The difference is that today, unlike in the 20th century, there's a feasible path to post-scarcity. It's not "around the corner" but there's a path if you squint. Myabe it won't pan out, but it's worth a shot. The irony is that leftists want to ban AI to preserve scarcity thereby protecting people's jobs.
It’s one thing to say something like: AI will enable lights out manufacturing and replace virtually all employees in that sector.
To which those employees respond: What will happen to us?
And they are told: things will be great, you won’t need to work in the factories any longer, and we will have no shortage of goods.
Do you see the missing link there? They might ask: “What happens to those goods? What happens to me? Do I get given the goods? Are the goods sold and then I am paid a stipend? I’m hungry. Will I still need to buy things? Okay, if so, but I have no money because I was fired.”
That said, some displaced workers have experienced substantial difficulty moving to other industries, especially if those new jobs are in different cities or countries. And it is also possible that this time is different, although I'm not convinced.
Given how much control capitalists have over almost every mechanism for organizing, I don't even know if such labor movements would still be possible today.
This process will take generations. Over time, people will work less and less as productivity steadily increases (we already see this in the pre-AI era as technology has accumulated). Eventually, AI will do all necessary labor and goods/services will be incredibly cheap. Over the decades, as this situation develops, our governments will become more socialist/redistributionist.
Also, it's possible that this technology just doesn't pan out. There could be a bottleneck or a nuclear war or whatever. Maybe it just stops scaling, or it stays in the realm of text-generation and can't replace manual labor. But it's worth a shot, and leftists should get on board.
I think the crux is in how fast you think the technology is developing. The widespread view in Silicon Valley is that drop-in remote workers will be a reality within a couple years. Sam Altman is already claiming that AGI has been achieved [1]. Jack Clark from Anthropic puts a >50% chance on recursive self-improvement by the end of 2028 [2]. This is an enormous sector of labor being made redundant in a very short amount of time.
So the actions taken in this specific administration over these next few years become pivotal. The industry is unregulated and currently undergoing explosive growth in a way we haven't seen since the railroads, in entirely the wrong direction to Sanders' interests. He is a major player in the political process, so of course he will take measures to get things under control.
> But it's worth a shot, and leftists should get on board.
That's why the bill is about "temporarily pausing" development, not banning it forever.
This is to say nothing of the catastophic risks that the bill is actually mostly about, not just the labor disruptions.
[1]: https://venturebeat.com/technology/welcome-to-the-agi-era-op...
[2]: https://x.com/jackclarkSF/status/2051312759594471886?lang=en
If it weren't for that, we already live in a post-scarcity world. But as such a state is anathema to the human condition, we continually strive to create new forms of scarcity that can separate the elite from the commons.
But if we solve food, hunger, housing, education, healthcare, and entertainment then that's enough for me. And no, it's not "the current political system" that prevents us from solving those problems now. Rather it's that engine of production is human labor, which forces us to rely on incentives.
In some sense I agree with you that starvation in the modern world is a political problem. Evidence for that is the common observation that famines don't occur in functioning liberal democracies.
But food production relies on more than technology. Human labor is necessary to produce food, and so incentives have to exist for people to do that work (prices, free markets, capitalism, inequality, etc). So if we decide "everyone deserves free food" then we are undermining the production of food. Why would people work in the fields when they could just collect their free food? Scarcity won't be truly gone until food is abundant whether or not there are any people working the fields.
Why should the owners undermine the value of their robots by providing free food for all? Those robots could be put to better use fighting wars instead.
The owners/workers at AI companies won't resist the redistribution. It will be seen as inevitable as AI performs a greater and greater share of labor. Also, the AI company owners/workers will accrue massive status and fame; which will become the new currency (like you noted in your first post).
I find this to be a somewhat incredible claim. I don't find it easy to believe such a thing. You can bring up enlightened self interest if you want, but you're going up against the entire history of humanity. I think it's more likely that something else will happen instead.
For example, you're underestimating the influence that being the ones to control all the labor in a society will grant these entities. When they reject your demands and send in the robot military to maintain order, how are you going to resist? Why should they bend when controlling all the labor will allow them to win?
2. They care about status, fame, reputation
3. Attitudes towards taxation/redistribution will change in a world where AI is doing almost all the labor
Yet even with fewer robots than necessary for certain victory, if enough households own a robot, the rich could easily force the government to stand down by taking a small percentage of the population hostage.
2. They don't care about reputation, or we wouldn't have examples like "doing funny arm gestures at an inauguration" or the openly corrupt dealings we're seeing these days. Above status and fame they primarily care about power, but enslaving everyone else would give them all 3 of those things. And let's not act like they're too rational to delude themselves into thinking they'd still be morally righteous - again, just look at so many recent examples.
3. Attitudes don't stop bullets.
Really, I'd love to be wrong on all this, and for the Epstein class to be better than what they show everyone. But our system makes the greediest among us rise to the top, and after so many blatantly cruel actions I can't believe anyone still gives them the benefit of the doubt.
If there's a way Trump can claim credit for it, he'll have no problem with it. He has no actual ideology beyond self-promotion and self-enrichment.
Maybe there will also be world peace!
Leftists oppose human suffering and disempowerment.
Labor is one thing, but there will always be some scarcity such as natural resources. I still doubt all labor could be done by AI alone at any point in the next couple generations.
Whenever I hear AI (or a token predictor in its current form) will solve some universal problem like hunger etc., a picture comes to my mind. . It's a picture of a mom breaking bricks with a hammer to be used for molding concrete, with a child nearby playing, who is tied with a rope to a pole. It's not an imaginary picture, it's real, etched in my memory from childhood. It's a reality that's driven by scarcity- of food and security.
How will AI solve this to bring post scarcity society?
It doesn't seem to me like we have any guarantee that AI will contribute to public wellbeing. Right now, the public is socializing the losses while the industry privatizes the technology and cozies up to the federal government. LLMs will be usable for mass surveillance and war long before it ever leads us to a post-scarcity society.
If anyone can name a rational reason why the top comment is the top comment but this one deserves -4, please say so.
Second of all, the massive redistribution shows no signs of appearing anytime soon. In the meantime the industry is in the midst of hysteria about a "permanent underclass" [1]. And this is all happening using models built off of the works of all writers, artists, and creatives everywhere, which said creatives have to then rent from the labs.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/opinion/ai-labor-work-for...
AI has achieved the same religious undertones as your average cult. Is the new god of the gaps for some tech people. The wild card to achieve anything.