I said this way earlier in the thread, but it bears repeating. For most of the 20th century the rich were TERRIFIED that the hoi poloi were going to be coming for their money Soviet style. They haven't been terrified by that nightmare for thirty plus years. Fear of a worse alternative is what motivates the 1%-ers to accede to changes, and changes in this regard don't happen when the 1%-ers are fighting them tooth and nail. The outlook will shift pretty noticeably when there are enough people milling about with nothing to do that the 1%-ers are concerned for the safety of their Kandinskys and Picassos.
is this a let them eat cake scenario you're projecting? do we solve this without violence? please say yes.
Make the UBI inflation adjusted every year. The point of UBI is to make sure the working class keep their wealth (hopefully, gain wealth) through the automation and technological revolution, not for the ultra-rich to play games with the value of the dollar to ensure they successfully funnel all value from the working class.
I'm thinking like the stuff you see on TV - a whole bunch of out of work people march, police shoot tear gas, people get arrested. Maybe some people getting hit with riot sticks. The kind of thing that would make you worry about what's going to happen if you dont make concessions, but hopefully not anything actually violent. The wealthy are going to do what's best for the wealthy. But there is a point where acceding to a 15% tax raise to calm down the masses seems like a better bet than gambling all or nothing that a bunch of desperate people who can't feed their kids aren't going to cross a line. The European monarchs who lost their heads in the last century seemed to be really into that "divine right of kings" stuff. When mobs came screaming at them for bread, instead of giving them bread, or trying to calm them down they were often offended and called the gendarmes to come crack heads. Not a very practical understanding of the power of mobs. At least in the last century, Americans were far more practical and tried to cut deals to placate angry poor people.
I think it is time to revisit this topic. I didn't think that AI would endanger white collar jobs so quickly with many companies like Meta aiming to eliminate mid level programming jobs within a few year. Self driving taxis on the road. Heck we even bots spreading propaganda on this board.
Definitely worth a conversation when 100% of all human labor )for necessities) can be done by 5% of the population + Machines will that 5% decide that the rest should live in poverty and misery and are lesser humans? That they are only there to entertain the 5%? Rocket River
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It's already the case that the 5% has decided everyone else should live in poverty. That's a little hyperbolic, but as has already been pointed out years ago in this thread, US worker productivity has doubled and redoubled but the wealth of the workers has remained relatively the same while the ownership class has gotten richer and richer. Owners have been able to capture the great majority of the value of the productivity gains that have come with industrialization, digitization, and now roboticization. Workers get fancier products for lower prices, but not more wealth. And now the employment that would allow workers to stay level is threatened by the owners as well. There has been a decoupling of labor from the creation of wealth and it's getting harder to make a living with just your ability to work to sell. Obviously it cannot be sustainable that a small minority of the human race who own the means of production can just deny everyone else a livelihood. There would be violence, seizures of assets, and redistribution of wealth. People won't just sit and starve if there is a persecutor, real or imagined, whose head he can cave in with a rock. The rich will have to share with enough people to ensure they're protected from violence. I think the owner class would be wise to embrace more socialism and break the link between work and compensation. What they will actually do will probably look more like authoritarianism, where violence workers like soldiers, police, and security (plus the engineers making surveillance systems, weaponized drones and robots, etc) are paid enough that their self-interest is found in protecting the status quo from the discontented masses -- replacing compensation for work with compensation for loyalty.
Does each country either become socialist or a third world country where there is essentially an oligarchy or aristocracy.
This is a great post as it highlights facts on how the rich have treated poorer individuals. There is going to be a subset of extremely rich and powerful individuals whose ideology will drive our future. I think as evident by history they will only provide socialism to those that provide them a utility. The rest will starve to death. The masses are so stupid and worry more about each other than those that are controlling their most important thing...their future. I found it hilarious how Elon Musk changed the narrative overnight about fodder for the masses to fight each other on rather than speak up about H1-B visas.
how does that work exactly? was there some kind of meeting of the five percenters where they put it to a vote? or is it some kind of uni-mind sort of thing?
there will always be a need for laborers Gen Z shockingly admits they don’t know how to change a lightbulb in startling new poll https://nypost.com/2025/01/14/lifes...-to-change-a-lightbulb-in-startling-new-poll/ excerpt: The investigators found that nearly 25% of Gen Zers had no idea how to change a lightbulb in a ceiling lamp, with many claiming that climbing a ladder is “too dangerous.” One in five also worry that the bulb might be “too hot.” So, instead of risking their lives to complete the common DIY, the Z’s would rather GOTDIT — Get Others To Do It, according to the report. more at the link
Particularly interesting to me because I used to be a professional light bulb changer. But, in Gen Z's defense, some of those bulbs have gotten harder to change. Because they say LEDs last for 14 years (which is some bs), the can lights in my ceiling now are a whole fixture and bulb in one. And when you have to replace it, you pull the whole thing out, detach the wiring and wire a new one. Still not that hard, but harder than screwing a lightbulb. I'll have to make one of my kids do it next time it comes up and see, but I know for regular bulbs they can do it. Anyway, I think a lot of their ignorance is a result of their age and not their generation. Which is a fallacy that is often committed in these studies about generations. When these kids get a house and manage a budget, they will end up learning how to change their own lightbulbs and washing their own cars. When I was leaving for college, I didn't know how to cook and now I cook every day. I didn't understand my student loan and then I became a finance professional. Kids are ignorant, but they eventually learn stuff as it becomes relevant to their lives. It is the result of a complex algorithm in which billions of people seek over and over to maximize their own self-interest.
