It’s hard to say for certain, as it was during wartime, but in the Spanish civil war anarcho-syndicalism did seem to be working well right up until the Stalinists forcefully claimed control of the voluntary collectives.
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Any -ism, really, whether philosophic, political, or religious. The weak link, every time, is the fact that humans are involved.
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But the CNT as main player for anarcho-syndicalism in Spain was never responsible for governing a nation state (both governing and state used loosely as the don’t have the same meaning in an anarchistic society) and the founding principle was refusal (both of the republic with it’s partly liberal government and late in the civil war Franco’s nationalists).
Too much Direct Action, not enough peaceful living as a society: Spain is not a good starting point for a what-if.
How is he wrong here? He’s saying that we could have a more egalitarian society with the advance of AI. But we won’t if the people at the top hoard the wealth. We are living in a society where we have people who are doing just that. It’s not a huge cognitive leap that they’ll keep doing that if we let them.
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And what we’re doing now doesn’t work. And the systems set up under the soviets was hardly anarchistic communism. Stalinism and the American system are not the only two ways to build a mass society. We can maybe come up with something else that doesn’t lead to either one of those.
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I wholeheartly agree. But I have no clue how to change (and what). I can list many points that are imho not working in the current system*, but would they be constructive changes? I don’t know.
*) my subjective POV (the socialisation in a rich developed country make me part of the global 1%), so my input is not even universal valid
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Yah. IMO the whole enterprise of ideological affiliation suffers from the No True Scotsman problem. There are no real adherents because for every individual, their particular idea of what constitutes true affiliation differs from those of everyone else.
No one is responsible for the behaviour of any of the other adherents because ‘they don’t represent x-ideology properly’ and the institution is not responsible for even hard-line adherents behaviour because, ultimately, they are all individuals.
The deeper problem, I think, is that no-one even really wants to be associated with the ideological principles of an entity unless it in some way bestows upon them some positive value. It’s a one way street from nowhere to nobody.
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The problem here is that robots will give us lots of leisure time. Lots of unpaid leisure time. The wealth will of course be amassed by those who own the robots, and hence the means of production. The produced goods are not going to be distributed freely unless there is recoup of the cost of production plus profit for a price.
T’was ever thus.
Agreed, and this is precisely what Hawkings is saying, that those who own the means of production will indeed continue to hoard wealth… Unless we figure out a way to not have that happen.
So, what’s your objection to what Hawking is saying?
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Define happiness.
But really, why would you want to be happy? Can’t you settle for contentment?
So he’s not actually proposing any solution or mechanism of wealth-distribution? All he’s basically saying is if the rich don’t give up their wealth, then people are gonna be poor. He may as well be saying that if particles with mass could attain the speed of light, then light speed travel would be possible.
I don’t want machines to make me happy.
I want them to minimize deprivation.
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Maintaining 7.3billion+ people - probably doable
Material abundance for all the world - probably doable
Both of the above at the same time - Not a chance without utter miracles.
It all boils down to the quality of life vs quantity of life argument. Being as there’s literally no benefit to the latter, the outcome would be simple if humanity had collective brainpower: overpopulation is the core problem of our time.
Breeding less is an incredibly simple solution to many of our problems. (though admittedly not all of them)
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So, in order to be allowed to talk about the world, we have to also offer up solutions to the problem? How can we even understand the problem if we need to a solution before we even talk about? Plus, it’s not like everyone actually agrees with that assessment in the first place. So I’m still unsure that if you basically agree with his premise, that you’re annoyed that he stated it? Are only economists allowed to talk about the economy? Only literary theorists allowed to hold opinions or literature? Can only musicians talk about music?
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Anyone’s free to talk on any topic they wish, but be aware then that people will often disagree with them, sometimes rightfully, sometimes wrongfully. Personally, I think he’s stating a bleedin’ obvious non-starter, material abundance is highly contingent on ever-scarcer resources and has side effects such as pollution, not to mention the issue of ownership of the robots.
It’s hardly a great social faux-pas, it’s just a little simplistic is all. Not worth having an argument about really.
Maybe and I’d be inclined to agree, but it really isn’t an obvious thing. And having someone who has a fair amount of respect and social standing state this thing that we agree is obvious does help to make it more obvious.
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I guess you’re right there. Perhaps it’s his framing it as a mechanized-utopia that sci-fis it up a bit too much for my taste. I like a lot of his physics ideas, some of his other alien and robot ideas, not so much.
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Marx was living in a completely different reality. In the 19th century when a factory was hiring, there would be a big long line down the street and they would just hire the first eight hundred guys who showed up, or whatever.
There was no public relations industry, ordinary people didn’t have credit ratings, for that matter most people worked on farms. Marx could not imagine a world where there are more people processing insurance forms than delivering health care.
Organizing at the point of production to reverse the alienation of surplus value is a totally different thing from organizing in an alienated, surreal society to reverse being excluded from the production process at all.
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Solving over-population is definitely a good thing, but it’s not as if resources were distributed more equitably back when the world was less populated. (To state the bloody obvious.)
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I’m not worried about Robots but I wish that Wall Street had to follow the Three Laws.
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