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The article is a piece of revolutionary rant. > Capitalism is unnatural, and selects for unnatural things. Wrong. Even plants have a conspicuous signaling economy to get their way to selection.
Capitalism is allowing the winners of the markets to make the rules that everyone has to abide by, sidestepping "democracy" with anti-democratic "lobbyism" and creating a power hierarchy based on networth. The markets that allowed this are usually "free'ish" at best.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And die in large numbers, yes.
Or not riot and die in large numbers a bit more slowly.
Further reading: Walkaway by Cory Doctorow, The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin, The Anarchist Cookbook by Keith McHenry (and look into Food not Bombs, Food not Lawns etc while you're at it), and various solarpunk copium like "A Half-Built Garden" by Ruthanna Emrys.
>No, liberal capitalist societies will not reduce work hours, increase safety nets, do UBI, or competently handle massive unemployment. You may want to look at the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, and Canada.
If we're gonna take a look at places, where I'm really interested in watching is the PRC, Cuba, and Vietnam. Capitalism managed to beat the Soviet Union, will it to any other remainders from the era, or will the conversion to state capitalism create a strange equilibrium? In any case it's not like the PRC is doing much better in terms of worker's rights, you still have to justify your existence through labor there more than you do in the aforementioned Nordic countries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or not riot and die in large numbers a bit more slowly.
Personally I'm thinking the solution will be establishing parallel forms of mutual aid and organization with the goal of making the State and capitalism obsolete and moot. Why would I buy food when my neighbors and I grow and share more than enough? A stretch goal but I don't see any other path. At least trying to reach it makes for lots of fun projects like gardening, homelabbing, setting up federated software, etc.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or not riot and die in large numbers a bit more slowly.
Personally I'm thinking the solution will be establishing parallel forms of mutual aid and organization with the goal of making the State and capitalism obsolete and moot. Why would I buy food when my neighbors and I grow and share more than enough? A stretch goal but I don't see any other path. At least trying to reach it makes for lots of fun projects like gardening, homelabbing, setting up federated software, etc.…
The State and capitalism will not let that happen without a fight
i'm so tired of those HN blog articles where the title is always someone over confidently claiming something they have no expertise over (sorry, being a software engineer and founder doesn't make you a job market expert nor a historian, and doesn't make your opinion relevant). I wish there were options on HN to filter out "my opinion is a fact and you're all wrong" articles
I would not expect a job market "expert" or a historian to be able to predict future world where cumulative machine intelligence is higher than cumulative human intelligence. Why would you?
I think this article takes some assumptions for granted: 1. AI will get better, and at a price point that makes sense for businesses to operate on. 2. "Managers" (non-technical users) will be as good at using AI as "frontend engineers" (technical users) or make something of comparable quality. 3. All or most technical problems can be solved by AI. I think the title and take for this type of doom thinking is not reall…
Yes, the horse will take your job. Yes, the written word will take your job. Yes, fire job take. Yes, the automobile will take your and the horse’s job. Yes, we’re all doomed. Might as well go back up the trees and start hollering.
Now they're threatening us with total automation. In their dreams, we're not the people riding horses who now get to drive shiny new cars. We are the horse. If that dream is possible with the current technology, they will stop at nothing to achieve it.
- Yes, engines did replace horses, it was utility revolution
- Yes, computers replacing pen, paper and calculators
- Yes, internet has revolutionized access, borderless business, communication and digital transformation
All the inventions have been about tool replacing another tool, but AI trajectory does not really fit those models.
Maybe AI utilization today is giving the impression of tool and productivity revolution but it's the only entity challenging the actual human organ. It's brain replacing brain and that's the unprecedented and unfamiliar territory.
Eventually this new brain will get its own limbs too!
I think this article takes some assumptions for granted: 1. AI will get better, and at a price point that makes sense for businesses to operate on. 2. "Managers" (non-technical users) will be as good at using AI as "frontend engineers" (technical users) or make something of comparable quality. 3. All or most technical problems can be solved by AI. I think the title and take for this type of doom thinking is not reall…
"Path that needs a lot of things to go wrong" -- wrong for whom? For the people with money and power, the people who determine what jobs exist and what those jobs are doing, this would be a dramatic version of things going right (as long as they're able to capitalize on it). Human labor is an expense for business owners, not a virtue.
Not speaking to you in particular, but I'm shocked at how so many otherwise brilliant people are rendered practically neo-luddites by AI. The cotton gin was disruptive, but once it was invented there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. The same is true of agentic AI. The question isn't whether or not it will upset the status quo of human labor, it's how much and in what way.