alt Hacker News> Also, if techno-feudalism accelerates and public purchasing power collapses, leading to the introduction of UBI
This always makes me laugh. What motivation would the oligarchs have to pay out UBI? If they can automate the labor who needs more mouths to feed? They’ll push undesirables into ghettos and start a slow genocide of starvation and disease.
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> into ghettos
No. Send to fight a war. To capture resources.
Because, think about it. Let's assume techno-feudalism is complete. Every piece of infrastructure is going to have usage fees attached anyway. Everyone is using AI, so are you going to be the only one not using it? Of course you'll use it. It's a structure where everyone has to rely on a specific corporation's products to get anything done, meaning the wealth will automatically be absorbed back to them anyway. So why would they go out of their way to commit a massacre?
From a cost-benefit perspective, I think it's a terrible idea. In the case of a massacre, long-term instability makes it hard to build a supportive faction. But if you provide just the bare minimum to survive through UBI, the capitalists will gain a loyal faction that will act as their Red Guards to attack dissidents, which I think is much cheaper in the long run. There are already plenty of people who blindly defend corporations even when they do terrible things, right? In my opinion, UBI is simply the cheaper option. Historically speaking, post-massacre recovery has always ended up costing much more.
Me too. Here is some history to back up how absurd the statement is.
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay title "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren"
He predicted that in 2030, technology, productivity, capitalism would solve the economy. There would be so little work to do and so many resources that the average work week could just be 15 hours!
He wrote that once all us plebes were liberated from work, what we would face is humanities greatest problem. What purpose will we have with all this new found leisure time!
We only have to wait 4 more years to relax.
Is it because UBI is cheaper than a massacre? Since it will all end up being absorbed by the capitalists anyway.
Historically, such things have been brought about by extreme political violence, brought about by poverty. For instance, worker's rights (any at all, e.g. the right to go home every day) were a compromise between workers owning the workplaces (what workers demanded) and workers shooting their bosses to death every few weeks in frustration (what was actually happening at the time).