Without capitalist advancement, prices would rise at a frightening rate. Decide what you want - fully stocked supermarket shelves thanks to capitalist efficiency. Or rationing, shortages and civil unrest thanks to government intervention in the markets and the dissolution of business.
I refuse to believe that our only choices as a species is between the very worst of libertarian capitalist excess and the very worst of Stalinism. I firmly reject the idea that nothing else can work or should even be tried.
What, you're saying that excluding the middle ground is a fallacy? By Jove, I think you may be onto something!
Without capitalist advancement, prices would rise at a frightening rate. Decide what you want - fully stocked supermarket shelves thanks to capitalist efficiency. Or rationing, shortages and civil unrest thanks to government intervention in the markets and the dissolution of business.
[citation needed]
The USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, Communist China, North Korea, Venezuela, Argentina...
Considering how deeply this community has internalized the importance of creative thought your analysis is pretty limiting to any new possibility being possible.
I'm still waiting for someone to come up with an alternative to capitalism that isn't communism, or some dilute form of communism. We have socialism - the erosion of capitalism to provide a reward for those that won't or can't work. What's your "new possibility"? Without a proposal, your point is moot.
Your definition of every form of economics that isn't an extreme libertarian version of capitalism as "communism or a form of socialism" makes further discourse moot.
With all due respect to Stephen Hawking, whose expertise in theoretical physics is undoubted, how would he be in a position to "confirm" this?
Because the linked article does not capture his original words well. Instead he said: > If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. > Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. > So far, the trend seems to be t…
>If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed.
When you start with ridiculous premises, you're going to reach ridiculous conclusions.
I refuse to believe that our only choices as a species is between the very worst of libertarian capitalist excess and the very worst of Stalinism. I firmly reject the idea that nothing else can work or should even be tried.
What, you're saying that excluding the middle ground is a fallacy? By Jove, I think you may be onto something!
Sigh, unfortunately this fallacy is alive and well as the OC clearly indicates.
Considering how deeply this community has internalized the importance of creative thought your analysis is pretty limiting to any new possibility being possible.
I'm still waiting for someone to come up with an alternative to capitalism that isn't communism, or some dilute form of communism. We have socialism - the erosion of capitalism to provide a reward for those that won't or can't work. What's your "new possibility"? Without a proposal, your point is moot.
Banks that work properly would be the ideal form of capitalism, to me. In Canada at least, very little lending takes place to people who want to increase their capital doing useful things, unless you already have $10M+ in assets in order to get fancy AR-secured credit lines and other secured loans. The only way to get a loan is to tell the bank you want a house (capital gains but no value creation) or to go on vacation (consumption). In theory, you could create capital doing productive things, store it in the bank, and they lend it to others who can do useful things with it. I am thinking small business, as opposed to vacation consumption. I would be pretty "Liberal" or socialist about how I allocated money to small ventures. Almost anyone could get a small loan to start a venture, and then how that goes determines their lending credibility in the future. Again, I am sure this is where we started, but we are far from it now.
Considering how deeply this community has internalized the importance of creative thought your analysis is pretty limiting to any new possibility being possible.
I'm still waiting for someone to come up with an alternative to capitalism that isn't communism, or some dilute form of communism. We have socialism - the erosion of capitalism to provide a reward for those that won't or can't work. What's your "new possibility"? Without a proposal, your point is moot.
Capitalism can't be communism because one is a financial / economical system and the other is a political system. The two are related but not always in the same way. European countries, especially the Scandinavian ones are very Socialist and capitalist. China is an even 'weirder' example. There already are many different forms of capitalism as an economic system under different political systems.
Hawking does believe that AI will be a danger to humanity long term. The short term problems caused by near future robots is a different subject. Capitalism isn't inherently the problem. We could have capitalism and tax capital owners at a high rate, and distribute the wealth much more evenly. It's possible everyone could become capital owners and it would be normal to live off interest instead of work. Like owning t…
There are WAY fewer farmers now than there were even 100 years ago. The rest of them are no longer employed as farmers.
Because the linked article does not capture his original words well. Instead he said: > If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. > Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. > So far, the trend seems to be t…
>If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. When you start with ridiculous premises, you're going to reach ridiculous conclusions.
Then disagree with the premise. Is it wrong? Why is it ridiculous? Are the adavances in robotics and ML that we are currently experiencing going to hit a wall soon?
Without capitalist advancement, prices would rise at a frightening rate. Decide what you want - fully stocked supermarket shelves thanks to capitalist efficiency. Or rationing, shortages and civil unrest thanks to government intervention in the markets and the dissolution of business.