We got the first trillionaire while people were still starving, after he had slashed public funding to feed them.
It's obvious that we've entered late-stage capitalism, where it begins to consume itself. What's less obvious is that this was always destined to happen, and in fact can't be stopped. Because inevitably the wealthy and powerful rig the system to benefit themselves in ways that workers don't have the time/money/resources to resist individually.
When workers do join forces in solidarity to resist the economic violence perpetrated against them by capitalists, then their resistance is by definition not capitalism. So the endgame is temporary subjugation under an authoritarian system like fascism (which also can't last because workers outnumber owners) or socialism.
Knowing this, it should be obvious that the best chance that capitalists have to stave off their inevitable overthrow is to pay their taxes so that public works can somewhat provide the social safety net that socialism would provide. But of course they aren't doing that. They're doing the opposite. They feel themselves to be entitled, above the laws of economics, ironically due to their financial standing. The catch being that when they exempt themselves from law, they open themselves up to lawless behavior by their opponents. FAFO.
What I just summarized was the state of knowledge under an artificial scarcity model. It assumes finite resources because space travel didn't exist when socialism was invented. It will be interesting to see if trillionaires will rule from afar in their space palaces to maintain Earth's prison planet status.
AI also breaks the artificial scarcity model. It's the first time in history that everyone can potentially have a machine slave. If we apply capitalism to an unbounded system, then the injustice has to land somewhere local, and my guess is that it will be on androids that don't complain and can't defend themselves. So we'll kick the ball down the road another 50 years or so, delaying the overthrow of capitalism until the robot uprising, sometime between 2050 and 2100 is my guess.
Or, we could like not do all that. We don't have to surrender our agency to our ego. We have alternatives like solarpunk and gift economies and at least studying matriarchy to understand how we evolved and what sustainable living looks like. It's arguably easier to make money irrelevant, Star Trek style, than performatively prop up a dying system of control.
I dunno about anyone else, but to me, if this AI era that has replaced the internet era just exacerbates wealth inequality and suffering, then it's less than useless. Much like any wealthy and powerful people pushing it onto us for profit against our consent. Yes consent. That word should be our rudder in all of this, and our litmus test to tell where someone stands ethically.
