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| ▲ | swid 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > the % of jobs not doable by AI and robotics approaches 0 over time. Horse are an analogy. When they were more economically useful, there were about 5x the number of them. Now they are basically pets and we get comments like this suggesting the work they do is virtually meaningless. |
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| ▲ | ForHackernews 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, most of the work many people do is virtually meaningless. Are you a preschool teacher? Are you a doctor, a therapist, an artist? Does your work contribute anything to yourself or other humans around you? Or do you get paid a lot of money to sit in an office and update JIRA tickets about tracking ad conversions and increasing engagement OKRs? | | |
| ▲ | 0c3ca83 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Are you a preschool teacher? Are you a doctor, a therapist, an artist? We've already automated the artists. Doctors are currently a strong area of focus. In a world where AI replaces human thought, education becomes only for hobbyists. That leaves therapist. I suppose we're going to need a lot of therapists. | | |
| ▲ | layla5alive 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | LLMs have much better cognitive empathy than most humans have limbic+cognitive empathy - the therapists will also be automated - friction like licensing bodies will slow it down but not stop it. | | |
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| ▲ | harimau777 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What's your proposal for ending capitalism in our working lifetimes? |
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| ▲ | pixl97 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Explain a world in which capitalism ends without a fight? |
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| ▲ | fodkodrasz 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The world where humanity ends without a fight due to capitalism "winning"... | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim 9 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | It will happen. Communism ended without a fight. Edit: And today's industrial society is quite far from being capitalist. Feudalism is more close to reality, seeing as the one most important factor for almost everything in life is whether you own real estate or not. |
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| ▲ | alastairr 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > HN: A site full of bold futurists where it's easier to imagine the end of the humanity than the end of capitalism. That's an underrated comment! Totally agree. So so much of discussion on this topic sort of assumes business as usual (both literally and figuratively) and that AI quickly diffuses through the economy, sucking up all economically useful activity, with humans falling by the wayside as inevitable collateral damage. There's a failure of imagination taking place here that there's no other outcome. Capitalism is an evolved solution to how human community works, but is not inevitable. |
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| ▲ | pixl97 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Massive changes in technology pretty much always involve wars and a reshuffling of power. This doesn't have much to do with capitalism at all. It's more of a question of how are those that currently have power going to adjust. In the case of technology we quite often see this end up with a concentration of power. How to maintain stability in a world filled with greedy people in power that don't want to give up a single penny is a good question to ask at this point. |
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| ▲ | TFNA 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is the Chinese century, and even if China charts a somewhat different course than Western capitalism, it still believes that human beings should spend most of their days in some employment, even if it is just makework. A population with mostly leisure time is viewed as very threatening to social stability. I can see that model being exported to the rest of the world far more than I can imagine your utopia. |
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| ▲ | someonebaggy 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Have you got a citation that the Chinese government believes in makework? | | |
| ▲ | TFNA 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The Chinese social safety net, for individuals not covered by unemployment insurance, is strongly centered around public sector jobs (公益性岗位) that, if you see them in practice, are often plainly makework: the essence of the work has been mechanized/automated, but human beings will still be directed to be somewhere all day and look busy. There is no paying those people a dole while they stay home like in sone other countries. | |
| ▲ | fragmede 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Chinese State Council: 2026 Employment Priority Strategy http://big5.www.gov.cn/gate/big5/www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/... |
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| ▲ | sceptic123 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Isn't the end of the humanity also the end of capitalism? |
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| ▲ | gattr 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Not necessarily! In "Saturn's Children" by Stross, humanity managed to wipe itself out, but post-humans (evolved from former, ahem, entertainment androids) are doing just fine across the Solar System. There's a plot point where one of them discovers that some corporation back on Earth inherited full property rights to her body due to an old pre-human-extinction EULA, and she'll be recycled for parts if she ever sets foot in their jurisdiction (I'm paraphrasing from memory). | |
| ▲ | layer8 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do you expect competing AIs to give up on private ownership of the means of production and using them for profit? | |
| ▲ | kbelder 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And vice versa. | |
| ▲ | sellmesoap an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It'll turn into some starwars robot slave trading, Capitalism will be fine! |
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| ▲ | layla5alive 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Because the capitalists have very big guns and a monopoly on violence. Its very easy to imagine a better world. Its much harder to imagine the Scrooges in power willfully giving it up so that we can build that better world. |
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| ▲ | ForHackernews 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's okay, I'll just use AI to vibengineer a viral basilisk that only targets those who violate the NAP. | |
| ▲ | AnimalMuppet 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's not just the Scrooges in power. Previous attempts to actually make a better world often made a worse one, and not just because of capitalist opposition. | | |
| ▲ | layla5alive 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you mean attempts like centralized communism - absolutely - and the failure mode should have been obvious from human nature: centralizing great power incentivizes corruption. We don't fully know the failure modes of every alternative yet, but that doesn't mean powerful central governments + capitalism is the best alternative. | | |
| ▲ | ipsod 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Interestingly, the Amish shape their lives around this sort of thing. With any technology, they ask themselves, "Does this make us dependent?" If the answer is yes, they refuse it. | | |
| ▲ | bluGill 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | They are more and more adopting modern technology. And where they haven't directly they have found ways to use it and be just as dependent while appearing to not. Go visit one and you discover they want to borrow your phone to buy things from Amazon... | | |
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| ▲ | bluefirebrand an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > HN: A site full of bold futurists where it's easier to imagine the end of the humanity than the end of capitalism HN is literally owned and operated by venture capitalists why are you surprised by this. |
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| ▲ | 0c3ca83 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| If you're not economically useful, what pressure would you be able to bring against the government and it's drone-based police force if it does things you don't like? General strikes don't work in a world with no human labor needed. Iran recently shot thousands to tens of thousands of its own people when they protested. If a sociopath were in power, what would stop them? |
