Capitalism is getting obsolete

[Greatnestwithin]

22 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yeah, it's radical. Some kind of alternative to Wall Street needs to be invented.

The whole point is to break up the consolidation of capital in the hands of a few elites. There need to be systems and laws that push capital downward to average people. One such principle might be that if you leave the company, you lose most of your stock to the guy who replaces you, and holding stock pays automatic dividends if your company makes profit, but only if you work within the company. As soon as you leave, the guy who takes your position gets it.

Passive sources of income need to be gradually eliminated. All passive income comes off the back of wage slaves.

I'd be curious to know shall you want to share where does the majority of your income come from. Like YouTube, your online course or something else?

[Leo Gura]

12 minutes ago, Joel3102 said:

I don’t entirely disagree that all employees could get some stock or dividends to share in the profit.

But if your life savings are invested in one stock and it crashes you’re kinda fucked....the good thing about a 401k diversified portfolio is it mitigates for risk

But in my system your life savings cannot be invested in stock. That's the whole point! You would have stock, but the stock by itself would be worthless unless you're working in the company. All the stock does is pay you dividends as long as you work there. Your true worth would not be in stocks but in cash savings from years of work.

This would effectively eliminate the stock market and its crashes. People will no longer be allowed to speculate on stocks. All the speculator sharks will have to go out and get a real job. Which will put more money in the hands of loyal workers.

[Joel3102]

@Leo Gura Interesting idea. I guess I like to enquire how these ideas that sound nice would actually work in practice. A lot of cash not doing much.

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Joel3102 said:

A lot of cash not doing much.

Take a look at the cash reserves of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and such companies. Tens of billions in cash, not doing much. I propose most of that go to its employees who will actually spend it.

Right now capitalists and investor class is hoarding most of the world's wealth and using it to milk the working class dry.

[Leo Gura]

11 minutes ago, Joel3102 said:

I guess I like to enquire how these ideas that sound nice would actually work in practice.

It's not a matter of ideology. All these ideas would need to be tested at small scale to see which of them work. Some may not work. Or they may work at low percentages. We need to test what the right percentages are.

For example, we need to test what the best corporate tax rate is. That number should be scientifically derived, not ideology derived.

[mandyjw]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Imagine if every Walmart employee -- even the cashiers and janitors -- earned dividends for every year they worked at Walmart. That would be a just system and they would be a lot richer. Working at Walmart would be a lot more enjoyable.

It's not just the Walmart employees you actually see and interact with, what about all the employees in factories in China and other countries that are producing almost all the goods being sold there? 

 

 

[DocWatts]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Many problems with capitalism could simply be fixed by passing a few rock solid laws.

• No ownership of stock without being employed by the company
• No corporate lobbying
• No corporate political contributions
• No buying of other big corporations by big corporations
• Salary caps for executives and management
• No arbitration clauses in contracts
• No criminal liability protections for executives
• No off-shore tax havens and corp tax loopholes
• All employees get representation on corporate board
• All employees get profit sharing
• Higher taxes on successful wealthy corporations
• Strict environmental regulations
• Severe fines for corporate fraud or mismanagement

Simple laws like that, when rigorously enforced, would fix many problems.

These laws are not that difficult to make work. It's just almost impossible to pass them in Congress.

Good evidence for why we need to fix our Democratic Institutions before we can make real headway on this or a host of other issues. If Corporations can just buy politicians through legalized bribery, aka Lobbying, and can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections,all of these Reforms are pretty much dead in the water. 

Capture of the Political System by Corporations and the Wealthy Elite is a Root Cause that needs to be solved first. Overturning Citizens United and revoking Corporate Personhood would be a good first step, but there's also decades of Fear Mongering against any and all Reforms to Capitalism that needs to be fought against.

As sad as is to say, I wonder if it might be a situation where it will take the Boomers, who haven't suffered to the same degree under Late Stage Capitalism, dying off from Old Age before we have any realistic chance for making substantive reforms.

Edited December 22, 2020 by DocWatts

[Anderz]

@datamonster My point is that capitalism has been useful but that it now is starting to become obsolete. I diluted my claim a bit and modified it to saying that capitalism is getting obsolete as the dominant power of production. The main driver for this trend is the exponential (accelerating) progress of technology. Basically products and services are getting dirt cheap while the performance increases. I learned this from Ray Kurzweil. He believes that there will still be enough jobs in the future. Maybe true for the next decade but after that I see automation increasingly taking over basically all jobs!

 

[TrustTheProcess]

@Leo Gura How does automation fit into this? 

Said Dawlabani predicts that "all quantifiable jobs" will be non-existent within the next 20 years. UBI maybe?

[Anderz]

@louhad Interesting, I hadn't heard of Said Dawlabani before. 20 years seems too optimistic to me considering the huge inertia in society, but say in 30 years I think that automation has replaced the vast majority of jobs.

I found this short video where he talks about Spiral Dynamics applied to economics:

 

Edited December 22, 2020 by Anderz

[Anderz]

Here I found an even more relevant video with Said Dawlabani. I will compare it to my amateurish ideas.

 

[Anderz]

Automation may look clunky and inefficient today, but the trick with exponential progress is that it improves at an accelerating rate. Compare the early video game Pong with today's video games for example. Then what about computer programmers? I found this amazing video describing how an AI programmed (developed/created) a Pac-Man game by just looking at it being played! Very crude program, but again, exponential progress has to be taken into account. 

 

[Anderz]

@neutralempty I think AI will start to develop AI. That is the start of the so-called intelligence explosion.

Quote

"The technological singularity—also, simply, the singularity[1]—is a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization.[2][3] According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, called intelligence explosion, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an "explosion" in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence." - Wikipedia

And even before that happens (if it happens) AI can learn by interacting with the real world. First mainly on the internet probably but then later in the real world.

I believe that we humans will remain on top of the power and AI will be used as a tool to extend our capabilities. For example we humans are good at using high level abstractions and AI can be used for doing the heavy lifting and then present results to us in high level forms such as in images and natural language.

There may also be overestimations of the power of early AI. For example self-driving cars might be much more difficult to become fully automatic than many experts believe. There are millions of edge cases in traffic that need to be managed safely.

[DocWatts]

1 hour ago, neutralempty said:

@louhad

AI will never be able to do intellectual and creative work. 

We can replace physical tasks and calculation with it, but that's it.

There will still be businesses with employees for a time.

Also skilled trades are heavily resistant to automation; the work of plumbers and electricians won't be automated any time soon.

[Hello from Russia]

6 hours ago, Joel3102 said:

 A lot of cash not doing much.

@Joel3102

It seems like you've picked up these beliefs from poor people. Cash is the most valuable asset of all because it's the most liquid. That's why rich people who know what they are doing (Which a lot of them are) hold on big amounts of cash and don't just stupidly invest 60-80% of their networth into some good sounding bullshit, like most people people do

Edited December 22, 2020 by Hello from Russia

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, louhad said:

@Leo Gura How does automation fit into this? 

Said Dawlabani predicts that "all quantifiable jobs" will be non-existent within the next 20 years. UBI maybe?

People need to be trained for creative jobs.

Automation is a great thing. Just train for jobs that aren't so dumb a donkey can do them.

UBI cannot solve this problem. People need highly creative work.

[Anderz]

There are also dangers with exponential technological progress. Technologies such as nanotech and biotech can easily become horrible weapons and with terrorists having access to advanced AI they can use it to unleash bio and nano weapons. And even advanced 3D printing in the hands of ordinary citizens is a danger since that allows for the 3D printing of weapons and other dangerous items.

What may happen is that advanced technologies like that will be used by industries and corporations and that they will keep it away from the public. Not only because of government regulations but also to maintain their own survival. For example what would Nike do if people were able to 3D print superior shoes and clothes themselves?

[Anderz]

@neutralempty That's actually what Ray Kurzweil has said. That there will be both free open source and commercial 3D pay-for printing models to download.

But I'm starting to have doubts about what level of access the general public will have to these kinds of technologies. The 3D printers available today are fairly crude although this big one is interesting:

 

[TrustTheProcess]

 

they built a 50 house community in Mexico all through 3d printing. cool stuff

[Anderz]

Donald Trump believes that jobs are important. That's absolutely stupid in my opinion. What is important is helicopter money until automation has replaced most of the jobs and made money obsolete. To cling to the old job model is like clinging on to the industrial revolution.

Clarification: I'm exaggerating my statement here to make a contrasting point. Jobs will of course be necessary for many years to come, and Trump and Biden need to promote job politics. My main point is that change in society is really starting to speed up. It's not like 10,000 years ago when the same kind of plows were used over thousands of years without much change. It's not even like in the industrial age where things remained stable for decades.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Anderz