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Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

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Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#71

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…

Exactly!

Start from a capitalist principle: if there's an excess of unextraordinary labor and a shortfall of jobs which will trade that for food/shelter/goods/etc, how would one take advantage of and simultaneously alleviate the supply/demand imbalance? By vertically integrating -- directly turning unextraordinary labor into food/shelter/goods/etc. This has been tried, they're called "communes," which is funny, because we started with a capitalist principle and wound up at a communist principle (people owning the means of production) while the popular dogma is that they're incompatible opposites.

In any case, communes have a bad rap for a good reason. They're hard. Economies of specialization and economies of scale are very real, and historically communes have had a tough time competing with the "job+apartment+supermarket" combination. I'm pretty sure that won't be the case forever: the "extremistan" economy is leaving more and more people behind while technology of every variety is advancing and (presumably) making extreme vertical integration more and more feasible. There has to be a crossing point.

The real question is "when?" It won't be obvious -- even once we have passed the tipping point, there will be a huge amount of friction. Putting together a decent commune that embraces modern modes of production will require significant risk and a huge chunk of capital (recouped with entry fees, presumably, since if it was able to more efficiently produce something already valued by the market why not just go into business doing that instead?).

But once the business model is proven, it ought to scale nicely. Communes compete with each other and with the traditional job+supermarket on social contract, each one providing a lower bound for the other. Which is important, because for all the blathering on about how traditional capital markets are based on consensual transactions, mutual benefit, and value creation, they seem to do a fantastic job of making life a living hell for a huge number of people by repeatedly un-fixing already fixed problems (like how to feed and shelter ourselves). And the world is certainly no stranger to communes gone awry. But maybe, just maybe, if they're in direct competition with one another we'll get to see them both on their best behavior.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#72
post #38

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.

Yes, but that happened over a long time. There was no single day where someone said "ok, you've all been automated, go somewhere else".

It's not a perfect example, I admit. Because not all farmers owned their land, and there were a lot of farm laborers that didn't own capital. But it's a much closer example to what I am talking about. As opposed to factory owners being automated, where none of the workers owns capital, and it's far more unequally distributed.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#73
post #34
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In parent's defense, I believe that needs are endless and there is always a tiny motion that can be rationalized away or a shiny item that can be obtained before the others get it (think iphone a decade back).

Unless we reach the singularity, there will always be the need for something.

And if you think of needs as something as abstract as "power over the universe" (which is still a limited resource, even after the singularity), you cannot ever reach the state where machines produce everything we need.

Hence, the premise can be unreachable, or - in parent's words - "ridiculous"

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#74
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean increasing life expectancy with unparalleled standard of living? Why would anyone want to prevent/change that?

> You mean increasing life expectancy with unparalleled standard of living? Nope, I don't mean that. Are these the only two things going on in the world? Is capitalism the sole driver for these two? Just trying to get a feel for why you would guess so horribly badly. > Why would anyone want to prevent/change that? What makes you think I have to defend myself against your straw man? edit: And you know what, the fact t…

>Is capitalism the sole driver for these two?

Trade (which is to say, markets) and globalisation are largely responsible for driving this. Capitalism (private ownership of the means of production) is currently the most successful model we have for facilitating these.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#75
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Free market capitalism is the epitome of creative thought. It's not a limiting doctrine that says you can only do this or that. It's a doctrine that says you are free to engage with others however you want so long as you respect their autonomy and freedom to make their own decisions. If someone wants to start a voluntary socialist commune, they have the freedom to do so within a free market. Unfortunately for as…

There sure was a whole lot of force and coercion behind social security.

The fact that governments rely on coercion to enact policies like Social Security is not controversial among political philosophers. It's widely accepted.

The controversy is regarding which cases, if any, governmental coercion is justified. There is a wide degree of disagreement here, but even those who believe coercion is justified still admit that it's coercion.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#76
post #32
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

The USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, Communist China, North Korea, Venezuela, Argentina...

so it's either full communist dictatorship or wild west capitalism ? I thought the cold war propaganda was over by now.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#77

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…

It would be very hard to implement a capitalism with even distribution. By nature, this system leads to capital accumulation. Since no capital is infinite, accumulation in one place means removing it from somewhere else. So you need mechanisms to always redistribute the capital to avoid this problem and balance the system. But capitalists will battle these machanisms to gain efficiency, and you will be in a rate race…

Well, a fair starting point would be a basic income. Capitalism can still do its thing, but all those people disrupted by the rise of the robots would still get to eat.

As of right now the pendulum is too far on the side of inequality, yet governments are unwilling or unable to correct. Probably a combination of both.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#78
post #32
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

The USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, Communist China, North Korea, Venezuela, Argentina...

They will say, "They did not fail because of socialism." or "They were not true socialists."

Anarcho-Capitalist Hoppe explains this in the book "A theory of Socialism and Capitalism" (Bear in mind that he puts russian style socialism, social-democracy, conservatism and social engineering in "Socialism" category with varying degrees.):

"....Nonetheless, socialism is very much alive and well, even in the West where social-democratic socialism and conservatism have remained powerful ideologies. How could this come about? One important factor is that its adherents abandoned the original idea of socialism's economic superiority and instead, resorted to a completely different argument: that socialism might not be economically superior but is morally preferable. This claim will be considered later . But that is certainly not the end of the story. Socialism has even regained strength in the field of economics. This became possible because socialism combined its forces with the ideology of empiricism, which traditionally has been strong in the Anglo-Saxon world and which, in particular through the influence of the so-called Vienna-circle of positivist philosophers, became the dominant philosophy-epistemology-methodology of the twentieth century, not only in the field of the natural sciences but also in the social sciences and economics...."

"....No matter what the charges brought against socialism are, then, as long as they are based on empirical evidence the empiricist-socialist could argue that there is no way of knowing in advance what the results of a certain policy scheme will be without actually enacting it and letting experience speak for itself. And whatever the observable results are, the original socialist idea—the “hard-core” of one’s “research programme” as the neo-Popperian philosopher Lakatos would have called it —can always be rescued easily by pointing out some previously neglected, more or less plausible variable, whose noncontrol is hypothesized to be responsible for the negative result, with the newly revised hypothesis again needing to be tried out indefinitely, ad infinitum. Experience only tells us that a particular socialist policy scheme did not reach the goal of producing more wealth; but it can never tell us if a slightly different one will produce any different results, or if it is possible to reach the goal of improving the production of wealth by any socialist policy at all."

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#79
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not that advancements are going to hit a wall. It's absurd to assume human demand for consumption is finite. There will always be human desires that cannot be satiated by machines.

> There will always be human desires that cannot be satiated by machines

Not necessarily - and even so, the work left to be done by humans might only cover a small % of the population.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#80
I think it's same line of thought that someone would hoard all computers and be in a monopoly position. Super-efficient robotics (without the Hawking's 'monopoly fallacy') does one thing in long-term: lowers the price of work to the price of needed energy (+ some investment interest). Everyone can collect a bit of solar energy, and well, robots also won't be expensive at all (so there's not much interest on top of the price of energy). We'll be fine.

Actually, what happens, is that everything will be so cheap there wouldn't be any point of being a 'rich person', or hoard anything at all, because of abundancy. End of capitalism.

edit: There will be ads. Somewhere.

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