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Comment by king07828 | Hacker News Reader

Instead, why not transition from a labor based system of resource acquisition for the masses to an investor based system of resource acquisition for the masses?

Assuming that the labor economy is dying, then all laborers (truck drivers and code writers) need to figure out how to transition from generating livable income with their labor to generating livable income from their investments.

Difficult? Yes. But is it any more difficult than attempting to acquire sufficient resources to live using obsolete labor skills?

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> Instead, why not transition from a labor based system of resource acquisition for the masses to an investor based system of resource acquisition for the masses?

Because that means the existing capitalist class has to be forcefully deprived of much of their capital so that it can be redistributed, and a system needs to be set up to prevent it being from be reconcentrated.

The existing capitalist class, which holds disproportionate power, largely opposes this for obvious reasons.

Agreed that top-down solutions will likely be opposed by those who are already at the top.

And this is exactly the reason why the comment was posted. I.e., the debate about how to help laborers transition to different types of labor may not be the correct debate because it only pushes out the problem to the next technological revolution, which will likely come even faster. Improving technology reduces the need for labor while at the same time it increases opportunities for investment. Hence, perhaps the debate should focus on transitioning from a labor based society to an investor based society.

> The existing capitalist class, which holds disproportionate power, largely opposes this for obvious reasons.

Counter-point -- if the situation really _is_ such that the vast majority of the population enters into a situation where they require capital that only a minority have, then its inevitable that some form of wealth sharing would develop in any non-dictatorial society. In other words, I argue that such a transition could happen in a relatively peaceful, progressive way. _If_ it really needed to.

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