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Comment by Tsagadai | Hacker News Reader

The modern capitalist society is extremely unlikely to end up in this state. Companies grow larger, that is their modus operandi. Once capital can be used to buy capital that produces capital you have eliminated humans from the equation. There is a level which we are approaching where some industries will become almost entirely automated. What happens in that situation is a few people make all the money and the rest don't. We are seeing an ever increasing disparity between wealth gained through capital investment and wealth gained directly through labour. Even high-end labour produces far less money than investment does. Most high-end labour tasks are tightly coupled to capital investment.

Do you really think that the history of wealth production is somehow going to change radically to a sudden redistribution of wealth to everyone so they can relax and take it easy while living off the fruits of others investments?

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yeah, standards of living will remain stagnant as the evil rich overlords accrue ever increasing wealth!

Oh wait 200-2010 was the single greatest decade in all of human history for the amount of people raised out of subsistence living to a reasonable standard of living and 2010-2020 promises to be even better.

Darn reality messing up my morality plays. Real life is not a status game.

I agree with you in part, capitalism has brought billions out of poverty and backbreaking labour. When you compare serfdom to pretty much any alternative is better. You will also notice if you read the data correctly that individual wealth has risen across the board. Everyone has more than they would have otherwise had in the 1950s. That's great but it doesn't mean that economic discussion is now over because all arguments have been won and lost.

What I was wondering about in my post was what happens when capital no longer requires much labour. This is happening now, hedgefunds are a great examples of this. They are amazingly efficient and produce very large sums of capital for the amount of labour required (revenue per employee). I'm not saying all labour is equal, I am saying capital is producing more in industries with less labour. Potentially, a financial model could get so good (or so stable) that it requires only minor updates to the system in order continue deriving a profit. You then have a situation where capital creates capital with only a statistically insignificant amount of labour. Efficiency pushes the system forward and delivers much to people while people have a valuable product to sell, their labour. When their labour is not valuable, they are unemployed. If their labour cannot generate enough value, why would they ever be employed in an ultimately efficient system?

My argument still stands, if you would like to respond to it. Why would capitalism suddenly change to give accumulated wealth back? Will the masses just rely on philanthropic whims?

The masses will end up relying on some sort of a welfare system, and would riot otherwise.

Food and wellbeing are the main things keeping civilization together. Wealthy regions are also stable regions, so it is necessary for the poor to be supported.

productivity outpaces population, so supporting the masses takes a smaller percent of gdp as time goes on. Of course this will not happen in a democracy as the populace will vote themselves largesse until the system collapses as noted by the greeks.

> What happens in that situation is a few people make all the money and the rest don't.

Or alternatively the economic force of competition kicks in and these goods become virtually free above the cost of the machinery and raw goods.

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