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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Sure, but more to the point, we need to overhaul the entire socio-economic system. The neolibs experiment in deregulation and privatization and prioritizing profit growth has manifestly failed.
The stunningly stupid thing is that we basically have the tech to automate a huge amount of the labor required to produce all the stuff humans need and to at least try to do that sustainably, the problem is we don’t know how to organize a society that can run on much less human labor.
What keeps me up at night is the thought that one obvious way to reorganize around a much smaller human labor requirement is to have a much smaller population. Isn’t that the radical right end game here? Isn’t that why Very Rich People have gone full fascist?
Most of the words you just wrote are insurmountable to the average voter. But no. The Very Rich People don't want the population to decrease. They can dogwhistle to conservative voters about "demographic group x" and how they want them gone, but the ruling class needs infinite growth, and you can't have infinite growth (realistically at all) without a growing population.
Oh I think they (the tech-fascist oligarchs) accept that the current system has hit its growth limit, is played out. They are aware that the ecosystem interface with capitalism has been shredded to the extent that we are in multiple related crisis - all driven by the perpetual growth requirement of the system, and that the end result is a massive die-off anyway. They intend to accelerate that end while they can still control (or at least think they can still control) the transition to whatever the next phase of the system is.
I've thought about this several times myself. Its like these mfers saw Kingsman and said, lets run with that idea. Wiping out mass swaths of the population would allow them to negate a small portion of human climate impact so they can keep on polluting and add another zero to their quarterly statement. I have no clue if this is something they think about, but one thing I do know is that these people are sick fucks and completely detached from reality. Hoarding extreme wealth is no different from hoarding a house full of random crap, its just their hoarding problem is all digital and doesn't attract roaches.
I'm all for automation but what do the people who are unemployable do (other than not work, lol)? how do they pay for the goods and services they need?
we're nowhere near a post-scarcity society. who/what mechanism pays for and/or creates the resources used by those people that can't get their own resources because their purpose has been automated away?
Is arbitrary busy work a good answer? Because that's the system we have now. Also production costs would drop dramatically after the initial investment which would make things cheaper. Of course none of the companies would actually lower prices unless they were forced to but that could be arranged.
eh... forcing companies to do something like that has the socialism stink stuck to it - no politician is going to ruin their life's work by supporting socialism... unless they're on death's door/have nothing to lose, and really no one should anything they have to say at that point. no, I dont see that happening.
I'm sure there's quite a few meaningless/useless jobs out there - probably at least 30%, but if we automate them away (as with the recent snafu between movie studios and actors), then those people that have been obsoleted will need to find new things to do - preferably, things that positively contribute to society - but you can only have so many musicians, artists, poets, etc before their value is also devalued.
some folks will try to claim that UBI has a place, but they never explain where the resources come from - the government cant just print more money, that leads to rampant inflation. so - how do we support people that have no purpose, no value? how do they eat? ultimately, I suspect that with enough automation and the looming overpopulation crunch, we're in for a few really bad decades.