Socialism is the only answer to the future of work if we want that a majority of people have a good life.
It's a fact that we're witnessing the concentration of capital into the hands of fewer and fewer. You can see that by looking at what the top 1%, 0.1% own compared to the bottom 80%, 50% etc.
It's also a fact that the bottom 60+% rely on work to get their needs met, to sustain their lives.
So it only follows that should the rate of automation explode, devaluing the work that currently sustains a huge portion of the population, we've got a huge problem on our hands, making the system unsustainable.
But we're also seeing governments, especially in northern Europe, employing taxation policies that are in a way trying to prevent this growing inequality. And in fact, the level of inequality of a nation has been correlated with a lot of undesirable problems. UBI is a natural extension of that.
Naming things is important and all, but I'd prefer to evaluate policies on their individual merits instead of simply classifying them as X is part of Y and total Y is bad therefore X is also bad.
Are worker co-ops bad just because they are socialist? Is it bad to regulate a company dumping chemicals in your drinking water because it saves them a few bucks?
On the flipside, is it bad to have reasonable pay discrepancies (not 300x, but maybe 8x) which markets naturally produce?
I think as a general rule we should strive to avoid concentrations of power in the hands of the few. Which has been a side effect of both capitalism and communism.
Humanity evolution is clearly follows the trajectory with well known "strong points" (in math sense) Slaveholding, Feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, …
Point (in math sense) has no dimensions so you cannot say "we are exactly at Capitalism now" but rather somewhere on that trajectory between strong points. Closer to Capitalism, closer to Socialism are the right terms I think.
It is obvious that, let's say, Europe now is somewhere in between of Capitalism and Socialism. And in 1900 it was around pure Capitalism point, in some countries between Feudalism and Capitalism.
And "Robots economy" will move us closer to Communism where 95% of population will not participate in goods/services production activities. So that will be that famous "... to each according to his needs" [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi...
If you have private ownership of production you are still capitalist. All the Nordic countries do this. They are not so much socialists as welfare states. If we must have a welfare state, I would much prefer the "citizens as shareholders of the country" model with a basic income, rather than the overweening paternalism of current welfare states.
Did they have a house though?
socialism is already everywhere. communism on the other hand failed on all fronts.
The economic system in communist countries was generally called socialism, while 'communism' is used for the political movement and its ideology.
i personally think there will no difference. automation has been happening for at least two centuries, and so far it’s been a major success on all fronts.
i think this fear of automation just shows how conservative people really are.
If you mean that when majority of work is free, people simply by existing will produce enough value for other people to deserve UBI large enough to live(1), then yes, but it is not a system that is called socialism today.
(1) the value for other people will be produced simply by increasing the likelihood of new science and art being created, so like investors are happy to waste lots of money to get one really successful startup, people as a whole would be happy to waste lots of money on UBI to many people, to get some really talented scientists.
In some cases whole population of a country may behave as a single group. Let's say USSR at 1941 was clearly one single group focused on "do everything for the victory".
As of the humanity... Global warming and other global threats will group us all.
That's a very good example of a case where people were not acting as a single group at all. Most of the soldiers were simply leaving everything and retreating, because at first they were not sure if Hitler was really worse than Stalin (http://www.solonin.org/en), groups of people were joining with German army sometimes hoping to get rid of soviets and sometimes because wanting to kill neighbours (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera), food was being captured from all the areas that potentially could end up under German control, which ended up causing the famine in Leningrad. So even if from afar it looks like a single group, it was much more complex and turbulent close up.
This is only true in some kind of socialism, counterexample: mutalism.
"social ownership of the means of production"
Social ownership: can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity.
The problem with all of this, is that if someone works better than others, and creates his own "means of production" there must exist someone else who will seize it and distribute it to the collective, otherwise the means will again concentrate at the hands of lucky or more hardworking people.
But nowadays we should have taken another step (4x7?). Millenials are the first generation living worst than their parents, inequality increases and wealth and work are not well balanced.
Why? Because capitalism has won and socialism is not watched as an alternative.
(Note: this reasoning of past progress doesn’t apply to the US)
Is that so far from Walmart?