Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

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> But the car that this engine drives is one that is meant expand and deepen the human experience by keeping people healthy for longer and giving people back more free time than ever before to explore themselves and the world. But some people don’t see it this way. Most ceos and founders are able to impose their deeply flawed worldview onto society as a whole by accruing capital at the cost of everything else.

I agree, the CEOs and founders see the car a vehicle to further their own greed and power, they're personal human experience, not the collective human experience.

Many of the ideologies that underlay our culture, especially at its elite ranks, allow and encourages that.

> The only solution I can see is one where machines and automation can carry out all the essential functions needed to feed and care for a large population. Then everyone is given a universal basic income and the freedom to choose what they want to do with their lives. I’d like to believe most people will immerse themselves in the more human hobbies like arts and sports instead of wasting their lives away without purpose. Maybe I’m just hopeful

That's an utterly unrealistic fantasy. Automation isn't a solution, it will be more of the same without fundamental change in those underlying ideologies. Hoping that automation will be the solution is a disparate, unrealistic hope that putting the cart before the horse will work out.

The only reason the "ceos and founders" share anything with you (i.e. pay you) is because you're useful to them. What happens when automation means you're no longer useful? Are they going to keep sharing? Have their kind ever made that choice through all the other prior waves of automation?

Isn't the richest man in the world right now working really hard to slash government spending in a way that will likely hurt all the people already discarded due to the prior waves of automation?

What needs to happen before total automation, is an ideological change needs to be forced on the "ceos and founders" that massively reduces inequality and greatly lessens their power. And that needs to happen before most workers lose all economic power to automation.

UBI's only purpose is a sop to keep the population passive in the face of changes that will pull the rug out from under them.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I tried to limit my writing while keeping the core ideas true as I’m not going to write a multi page paper for a HN comment. I agree, automation alone will not bring equality to the masses. As I see it, it should go something like this: automation scales to the point where it’s pushing people out of jobs. This scares the working class. It gives them a real reason to go out and force change (hint: the working class can force change. They just have to want the change so much that it overcomes the many roadblocks in place to prevent them from making change. Partisan politics, big corporation lobbying, big media outlets all stand in the way of this, but I believe all of them can fall to the pressure of the core change making machine that is the American democratic system). Now this is far out there but here is what I think: My hope is this ‘movement’ will have deep enough considerations to the future of civilization to be able to overturn the outdated capitalist system and replace it with a neo capitalist system that should essentially rob large companies of systems essential to the country. There should be an upper limit to the net worth one can obtain. Think like this: Amazon slashes 80 percent of its workforce through automation. Then it is clear that they have created a system largely self sustaining that will suck up many more times wealth than it will give back to the population, and this wealth will condense into the owners of Amazon. Then the government should essentially strip the owners of their share of profits the company makes. They can keep their power within the company. They can keep their roles and they still manage the company for a hefty, hefty salary. But every dollar of profit over what it takes to keep the company running and pay the owners well will be evenly distributed to the American people because otherwise society will collapse. I know this reads more like a fiction novel than anything but I think the scale of problems that we face today require such thinking. I appreciate your willingness to comment and think critically about the future of society because this is something we need more of. We need more people to a. Believe in a vision of a future where we progress as a people - b. Believe they have the power to advance our society toward such a lofty goal. Because if enough of us believe so, it becomes attainable.

1. I used America as an example because I am American and that’s just how I think - no doubt the path could be blazed by other countries but I want to see my country survive

2. I’m sure there are many many technical issues with my vision of the future to be solved which would require many great minds to combine forces and analyze history. The question is will such an effort ever materialize, or will humanity be forever chained down by biology and circumstance? I would like to think it’s possible because as an American I see the formation of our government and constitution as possibly the greatest triumph in human history. Democracy was a revolution. But to progress we will soon need another revolution about equal in weight.

> As I see it, it should go something like this: automation scales to the point where it’s pushing people out of jobs. This scares the working class. It gives them a real reason to go out and force change...

The biggest problem with that idea is that it's highly likely that the working class will wait to take action until long after they've lost the power to succeed at anything they try.

We've already had analogous waves of job losses (e.g. due to NAFTA, the China shock), what happened then? Forget going out an forcing change, the working class lost a lot of their leverage (e.g. factory owner to the workers: give us concessions or we'll move the factory to Mexico more quickly).

A reaction is insufficient. A proactive response is the only thing that can succeed, but that's very hard with a decentralized group like "the working class."

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