businesses, and generally do whatever the patron wanted. The clients helped the patron maintain their wealth and political power, and the patron would share the rewards of that wealth and power with their clients.

Think about the sort of country we would have, the sort of politicians who would be elected and the sort of laws who would be passed, if Altman's idea came to fruition. Imagine if we had a significant unemployed underclass whose financial security depended solely on the success of the AI industry, and who would be rewarded by their technocrat billionaire patrons for electing AI-friendly politicians or blocking AI-friendly regulation.

Mere serfdom would be preferable.

the average person doesn't think they are working class, they think that's what poor people are.

my dad made a working class salary his entire life, but he always told us we were middle class and 'better' than those working-class idiot losers.

average people admire rich people and want to be them, and they hate working class people.

i'm a middle class person now, but i live around a lot of upper middle class people, and regularly they let me know I'm subhuman scum in their eyes. and working-class people i grew up with, think i'm a rich effete snob with my graduate degree and my expensive coffee and my compact car.

people generally are much more focused on the differences around them and feeling they are better than their neighbors is a far bigger concern than what rich people are doing. the person living across the street from you gets more upset about you getting a nicer car than them then they do about jeff bezo's wedding.

The window in which these calculations remain relevant is rapidly closing with the development of robots and drones.

I'm with you on being against capitalism, but UBI isn't convincing as a solution to me.

UBI pre-supposes that the rich and their corporations should have a monopoly on the means of production, and you still have capitalism, just that the population are guaranteed an income via high taxes. But the power structure, and undemocratic nature of capitalist controlling everything still exists.

UBI is some dystopian stuff if you don't combine it with getting rid of the ruling class and the other tools of capitalist oppression.

But yeah, I agree with you that we certainly ought to be working less than we are (yes, even if standards of living were more fairly distributed to poor countries), and in the future I also agree with you that we ought to be working way, way less of technology allows for it.

Psychopathic capitalists don't feel like they're winning unless everyone else is losing.

Products are being created for rich people. Poor people are being cut out of the economy.

They will buy their products and services from each other. That can still form a working economy. It would function just like any slavery based economy of the past, just with more slaves than usual

the issue with housing is that other people hate other people. they don't want more people living around them. they hate growth. they think people should live 'somewhere else' than their town/city/neighborhood.

i live in a city with over 120K people. if a housing project goes up that that adds say, 20 units for 30-40 people, people FREAK OUT. and oppose it and usually it gets downzied to like 12 units for 20 people, and only then it's approved for development. this is in already very dense city, it's worse in less dense places. anytime a major project, for like 500+ units is proposed, it has to be downsized by like 50% before anyone will approve it because the citizens REVOLT. they HATE new housing.

the last major development in my urban area added 8000 jobs, and 500 units of housing, and the major opposition was to the housing, all the feedback was 'no new housing, but more new jobs'. the plan with the highest approval from the citizens was the one with 10,000 new jobs, and 0 new housing. and th eone with 5000 jobs and 1000 units of housing, was opposed like 90%. and the plan that was approved only had a 1 vote margin...

this is what people want. they democratically oppose new housing at every opportunity.