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Comment by android521 | Hacker News Reader

Well , if that’s the case , it would be much easier to tax the land owners. Can have exponentially bigger tax so the more land they own, the more tax they have to pay until they can’t afford to own the land. They can’t run as they can’t bring the land with them . Socialism might work in that world

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You don't even have to tax the monetary value of the land. You can require a percentage of the land, itself, over time. If we're really moving to a post labor world -- which I sincerely doubt -- I think the concept of private property is going to have to be narrowed only to things that have a limited lifespan.

> Well , if that’s the case , it would be much easier to tax the land owners.

No, the land owners have bought and paid for every politician. Not gonna happen.

> Socialism might work in that world

Technically, what you've just described is Georgism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

The real question is, in a truly post-labor future, how do workers have enough leverage to negotiate for any particular change in the economic system?

Violence. Unfortunately.

In the times of the French Revolution that was enough, but I think technology is obsoleting us there too. If evil oligarch can make a bunker and ten million $100 kill bots, I don’t think the people are rising up unless existence is worse than death, and even then they might not win.

Back to feudalism, huh?

No, survival of the fittest. In this case, the people whose ancestors were better at hogging resources.

Survival of the shittiest?

Most of human history has been Survival of the Shittiest.

colonial revolutions tended to be fought by those for whom death was preferable to existence. i don't disagree that, in this age, the chance of success is slimmer, and will continue to shrink as such --- there's probably some critical mass of capital fortification which is unpenetrable without worker leverage

Socialism "might" always work in an immaginary world that does not take into account the reality of the human condition.

One of the many flaws of such immaginary worlds is thinking that people will be content to live in a system where they have no creative outlet left and nothing they do will have any ultimate meaning.

People in those conditions might burn down the system for the mere excitement of novelty. Even experimental rat utopias quickly degenerate.

There are a lot of functioning socialist states. You don't have to imagine them. They are happier, healthier and have better infrastructure than the United States.

Which ones?

If you’re thinking Scandinavian countries they are mixed economies. Most successful economies today are mixed economies.

All economies are mixed, save for North Korea, which is command economy communism.

On the sliding scale of welfare state socialism, Finland and Norway have the greatest degree of public investment. Angola would be on the other side of that spectrum, with almost no public services or redistributive programs offered.

When people want to introduce Scandinavian-like social programs to the US, it's "socialism doesn't work". When people point out that they work in the Scandinavian countries it's "Those aren't actually socialism".

When people want to claim that socialism works, they point at countries that aren't socialist.

Socialism is very well defined and it's made nebulous only to claim virtues it doesn't have.

Scandinavian countries aren't socialist. They themselves say they are not socialist and a simple google search for "are scandinavian countries socialist?" will show you that the consensus is that they are not.

Good news. The US can implement universal public healthcare and free university without fear of being socialist.

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