I’m not disputing that society as a whole may win - but the gains are not equally distributed. Look at all the gig economy jobs that are thriving because the other jobs are even more exploitative. Look at the Amazon warehouse workers and delivery drivers that pee in bottles and shit in bags. Are they profiting? They’re clearly not. They may be able to buy a bigger phone or a larger tv, but in the end, they’re often worse off than what a worker at ford or gm had on the factory floor.

I think if you ever spoke with these people supposedly peeing in bottles and asked if they liked their jobs, what they did before, what their goals are, you would get a very different opinion about how miserable the American work force is. They are not miserable.

The language of socialists / Marxists - “workers are ‘exploited’” etc. is very inflammatory and inaccurate. It is like once you get this worm in your brain that all work is just evil exploiters taking advantage of the workers, you became a bitter cultist and can’t see how backwards your thinking is.

If you’re right and the gains from productivity improvements were equally distributed among the populace, you’d expect the Gini coefficient which measures inequality to stay level - that is neither rise nor fall. And it’s clearly not for the US https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA

So either the top end of the bracket is pocketing more or the bottom end is loosing some. But it’s definitely not equal. Acknowledging that and considering that a problem is neither a Marxist standpoint nor a sign of a rotten mind. And neither is acknowledging that there’s a whole class of people that are exploited by society.

You're focusing on the benefits of increased productivity squarely from the perspective of a consumer. It's true increased productivity means consumers benefit from more goods, however, producers are not benefiting. Take programmers today, we are more productive than ever before due to increased computation power and a vast collection of open source libraries. When it comes to building CRUD apps one developer today can produce in a day what would have taken a week or more ~25 years ago. So if a programmer is ~5 times more productive today, why are we still working 5 days a week? Why not 1 day a week? Why do we need H-1B's and other salary suppressing nonsense? The problem is these technology gains are not benefiting producers, only consumers and C-suites.

If you're dead set on favoring consumers over producers, then consider by freeing the producers time up they'd be able to produce more passion projects for consumers to enjoy. Today's consumers don't necessarily get the highest quality "stuff" but rather the "stuff" that is "safe" and guaranteed to maximize profits (see Hollywood movies). If socialism/Marxism ever did take hold, then I agree that there would be less "stuff" to consume, however, the "stuff" that is produced would be of higher quality because it would be made with passion and love of the craft. True builders will build anyway regardless of whether there are financial gains. It would be quality over quantity.

I think this is slightly wrong in the other direction. How does people doing things "for the love of the craft" inherently lead to better quality "stuff"? There are plenty of examples of people doing things already "for the love of the craft" either because they're wealthy, or at least doing well enough for it to be a serious hobby. But that doesn't mean they beat our professionals every time.

Hollywood movies seem to be to be one of the least able kind of task to be done "for the love of the craft" across all thousands of people involved in a blockbuster. How does that coordination work out across everyone who's interested "in the craft"? Ever see fan productions? It can be done, but they're also often driven by people actually doing tasks for cash that was gathered via donations.

I also might point to the people who are so well liked and famous that they basically can "write their own ticket" - George RR Martin is an example. His first few books were considered amazing, but it's also considered that given no real impetus anymore - he's unlikely to finish the saga ever. As a whole then, is an unfinished saga really "higher quality" than one finished to make a buck? The answer IMHO isn't obvious.

> I think this is slightly wrong in the other direction. How does people doing things "for the love of the craft" inherently lead to better quality "stuff"?

You're correct that a passionate hobby does not necessarily translate to higher quality output. These sorts of discussions are handwavy by nature because the truth is never black and white. In fact, I can easily provide an example that contradicts my own assertion that there would be "less stuff" in a socialists/Marxists environment: Wikipedia. Before Wikipedia, when I wanted a digital encyclopedia, I purchased software from Encyclopedia Britannica. The nice thing about their encyclopedia was the articles were high quality, vetted by experts. The problem is the number of articles was limited, updates and additions were infrequent, and it cost money. By comparison, Wikipedia has a massive number of articles, frequent updates, and is freely provided by a non-profit foundation. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the same vetting as Encyclopedia Britannica and so the quality is inconsistent. So here the "socialists" Wikipedia offers consumers more "stuff" to read, albeit with inconsistent quality, than the "capitalists" Encyclopedia Britannica.

> I also might point to the people who are so well liked and famous that they basically can "write their own ticket" - George RR Martin is an example. His first few books were considered amazing, but it's also considered that given no real impetus anymore - he's unlikely to finish the saga ever. As a whole then, is an unfinished saga really "higher quality" than one finished to make a buck? The answer IMHO isn't obvious.

Why did George RR Martin lose his passion? Was he only after fortunate and fame? Did the dopamine hit he received from said fame outweigh the hit he received writing books? Questions like this are far more revealing because they touch on a deeper truth.

> There are plenty of examples of people doing things already "for the love of the craft" either because they're wealthy, or at least doing well enough for it to be a serious hobby.

What makes someone a natural builder? Why aren't there more engineers like Ton Roosendaal who, when asked why he gave his creation away for free, is quoted as saying "Money doesn't mean anything. It's not interesting. I call myself a maker; I want to make stuff." Why aren't more physicians like Dr. Frederick Banting who, after discovering insulin, sold the patent for $1 because he believed "insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world."

Human nature can be less-than-stellar and economic systems like capitalism attempt to channel it into something constructive. Is this channeling necessary and at what point does it become counterproductive?

Humans are a product of their environment and experiences. On this very board many folks idolize CEO's...but why CEO's and not folks like Ton Roosendaal and Dr. Banting? I think the real truth, the deeper truth, is the "revolution" starts with the culture itself: rather than TV shows like Shark Tank lets have programs emphasizing non-profit founders, rather than hero worshipping CEO's, let's encourage emulating folks like Ton Roosendaal and Dr. Banting, then...maybe...capitalism will fade away on its own.

>The benefits of increased productivity go to all of society

They havent though. They've gone to shareholders and landowners.

It would theoretically be nice if the productivity gains were evenly distributed but in practice to make that actually happen would probably require a great deal of violence.

But what about all the pensions that are shareholders?

You mean the average pensioner - the bottom 90% who own 11% of the stock market between them?

What about them?

Do you think the bottom 90% of pensioners do not deserve to own more than 11% of the capital stock of the country?

I mean that huge pools of capital actually represent the interests of a lot of people, such as Norwegian Sovereign Wealth fund and CALPERS which collectively fund the retirements for millions of people. And there are 401ks and IRAs, and even social security which is backed by the dollar which requires a healthy economy to maintain its preeminence.

It’s hard to just point the finger at this thing or that thing and pretend it’s just “the 1%” who benefits and they are causing all the problems. The economy, and society itself, is far far more complex and trying to do something extreme like destroy private business has enormous knock-on consequences.

But...Aren't the beneficiaries of those pensions 2 types of people: 1) retirees who technically are not impacted by the job loss that is happening or is about to happen; 2) fund managers that are "Actively managing" portfolios including pensions? Happy to be corrected.

I’m saying if you make political decisions that hurt this or that company (or all of them) you actually hurt normal people rather than “the 1%” who supposedly pull all the strings.

The rising tide may not lift all boats but it lifts a lot of them.

For every dollar lost from the stock market cap:

* The 1% lose 50 cents

* The top 10% lose 90 cents.

* The bottom 90% lose 10 cents.

* The bottom 50% lose maybe 1-2 cents (and only some of them).

A net loss in the stock market that leads to a slight redistribution of that wealth would thus be better for the majority of pensioners.

As somebody who is primarily concerned with the welfare of the average joe you would support this, no?

I don’t want to hurt anyone. I think the people at the top of the economic pie generally know what they are doing, have grown their capital because they have earned it via expertise, and making political decisions to hurt the rich ultimately hurts all of society more than the rich person.

Take Elon Musk. Even if you stole all of his money, he would start a new business, and people would back him with capital (whatever is left after the socialists stole it all) because of his background, and it would be successful, and he would be rich again.

You can’t stop talented people from making money unless you use guns.

I'd say this is a fundamental misreading of Musk. He's a good hype man, who started rich, got richer and became famous. Him starting over would be simply that he's famous and so is better at being famous and generating hype than someone who isn't already famous.

The thing is - basically being a grifter is a great skill for making money for oneself and friends, but not actually a skill that helps society as a whole. And sure, advertising is a kind of expertise, but I don't think many people actually hold it in high regard as being worth a lot in terms of "deserving".

He built Paypal, then Tesla, then SpaceX. People who think that he isn't an incredible entrepreneur and operator clearly don't know anything about building businesses. Regardless of how he started out, dismissing his accomplishments as a "grifter" or "hype man" shows you have very little understanding whatsoever.

Minor correction: SpaceX came before Tesla. Elon started hanging out with the Mars Society people after Paypal. Probably more impressive to take your exit cash and go “okay, how much to go to Mars?”

>The benefits of increased productivity go to all of society that can now get more of their wants fulfilled

Serious question, how exactly do you envision unemployed people without any renueve stream can afford to "fulfill their wants" when the goverment and landlords will yell them for their cut of the meal on taxes and rent at the end of every month, implying they've enough food savings to last up to that point?

> People have found new desires to be fulfilled and created businesses to fulfill them What about the desiree to not die thanks to a crashed economy and inexistent safety nets? Seriosly, on what kind of cutesy fantasy spot do you think vast mayority of people live on, that they've the time to daydream about hypothetical wants instead of the real treath of being kicked out of a roof and starving to death?

Maybe, at some point in the distant future, some middle spot can be reached, but not sure not right now, society as we know it may be the verge of crashing and those holding the keys are hardly willing to care.

I don’t know what country you live in, but it sounds like Cuba or Venezuela. I am very sorry for your situation.

Not sure if this is a snarky gotcha, but is hardly worth sleeping on considering that USA isn't on a extremely healthy economic spot right now, and be sure shareholders aren't inconvincing themselves anytime soon to improve the situation. It really feels like people is suddenly trusting too much the intentions of those companies owning both these models AND the hardware is able to run on, and also can operate them at a much higher scale than anyone else could dream of.

I guess I don't see it playing out quite like that - let's say we replace a lot of creative-but-not-very desk jockeys of various kinds, lawyers, graphic designers, software devs. For the rest of society, they continue to get adequate output from those fields, now mostly from AI and a few handlers. They didn't really need more of it, and the owners of the companies producing it are unlikely to pass their new savings along. So the benefits don't seem to trickle down meaningfully? And the replaced middle-class folks can't get work doing what they trained to do, so at best they start over.

That happened over several decades with the mechanization of agriculture - gave people enough time to adapt and skill up to other jobs.

The pace at which it's happening now with no social safety net for the work force being left by the wayside - is what is worrisome.

What pace? Where are the job losses caused by AI? I’ve been hearing about these forever, although previously it was called “automation” yet here we are with very low unemployment.

I’ll believe it when it actually happens because the futurists have cried wolf for too many decades.