> Capitalism emerged when people began discovering that wealth could be created rather than merely captured, and that ordinary people could be sources of demand and initiative rather than merely labor to be commanded as a factor of production.

A worker under capitalism is exactly just another commodity commanded by capital. Only competing power centers like unions makes it not one-sided.

I dunno about “demand and initiative”. Is this how capitalism started, or are we jumping ahead to the post-WWII USA where the socialists and capitalists had won concessions from the bougies so that a “middle class” came about?

> The early capitalist worker voluntarily increased annual working days from 250 to 300 because a new universe of desirable goods had become accessible.

The weekly working hours increased for many who moved to the factories of the cities. Labor organizing is what lead to the two-day weekend.

> We are moving toward a world in which an ordinary person can command quantities and varieties of intelligence that would previously have required teams of highly trained specialists. Just as I can enjoy food without knowing how to farm, I can increasingly enjoy the products of intelligence without knowing how to produce them myself.

Some people are incapable of seeing power dynamics. An ordinary person might fear AI because of the explicit threats against his or her job.

How does power work? In this case it works by concentrating compute and access to the vaunted frontier models.

Another thing is the part about “hoarding”. AI is exactly about hoarding. Labor built the intelligence of centuries. Now AI wants to close that off.

> Labor organizing is what lead to the two-day weekend.

And the 8 hour work day. And, for miners, being able to have their lunch break above ground.

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