I'd argue against the entire perspective of evaluating every policy idea along one-dimensional modernist polemics put forwards as "the least worst solution to all of human economy for all time".

Right now the communists in China are beating us at capitalism. I'm starting to find the entire analytical framework of using these ideologies ("communism", "capitalism") to evaluate _anything_ to be highly suspect, and maybe even one of the west's greatest mistakes in the last century.

> I see a world where we can build anything we want with our own hands and AI automation. Jobs might become optional.

I was a teenager back in the 90s. There was much talk then about the productivity boosts from computers, the internet, automation, and how it would enable people to have so much more free time.

Interesting thing is that the productivity gains happened. But the other side of that equation never really materialized.

Who knows, maybe it'll be different this time.

I’m not certain we don’t have free time, but I’m not sure how to test that. Is it possible that we just feel busier nowadays because we spend more time watching TV? Work hours haven’t dropped precipitously, but maybe people are spending more time in the office just screwing around.

It's the same here. Calling what the west has a "free-market capitalist" system is also a lie. At every level there is massive state intervention. Most discoveries come from publicly funded work going on at research universities or from billions pushed into the defense sector that has developed all the technology we use today from computers to the internet to all the technology in your phone. That's no more a free-market system than China is "communist" either.

I think the reality is just that governments use words and have an official ideology, but you have to ignore that and analyze their actions if you want to understand how they behave.