Back in 1950, I wrote a short story for freshman English that embodied the gist of this article. Great. Go for it!
4
I feel the vast majority of comments is far too charitable.
Leaving out the obvious nonsense of communism (I grew up under it) and the never fulfilled fears of the Luddites (there seem to be never-ending new needs that require us to work no matter the technology level) the author seems to have no sense of the ennobling psychological effect of labor. I have worked many low end jobs in my live and especially when my pay was ridiculously low I felt pride in my contributions. I was pulling my weight.
I hear supreme arrogance when the author sets himself aside from mere cashiers, drivers and construction workers.
14
Can you imagine a world where people won't have to work because "we could provide for the needs of everyone, in style"?
What they gonna do then: write poems, paint pictures, play sports, volunteer in nursing homes? Do we have suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, and violence only because folks have no jobs or also because they don't know what to do with their lives?
16
Does changing the phrase "Fully Automated Luxury Communism" to "The Star Trek Economy" make these ideas more palatable?
13
The fundamental problem is that human labor is becoming worthless. Both capitalism and communism depend on trading labor for goods and services, because labor is the only thing most people have. Neither system will work when robots can do nearly any job for pennies an hour. Imagine a clerk trying to add up a column of numbers faster than a computer does. Any computer can add up more numbers in one minute than you can in a lifetime. There can be no modern "John Henry" competitions with computers and robots.
The solution is along the lines the author recommends. Experts in computers and automation have been saying this for years. Especially Martin Ford. See his website:
http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/
5
Capitalism must be bridled. It's madness to pretend that it doesn't, and that it is fair.
Einstein said decades ago that the three greatest problems facing humanity are greed, ignorance and stupidity. Nothing has changed.
I could see a transitional period to socialism, but it may last quite a while, because those three problems have not abated, and they are not only a problem with Capitalism.
10
Fully Automated Luxury Communism is a cumbersome way to say Star Trek.
I'll hold out for Luxury Dystopia - Mad Max where every car has a beer tap.
5
This is a parody, right?
9
Socialism where no one has to work and everyone has what he wants 'tis socialism even Ayn Rand would approve.
* * *
Socialism where no one has to work and everyone has what he wants: the last--and the greatest--gift of capitalism.
3
Economies, like nature, being part of nature, are zero sum. That does not mean if you consume more, I must work more and consume less, but that the only way everyone consumes more is by everyone producinng more.
Profit is money not paid to workers but obtained from consumers who get it one way or another from workers paid to produce what is consumed. Unless profits are not totally spent on consumption, there will be no money to pay for consuming what is produced.
Debt is a way to shift pay for work to the past or the future, but taking high profits by putting consumers in equal debt will end up with a reckoning of default, "wealth" destruction, and bankruptcy redistribution of wealth, by a government technocrat (bankruptcy judge).
tanstaafl - voodoo aka free lunch economics fails whether winnners and losers are picked by the left or right. Study Keynes "general theory". The problem is too little capital; the solution is to pay more workers to build more capital.
1
A sunny intellectual, finger wagging about how small our dreams are, is the typical gateway thug who ultimately ushers in the next collective failure. And of course, some nation or some empire will collapse in the virtuous attempt. Capital can only be produced by an exchange between those with capital and those offering something they want. The government can only tax and redistribute. Cloaking an old idea, long ago wrestled over by thousands of other intellectuals, with new, gleaming visions of the future, is a slight of hand for feeble minds. Yes, the future will come, one way or another. But let us hope it is firmly embedded in the dynamic system that has brought the most happiness and prosperity to the most people across the globe: Capitalism.
8
The author starts with a long preamble and ends up giving less space on the actual topic.
The truth is technology drives the social contract which in turn drives economic policy.
With the invention of the steam engine and the flying shuttle came the industrial revolution. This led to capitalism as we know it. All there in history books.
The question is, what is going to happen with the rising IT revolution leading to automated factories and cities. We do not need to “work”. What would we “do”?
The truth is that, with the rise of IT, we see the rise of products of “online communes” that are challenging and replacing products from “capitalist economies”. Linux and Wikipedia are good examples.
A major industry of tomorrow would be to clean our oceans of plastic. What would you call that?
You can label the future in whatever way you want but the truth is that the existing social contract, to sound Marxist, ‘shall wither away’.
5
After reading many of the posts on this thread I'm tempted to recycle Cool Hand Luke: What we got here is a failure of imagination. Not surprising. If you live in a dystopia everything you can imagine that seems realistic, including alternatives, takes on similarly dystopic shapes. Part of the problem is the aspect of human history that elicited the observation by Marx, that "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living". That's the nightmare we must wake from in order to create a new paradigm for human life. That will require us to abandon our drive to dominate each other, and by extension to dominate nature, and to learn to live with each other and within nature. It's that, or accepting our fate in the Sixth Mass Extinction we are now creating.
8
It might said of a physician who correctly diagnoses someone as ill while prescribing generous doses of mercury as having prescribed a treatment worse than the disease. That is Marx, and that is communism.
Marx was an idealist who imagined a world where everyone's need would be taken care of. Unfortunately, his prescription involved a misunderstanding and misapplication of the dialectic; and in the end, the violent revolution as the ultimate exercise against oppression. Subsequently, his followers believe that power comes from the barrel of the gun. Many have tried to enforce Marxist dogma only to fail and fail miserably, as millions can attest.
The latest nightmare? Venezuela today. One cannot solve human conflict within and between by force.
4
Optimism is good and I like some of the ideas, but I have some problems with this.
I wouldn't even had picked up on the biggest one a few months ago. The author begins with the assumption, shared by many, that markets are the same as "capitalism." They are not. Adam Smith was studying markets almost a hundred years before "capitalism" was coined.
Markets are using money to facilitate trade and the relationships that grow up around that trade.
Capitalism is the continuous demand by the owners of capital that government interfere in markets on their behalf.
For example, a corporation does not exist in nature. A corporation is chartered by a government. It is not a person. It is a fictitious entity designed to shield shareholders from responsibility for their business. Every corporation is a government interference in the free market for shareholders.
I don't know what luxury communism is, but we can move past capitalism and still have markets. We can have decisions that are appropriate for markets decided by the movement of money, and democracy, which IS our government according to the Constitution, can step in when markets are not the most efficient solution, like with heath insurance which violates all off the pre-requisites for a functioning market.
I wouldn't be too.eager to trade in the Constitution for a new political system. It is designed to scaffold the way into the future, and it keeps Ris from going backwards.
Protect the Constitution from capitalism.
7
i cant think of a more effective way to impoverish the world than to adopt a communist system. all the great scientific and technological advances mentioned in the article were the result of a capitalist economic system. most of the problems with income inequality are the result of governments intervention with capitalist free markets which tends to distort the efficient allocation of resources and wealth. i am an inveterate meat eater, but i would prefer if my meat did not come at the expense of an animal. so i am looking forward to being able to eat cultured meat.
3
Wait. Wasn’t this part of the premise of the movie Wall-E? Mankind had made earth uninhabitable. So they all took off on giant spaceships, where nobody had to work; where their needs were all taken care of. What happened? They all got lazy, and fat.
.
Let me propose a different vision of the future. (As an architect that’s something I enjoy doing). Automation has made factories smaller and cheaper. A micro-factory that makes tee-shirts (or baseball caps, or shoes) can fit in a single car garage and costs about as much as a pickup truck. Most houses are net-zero, with solar panels and rain cisterns providing power and water. In places prone to flooding, they are built on stilts - and so are the roads. Many have small apartments attached to help the owners pay their mortgages and to provide affordable rental housing (while encouraging socio economic diversity). Creative types like me are able to embrace the ‘gig economy’ as healthcare is universal and the computers and specialized software we need have become more affordable. A flexible, universal minimum wage that increases with inflation helps allow all of us keep looking up and to the future. Our taxes and regulations have been reworked to help individuals and small businesses, while large corporations pay their share.
.
We work. But we work at the things that interest us and that we enjoy. It isn’t drudgery.
12
This gentleman has it 100% right. Unless we blunder into a nuclear war or some other catastrophe, our future is unimaginably excellent, with eradication of diseases, a reasonable living standard for everybody, and time for everyone to pursue whatever they would do if they didn't need to spend so much time working, like playing the saxophone, off-roading, dance, or whatever you like. Large amounts of money will produce diminishing returns, even as they do now. Who needs 11 houses? Imagine where we came from, with torture in the public square the main entertainment 500 years ago. Now most of us have 200 channels. Our future is that, to the nth degree.
8
Add free birth control, that's strongly encouraged. Most all of the world's problems become simpler to solve with fewer people. Media take note.
6
The problem isn't that robots, physical or virtual, can do all the work. The problem is who owns the robots.
Right now the Valley is essentially devoted to embedding all human knowledge into software. Google and Facebook collect much of it as a side-effect of their surveillance economics business models. Everytime you complete a reCAPTCHA challenge to prove your humanith. to a website, you are helping Google build its proprietary vision technology that it resells to others. The opthalmologist who 'collaborates' with Google by labeling pictures of macular and degeneration and diabetic damaged retinas is literally embedding his lifetime of knowledge (and that of countless colleagues and researchers into their systems. With sufficient early entry into the "market" for automated diagnosis Google can build an insurmountable lock on these activities. If shared this can be all for the good. If turned into a proprietary service platform, not so. Look at the index of the web owned by Google or the Social Graph owned by Facebook for prior examples.
The problem isn't the robots and so-called AIs that operationalize our collective knowledge. It's who owns the robots.
7
Sounds like living in China.
5
Wow! Look at all the upvoted right wing rebuttals! It almost looks like they were notified that a straw-man argument was being constructed....
Is this satire? It is, right?
8
The conclusion is all wrong but I was struck by this phrase which describes the here and now and incontrovertible:
"It is as if humanity has been afflicted by a psychological complex, in which we believe the present world is stronger than our capacity to remake it "
Communism was but a name given to the stage of mankind when a Communist Party was required to represent the proletariat as they strove to progress to the utopia described in this article - all theoretical Marxism, of course - which Marx understood to be socialism.
The complex that the present world is stronger than our capacity to remake it is imposed on a sufficiently large portion of the population by billionaires who have little reason to remake anything. Why would they? As far as they are concerned, it's all good. They have only to convince a majority of the population in the West that they will lose more than they will gain if things change. They don't have to show anything; they have only to instill putative fear and offer the alternative - security. They certainly do not lack the economic means to do so. Progressives have only their ideas. The good news is that we (all of us) have seen enough technological progress to know that anything is possible. It is time to say the possible is only being impeded by the "conservative" who would be happy to see all humanity come to a dead stop as long as he can conserve his relative position, while the rest of humanity rots.
2
The fundamental problem with any communist system is that the allocation of resources is controlled by the people with power. If you think money controls politicians now, what happens when nothing controls them?
7
@David
I agree. Communism won't work until we are all mature enough that anarchy would work.
2
Mr. Bastani is indeed correct. A utopian future beckons, and the timely elimination of capitalism will herald automated luxury. I’ve just spoken to Elizabeth Warren, and we’ve added this $846 trillion program to her list of federal priorities. (The rich will pay for it, so all good.)
5
The purpose of life is to acquire the resources and power to reproduce. Unfortunately, that will be the end of us all. It's depressing to acknowledge that Thanos was right
Sorry, but the most pressing crisis of all is NOT " ..an absence of collective imagination". It is too many people. Period. We would not need any of this if the world held a sustainable number of humans. Articles like this ignore all the other creatures that inhabit this world of ours, to our long term peril.
6
"We inhabit a world of low growth, low productivity and low wages, of climate breakdown and the collapse of democratic politics. A world where billions, mostly in the global south, live in poverty. A world defined by inequality."
Yes, we do. But you would deny many of those billions a source of sustenance and livelihood, i.e., agriculture and grazing. A handful of engineers and factories producing artificial food won't feed billions, nor will those billions be employed as engineers or factory managers.
Please spare me the high tech solutions to every problem. "But that’s only a problem if you think work — as a cashier, driver or construction worker — is something to be cherished. For many, work is drudgery. And automation could set us free from it."
Not working can make us free.
Technophiles have been beating this drum for decades if not centuries. It's laughable. I'm all for big ideas and better life for all (including me), but not for roboticising and genetically modifying everything. That's a dystopia. That's the Morlocks without the Eloi.
Asteroid mining. In spite of the breathless superlatives here presented, the energy costs are *enormous* and energy has a tendency to be stubborn. Iron for 1000 times the cost that it is now? Makes trxmp's tariffs look like a price cut.
Sure let's go beyond capitalism, I'm all for it, but there has to be an exchange mechanism. There's no way around that, and the author doesn't have any idea how to deal with that.
Oil was never a resource until human ingenuity made it so to fill up our cars and turn on lights. But we are locked into its economic system, until the next invention made up by human ingenuity comes along. But advancements in energy development are controlled in part by the energy industry that does not have a vested interest to change. Technology is advancing at such a rapid speed, and with it, change. We don't have to get in a huff over the words capitalism or communism. How about Universal Basic Income? This concept is not rocket science - and the reality is that machines will replace more and more jobs, as history has shown already. People can still work - and do jobs that they love - others can work and make money by selling products and ideas. But a baseline is provided. Think of all the great minds out there, maybe your own, that is wasted in doing a job to pay your bills. Why not have the freedom to use your brilliance - and be able have health care and put food on the table? Whether we like it or not, change is inevitable. It's coming. I vote for Utopia, not Dystopia.
I totally support this.
The only thing to add is that we must unite to smash the followers of Fully Automated Luxury Nazism.
6
Judging from the comments, it looks like I’m the only person who read this piece as a joke.
5
@JoesphDeeFoq
Nope - We're just using the word 'joke' in a different sense.
"We inhabit a world of low growth" Not so fast.
We have NOT managed to slow human population growth (we haven't even tried), and please don't babble about the rate of growth, that's immaterial. Retarding the human birthrate is relatively simple: free birth control for all humans, worldwide.
A growing population, sucking up more resources, causing more pollution, causing the extinction of more wildlife species, making the environment more uninhabitable, exacerbates ALL our problems.
Mr. Bastani misses the point about the danger of capitalism: it's ONE principle is ROI, and that means GROWTH. But we inhabit a finite planet. Capitalism MUST lose that conflict, if we are to survive as a species. And that means we must reduce the consumer base, AND evolve our economic system to one which accepts the finite nature of our home planet (which MUST remain "livable"".
3
Aaahhahaha! Thank you for the best comic relief I've had all month. Oh, "communism will totally work now because gene splicing and stuff!" And your reasoning is to get the most out of all those whizzy technologies by ending the system that created them!! Oh this is too rich, your talent for irony is unmatched. Oh, wait, you were SERIOUS?!?!
6
You missed the "gay space" part of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. Us gays are the only ones with imagination anymore.
5
Why would the NYT seriously publish what appears to be a joke? This is really just nonsense.
4
We have both a breakdown in democracy and capitalism, both of which must be addressed. We do not have the tools yet to address capitalism, and as such, I would not recommend its overthrow.
We do, however, have an alternative to democracy: dispense with elections and replace it with random selection — the higher the office, the higher the qualification. As long as venal and narcissistic megalomaniacs are in charge, we will never progress beyond our current age of crisis.
'Cultured' food for thought.'Communism' may not be the most apt word choice here--I would prefer something like 'comprehensive affluence' or 'universalism'--but he may relish being a provocateur. The catch is not necessarily capitalism per se, but a collective delusional capitalism that preaches maximization of profit to the exclusion of all else. He paints a rosy future, but the 'how to get there' part is the weak link. The road to hell is always paved with good intentions; the path to utopia with carnage and roadkill.
1
There is no effective difference between the far left and the far right. Both are hell-bent on imposing their worldview on others and destroying peoples freedom’s in one form or another.
2
The world is based on greed and racism. We don’t mind stepping over people in the street or reading about starving children.
We go to church every Sunday and act as if we care and want to make a better world,
We could of had electric cars decades ago but Wall Street said no
We can do anything but greed dictates how and when we change
Money counts humanity doesn’t matter, children dining just doesn’t matter .
Fully Automated Luxury Delusion. It sells books possibly, it is nonsense in reality.
4
Overpopulation.
Overpopulation will always block freedom.
Overpopulation will deplete what little is left of the environment.
Overpopulation + capitalism ?
Oh my god !
(and that being said by an atheist!)
2
This reads like the monologue of a sci-fi super-villain, right before he reveals the ingredient of his equivalent of Soylent Green.
3
I see most of readers are stuck in the comunist word and they miss the point. I strongly recommend the author to try find another word. At least for the American people..
If not for the struggle, what is life's purpose ?
2
This is the same dream that begat industrialism: the dream that the machine will someday set us free.
**For many, work is drudgery. And automation could set us free from it.**
It didn't and won't turn out that way, but the dream persists. It won't turn out that way bc automation presumes a vast industrial basis, and nothing in this op-ed accounts for that.
What resources does this industrialism require to fulfill the dream that machines will someday set us free?
Yes, we need more excuses to refuse to work, to demand hand-outs, and proclaim that any voice that opposes the move the towards a Maoist communist revolution as sexists, fascists, racists you know the drill.
3
two billion more people on the planet by 2050 -- is not slow growth to me.
Batani is correct in that we do need to reimagine the future. Maybe more virtual everything.. and then Jason Horowitz can stay at home with his wife and kids and enjoy Rome and Venice and the Louvre using his/their headset(s)!
Soylent Green is people.
Too many people.
I expect I'll be dead by then.
Gratefully.
Bon appetite.
Cogent clear article on the epochal transformations of technology that are already moving forward.
It inspired me to write much more than this comment word limit. The essence is we are at a crossroads of a epochal nature; meaning more than history, leaders and constituents of governments, but the very existence of what we consider civilization itself.
After many hours I reduced it down to a single question that can be asked of the Democratic presidential candidates that will define their level of courage, and for many their integrity. Clue- not everyone of them are neutral on our national motto, "In God We Trust"
Here's the link to my longer essay:
https://alrodbell.blogspot.com/2019/06/2020-election-that-will-shape-worlds.html
I think a lot of Communist nations do organ harvesting of the vulnerable poor for all the wealthy communist elites.
As their media is censored, by the communist government, you don't read about it.
1
Typical millenial idiocy: "Causes no animal to die." Actually, cause no animal to live, as well. With the exception of wild seafood, all the animals we eat live their lives because of us. With proper husbandry, they live good lives. (Unfortunately, most husbandry is not good husbandry, but much is, and more could be.
If one is concerned about global warming, then one needs to seriously support a carbon tax and, above all, rapid building of safe nuclear power plants. We've wasted thirty or so years by ceding the issue to morons who have no idea of the concept of scaling. For instance, how much space will be required for alternative energy sources?
1
Our demise as a species is not dependent on the form of government we choose to believe in. Our end lies in evolution itself. We monkeys seem to me to have a strange and dangerous predisposition to perceive, to choose and to follow- even die for those with whom we identify, those whom we believe are like us.
The only way we have found in our long and peculiar history to actually keep order in our ranks has been to use opposing forces which would perfectly balance each other were we not fatally flawed creature e.g.the justice system where a man who kills another gives up his life/freedom, yet those responsible for the opioid epidemic are immune; capitalism itself should be balanced by the government, since business men do not, as a rule walk on water.
Man has always known at some level he was doomed. Every system of myth has a disastrous end for its believers. Our era has provide us the means. Intelligence is the counter weight to ignorance, Yet I read recently that the flora and fauna in my gut have a direct line to my brain and, yes, I'm over weight.
I think there is a very real reason that we have never found the slightest trace of intelligent life in this almost infinite universe.
Let us all hope I am very, very wrong; but our present political situation doesn't seem to contradict what I fear.
Our demise as a species is not dependent on the form of government we choose to believe in. Our end lies in evolution itself. We monkeys seem to me to have a strange and dangerous predisposition to perceive, to choose and to follow- even die for those with whom we identify, those whom we believe are like us. The only way we have found in our long and peculiar history to actually keep order in our ranks has been to use opposing forces which would perfectly balance each other were we not fatally flawed creature e.g.the justice system where a man who kills another gives up his life/freedom, yet those responsible for the opioid epidemic are immune; capitalism itself should be balanced by the government, since business men do not, as a rule walk on water.
Man has always known at some level he was doomed. Every system of myth has a disastrous end for its believers. Our era has provide us the means. Intelligence is the counter weight to ignorance, Yet I read recently that the flora and fauna in my gut have a direct line to my brain and, yes, I'm over weight.
I think there is a very real reason that we have never found the slightest trace of intelligent life in this almost infinite universe.
Let us all hope I am very, very wrong; but our present political situation doesn't seem to contradict what I fear.
Sadly, the quanta of energy required for such a global reformation is greater than the Schwarzchild radius of that black hole known as human nature, and so does not exist, if you are implying "we" could ever do such things.
One lands stands out from the rest:
"It is as if humanity has been afflicted by a psychological complex, in which we believe the present world is stronger than our capacity to remake it."
I often wonder about the national "can't-do" spirit in the United States. We face many serious problems, and for whatever reason, "there's nothing to be done," is a hardwired cultural response to many of them. Take or leave the rest of this piece: the can't-do spirit has to change.
2
The cell-cultured meat companies cited in this article aim to eliminate the moral issues of animal-based meat for vegetarians, but a company still in stealth-mode in the Valley aims to address the biggest taboo of all with a truly HUGE market.
"Eat the Rich" is developing laboratory grown meat cultured from cells sourced from some of the biggest names in technology, finance, entertainment and politics.
Look for ETR's IvankaBurger (TM) at better restaurants and Whole Foods in 2020.
Our economic system is certainly at a crossroads. Capitalism is based on consumers as producers and producers as consumers. Henry Ford recognized this axiom and made his cars affordable to those who built them. Many other companies also followed this path.
However, today most producers are robots, and they consume nothing more than electricity or battery power. Meanwhile, a large and increasing number of real-live human consumers are not producing, yet still must consume to live. (Working in retail is not production, by the way, and it's often boring and repetitive, like the factory work that robots now perform. Thankfully, robots care little about repetitive tasks.)
Yet, we want more than leisure. Certainly we can find ways to engage citizens in creative projects that enhance our environment and society and provide their means of "thrival" without requiring that profit ensue.
Das Kapital by Karl Marx envisioned communism emerging or unfolding from a fully formed capitalist society, not a feudal society. It was this type of "government" from which most instances of "communism" resulted, with many disastrous results. The infrastructure and consciousness in advanced nations such as ours is now mature enough for evolution.
What a pleasant Utopian fantasy! Alas, in the real world, the contradiction--between the immense increase in productivity brought about by technology under Capitalism and the impoverishment of the majority of the population whose labor creates this wealth--has been a characteristic contradiction of the Capitalist system from its very beginning. As Marx wrote back in 1867, "There cannot be the slightest doubt of the tendency that urges capital . . . to convert every improvement in machinery into a more perfect means of exhausting the workman." . . . No magical quantitative improvement in technology will eliminate this qualitative difference, between a system based on private ownership of the means of production by a few wealthy powerful individuals and a Socialist society based on sharing the benefits of science and technology with all the population.
4
Count me out. This does not at all describe a world populated by human beings. And I'm leaving out my rebuttal of the numerous technically unfeasible figments of his "imagination."
2
At least a new view of economics and politics.
I have always wondered the proactive role of capitalism in attacking any perceived threat like communism ended up causing more pain. I agree communism is heartless and evil. So is capitalism.
If the US hadn't ever gone to Vietnam or Afghanistan. If the West hadn't fostered brutal dictators in Africa and Asia to prevent communism.
Maybe the US would have been richer.
And not locked in terminal combat with China.
1
Mr. Bastani's vision harkens back the to work of Stafford Beer, particularly in his seminal "Platform for Change." He had a dream that cybernetics theory and control-system theory could build a rational and efficient production web without the many layers of price signals. It has taken 25 years, but with the deployment of sensors and AI, this vision is closer to reality than ever. ( check out an Amazon warehouse ) The bigger challenges are can we ever free ourselves from faith in THE MARKET and what do we have to give up to enter this 'utopia?'
1
Once food, clothing and housing can be net at negligible cost, then you change society. At that point, everyone can be given a basic lifestyle that is cost sustainable. As a note, Communism does not have to mean tyranny just as capitalism does not necessarily mean representative democracy.
With that said, there will still problems to solve, machines to invent, infrastructure to build and maintain, children to teach, a universe to explore and organizations to run.
Therefore, work will be with us for a very long time. The question for society is whether they decide to extend the experience of a GREAT education to every child. The alternative is to provide a great education to some, and buy off the rest with a universal basic income/lifestyle that most honest observes would find acceptable.
I think if we figure out how to educate all children with a good education, then people will happily sort themselves out based on their talent, willingness to work, lifestyle needs and intellectual curiosity/pursuits.
2
I think there will always be a "profit" motive to taking risks or investing in difficult to acquire skills. The profit may not be monetary, but provide an advantageous life style. Even in Star Trek world it is good to be the captain.
Their might be more altruist people out there, but it definitely is a minority.
Assuming the end point is universal income or retirement at 50 for all or another means to redistribute "work", the main question is how you go from where we are to where we should be going to move from have to work to survive to pursuing "work" for social engagement not survival.
1
The main problem with communism is that in practice it never moved beyond the totalitarian state. Marx believed in a transitional period of statism before the reins would be handed over to the workers. In practice, the state has never given up power once it gets it. Revolutionaries tend to take on the worst aspects of the regimes they replace.
4
"More speculatively, asteroid mining ... could provide us with not only more energy than we can ever imagine but also more iron, gold, platinum and nickel. Resource scarcity would be a thing of the past."
That's a non sequitur. Asteroids aren't a source of clean air or water.
More to the point, any material "mined" in space would need to have its kinetic energy dissipated before landing on the Earth's surface. If done on a large scale, there could be environmental effects.
Any malfunctions while entering the Earth's atmosphere could cause the material to crash to the Earth or to burn up during entry.
Also, energy would be required to move material from the asteroid's orbit to the Earth's orbit.
2
Fortunately there is a natural constraint on the use of AI-powered automation and robotics.
Capitalism requires markets.
Markets are made by people who have money to spend.
No job, no money, no market participation.
And no job, no money, no market participation ultimately means anarchy.
That’s not to say that business owners won’t try to locally optimise the labour cost of their own business in the name of remaining competitive through the use of AI-powered automation and robotics ...... all the while hoping they can transfer the social cost of unemployment to the state.
1
Reminds me of John Kenneth Galbraith's 'The Affluent Society'. Shift something here, tweek sonething there and all will be wonderful. Didn't happen.
Not that it couldn't happen; I just need to know who will be in charge.
3
Sounds good, I'm in.
If society can reach an equitable solution: to poverty, homelessness, inadequate medical care, adequate housing, for all, an end to the heartless vampires in "Pharma", non toxic foods, and did I forget pollution that is out of control, because the folks who are responsible for the pollution are, currently, the ones who are in control of the EPA, then I'm in.
Well, if all this can happen before we destroy the world in which we live, before the billionaires and their families become targets of an angry population which has had enough, or, rather, not enough.
I see it coming, I feel sorry for my children and my grandchildren; my friends and their progeny.
For me, it's a sad moment in time. However, the predicted reality will have little, or, no impact on me. When all this comes to be, I'll, be dead
3
Capitalism is evil? Perhaps. But tell me who is funding the meatless meat and sky high longevity?
5
I love technology. It is the future, and it will continue to improve lives in countless ways. But it will not eliminate work (nor should it), and it will not make Communism viable or desirable.
The asteroid mining example should be the give-away. The more technology frees us from current burdens and responsibilities, the more we will look to the next big thing and the more we will shoot for the stars. We will still work, we will just work on new things. That is ... if we are allowed the freedom to do so.
A Communist system that cuts off further innovation and simply delves out the luxuries that our free market created would lead to a mass of idle consumers and result in nothing but apathy and depression.
11
The Earth was designed by millions and millions of years of evolution to be perfect for humans. Perfect. So long as we share it with the future and don't let ourselves overpopulate it. That's all we have to do to live on this perfect spaceship. The fossil fuel age helped us learn how to do more with less. We have a perfect spaceship with a tidal energy satellite called the moon and a perfect distance from a star. Nearly infinite available clean energy. It turns out that humans are too impulsive and too afraid to understand. Space ships, asteroid mining (for gold, for all useless things),
1
To accomplish Bastani's proposal, all we have to do is:
-Understand and manage the complexity of every economic activity on earth in real time, including the subtle whims and needs of every living thing.
-Learn how to prevent power from concentrating in the hands of the few people who will inevitably be in charge (this happened in communist countries too, not just capitalist ones.)
-Completely eliminate any competitive drives in humans.
-Convince everyone on earth to cooperate with this plan, while still allowing everyone basic liberties.
His proposal needs a LOT more R & D.
6
@Chris
"-Convince everyone on earth to cooperate with this plan, while still allowing everyone basic liberties."
He didn't promise that one. And if Communism could actually deliver everything else (it cannot), it would still come at the price of our liberty, and should be rejected out of hand for that reason alone.
6
"To grasp it, however, will require a new politics. One where technological change serves people, not profit. "
I would love to see that day, but doubt I ever will. We are not people, we are "consumers," and the stranglehold on our humanity by the Corporations grows stronger and more likely by the day.
1
How does adding the word “luxury” fix the typical problems of communism in practice, like the difficulties that come from abolishing private property?
2
This kind of thinking makes me scream. It makes my head explode. Leave aside scrapping capitalism - I can get behind that. It's the delusional assertion by a certain cohort of male techno geeks that we can somehow imagine our way out of our ruinous disconnection with our world (reality) by digging our hole deeper. We know what to do, we know what works: living in harmony with our very own environment, on which we are utterly dependent. But that's not exciting to tech junkies.
Just one question for you Mr. Bastani: what makes you think we aren't going to screw up robots, asteroid mining, etc. In your vision we suddenly get cooperative and competent? OK.
103
@JS You say "It's the delusional assertion by a certain cohort of male techno geeks that we can somehow imagine our way out of our ruinous disconnection with our world (reality) by digging our hole deeper. We know what to do, we know what works: living in harmony with our very own environment, on which we are utterly dependent."
Everything in this piece is consistent with a return to harmony with the environment. Subtract factory farming and mass grazing of cattle so you can reforest the earth. Automate care for the elderly so they can putter around and be social in the public garden.
21
@JS I'm with the author here. I agree with you about relying on techno geek to solve everything. But the overriding point here is that an optimistic attitude is needed, and even more important: that winner take all capitalism vs a share the goodness type of system is a conversation that's much needed.
15
@JS -- Anyone who has been close to semiconductor fabrication technology will understand just how fragile our human civilization has become. A sage can look at a chunk of granite, a piece of wood and a bucket of water and envision them turning into a smart phone or a whataburger. The real story of "how" is not so simple, especially when we are killing each other to reach that last remaining can of Campbells Soup.
8
I do not want to get there, Aaron.
1
The automated dictatorship police - Sounds good, doesn’t it?
1
Not a word about incentives in this piece. For things to work, there have to be incentives to make them work. Otherwise, they won’t work.
Also: solutions that don’t attract voluntary cooperation (because incentives are lacking) will have to be implemented by force. The precisely is how communist regimes operate: they use force.
Also: Mr. Bastani seems to think that high-tech enterprises can be set up to run automatically. Karl Marx thought the same: he presumed that capitalists set up factories, hired workers and collected profits.
I’m a financial planner. My clients are self-made entrepreneurs. For Mr. Bastani’s information: if the owner of a business isn’t there every day, keeping a sharp eye on everything, the enterprise will founder.
Also: we don’t know how people will behave once given a guaranteed income. Our experience with welfare is not encouraging. Will they turn to mischief? They’re not going to sit around doing nothing, and they’re not going to immerse themselves in the history of Renaissance art. They’ll be interested in entertainment and in mischief: drugs for example.
Yes, excessive inequality is a problem. We love to scapegoat the 1%, but the greedy 1% didn’t create the problem. The principal causes of it are: 1) the rise of the service economy; 2) low-wage competition from abroad; and 3) the virtual tax on incomes, very large, that medical cost inflation imposes on employees.
How to fix it? Don’t know, although I do know this: not by going communist.
6
Love this imaginative and constructive piece. It reads like an update on Keynes's "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren."
One suggestion: lose the "c" word. As you can see in the comments, it's bad marketing.
2
This piece describes exactly what I used to think whenever "cybernation" was discussed back in 1960s. It's great to dream though. Given US "work ethic" indoctrination and the apparent inability of the average person to find something creative to do like read a book or build furniture, I don't hold out much hope. I believed for a short time that I would be able to live as an artist and writer but, instead, was chained to horrific jobs for decades. I also believe that humans would be freed up to participate in an aesthetic revolution. For the sake of future generations, including young people today, I hope this dream can be realized for them.
1
There is only one biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species that began in Africa 300, 000 years ago.
As one of three closely related surviving African primate apes- bonobo, chimpanzee and human- we are driven by our nature and nurture to crave fat, salt, sugar, habitat, water, kin and sex by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation.
Every scientific technological human advance has costs and benefits. There are 7.3 billion and growing humans left to wrestle with tomorrow.
Dr. King warned against the combination of unfettered capitalism, militarism and racism that has made America first in money, arms and prisoners.
3
Hieronymus Bosch? Asteroids? Nah, nah, nah.
The means of production will be developed by the next generation's Steve Jobs.
British futurist James Burke ("Connections," "The Day the Universe Changed") has forecast that in the next 50 years, nanotechnology will allow families in homes to make most anything they want. A nano-fabricator and variations of a 3-D printer will make things from a sack of dirt. It will simply rearrange the atoms to what we want.
Thus, scarcity will no longer be integral to economics. People will have a different concept of personal property. The relationship of identity to property will be totally different. Hence, a lot of laws on the books will be obsolete.
Right now in the age of robots and increasingly efficient clean power, scarcity should be less of a problem. But it is because powerful corporations do not want to share in the least. Old school economics and scarcity are used to control vast swaths of the population to an unnecessary degree. We live in an age of high-tech serfs and vassals but hoi polloi do not realize it.
We should be rearrange society for our new age of plenty, with an eye on the distant future in which there will be next to no scarcity.
https://foresight.org/changing-world-nanofabricator-make-anything/
2
The simple solution is to encourage having fewer children!
Population reduction is the only solution.
As it is--and I admit I didn't read the piece, since anything advocating silly concepts isn't worth a darn--nothing less than that will mean that indeed those million or so species slated for extinction will be followed by more millions, unless maybe the first million will so imperil the life support systems we depend on to such a degree as to do the job for us. Humans cannot stop making a hash of the planet.
Cheerio, fools
1
There are some ideas that just won't die . Mainly because as P.T Barnum once said , " There's a sucker born every minute."
What's that definition of insanity , " Failing at the same thing over and over again , but believing that this time you can make it work."
3
Of course we could...but unfortunately the psychopaths who run the world won't give up their power so easily, so most of the rest of us will continue to work ourselves to death for their benefit until enough of us wake up to how the world really works and demand change.
1
I love the vision -- much like Oscar Wilde's 19th century ideal of socialism being ancient Greece with robot/automation replacing human slaves -- but how will it avoid the problems that caused the earlier Communism, ie Marxism-Leninism, to collapse?? That's a question that can't be glossed over with slogans about "human needs not profits".
1
Just what we needed. Yet another sure-fire plan to save the world. Ho-hum. If any of the previous plans had worked, we wouldn't need these new pipe-dreams.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
2
Apparently the NYT comment section leans more ‘Star Wars’ than ‘Star Trek.’
3
Sounds like a wonderful "non-worker's" paradise, Comrade!
2
Wrong word choice Mr. Bastani. The word Communism, as commonly defined, means state ownership of all property, state control of all media and gulags for dissidents. That arrangement has not worked out very well. I think what you mean instead is an economic system where all human labor, except for political and creative activities, has been replaced by machines so that it no longer serves as a basis to determine wealth distribution, which is instead determined by other criteria which you seem to believe will be humane, such as 'to each according to his needs...'. There could still be the same mix of private and public property as now.
3
It is always an either-or proposition. Either communism will drag us down to the lowest common denominator where we will all stay, or capitalism will make some of us rich at the expense of condemning the majority of us to eternal poverty.
How about exploring the possibilities of what might work for all of us while leaving room for individual improvement or self actualization and preventing our worst impulses from taking over to the detriment of all. We need imagination not lines in the sand.
81
@Cab
Dragging us down the way communism has made everyone poor in China ?
Or are you willing to admit China is only thinly a Communist country, like Vietnam?
There are no communist countries on this planet. True communism might work, but there have been zero examples of truly communist countries on the planet.
And no, I’m not a supporter.
I support true democracy, which unfortunately even the U.S. lacks, since we are a Representative Republic.
One person, one vote.
And companies are NOT people.
5
The is one large flaw is the innate greed of humans. From the time humans were hunter and gathers, to now, there have always been people who had to rule over others. There has never been full equality. See "animal Farm".
When humans settled into communities, and started farming, they were required to pay a tribute of grain to those who protected and ruled over them. It did not take long for these rulers to raise armies to go after other villages so they could control more grain, human resources and wealth. Conquered peoples were enslaved, were forced to pay tribute, or were slaughtered.
The concept of money was invented, to represent the wealth of what rulers had in grain. This made capitalism more portable. As more "precious" metals were found, the coinage took own its various forms of wealthy. Stones gave way to copper, bronze, silver and finally gold.
As human "civilization" spread with its new found form of capitalism, larger and larger empires grew and fell. War became on constant companion; which still exists to this day.
Capitalism has changed over the rt6eh past 10,000 years. Establishment of democracies allowed more to share the wealth. But, the 98% world's wealth is still concentrated in the hands of the very few.
Human greed will never adopt Automated Luxury Capitalism. The wealthy will not give up their wealth, or control. If anything, they want to take back the 2% they don't have. The want a world of "1984"/"Brave New world" not "Star Trek".
6
The author of this piece is 100% correct in positing a poverty of the collective imagination. Part of the problem is the education system where professors teach what they know, not how to approach the unknown. The other is political. As we know, we are in the grips of a paralysis of political imagination. Conservatives are not conservative at all. They are a cult who worship at the altar of low taxes, hypocritical piety, and willful disregard for the coming climate catastrophe. It seems time to make some big moves. What did you do to preserve civilization daddy?
3
How about Semi-Automated Sustainism?
If we want to have a future with vibrant human societies on Earth, we must create a sustainable, circular economy that works at the speed of the planet.
Everything that we manufacture must be designed so that it can be de-manufactured and returned to the Earth without poisoning people, animals or plants.
If robots take over dangerous and repetitive jobs, then we must come up with more enriching creative jobs. For example, the subsistence farmer goes into eco-repair or craft art or tourism.
And we would definitely need to reward people who choose not to have kids. Children benefit from having multiple adults in their lives who can devote time to them, so maybe it needs to become fashionable to be a god parent or auntie or uncle who is a second parent without birthing their own kids.
Communism has too many bad associations--and it's not what we need anyway. We need an improved way of living that is more harmonious with the natural cycles of the Earth.
4
Many of the commenters here are apparently strangers to science fiction, from where Mr. Bastani borrows most of his ideas.
In principle, everything he is saying makes sense; he's advocating a "post-scarcity society," where there's enough for everybody, "work" and "leisure" are synonymous (you are free to pursue whatever endeavor gives you satisfaction), and money is unnecessary because everything costs essentially nothing.
If you want to see such societies at (fictional, but well-realized) work, go read authors like Iain M. Banks, whose Culture novels are all set on the fringes of such a society, or go watch Star Trek TNG, which adequately captured the utopian spirit of people living in such a world.
The problem is not that this isn't a good ambition or aim point - it is - but that we're not even close. Still, we must have a point to navigate towards before we can set out, and yes, a post-scarcity future is the only ethical future waypoint yet imagined.
6
It's not capitalism that needs to end - it's greed. When we are satisfied with enough, and not hungering for too much, we will succeed.
3
Less than 100 yards from my apartment building, in the north east corner on Yesler and 6th Avenue South is a homeless encampment - right next to the I-5 freeway. The police come and clear it out and city workers clean the place up every couple of months but within days it full again.
Those who populate these homeless encampments are surrounded by the Greater Seattle area's incredible wealth - yet the City of Seattle, the fine cities of King County and the many private organizations, churches etc. are unable effectively to deal with this issue - despite annual costs which are estimated by some at US$40,000/year/homeless person.
One of the challenges to effective solutions is that aid comes in many and disparate forms: There's a free meal Wednesday night on Broadway and Pike, free breakfast in Bellevue at a church 3 days a week, a "pay what you can" medical clinic in Renton, occupational training offered by a joint effort by the City of Seattle and King County... Say you're homeless, you don't have a car, can't afford public transit and what resources you do have go to food and some means of shelter - usually a tent. It's no wonder the homeless problem in Seattle is growing despite the city's plan to eliminate it in 10 years - a program which began in 2005? or so...
Can you tell me we don't need some creative and constructive imagination here or in our society in general?
We are taught to see all the flaws in communism but seem blind to those in capitalism.
5
Back in the mid-60s, our 4th-grade class assembled in the gym now and then to watch amazing movies, with marvelous animations, about modern science--space travel, atomic energy, etc. (I seem to remember they were produced by Bell Labs.)
One movie promised us that by the time we were adults, automation and AI would make it possible for us not to work at all, unless we wished, in which case we'd spend 3 hours a day at creative, fulfilling work. It was going to be wonderful.
Won't get fooled again.
2
Nixon and Reagan shot that dream down.
1
We had embraced capitalism and religion to differentiate us from communism and their atheism. And now are stuck with it and over a period of decades, we have enabled vested interests in capitalism. And in the 1980s when U.S.S.R fell we took it as vindication capitalism instead of seeing it as a failure of authoritarian rule, vested economy, corruption, alienation of public economic good, etc.
6
Buckminster Fuller is worth a read if you can adjust to his writing style. His ideas and his works were toward this end and quite amazing. He proposed that the planet belongs to everyone and technology could ultimately provide everything needed by humanity.
1
I also don’t see why people cling to work as though it provides the only path to a fulfilling life. My job is great, sure it provides purpose... but I could also find purpose in making music and art all day without having to worry about producing things for money. Or in exploring the solar system. Humanity could be endlessly engaged in creating things that are beautiful rather than necessary. We need work to find purpose in our current society, because one doesn’t derive much meaning from starving.
7
Technology is a simple trade-off- a quality life now, for the slow destruction of the environment impacting future generations. Every technology has an unintended consequence on our environment. Better medicine- people living longer using up more resources. High tech farming- allows the population to grow by the billions even though it ruins soil, kills insects and drains water tables. Fossil fuel- allows a gallon of gas to do the labor of hundreds of horses (horsepower) but heats the atmosphere. Solar power- requires fossil fuel to mine lethal battery materials so that power will work when the sun is not shining.
Unfortunately- the 'future generations' affected by the destruction of the planet are becoming not so future. Too bad we were never smart enough to control our population in correlation with the impact of technology on the planet.
1
Decision-making in capitalism is 'one dollar, one vote', while in democracy it's 'one person, one vote'. Our main task is to stop capitalism from purchasing the democracy. Then the democracy can act to sand down capitalism's rough edges. But, decision-making in an economy is more efficiently left to those who have demonstrated an ability to make value. If you drop that, you're left making such decisions 'by committee', with results somewhere between comical and disastrous. I'm very liberal, which in today's age means I want money out of our politics: back to 'one person, one vote'. But never in my wildest dreams would I want an economy that wasn't substantially 'one dollar, one vote'. It's just more efficient.
2
While I agree with the technological optimism I disagree that communism is the way to distribute those gains; an idea that rose and fell in less than a century while inventing little and causing massive shortages of goods we could already make won't help achieve anything - unless the broader sharing of misery is the goal.
Communism fails because of human nature, and that hasn't changed.
3
If there could be a non-Marxist communism it might conceivably work. Marxism, however, has led to famine time and again. Stalin caused a major famine as part of his war against the Kulaks. Mao created the worst famine in all human history--at least 40 million deaths through starvation and probably more--by forcing the people to melt and give the government all their metal products, to be used for weapons. Farmers melted their tools and famine followed. Pol Pot and the Kim Dynasty also caused horrible famines.
What is the country with the greatest gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99%? North Korea.
3
@George Jochnowitz
"The top 1 percent in the United States holds 42.5 percent of national wealth, a far greater share than in other OECD countries. In no other industrial nation does the richest 1 percent own more than 28 percent of their country’s wealth."
https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/
2
@George Jochnowitz I suggest communism fails because workers and managers work best when fueled by greed, competition and ambition , and the governors are much worse when fueled by greed, competition and ambition.
The same human flaws which are also bringing our own capitalist government down.
"Cultured meat"? Might I recommend to Mr. Bastani the movie "Soylent Green".
Asteroid mining? No content with messing up this planet we should now send our spawn to other ones and mine them and otherwise exploit them?
Gene editing. Smacks of early 20th century American eugenics. We may have the tools to do it but I firmly believe we do not have the wisdom to do it.
5
So you would rather eat animal meat that requires massive greenhouse gas emissions than an identical product that doesn’t because of a dated movie?
1
@Lana Lee
Ms Lee, there are no "free lunches". The processing of anything takes energy and has byproducts and emissions.
Regarding the dated movie, never cared it but it did suggest a solution to what may be our primary problem, too many people.
I will soon fall off the perch which will make room for one more.
1
You lost me at synthetic meat.
3
Bastani writes an important article. Hope it's published in the print edition of the NYT.
2
This reminded me of Frederik Pohl's great novel "Space Merchants" in which all of the world's food came from colossal masses of gelatinous protein grown in huge laboratories.
The food was disgusting, but people kept eating it because of addictive substances mixed into it.
Mmm.
_________
“Anybody who sets out to turn the world upside down has no right to complain if he gets caught in its gears.”
– Frederik Pohl
4
Love Pohl! Man Plus is another interesting take on a possible future.
1
The Star Trek economy at last. Beam me up Scotty!
2
What an odd conclusion from his initial supposition: The World is a Mess. Translated this means humans are a political mess and making a mess of the planet. In context of that remark I would think sex education for women in rural villages would be the place to start, or some variant that addresses the 1B new humans we add to the earth ever 8 years. Until we begin to realistically discuss our rampant reproduction, there won't be enough peas for fake meat, or asteroids for all of us, communism, or not.
2
I don't have an intellectual comment to offer on account of suffering from an acute case of Trumpitis. I apologize for that, but as for capitalism ruining my day, I wanted to hear the NBA game last night on the radio because my TV is not working right now.
But in spite of 3 all-sport stations in my town, it is no longer being broadcast live like before, since I can remember. Imagine- not even "sports", the apolitical holy grail of Americana? I couldn't listen to it online either, and I tried everything. The NYT's did run a "live written commentary" every few minutes or so, but that is a "forever" waiting period in basketball. I guess I'll just have to wait
and watch the highlights today. That's not a big deal I guess, like when I was in the hospital and the TV menu only carried Fox News. I detect a deep-state conspiracy here!
1
I didn't read anything about population control. Wish I had.
1
Old ideas. Utopian fantasy rehashed for the millionth time
1
If you have ever seen the Movie "Elysium," give it a try. The world that the author of this article envisions will be available; For the wealthy. The rest of us will be stuck on a world that exists, as it does this very moment, only to supply that fortunate few with the raw materials which will feed their luxurious existence.
2
That is the movie where the poor people you describe have space ships carrying 50 people that can reach near moon orbit (Elysium is supposed to be at a Lagrangian Point for stability) in 15 minutes. Yes, that makes sense.
For all the encouragement to think big, there sure are a lot of small minded comments here. Imagination is in short supply I guess. Imagine this, we are a virus killing our host, the earth.
89
@Joseph
Sorry, I'd rather think smart than think big.
A big thinker now inhabits the White House.
1
The current world us a double mess compared with the world of ten years ago, and the mess is growing more and more...
Is this bad or good? All depends of the perspective of the observer.
1
Communists were unable to even make bread and yet you want to go around one more time. What you wish is precisely the dystopia of Huxley.
112
@Michael F
Communists were people. He is talking about a species capability multiplied by mind blowing technologies.
9
@Michael F
In this universe, technology makes bread. Technology harvest the wheat. did you read the piece. I too think it is too idealistic but it points to a change in resource distribution. Look at how more available goods and services are to the bottom half of the American population. Technology will never solve every problem. I expect a society without any status whould be static.
11
@Michael F
The USSR was never communism. It was an authoritarian state or oligopoly at best. Our biggest mistake was giving them the title of communist, they were a single party rubber stamped dictator.
From my basic understanding, Marx thought communism would occur in a highly industrialized state (like England or Germany) that had strong democratic participation. Those states were more prepared to go to what he thought was the next logical step. They were producing more goods (thus more able to meet everyone's needs/demands) and were more involved with their government via elections and holding politicians accountable. Russia was a backwards agrarian culture. They went from one king to another (just with a different name) when Lenin took over.
They were not ready, nor do I think any nation currently is even close. We're probably hundreds of years if not a millennia away from the maturity to even attempt a new system. It may even be a hybrid version of the two, who knows?
We need more robots and automation to end want. Even more importantly we need to stop wanting so much stuff. Its CONSUMERISM and not capitalism that's the real problem. If you want a luxury watch fine, if you want 6 that's an issue. Living within your means reduces the strain on our resources. Once we find balance and everyone is able to have their needs met then a system like capitalism won't be as necessary however I think it'll be a long time before our world can come together on that one.
57
Sounds good, but completely doing away with capitalism, is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. For all it's flaws, capitalism has both crushed (or coopted) the competition, and powered the phenomenal progress of the past century. Might be some lessons worth keeping.
In it's current state, I'll agree that capitalism needs some serious regulation. Piketty's "Capital in the 21st century" demonstrated capital's innate tendency to concentrate; as such, well drafted regulation is necessary, if inequality is to be reduced to acceptable levels.
Add a universal income high enough to enable a decent life, a well rounded safety net (universal healthcare, etc ...), et voilà !
It can be done. We now have (or are very close to) the ressources and knowledge to allow for a decent life, for every human being.
That being said, there will always be some people who will want more. It's in a society's best interests to offer them a fair path, where they can both reap a reward for their efforts, and serve society by their contributions. Well regulated capitalism has previously proved it could be that path, so there's really no reason to ditch it.
3
The $64,000 question I have for this proposal is, "What will you do with YOUR Leisure Dividend?" (visualize Uncle Sam recruitment poster, menacing finger pointing from extended arm).
Taken to its logical conclusion, Jen will have to make a new plan, because helping those less fortune will be in low demand in a world with no strife.
Think of it: In a world with no poverty or disease, altruism will roam the world like a very helpful Diogenes searching fruitlessly for someone in need, and always find itself wanting.
Ambition, too, will be a thing of the past, for what purpose would one strive, if not to have more, or bigger, or better?
I suppose all of these impulses could be "corrected" with a bit of genetic legerdemain, but to what end? Write a great novel about what you did today (nothing), hopes and dreams for the future (all set, thanks!) work toward world peace (oh, right - we're there)?
I sit at my window on the 17th floor watching a few crows pestering our bald eagles as they guard the fledglings in their aerie across the way and am reminded once again that life is about the journey. It's not about being there; it's about getting there.
And if, as a retired American, I am now "there", I can tell you that while I am glad to be here and to have these idle moments to bore you with my musings, I would not have wanted to be here always.
For that way lies madness.
4
There are bits of insight here but the piece is ignoring a lot of historical and psychological lessons. For example the author says
"if you think work — as a cashier, driver or construction worker — is something to be cherished"
as if it's obvious that no one will think that. But millions do, and one of our current problems is that people that have been denied that kind of work, partly through the automation that is advocated here, have turned to self-destructive drugs in the opioid crisis. With regard to history, the argument is very close to Marx's original one, and Marx was, in my view, not entirely wrong in his analysis of capitalism in that time.
But we know, of course, what happened when capitalism was destroyed in some large societies: Huge inefficiency and
brutal autocracy to prevent resurgence of capitalist behavior.
Criticizing and possibly overthrowing capitalism is the easy
part. What to do instead is unresolved, but some form of
highly controlled capitalism with generous social safety nets (and high taxes) seems like the most promising route. Some of the current contenders for the Democratic presidential
nomination seem to be on that track. For example
Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang seem to have thought carefully about these questions.
1
@jwhalley No one wants do that kind of job if they don’t have to.
1
It may not require animals to die, but it also may not require animals to exist at all. More water and oxygen for us. The failing of communism is that it is completely egocentric. Humans are all that matter. It follows that this chap is already working on eliminating the "need" for the rest of it. So the point here is that our pile of atoms is far superior to any other pile of atoms and therefore it all must be sacrificed. So much for the utopian vision of each of us under our own vine and the lion and the lamb lying together.
1
@Rich McConville We don’t really need wildlife to exist today either but need the land where they inhabit for production. Hence half of wildlife has vanished since 1970s. Technology hopefully will change the way we produce so wildlife can be left alone.
hundred years ago Vladimir Lenin had the same passion for bringing equality across the board....try again
2
I'm afraid there are likely to be ultimately two paths in the future. Something akin to this automated luxury communism, or, total annihilation resulting from the ever increasing growth necessary to sustain capitalism. Change is hard but something has to give.
1
It’s always the same argument from communists. It has not worked yet for over a century because it just has not been implemented correctly. It didn’t have the right leaders. Now we’re told it just needs better technology. Communism has already killed 100,000,000 since 1917. How many more cold bodies are needed before we finally quit trying?
6
The applicability of these ideas depends on the model of identity you hold.
1. If you believe in religious doctrine and that morality derives from that doctrine, these concepts will no benefit you, and will seek to lure you into sin.
2. If you believe in Me First, and that cooperation to achieve common goals is not as important as personal power, these ideas will be of no benefit.
3. If you believe in loss of individual identity in favor of societal accomplishment, like the existence of a cell within a human, there would be no question of the utility of these concepts.
For most intelligent humans, the sweet spot is likely between 2 and 3, where you, as a discrete identity, enjoy a personal sphere of almost complete control, but are able to contribute effort and resources to large, complex projects which benefit many without puncturing your local sphere. The establishment of this Nirvana is pure politics, and the Neanderthals amongst use have shown how good they are at breaking things to prevent this outcome.
1
If there is no capitalism, there is no money, so there would need be an alternative means for rationing scarce goods. So lets just say that 1000 families want a beach house along a coast that only has room for 100 families. Who decides which 10% gets the beach house?
And if you say "the government" then you're going to have to defend that the government will always be fair. I don't think you can.
If you say "let a lottery decide", then fine. That's fair. Now suppose we change the scenario to 1000 families have a child that needs a kidney transplant, but there are only 100 kidneys... still a lottery?
2
A pea in every pot! Free cheerios for all!
If it's so easy,
THEN IT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE CENTURIES AGO AND IT NEVER WAS. GET OVER IT. Mankind has been around for about 100,000 years and counting. You can switch to communism for a couple years if you like, and then the right wing will go ballistic and kill people and go nationalist. Don't believe it? Read your history for once. Just going communist does not make it permanent. Stop being so ignorant.
1
Decent attempt at satire. But worthy of the times?
4
I thank my lucky stars that I'll have left the planet before encountering your utopian hell. Growing up in a wonderful place called the U.S.A which, despite it's warts, is still the best place to live on Earth. May you enjoy your synthetic life.
5
We don't need communism. We need social democracy ...
My opening offer:
* Strong progressive income taxes
* No tax on corporations (to incentivize investment), but strong regulations to prevent executives from stashing their compensation overseas
* Taxes on capital gains GREATER than taxes on income or dividends
* Use the revenue to provide a universal basic income (applied at birth), and end minimum wage
* Place a bonus on UBI for those without children, equal to the UBI for having two children
* Open the borders on a first-come, first-serve basis, limiting immigration to population replacement levels (UBI available to children, but not adults)
* Build free housing, filled by lottery, in communities with decreasing, aging populations
* Single-payer healthcare
* Free higher education paid by a higher tax bracket after school
This should improve the quality of the next generation, sustain enthusiasm for low-skilled labor where necessary, and incentivise automation wherever possible. All while seeing to life's basic necessities.
3
@Len Arends " Open the borders on a first-come, first-serve basis, limiting immigration to population replacement levels (UBI available to children, but not adults)" Sounds too much like the traitor's "we're full" blathering. Otherwise, you'll have my vote!
1
A writer young and hopeful sat before his keyboard white,
to figure out a future where most ev'rything was bright.
Meat and mashed potatoes would become so cheap that all
could eat until they busted, right at home or in the mall.
**************************
Technology would free us from the drudgery of toil,
and diplomats would triumph, freeing us from all turmoil.
Babies will be edited, becoming customized;
never having colic and with parti-colored eyes.
***************************
Fully automated and communally secure,
the future, says this writer, will be clean and safe and pure.
He'll make a million dollars when his epic hits the stores
(and just as quickly go extinct just like the dinosaurs.)
1
What color is the sky in your world?
1
It's not just cashiers and drivers. Companies are already working on AI to replace accountants and paralegals. When you think of other white collar jobs that require someone looking up or reading data only to have someone else do the work, looking at you doctors, you can see the writing on the wall for much more than just low wage service positions.
The fact that someone thinks Communism is actually obtainable by human beings is laughable, like really really really funny. Humans by nature are very incapable of being in power and not screwing it up. The second someones cousin gets an extra slice of space beef or gets a position on the shuttle going to the best asteroid, we've blown it again. And having robots and computers run everything is just one more magical nightmare once a human figures out how to manipulate for their own benefit.
Let's stick with capitalism and get this over with. The few of us that live through it can go back to living in small tribes hunting petri dishes and looking up at the sky wondering what could have been.
1
Lovely idealistic thoughts about the future and a world without scarcity, poverty or problems. Yes anything is possible, but is it plausible without a radical change in human nature.
As long as humans have an ego; variations in interests, self discipline and work ethics -- and creativity & problem solving abilities -- and have hearts with a degree of pride, greed and selfishness, how will such an ideal world actually happen.
And besides lots of personal transformations, somebody still has to actual understand physics, chemistry, biology, math, engineering, computers, finance & manufacturing to make it all happen.
It's amazing how one can do anything...as long as you don't have to actually do it yourself.
Nothing wrong with dreaming about a utopia that may be theoretically possible if everyone became a hard working saint, full of compassion & practical knowledge to bring it all about.
In the meantime, of course try to bring about positive change...but probably the best we'll do is muddle through, basically what humans have always done.
And we'll probably be lucky to do that given all the ignorance, immorality & selfishness among a vast percentage of the planet. Especially those with wealth and power.
Those who sign up for this utopian vision, will you actually, tangibly make it happen...or just support those who do.
That's the problem of course, everyone largely waits for a few to make it manifest. Maybe with slow but realistic progress we can get closer in 500 yrs.
2
What's next? Democratic communism?
Keep on slipping down that slope. Eventually you'll find that utopia you're searching for.
The only problem is the slope will be littered with the bodies of millions of folks you'd have to "re-educate."
Capitalism isn't perfect. But, it is the only system we've developed so far that encapsulates basic human instincts into a manageable and non-coercive system of governance.
"Fully automated luxury communism" isn't the answer.
3
Though not in any way advocated by Bastani, articles like this make me worry about an eventual culling of the human race. At the point in time when 'we' no longer need human labor to provide for production and sustenance, it does become financially sensible to greatly reduce the human population living on this planet to allow those of us remaining a better quality of existence. Is it really too far fetched to imagine a man-made disease being unleashed on vast swaths of humanity in order create a so-called optimal planet-to-human balance?
2
Wow, what an amazing idea! I've never heard anything like this before! The academy's arguments for socialism in the '40s and '50s didn't resemble this information utopia argument at all. Mr. Bastani, and others of like mind, may I highly recommend a quick read of "The Use of Knowledge in Society," from 1945. "Capitalism," whatever that is, isn't the relevant concept here; it's markets and prices. Communism isn't a disaster because it isn't capitalism. It's a disaster because it ignores markets and prices.
3
Oh were it so! The basic problem is that it would end the game that drives most of us: We are hierarchical apes ever striving for higher status and have created in predatory capitalism the perfect framework for that endeavor, since we have thereby an objective means of keeping score: money. As Thorstein Veblen saw more than a century ago (during our last Gilded Age), our winners spend a good deal of their winnings displaying their trophies for the benefit (and humiliation) of the less successful, the losers by definition. As Roy Cohn, the patron saint of the game might say: You don't win unless the others lose, and know that they lost. Where would Roy's disciples and his apprentice Donald J Trump be if that game were no longer worth playing? Perhaps finally confronting their inner emptiness? Running for the Senate? Bloviating on Fox News?
3
Seeing the comments here, I can only accept that the future is coming and will be defined by another country than the US. That has been the quiet reality for the last few years, the US is declining the same way the Romans did, the Egyptians, the Greek.. when people stop believing in a future that is bigger than their society / reality then those people will not be leading it. What the author talks about is tangible and doable, it’s not such a leap of faith. The system is breaking in ways it never has, we are going to live through it and we should be thankful for it and what’s to come.
1
This proposal makes sense only if we believe that capitalism have left us with low productivity and low wages. But in historical terms, we are actually living in an era of astonishingly high productivity, high wages, and low social inequality, and the only reason we have high income inequality is our high productivity. That success has come in many ways from our capitalist system of competition, which encourages entrepreneurship even more than it encourages rent-seeking. By contrast, the only times when we've tried full-blown socialism or communism, innovation has largely stopped.
To take the most obvious example, the only reason we are even thinking about mining the asteroids is that private companies, motivated by capitalist incentives, have out-innovated government space agencies and their captive contractors. Why is the Times publishing such naive opinion pieces? Rhetoric like this is what will drive a lot of moderates to re-elect President Trump.
2
@John
You seem to be (willfully or otherwise) ignorant on this matter. USSR had massive scientific, health, and technologic innovations. Go to Wikipedia for a long list. They also won the space race with the US, in case you didn't know that.
Certainly they did have less pet rocks and other useless, neverending commercial absurdities, churned out for no reason other than profit motive. They were more focused on useful innovation.
@kryptogal
Thanks, you're right that Innovation in the Soviet Union did not "largely stop." Still, it was hardly equal to the astonishing breakthroughs in capitalist countries. And those capitalist innovations were hardly useless -- they drove ordinary workers to a standard of living once reserved for the rich, while Soviet citizens struggled to acquire basic goods. Communism also corrupted most aspects of life there and discouraged entrepreneurship. The Soviets did make some innovations in space travels, when they made that a priority, yet our putting a man on the moon was the far greater accomplishment in the space race, which the Soviets never managed.
1
Simply stated, there is no innovation without profit motives. Also as simple, implementing the concept of "we'll just all share" results in a power vacuum that leads to dictatorship or oligarchy. It's fun to pretend that human nature is full of puppy dogs and rainbows; but it isn't. That's why we have democracy.
4
@John Wallace Communism is democracy. Resources are distributed democratically rather controlled by private individuals corn profits.
The author commits the same mistake as Marx: an excessive focus on materialism. He believed that a world that provided material goods to all more or less equally would be perfect. (Some) material goods are necessary to human happiness, but not nearly sufficient. In fact, it is surprising just how much material wealth and how many lives human societies will sacrifice for objectives like autonomy and freedom. It is vitally important to humans to be seen and acknowledged as useful within their family and tribe. Further, humans, presented with equality, will strive to improve their status and the status of their offspring relative to others, wrecking that equality, even if society suffers as a result.
.
Capitalism has been successful because it harnesses some of the failures of mankind in the service of mankind, particularly greed. Communism fails because it forgets that we are humans, not economic robots striving for the greatest material wealth for society. It is possible to imagine a species that would be happy with Fully Automated Luxury Communism; that species is not humanity. Communism is so foreign to humanity that to make humans adopt communism an oppressive police state is required; history has made this clear.
.
We can make capitalism better. The improved version won't be communism. Humans just aren't built that way.
4
@Tom Meadowcroft
Don't disagree with you. Huxley understood this clearly, which is why in his society, sexual reproduction and family formation no longer took place. Because the reproductive competition, and striving for status that accompanies it, is the ultimate source of human bondage and the desire to exploit and subordinate for one's own advancement.
I would note that's also far more deeply ingrained in males than females, who don't have nearly the same risk/reward payoff if they can beat out their sexual competitors, and for whom securing material needs is a much bigger problem than securing mating opportunities. So no surprise that women are far more in favor of socialism, on average.
@kryptogal
Women will cooperate with each other more than men, but will compete viciously to provide advantage for their offspring. As you say, it is the biological imperative to strive for the success of your genes as they pass through generations.
I don't see how the claim for the most expensive meal in history can be true. Surely, NASA has paid more for some meals eaten by astronauts. Any NASA folks reading this need to come forward and set their record straight.
1
Yes, hyper automation has really helped the natural world - toward mass extinction.
1
The problem, as these comments illustrate, is that many of us now believe that the purpose of life is capitalism, rather than the purpose of capitalism being life.
6
The problem with this article is not as much the ideas it espouses as the arrogance from where they stem. I invite the author to humility. It will be easier for his ideas to spread from that place.
45
@Alberto
I doth protest. Bastani acknowledges the contradiction. Capitalism helped create synthetic burgers but synthetic burgers are what Bastani wants to help end capitalism.
It's almost as though we're seeking a duality. One in which those hungry for entrepreneurial combat are rewarded without actually consuming the material benefit. The material benefit of technology and innovation is used instead to benefit everyone.
That certainly doesn't stem from the Reagan model of conservative capitalism we've been experience for the past half century.
4
@Alberto
Physician, heal thyself.
2
don't mistake: this is futuristic technocratic propaganda in service of global corporate control. it's a manifesto to breed ever more people and feed them on industrial microbial stews of weeds and grubs. it's the hedonistically pathetic claim that work is drudgery; it's more fun to be unemployed. and we get utterly nonsense concepts about asteroid mining and protocommunist utopias. what a spiritual misery is celebrated as the bright future!
the pretense to a "democratic technology" that "serves people" is absurd at its base: like drug patents, all the technology is owned by corporations. corporations seek profit and use economic and corrupt levers to control the political process.
reading all that, i have to ask: is this a parody? does the author secretly intend to amuse? as in a zombie film, this is a future i desperately fear, based as it is on pipe dreams and false promises.
the upshot: more people, more surveillance and control, more resource exploitation, more guiding consumer infrastructure, and more corporate control -- the feedlots, veal pens, hog toughs and "free range" chicken coops of the genetically engineered future human species.
1
Sounds like someone has been reading Iain M Banks' Culture series.
1
I initially took this piece as a brilliant satire. Then I looked up the author.
4
@Evan
OMG, this isn't satire? Excuse me while I go flip my BM (Beyond Mean) burger and faint.. ;-)
1
The capitalist lie: Dulce et decorum est pro labore suo.
First principle: Work has no inherent moral value.
1
It's 2019! Where's my robot butler and flying car? It's going to be so wonderful when all the benefits accrued by society are shared with everyone, including those unable or unwilling to work. A new Golden Age! Nothing to do but eat, sleep and breed, like bacteria in a culture dish. Wait a minute, didn't we learn something about that in school? I don't remember, the free psychochemicals have wiped out my memory.
This seems like the kind of utopian vision which runs counter to human nature. Maybe in a thousand years, if anyone's still left.
2
What a beautiful thought. I love this type of writing, that said it seems a trope that capitalism will be counterproductive to this future. Writing this on a palm sized device more powerful than an early 90’s super computer it strikes me that capitalism is our best tool to make this future a reality. Perhaps the authors concern about the loss of the imaginative spirit should be redirected at the idea that our financial institutions and methods are somehow static. Instead of throwing them out perhaps we can guide the invisible hand towards higher aspirations and away from rent seeking behavior.
1
Agreed. Unfortunately we are moving towards Soviet style capitalism, selling off government assets to wealthy business cronies for pennies on the dollar. Public support for this behavior exists because of the lie that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. It only seems more efficient because private sector losses are not paid for by taxpayers. But of course that’s a lie, we pay for them through our tax system which provides deductions for such occurrences thus reducing government revenues. Ask trump, he loves to show losses on his taxes, though I’m sure many of his are real and due to his failure as a legitimate businessman.
We have two contradictory pressures acting on us: poverty and unnecessary consumption.
To reduce poverty, we need growth, consumerism, which destroys the planet, but provides jobs.
We are overpopulated only in the sense that we overconsume. We might need transportation, but not a stretch limo to provide it. Do we always need the newest TV, cellphone, car, stylish clothes? Well, they provide jobs, which alleviates poverty.
It's one step forward, one step back, a no-win situation.
But, if anyone, well-educated scientists, economists, visionaries are our best bet for figuring out an exit from this economic predicament.
1
The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Unfortunately the American best suited to lead this nation resides at ADX Florence.
1
What a great, light hearted piece, and amazing comments.
But, I have to admit that at first I thought it was satire.
Yeah, as others have pointed out, not sure the communism part can work. "We have met the enemy and he is us" as Pogo would say.
How about more highly regulated - fair to all - big safety net - not too much automated - with some luxury - Capitalism?
Such a thing is on offer by none other than E Warren. She's got these great concrete plans....
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-2020-policies-platform.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
1
As evidenced by Trump's retention of supporters no matter his crimes and transgressions, no, imagination is not leading us forward.
China has a vested interest in reducing pollution and leads the world in solar and electric cars, but Trump hijacked the possibility of coordinated action so he could line his pockets and feed his exaggerated ego.
Trump may prove to be the most destructive force throughout mankind because instead of dealing with Climate Change, we must tolerate a circus clown with serious mental issues.
2
And no religion, too.
6
I love it! Where do I sign up?
1
A symphony of shallow thinking. To compare our world to the crises of the past is ludicrous--if there is any parallel between now and, let's say, 1940 is, well..dumb. There is, by any measure, less abject poverty today than at any time in the past. The predicted famines simply never happened (unless they were caused by governments). We are more inter-connected than ever before. Disease is being conquered. The list of actual, real advances goes on.
Against this, the writer, as always in NYTimes op-eds these days, cannot resist flinging the word "inequality" at the reader. As always, the meaning of that pernicious word is never, actually, defined. By what metric, Mr. Bastani, is "equality" to be judged? When will we know that the search for this undefined quantity is, finally, over for the first time in human history?
Don't wait up late for the answer to THAT question.
4
Yup, the capitalists have a bit of a major problem on their hands. Automation will mean that there will no longer be a need for a permanent underclass of people in society. Poof!
GONE! And that's a lot of people standing around doing nothing and watching all the money go to some other people (who also are not working, by the way).
So the future will be: no workers (unless by choice and I'm sure for very good salary), no laborers, no serfs, no slaves -- so whatcha gonna do with all the people standing around with no way to make a living?
Ah, capitalism. If you're so great, let's see if you solve this one. (Yeah, good luck with that. And just to confirm: murdering huge swaths of the population is NOT allowed.)
Bring on the Fully Automated Luxury Communism!
2
Greed drives capitalism and greed destroys communism.
China is booming in billionaire communists right now buying up luxury goods, where is the Red Guard when you need it to purge these running dog, imperialist lackeys leading China?
2
Part of the basic human condition that can't be changed is that each person works in his or her own best interests. So, like it or hate it, capitalism is the only economic system that has a prayer of succeeding, while still allowing citizens to remain in any way free. Does it need to be regulated? Yes. How much? As little as possible for it to thrive. Communism requires brutal governments to keep black markets at bay and people in line. And even then, some people will take the risk. Utopia doesn't and can't exist this side of heaven.
4
Who do you think is more likely to deliver these fantastical visions, Elon Musk or some government bureaucrat?
2
@anthony Elon hands down
This is a novel idea, global revolution and communist hegemony.
If only someone had thought of that earlier.
3
“Sounds good, doesn’t it?”
No.
BTW, I’m not clear on how asteroid mining will provide “energy” to us on earth, but I’m pretty sure the earth is not running out of iron...
1
Also, as been pointed out recently in the NYTimes, by any objective metric, humanity is doing much, much better now than at any time in history.
3
Since "communism" has never succeeded anywhere at any point in history how dose the author expect this luxury communism to function. Someone will have to be in charge. There will be, of necessity, a large bureaucracy, to ensure equal delivery of these delightful goods and services. I stipulate that the current division of labor and wealth is, to a dangerous degree, out of balance, Is there no solution than the tired and failed system Karl Marx dreamt up.
4
@Jim
Hey, Jim in Texas. I used to be likewise, but now I'm Jim in Florida (with a whole new set of problems: killer humidity for one).
Anyhow, you asked, and from what I read, some modern socialists want work cooperatives: You, I, and others start a business or co-op; we are all owners, so we are invested in its success. Yes, there'll still be division of labor and responsibilities, and some will make more money, because they have the more difficult job. If you are president, and I am a data entry clerk, you will get a bigger salary than me, but I will get a living salary, too. It's a team concept rather than a dog-eat-dog concept.
Like many ideas, it sounds interesting, but will it work? You be the judge. Nothing works out perfectly.
Capitalism is a terrible system, but it's still better than all the others. If, however, we added in some socialism -- universal healthcare, affordable college tuition, etc., I think we'd have the best of both worlds, which still would not approach an Earthly paradise.
1
@Jim Muncy
I'm coming around to the idea of some form of universal healthcare. I believe one of the basic with higher education is the lie perpetuated that each and every kid should go to a 4 year college. We, at least for the time being, need plumbers, electricians, mechanics etc. That said, college tuition is absurd and grad school is criminally expensive at least for some professions , law and medicine for example. Again, I stipulate, the current paradigm is far out of balance. I just don't know how to fix it beyond reforming the tax code. It is ridiculously complex and favors the wealthy to an unfair degree. Simplify and force the wealthy, and $250,000 a year is not wealthy to pay more in taxes. For tuition perhaps forcing universities to spend some portion of their endowments on tuition relief and for public universities make tuition need based.
To many people, the most absurd part of Captain Kirk’s world is not the handheld communicators (got them now), writing tablets (got them too), video telephones (got that... in our pockets), voice activated computers (got poor stupid Siri and Alexa, at least)... it’s the absence of money.
And yet, why WOULD there be money? In Star Trek, energy is unlimited. And energy can be converted into anything; there is no scarcity.
Money is a way of allocating scarce resources, which is why air is still free. When there is no scarcity, you can’t actually charge money for something.
We aren’t at a scarcity free economy on Earth- yet. But (assuming humanity survives its growing pains) you can see a time when scarcity of many resources will be a thing of the past. Even land and property will become less scarce as the Earth’s human population begins to shrink in the next century.
Will this be “fully automated luxury communism?” I’m not sure. But, given current trends, it’s probably the future.
And if you think getting our hands on Kirk’s iPhone disrupted civilization, wait until we get our hands on Kirk’s economy.
Fasten your seatbelts.
2
"Money is a way of allocating scarce resources, which is why air is still free."
Actually, PRICES are "a way of allocating scarce resources". Money is merely a medium of exchange.
And "air" is not "free". For example, air pollution controls cost money. And some forms of "air", such as tanks of compressed air, cost money.
1
Sheer corporate propaganda. I read this to be sure it wasn't a satire. The author claims to advocate new thinking, but he's simply promoting the same old, tired, long-outdated thinking that caused the crises he claims to want to solve. Once again, the futurists present themselves as the solution to the problems they caused.
2
Assuming we ever get there, what is the point?
1
@SV
More enjoyable lives for more people?
I love it. Sign me up. Now just tell me who is going to pay for all this cool stuff...
40
@Nadia Google, Facebook, Amazon and that tower in the sky of your hometown Salesforce. Universal Basic Income or Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend is probably the beginning of the transformation.
10
@Nadia
Oh, it will be free. Just climb into the vat and plug yourself in, friend.
4
If I recall correctly, the human society depicted in "Star Trek" was some kind of hyper-technological form of socialism.
As a teenager, watching old Star Trek episodes I always found it puzzling that nobody wanted to own a cool space cruiser for themselves, or that nobody craved to own a beautiful house on some exotic tropical planet's beachfront. It seemed like a one-dimensional society where the human element of greed, hunger and desire for more had been replaced by some kind of weird collectivism by which all human desires were channeled towards the common well-being.
As much as I'd love this in theory, it goes completely contrary to basic human behavior. We are not very far removed from the apes we descended from, and our behavior is still ruled by the same basic principles: hunger, sex, hoarding, domination and territoriality. We are not a hive-minded collective species. So I doubt that this communist utopia will ever come to be. Someone will always be exploiting it for profit.
2
I was going to say something similar but you've already beat me. The society described sounds a whole lot like "Star Trek." It's not so bad until you have an individual grievance against the bureaucracy. Then all the replicator burgers in the world won't help you.
1
Don’t uncork the syn-bubbly yet! There isn’t a life form that isn’t built to work, strive and compete. These activities are essential for life. They are what has made our species what it is. Take them away and I don’t know what the point of life is.
Today I read that people watch YouTube actors eat. That’s it. I suppose they have nothing better to do. Will this be our fate when too many things are done for us?
I think that something like luxury communism is in the cards. I like to think that members of our species will devote themselves to their betterment through sports and the arts. However I can already see what path many are already taking with their free time.
So yes, much work is drudgery, probably made more so by those doing the work. I wonder if the bee finds his work drudgery? But take that drudgery away and do we begin to devolve? As our brains atrophy do we retrace our steps back down the evolutionary tree? No thanks, I’ll take drudgery.
2
Actually a very good article on capitalism. Multiple private companies producing new products and watching their prices drop thanks to the free market. Bravo!
2
The world is what we make it every day. We can change it any time we decide to.
1
These are intriguing concepts. Given human nature and resistance to change, I'm thinking that implementation might be a bit difficult.
Perhaps if Climate Armageddon progresses more slowly than projected, we won't suddenly be in darkness, crawling around in search of parcels of land above water and possibly still arable. Current global politics indicate that grim scenario is much more likely than a communal dedication to enlightened security and well-being for all.
If Mr. Bastani's next book offers appropriate steps to the "new politics" that will create Fully Automated Communism, I'm all in.
2
One reason such a utopia will never come to pass is because the rich who own and run everything won't let it. Part of the fun of having more money than one could ever need is having more money than everyone else. Being rich isn't enough. Everyone else must be poor. How else can one feel superior?
2
@Eric
I don't think this is true. I want to be rich, but mainly so I can attract gorgeous younger women and ski 100 days a year. I have some money. This allows me to spend my time in affluent areas (Manhattan, Aspen, Hamptons). In those areas, I have less than other people. Most of the rich people I know spend time around even richer people. I know people worth 10 million who feel poor. Most rich people don't live in Bushwick or Red Hook or Ridgewood. They live in TriBeCa or the UES, and, unless you're a billionaire, you tend to feel poor in those places.
2
"Automation, robotics and machine learning will, as many august bodies, from the Bank of England to the White House, have predicted, substantially shrink the work force, creating widespread technological unemployment."
People have been saying this for as long as I can remember (many decades now). As the west is automating jobs at an accelerating pace the number of people employed has not decreased. We actually keep adding jobs year on year. The idea that automation will eliminate work is total nonsense (and is empirically contradicted by reality). How can people keep repeating it and still get away with it?
4
Not enough jobs providing a living salary and too many focused in the service sector. Service to the wealthy in a world with a growing income divide.
1
@Cindy
"too many focused in the service sector"
Doctors, lawyers and bankers are all "service sector" employees. There is nothing wrong with working in the service sector per se.
In any case, this was not my point. My point was that we will never run out of (human) work.
2
For me , it would be more important to question the view held by all leaders that perpetual growth is inevitable.
3
There are no new ideas here that weren't already presented in 'Designing Freedom' by Stafford Beer published in 1975. Replacing the capitalistic economic order with a centralized automated system of production and distribution will only lead to disastrous outcomes regardless of our state of technology.
3
If you are interested in rapid decarbonization you support nuclear energy, not renewable energy. Nuclear is the safest, least waste producing, scalable, cost effective route to replacing fossil fuels and the technology is here today. All we need is a better educated public to shift public perception.
In contrast renewables suffer from two problems: they require high land use and we don’t have large scale storage to tame the intermittency. They can be low cost at low penetration rates, true, but as they make up a higher portion of the energy mix their cost skyrockets. If Germany couldn’t shift to renewables after investing hundreds of billions, how will a less developed poorer nation?
Current carbon intensity of the grid (lower is better):
France (nuclear): 62 gCO2/kwh
Germany (attempted renewables): 390 gCO2/kwh
Source: electricitymap.org
4
Before abolishing capitalism, we'll probably try Universal Basic Incomes to address the coming unemployment produced by automation, increased productive efficiency, the lowering of energy costs utilizing renewable resources, and artificial intelligence intervention into societal life. Make no mistake, barring the return of the wooly mastodons over the horizon, these changes will come.
Jose Arquelles addressed this concern in "The Mayan Factor" writing, "Now time is money; then, time will be art." When Maslow's basic needs are met, then humanity's innate need for self-actualization will come forward.
Providing, of course, that we don't kill one another off before then . . . .
3
Over and over again people write that we aren't simply overpopulating the earth. They have clever schemes to distribute food, produce green energy and bring back the fish. Eventually these meet with a lack of will or are just impractical for reasons that are not immediately apparent. The solution is less people not more technology. Sadly people born in the last 50 years have no idea how much better off humans were when there were less than 2 billion of us on the planet.
2
One reason such a utopia will never come to pass is because the rich who own and run everything won't let it. Part of the fun of having more money than one could ever need is having more money than everyone else. Being rich isn't enough. Everyone else must be poor. How else can one feel superior?
4
The essay and comments remind me of observations made comparing attitudes of natural vs social scientists. The natural scientists (especially those involved in the applied sciences) approached their work with a positivity about how humans can solve the myriad problems facing us. Work on renewable energy sources to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, breakthroughs in genetics to personalize medicine and identify targets for fighting human disease, information technology to democratize information, etc. etc. The social scientists, on the other hand, were less optimistic about the future since they focused on human organization and social and power relationships
Reminds me of an old cartoon from about 60 years ago of a report by alien explorers of their observations on earth. From above they conclude the main life form is the automobile, who leaves its nest (garage) in the morning and interacts in a most friendly way with others on its way to a new resting place during the day. They take turns when their paths intersect, occasionally vocalize to one another, communicate with flashing lights, etc. However, they note that occasionally they are infected with some pathogen that makes them act crazy at it shows an angry human getting into a car and getting into an accident.
3
Agreed. But, you say we live I a time of "low productivity". This is not true. Productivity hasn't been higher. It is the profit from the productivity flowing to workers that has never been lower.
2
Someday, there will be no more need for money. Coins and bills and old credit cards will be in museums, relics of a barbarous age when numbers on a balance sheet ruled our lives.
People went to war over money. Governments rose and fell because of it. People without enough of it starved, froze, or died of diseases they couldn't afford to have cured. It ruled our lives.
When there is no more money and no more private property, there will be very little need for government. National borders will be irrelevant. War will be a quaint but horrifying memory, like human sacrifices.
That is true Communism. It doesn't have much in common with our world. But it doesn't have much in common with the "Communism" of Mao and Stalin, either.
3
Full equality is not possible without terror. Inequality without terror is not viable. Maybe is time to use some imagination and explore other options.
4
We are much farther away from full automation than we think. Our AI is very dumb at the moment. We want to believe it will become very smart very soon, but our computing power advancements over this decade have not kept pace with the advances from the 80’s and 90’s. Today’s AI requires data centers full of data to train itself, and cannot learn on its own.
So I’m sure it will be a wonderful utopia for all the managers, AI coders and trainers, and asteroid miner mechanics. They’ll have more work than they can handle, but won’t reap the benefits of their long hours. Quality goes downhill rapidly. Everyone else will be stuck in service industry jobs - unchallenging yet lucrative enough to live on. Quality goes downhill rapidly.
Sorry, I’m betting that capitalism moderated by government wins out, at least for the next 100-200 years. If we can ever make machines truly learn on their own, and the companies that make them let go of their profit motive, and the machines decide not to kill us — then this communism may have a chance.
5
Agreed with Mr. Bastani here. It is all about the notion of resource scarcity.
As long as resources are scarce, socialized type methods won't work because they are primarily a change in pie allocation, not pie size.
However, this equation could be totally different if the cost of producing goods reaches a certain low point. At that point resources would no longer be scarce (we certainly are not there yet, but one can imagine it) and the only thing creating individual resource scarcity would be income inequality.
Give capitalism its due: the pursuit of profit and exploitation of natural resources are the only thing that could create the level of technology we are talking about here. There is an inflexion point, though, where we have enough for everyone to live well, and at that point we must prioritize equality and sustainability over growth-at-all-costs
2
As the world becomes more prosperous, efficient, it's possible to envision a "Fully Automated Luxury Communism" as the political/economic future of the human race?
My belief is that every profound step forward for the human race along artistic, scientific, technological and other lines has involved exceptional human beings and/or groups which have respected the talents of individual members of group and this is roughly why capitalism has been so powerful over human history and continues to be powerful, for capitalism at its best and simplest is to have an eye for those individuals and groups, those areas in life, in which it's best to invest, to expect a worthwhile return for effort expended, therefore I fully expect as life becomes more prosperous not a decline of capitalism and onset of communism but increasing acuity on the part of the human race for those individuals and group formations which can best afford return on investment, meaning in the future by all genetic/biological knowledge, all sophisticated nurture or environment over nature means, we will pinpoint individual talents in various fields and learn better how to form groups of people for particular ends, and invest in these areas, money and power will flow ever more intelligently in particular directions, which means for all prosperity not an everybody equal and static communism but an evermore accurate trajectory of development of the human race, a higher design of the human species.
Luxury vision.
2
Good news! We can solve global hunger and give billions of people meaningful employment by providing them with universal access to luxury goods like fancy meats and lab-grown whiskey. And the only thing in the way is capitalism!
3
Your article reminds me of two other similar writings. The first is an essay by John Maynard Keynes written in the 1930s: The Economic Prospects for Our Grandchildren. Keynes argues that in a century, the economies of the industrial world will be four to eight times larger than when he wrote. In actuality, it stands at 16 times greater than in the 1930s. The second is a book, Trekonomics, which discusses the economy in the world of Star Trek.
Like you article, these other writing discuss a post-scarcity society, that is, a society where the primary problem of economics, scarcity, is solved. In Star Trek, the replicators, which are a metaphor for industrial production, are publicly owned in the Federation. In the Ferengi society, like our society, the replicators are privately owned.
In Keynes's view, anyone who seeks to acquire wealth in a post scarcity society suffers from a form of mental illness.
Ironically, some of this thinking was hinted at by Marx. It certainly has been a part of New Left thinking since the 1960s. Namely, Capitalism will produce the level of production which will provide enough for all. Ultimately, this will lead to the liberation of all people.
2
I'll pass on the synthetic meat, but otherwise, point taken.
2
The essential thesis - that technology and attendant societal change have been essential to what we consider our world order today, and make the order of tomorrow similarly malleable - is a good reminder of the possible. Malthus has become a poster child for the folly of betting against these two forces.
That said, these two forces do not necessarily self-organize to make the transition easy, or conducive to what we like about the current world order. Just ask the Luddites that struggled with the onset of the industrial revolution. The wheels of the world keep on turning ... but it doesn't mean people don't get ground in the process. In particular, the increasing returns to scale for capital - both by business model (think: Google, Facebook, Amazon) and by self-organizing machines running on renewable energy (think: own the machine, own infinite production capacity - just add some raw materials) - favor a drastic wealth imbalance we are just now glimpsing.
I disagree that communism is the answer. It suffers the same issues today as 200 years ago: the Leviathan State magnetically pulls toward despotism while also robbing individuals of incentives required to sustain the forces of technological and cultural change. A hybrid world, though, might work. A floor - guaranteed income, guaranteed healthcare, etc. - that still leaves open incentives to do better by hard work...
4
I think we need to also reimagine and include human emotions as part of this technological future. So many of our aspirational futures are technology and material centric ( what kind of food, apps, 4k tvs, transportation, rocket ships, etc), but leave out what are new paradigms for how we could emotionally experience this. What are new narratives for the human condition we want to experience - both the pleasant and unpleasant - that make a life meaningful and abundant. Being in nature, spending time with friends and family, helping those in need, spirituality, creativity, connecting to something larger than oneself. And we also must address our shadows, coming from a traumatic legacy of living in a world of scarcity, injustice, and the emotional stories that have been deeply ingrained into our individual and collective subconscious. At some point we will collectively need to soften our "I" centric view of the world, release our fear, and see ourselves as part of a larger whole. What are the new social narriatives we will cocreate to increase our emotional and global well being and dignity.
5
Technology was never the reason why human societies failed: human weakness - greed, pride, lust, intolerance - was always the reason.
5
Always...?
"We inhabit a world of low growth, low productivity and low wages, of climate breakdown and the collapse of democratic politics. A world where billions, mostly in the global south, live in poverty. A world defined by inequality." ...that is like nothing new for several hundred years, especially if you define tribal life in the wilderness as impoverished (an arguable point either way, of course), but this is not a new condition, only the size of the population is different.
2
Every great idea emerged from someone's imagination. And every great idea was at first belittled by those who felt threatened by it. So I'm not surprised to see so many commenters resort to superficial knee-jerk reactions when rejecting the world Mr. Bastani describes. I'm not saying Mr. Bastani is right in all his predictions. I'm simply saying that those who ridicule his ideas without pausing to think remind me of hostile buggy whip makers of a century ago.
2
Cars were new Communism nor totalitarianism are new.
Wayne
“Fully Automated Luxury Communism” IS a dystopian joke, right?
Our world is shaped by an interplay of our technology and our character. For example: Yes the internet is great, but it's also hours wasted on cat videos, distractions that threaten the curiosity/literacy of a generation, and a threat to individual privacy and social democracy? And so on. Anyone who looked beyond the cool toys and into human character could have seen that coming. As my seventh-grade shop teacher told us: “No tool is any better than the loose nut on its end.” THAT’S the catch — the catch is not, as Mr. Bastani claims, “capitalism.”
Mr. Bastani's right about our for technological innovation; history proves that. He ignores our relative incapacity for fundamental character change; history proves that, too. In imagining “a society as distinct from our own as that of the 20th century from feudalism, or urban civilization from the life of the hunter-gatherer,” Mr. Bastani considers only technological distinctions. “Feudalism” is a social-administrative concept that's alive and well in today’s grossly unequal America. Hunter-gatherers? Cruising for burgers.
The Elysium envisioned by Mr. Bastani won’t happen through technological innovation. And unless humans’ relationship to technology and to one another can change dramatically, it can’t happen at all. The ancient Greeks were right: CHARACTER is fate. If the 20th Century taught us nothing else, it should have taught us this.
2
The major developed countries in the worls today are neither purely capitalist or purely socialist. There blended economies that incorporate idea's from both camps. If your in America and you enjoy the idea of the 40 hour work week, the eight hour day, overtime pay, workers pensions, disability pay that results from workplace injuries, the laws against child labor,(I could go on) you should realize that these notions were fought tooth and nail by the leading capitalists of the day and were branded as unlawful interference in the market and the start of the road back to serfdom, and even more awful to these gents, socialism. Same with medicare and social security. And for those trying to rebrand Marx, how do you explain China. They had control of the means of production, they had virtually eliminated income inequality, and almost everyone had a basic education, some form of healthcare,there was no private hoarding of wealth,why didn't their economy boom? Why did they abandon all that and introduce, poor Mao was rolling in his grave, capitalist reforms to the economy, semi private wealth accumalation, and how could a person in so called communist China become a millionaire? Because even though they refuse to change the name, China is no longer a communist state, they basically abandoned Marx. Why? Because having basically achieving the dream thy found out it didn't work.
2
Um, I'm sorry. I made it through this entire essay and eventually I realized it was NOT intended as satire. This dude is actually serious. Whoa.
I'm not sure what is more galling:
A. The false dichotomy of unfettered capitalism vs. utopian communism.
Or B. The notion that somehow, if the nearly 8 billion humans on this planet can get on the same page as to how to organize our economies and societies, we can somehow overcome the laws of nature and the finiteness of our planet.
And we dismiss religious folk for their quaint superstitions...
Or hey, perhaps Aaron Bastani isn't as delusional as he appears. Perhaps he's punking us after all; he's a capitalist after all (a capitalist of the snake-oil salesman variety); and he's the one who'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
6
100% agree with the challenges outlined in this piece. 100% agree that Capitalism cannot perfectly address them all in a way that will fully meet the needs and desires of every living being. But Capitalism remains the best system we have for allocating resources to address whatever challenges humanity faces. The "invisible hand" is cliched and mocked and admittedly flawed. But it is also adaptable and has produced better results on larger scales than other systems. I'm not sure how this piece can look around the world, marvel at various fruits of regulated Capitalism (from engineered foods to renewable energy) and decide that the best path forward does not include Capitalism.
2
I am addressing the commentators who apparently just read the headline and not the whole article. Fully Automated Luxury Communism - think about that for a moment. Automation is here and progressing at a faster rate than ever before. People are being replaced at a faster rate than ever before. What are WE as a society going to do about "those people" who are TOO OLD to be retrained? There millions of them out there. Are we just going to let them die off? Is that the solution?
I for one am looking forward to AI and robots doing the heavy lifting of monotonous manufacturing and free humans to be creative. Humans are an infinitely creative species - look what we have done thus far. We have created artificial intelligence. It will free us from the mundane and create a better world once we are freed from the struggle of survival. Universal basic income will soothe the transition to that future. The author imagines luxury that is available to all. Unfortunately he uses the term "Communism". I would prefer the term "a better life for all". Who does not want that?
2
@El Guapo Or maybe the daily task of survival is all that makes life meaningful and tolerable for most of us and all of our animal brothers. I would suggest few are designed to fill their own lives with creative endeavours unrelated to practical goals.
As someone who loves the post-scarcity, science-driven world of Star Trek, this sounds absolutely wonderful to me - and like exact direction humanity needs to head in if it's going to fulfill its potential.
1
How can you write an article about the future without addressing the health of the planet? Maybe the author and Jeff Bezos can accomplish this on the planet he is planning to populate.
3
"Work" is how we make people leave their houses and commingle with people they don't like instead of hanging out all day figuring out how to kill them. Without work, we'll be little tribes, preying on our neighbors.
3
Old Russian joke -
Q: What is 100 feet tall, 200 feet long, belches huge clouds of black smoke and cuts an apple into 3 pieces?
A: A Soviet machine for cutting an apple into 4 pieces.
195
@Hapax Legomenon
I saw that in HBO's 'Chernobyl.'
3
@Hapax Legomenon
You've only started episode 3 of Chernobyl?
1
Somebody just finished Chernobyl!
I'm seeing a lot of negative comments here, none of which offer any other solution to the rapid rise of technological unemployment we are going to see in the next few decades. Combine that with our worsening climate crisis, and things are going to get very bad quicker than I think most people realize.
2
I don't mean to be patronizing, but I wrote a column very much like this (albeit with different technological examples) 50 years ago.
I still agree with the author, but overcoming the forces that crushed my dream then will take some changes in approach, to say the least.
Very briefly, both capitalism and socialism/communism have failed to deliver on their promises. One response to this was facism. Another was managed capitalism, where the state is supposed to temper capitalism's worst impulses in the name of the common good.
Managed capitalism worked for a while. When FDR innovated it, he had the support of unions, revolutionaries, Christian values, etc. Capitalism has regrouped. It fights management directly with what the political science people call "industry capture." The lobbyists enlist the legislators and the regulators. It acts in the wider sphere with Fox News, organized political action, etc.
So now people realize that managed capitalism does no better than laissez-faire capitalism or socialism. Perhaps the best explanation is that it is human nature to skim a little extra, or a great deal extra, off the top.
Regardless of the cause, a solution must be qualitatively different from the systems that have gone before. Perhaps a spiritual revolution could do it, if properly conceived. Have you, for example, seen the Dalai Lama's book, "A Cal
2
Sounds great! A new list of rights can include food, money, shelter, health care etc.
This is an inevitable outcome of ever improving technologies and we should look forward to its rapid development.
For those who fear meaninglessness without work, massage the person next to you, work in the garden, work out, play out.... it won’t be that bad.
3
I appreciate the forward looking stance presented in this column, but I think more needs to be said about squeezing more from our current systems. Just because capital is currently pilling up in the bank accounts of the 1% doesn't mean that this is how capitalism has to work. How many resources could we save if everyone just turned off the lights in their house, drove an electric car, and cut their meat consumption in half? To me, the failure of imagination lies in how we are squandering the bountiful resource we currently have. Do we really need to extract more minerals from asteroids? Is holding out hope for a technological solution to our problems just holding us back from implementing the real solutions that are staring us in the face right now?
1
The problem is psychological, not material. Ignore that basic truth at your peril. This essay assumes two basic falshoods. That it is a lack of technology that created the class structure and that it is scarcity which maintains it. To be a champion of the obvious the author is consumed by a smiley-feel good middle class naivite akin to the drive behind Beto's campaign.
The ugly truth is that many. many people take pleasure in doing bad things to other people — this is a substitute for the love which they did not receive. It's called sadism and it's one of the character traits in an authoritarian personality — which is the predominant nature of our upper class rulers.
This is because of the way they raise their children, the values of their culture are instilled in ritual abuse and a denuding of the human qualities of empathy and love replacing them with a drive to power and a need to compete and win (others must fail in this closed belief system0
Ownership is worshipped. Property is fetishized. Control is considered the primary necessity, this in order to replicate one's own ego in one's children. It's like a species determination to survive. H.G. Wells saw it clearly in The Time Machine.Patriarchy is dystopia.
Social class is not fundamentally a problem of scarcity. Material scarcity was solved by new technology in the 19th century. It was never applied to egalitarianism. Not even in the Soviet Empire, because neither their nor our elite want that.
4
@Arthur
Very true. Reading these various comments, I can't help but think maybe we just need to divide into two societies. One with all the people who valorize dominance, subjugation, greed, drudgery as character-building, competition, etc., and one with people who like to play, innovate, and make themselves and others happy. I honestly can't remotely relate to the mindset of a person who thinks that without work, we would all want to kill each other or that life would be "meaningless". Maybe they're just a different type of person and should live in their own society together.
Problem is, the leisure and play society would need to be heavily defended and armed because the status and subjugation society would always be trying to attack and take over. Especially because 90%+ of the women would prefer living in the play society.
Thought-provoking, and I agree we are in an age of crisis, but collectively lacking in a sense of responsibility to others, to higher ideals (truth, compassion, action, etc... what it really means to be fully human) more so than lacking in imagination. How to fulfill the psychological needs of huge swaths of humanity to fight (on infinite levels, it seems) to win? From the minuscule sperm fighting to get to the egg first to sibling rivalry to sports to the race to the moon to Master Chef to address to salary (ad nauseam and especially here in the U.S.), we fight to win. And in order to be a winner there have to be losers. Of course, it could be argued that once the struggle for survival is removed humans could relax and work cooperatively, embrace those higher ideals, but that would take a collective shift and dedication from our current crop of "winners." So yes, in Bastani's perfect world we could all eat meatless meat and drink grapeless wine and ostensibly sit around looking at pictures of extinct animals and botanical species and "luxuriate" in Communism as we thank the tech winners for their largess and as we overpopulate some more and watch apartment buildings that dwarf the Burj Khalifa rise into the heavens.
Interesting piece - thanks, but no thanks.
5
The amazing meat burger, made possible by an investment from a modern Rockefeller. Space travel or asteroids? Goofy, but most likely through companies founded by other successful entrepreneurs. High quality, low cost alcohol? From companies and investors seeking a profit motive. And "low growth, low productivity, low wages"...does the world consist only of Dayton, Ohio?
Luxury communism is clamoring for a DMV experience we'll have the "luxury" of paying more for. How successful has the government been as of late with education or infrastructure?
Anti-capitalists are anti-vaxxers with a different subject matter. They take the bounty and health around us as such a given that they misguidedly work to tear down that which underpins it.
6
Many reader comments are discouragingly negative. Take the several objections grounded on the belief that the most critical problem facing us is overpopulation. But Princeton physicist and NASA consultant Gerald O’Neill solved the problem neatly and definitively nearly 50 years ago and published the book that explained how to do it. Doubt it? Read “The High Frontier.” I bet it’ll change your mind. Be sure to buy the title authored by O’Nell and, if you can find it, intelligently updated with 6 new chapters by Freeman Dyson, who explains that the technology needed, hardly esoteric in the 70’s, has gotten even more accessible today. We could do this! Nothing to lose but our chains of doubt.
38
@Patrick Gleeson
Then I have three questions:
1) Why is is so important that we have more humans earth? What do we gain in exchange for all that we sacrifice? It becomes a fundamental question of individual purpose.
2) Given your assertion that the technology to do that existed as early as the 70's why have things continued to fall apart? If we can't solve that first none of this matters.
3) I just read a summary of O’Neil's extra-planetary colonization schemes and besides skipping right over completely obvious logistical limitations (since we can't even mine enough tin to make iPhones without child slaves), isn't his idea just a complete admission of our failure as humans to be able to care for our planet?
Incidentally, it is interesting that the root of the word human comes from Proto-Indo-European ghomon, literally earthling, earthly being.
5
@Patrick Gleeson Problem is getting Megatons of construction materials in Orbit without a Fission Rocket, like Project Icarus, Space Elevator, or Orbital Rings. We are stuck on earth until we move past Chemical Rockets.
3
@Patrick Gleeson
The earth is a pretty nice place. The problems are indeed political. The basic solutions have been available for 50 years but depend upon the political long-range will. Is that an oxymoron? Population matters because people like luxury and a comfort cushion. So, assuming the new deal will work for everybody, we probably can't handle more than 5 billion total. We have tidal energy (e.g. gates to the Bay of Fundy), solar energy (cells, batteries, and steam heat to run all electricity). wind, geothermal. More than enough but we still think there isn't so we compete for "scarce" resources.
On the other hand, humans are not really capable of long-term planning much less family planning. We will need to be scared into making it work. Floods and famine should do it. All this talk about space is based upon the assumption that only a few people will be allowed to survive.
11
"This time it'll be different, I swear."
Imagine an abusive spouse saying this to his wife and when she resists, accusing her of lacking imagination. That's what this column is.
3
In 1968 the pop duo Zager & Evans released a song about "Automated Luxury Communism" titled "In the Year 2525." These are the pertinent lyrics:
In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545
You ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew
Nobody's gonna look at you
In the year 5555
Your arms hangin' limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin' to do
Some machine's doin' that for you
In the year 6565
You won't need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
In the year 7510
If God's a coming, He oughta make it by then
Maybe He'll look around Himself and say
Guess it's time for the judgment day.
When technology takes over you don't end up with utopia - you end up with the end of meaningful life.
5
Sure. Why not. Let’s just skip over luxury socialism. It didn’t really seem to have legs anyway. I realize the title is a bit of a joke, so I kid back.
2
Outland now!
1
You lost me at communism.
3
How embarrassingly naive.....
3
"There are two placed only where socialism will work: in heaven where it is not needed and in hell where they already have it" -- Winston Churchill
Communism is socialism's mean older brother.
2
Seeing so many posts on capitalism both for and against. At the end of the day I feel that its CONSUMERISM and not capitalism that is the real problem we need to combat in the future. Consumerism, to me, seems to be the root of greed and want that infects capitalism.
Encouraging the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts is the issue. Wanting more and more stuff exhausts our finite resources. There's nothing wrong wanting luxury. Want an IWC watch? Cool, that's fine and you have good taste. Want a collection of 52 watches? That's a problem. You can only wear one at a time so why have so many? Don't buy 10 pairs of dress shoes, get one really good pair that will last 20 years. You name it, sneaker-heads, hoarders, shopaholics, people who own 5 cars and multiple vacation homes. This ever increasing need to own more and more stuff is just illogical.
Yes there is an argument for capitalism vs. communism, as well as, the pros and cons associated with each. However, regardless of private or state control we on an individual level need to learn to live within our means. I would highly suggest the Netflix documentary Minimalism. It's not that we should only have one bowl, one spoon, one fork, and one chair; rather learning where the we have just enough to be happy and take care of our needs and going no further. We should be practicing minimal-ism (without necessarily being a minimal-ists) to free up our resources, time, & energies.
2
Yes, by all means, lets limit peoples' choices and force them to conform to living as you dictate, for their own good. How about no.
2
@George
... and how the heck did you come to that conclusion from my previous statement? I think you may have misread or misinterpreted my comments. I'm advocating that people should stop acquiring more things just for the sake of having more things. It's OK to have things, everyone's level of 'enough things' is gonna be different. I'd just say go and buy nice, high quality things that will last but just stop mindlessly acquiring them or living in a consume and depose mindset. If you have items that you use that's fine but what is the point of just buying a bunk of junk you never use and collects dust? Really what's so offensive about that?
So please George, when I advocate that people should just practice a little mindfulness, take stock and live within their means (however they wish to define it) how am I limiting their choices based on their own set limits?
It depends on whether you can take greed and need for power and one-upmanship out of the human equation....the quest to be "better than" and hold that over someone else's (lower) head....
3
Yuuuup. Not changing human nature. Been tried, delivers only unspeakably cruelty and death one an industrial scale.
1
"but it is unable to share round the fruits of technological development."
I have miniature supercomputers on my lap, in my pocket and on my wrist. I drive a car that cost three months' pay used but almost a year's pay when it was new a decade ago. I bought my phone used and it cost just over a day's pay. One of my teeth is based on a digital scan and built by a robot.
And that's as a supposedly underpaid factory worker!
3
Didn’t we see this movie one hundred years ago? Collectivism in any way shape or form has never worked in a large society. The only form of economic policy that has brought infinitely higher standards of living and continues to bring billions of people out of poverty is capitalism and free enterprise. Long live the “invisible hand”.
3
Ah! A vintage grand cru classe Bordeaux, in a box! How quickly the desirability of great vintages, steaks, or whiskeys will fade, once they become easily affordable and readily available.
3
At first I though the author of this column was engaging in a very subtle satire.
Then when I Googled the phrase "Fully Automated Luxury Communism" it was clear that the author today has just published a book by that title, available on Amazon.
Since the catch-phrase is not actually explained in the column, looks like we'll need to get a hold of the book to find out more.
2
Sounds like the world in Star Trek TNG!
2
How can any Trump hater want to create a giant government entity with even more power- so that when the first natural downturn happens (which happens in every system because there are economic cycles), then the masses vote some populist and now we've got a Tyrant with truly unbridled power. This drive towards such a centralized power is one of the most short-sighted and moronic pushes in the zeitgeist. There are terrible humans out there, we're flawed, and it's an inevitability that worse leaders than Trump will be placed in power in the future. So why would we want a system in place they could abuse worse than the one we have- like it or not, the current American system has a better balance of power than any of the socialist/communist countries throughout history- Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Casto, Maduro... don't get me started on the Middle East despots. And if you think people would never vote someone who would abuse power, or the people running this hypothetical America would never fall pray to the insatiable lust for control/power, you live in a fantasy world.
4
Why does everything have to be "luxury."
1
June 11 2019
The psychological spiritual maturity of American culture expresses well its intend to live with all kinds of non - material luxuries and the majority are willing to die in the bliss of liberty and with not intend to live long or even prosper - what is now and is now and always will be now - the answer in a celebrity fake president and ignore the forthcoming everything - its is the forever party time - scary true and nice not.....
1
"But there’s a catch. It’s called capitalism. It has created the newly emerging abundance, but it is unable to share round the fruits of technological development."
So go beyond capitalism to to....
Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
There, Aaron Bastani gets full marks for mixing up the phraseology of Karl Marx and Adam Smith in one phrase.
And how ? That's anyone's guess ?!
3
@Nirmal Patel
Actually, the phrase "Capitalism" was coined by Karl Marx. So when someone talks about "capitalism" or claims to be a "capitalist," he is living in a Marxist frame.
Adam Smith would have been horrified at today's capitalism. Above all, Smith was a moral philosopher. Unfortunately, he has been hijacked by Social Darwinists.
@Highplains Lawyer
Marx coined 'capitalism'. Really ? That is very interesting. I will certainly look it up. [ If you can forward any links to that, I would be grateful. But I will certainly should be able to look it up on my own, hopefully. ]
Mt. Everest is Disney World. Just stick a fork in me; I'm done. Don't care about gene editing and asteroid mining and synthetic meat. Just going to die in a blaze of global climate change when the last of the tuna is gone and the only big cat left is a Maine coon.
3
If you believe that technology solves everything, then you deserve the world you get. I, for one, would rather work a menial job and feel useful than be a brain dead blob fed fake luxuries. Your world sounds one step ahead of living on life support--no needs, no wants, no nothing except compliance with the wonders of technology and the technoids who think they rule the world.
3
Your compliance is below norms. Report to a Center for an adjustment.
" . . . a new politics. One where technological change serves people, not profits." You must mean an economy in which business decisions are made by politicians based on wish projection and election polling numbers, not economic or technological commonsense; that would be a socialist economy run by the Democrats. It might work for a while until the whole thing starts running at a loss and collapses. You know, as they politely say, when the guano hits the fan. I hate to bring it up, but does anyone remember the Soviet Union? That's roughly how their economy worked, until it didn't.
3
@Ronald B. Duke
"Fully automated." This actually implies an economy in which resource allocations (research, manufacturing or consumption) are made by algorithm. It's neither a command economy nor a market economy, but a programmed economy. It would depend upon an elite cadre of unelected computer scientists and engineers (technocracy) who would oversee a near-universal implementation of the distribution mechanism (a monopoly being required to create the positive network effects).
However, I somehow doubt this will make anyone feel better about the idea.
1
Fully Automated Luxury Communism, sounds like a high end car model. Surely not every participant in this imagined world will get the same trim. You could have your T-class (touring) communism, the base model, it has all the basics but no flash, no bells and whistles. If you have the ability the S-class (super) would add a little glitz to your communism. For those with connections, the L-class (luxury) tucked and rolled with a statement. Finally, the SL-class, known as Super Lux Communism for the great leaders with optional flight capabilities to fly above to observe their great works.
3
dystopian utopia...
5
I'm grateful this article is being posted because it really gives insight into the core beliefs of the Editorial Board and many of the readers. It serves as a confirmation of everything that is wrong about their opinions.
Or perhaps I'm wrong and this is just a satirical piece but missing Harrison Bergeron or Vonnegut's whit.
5
Yes!
AI for President 2040.
Only computers can be trusted.
3
Haven't we seen this movie before?
7
"But that’s only a problem if you think work — as a cashier, driver or construction worker — is something to be cherished."
I get what Mr. Bastani is saying, but this language is full of condescension. For countless people, a job provides a sense of purpose. I'm fully aware that being a cashier or driver is simply a means to an end for most people. I also know that people take pride in working, especially skilled jobs like construction, farming, etc. And automation isn't just coming for cashiers, it's coming for doctors, researchers, and many other jobs that require a college degree or higher. Given how much our work provides purpose in our lives, then what fills that void? Do we just become mindless consumers a la "Wall-E?"
I agree that our current political leadership lacks imagination in solving the big problems of today. But, I also think the author is too dismissive of how complicated something like, for example, asteroid mining, is. Let's hear what scientists say about launching a spacecraft to an asteroid and docking with it (while it's moving incredibly fast among other asteroids, mind you). Mining it with little to no gravity, and then bringing everything back. I'm no expert, but it sounds a helluva lot more complicated, expensive and dangerous than this article insinuates. In fact, most things mentioned here are more complicated than he admits.
Let's start with bringing the cost of synthetic meat down below $50 for now...
106
@SF I read an article in the Atlantic a while back that discussed what we would do to fill the void in a "post-work" society. The writer suggested that, with less work, humans would have more time to do what matters to them. I can think of many things that would give me a sense of purpose besides the job that pays my bills! I would love to spend more time giving to others and doing my part to heal the environment. There is more need in this world than there is money to address those needs. What if we all had more time instead? Though my default nature tends to be cynical, I like to believe that we would help each other more if we weren't so worried about things like unexpected medical expenses, etc, etc. Then again, my two young adult nephews spend all their free moments in front of a television playing video games. Sadly, no work for them might just be more time to stay checked out.
I also find the idea of living in a world that is overpopulated to the point of requiring lab-grown food to be rather... terrifying.
7
@SF Couldn't agree more. Computers will be able to write NY Times op-eds long before they'll be able to weld steel.
4
@Jen But the world is not overpopulated to the point of requiring lab-grown food. The farmers in the developing world who were producing 70-80% of food crops have been muscled out of agriculture by oligopolistic corporations. After 3 decades of structural adjustments and land grabbing, world agriculture is finally being expropriated. Land that was used locally for food production is now exploited for cut flowers, health fad crops, palm oil plantations, biofuels, or luxury resorts. Kenya for example has become 'the flower garden of Europe'; cut flowers, tea and coffee comprise 50% of its agriculture, while the population periodically necessitates food aid.
8
From each according to his ability to
each according to his need. I love the idea who wouldn't. I wish it had worked even once anywhere it's been tried. Turns out were better off harnessing our collective greed than our collective generosity.
2
@Brian Altruism always follows self-interest (if it exists at all). Thus it has ever been, and will ever be. And every Communist leader that's led a country has had a surfeit of the latter and a dearth of the former.
1
Nowhere in this enthusiastic essay was the most essential issue addressed: Overpopulation by humans. Asteroid mining, cultivated meat and whiskey, renewable energy and disease reduction are fine and so is an innovative imagination-- but there are limits to human population density when it comes to planetary well being. Neither capitalism nor communism are solving this crushing problem, which is exacerbated by cultural and religious indoctrination that teaches parents that more children mean more happiness. It's quite the opposite.
134
@WR
There's are natural mechanisms for sorting out "overpopulation." Let's focus our efforts on things that are actually fixable, like our collective quality of life.
4
@WR If we're going to revisit the '60s by proposing communism is a reasonable pathway, we might as well open up "The Population Bomb" too. If you haven't read it yet, we all died in the 70s and 80s because of overpopulation and the planet's inability to support us.
5
@WR
I would argue humanity's problem isn't overpopulation. It is haphazard and unplanned growth, poor allocation of resources, and poor waste disposal and management. If all humans lived as densely as people in Manhattan, the entire planet's population would fit in Arizona with room to spare. Now it is fair to say a large percentage of people would prefer not to live as densely as people do in Manhattan, but if the area was greatly expanded to say something the size of the US east of the Mississippi River. I think that realistically that would give most people enough room. Especially when you consider we would have the entire rest of the planet grow our food, harvest resources, and recreate. It certainly would require a massive change of thinking from what exist today, a massive retooling of our supply and distribution chains, and finally getting over the idea that some people are more deserving or less deserving of things because of where they were born, religious views, or how they look. In short everyone would have to learn to get along or at least tolerate each other. Which is probably the biggest hurdle of the three even though it requires the least amount of physical effort.
1
Finally, a writer who can imagine what a truly free society could look like, and not in some distant future, but soon. Americans in particular can’t seem to imagine a world outside the unhealthy tedium of life in cubicles and factories. We could assert at last the dignity of humankind and devote ourselves to the re-creation of our flagging culture — to “work” as the direction of productive impulses toward objects if love and passion.
The “communism” this requires isn’t Marx’s, either. It has more in common with far older visions of utopia. That we resist it is a testimony to the fact that we are self-enslaving creatures, and that “the way it is” is only the way things are because we permit it to be so by common consent. If we could throw off our genetic Calvinism, we could realize John Adams’ wish for his progeny: that because of what he was doing in his lifetime, his grandchildren might study the arts of peace. That is a profoundly American impulse industrialization and corporatism have obscured for too long. Now we have much of the technology and abundance we would need to seize upon radical freedom, if we, the people, dare.
The US does not need to be a polarized, hate-filled culture void. John Lennon sounded like “a dreamer” when he dared us to “imagine.” But now we are sleepers who need to awake. You don’t need to be a Marxist to recognize that we have, as the saying goes, nothing to lose but our chains.
163
@MM You're quoting Frank Herbert's Dune, which was a monarchy.
6
@MM And yet Marxism is EXACTLY what this author is advocating. As to the "'communism' this requires isn't Marx's", pray, give us an example of a variety of communism that hasn't increased the fetters on its citizens.
8
@MM wrote: "The “communism” this requires isn’t Marx’s, either. It has more in common with far older visions of utopia."
The original vision of Utopia was imagined by Thomas More in a book called "Utopia". Putting aside whether it could ever be achieved on a large scale, no matter how much technology we have, I still reject it as a vision to strive for.
More's vision of Utopia was one in which every person lives and works at the things best suited for his or her talents in harmony. It sounds nice (I suppose), but what it ignores is the basic human desire not to be limited or put into a box. One's talents don't always match one's desires, motivations, work ethics, or drives. People want freedom to chart their own courses and strive to achieve their own goals.
The free market (emphasis on "FREE") can be messy, but it works because it gives people the freedom to interact and work and trade and innovate. That system is not only the best practical economic system ever tried, but it has many virtues that transcend its practicality.
9
"A system where things are produced only for profit, capitalism seeks to ration resources to ensure returns. Just like today’s, companies of the future will form monopolies and seek rents. The result will be imposed scarcity — where there’s not enough food, health care or energy to go around." Scarcity is phenomena of nature as is not imposed by a market but is ameliorated by it. Monopolies can be dealt with by the fair and equal application of law, whereas history has taught us that the politics of communal tyranny leads to the degradation and death of millions.
2
@tjm
Scarcity is the primary assumption of economics. We assume resources are scare. That is how humans make decisions. We allocate resources based on the assumption of scarcity. If we allocate efficiently, we optimize utility given the scarce resources at hand.
To a degree this is true. Time for instance is biologically scare. No matter what you do, humans have about a maximum of 115 years on this planet. That's it. No amount of decision making can correct this scarcity. You are mortal. You will die.
Bastani is speaking from the perspective of a technologist though. We've made vast progress through technological efficiency. We aren't less efficient at producing food than we were a hundred years ago. Why are there still so many people starving?
This isn't a product of scarcity. There is more than enough food in the world to feed every single human being alive today. The problem is one of distribution. That's the failure of capitalism. Capitalism doesn't distribute abundance efficiently or equitably.
We live in a world of abundance and yet people starve. That's the tyranny that kills millions.
2
@Andy
People starve unnecessarily in an era of abundance primarily because of government interference in the market place. To paraphrase Adam Smith, When wheat is cheap at point A and dear at point B, the nasty self-interest of the baker does the rest. I see nothing in Mr. Bastani's rose-colored glasses opinion to make it otherwise.
1
The precise opposite future is more plausible: unchecked human population growth has produced climate change and all the other forms of degradation which are destroying most of Earth's ecosystems. Agriculture will eventually collapse on a vast scale and the resulting social upheaval will dramatically reduce human numbers, leading to the worldwide collapse of technological civilization. Survivors will rebuild pre-industrial societies, re-creating medieval agriculture and technology, based on the ubiquitous steel left by our current civilization.
For an excellent fictional take on this future, albeit brought about by an epidemic rather than environmental collapse, read Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart.
5
@Someone else
There is no such thing as "unchecked human population growth." There are natural mechanisms for sorting that out.
Unfortunately, the artificial systems that we find ourselves immersed in (Capitalism, Oligarchy, etc) are not compatible with sustainability--which is why we are doing so much damage to our environment. It's not even worth talking about "overpopulation" until we put in place systems that are sustainable. The only way to fix this is radical Democratization. I'm going to repeat this, because it's important: THE ONLY WAY TO FIX THIS IS RADICAL DEMOCRATIZATION.
Power to the People. Power to the Workers.
3
@BB You are, of course, absolutely correct. A population grows unchecked as long as the critical resource, usually food, is abundant. When the population outstrips and has consumed its food or an external factor reduces the food supply, the population crashes, usually very rapidly.
Voila, growth has been checked.
1
Utopian plans always sound nice, much like Star Trek episodes. But, what of those who don't participate? How does society progress when there is no incentive to excel? Without profit, how do new technologies and life saving vaccines develop? Who picks the winners and losers? Plus, do you really believe the ultra rich are simply going to take on this new organization without a fight?
The best answer is to control capitalism and create a social safety net. Progressive taxes (who needs or can spend $10M per year?), affordable health care and education for all.
4
@KB Human Nature is the incentive to excel.
1
You know who had no failure of imagination? Kurt Vonnegut, whose short story Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow depicts a world in which the population expands at a rate that would shock Malthus because death has become voluntary. It's only a step or two beyond what Mr. Bastani describes, and the results aren't pretty.
It's clear that the planet cannot continue to sustain its present level of growth. Petri-dish products and technology of the future may be one solution, but as I look at the world around me, I think more people should embrace some technologies of the past -- like reliable birth control, and legal abortion, so people who prefer not to overpopulate the planet have the option to do that without being vilified or criminalized.
223
@D Price affluence tends to negatively correlate with birth rates. If such a future were to come to pass you may see population pressure decrease significantly due to this. I agree though that we should always seek to increase access to the things you mentioned.
16
This is absolutely true. We can only have any of the good things the article suggests if we embrace our mortality, which is what gives our lives structure and meaning anyway. And maybe we shouldn’t be reproducing quite so much while we’re killing the planet, either...
22
@D Price Though overpopulation is a serious thing, I am deeply sceptical of this point when raised in this context. What precisely is your point? That we cannot possibly work toward a better social and economic system because of our sheer number? It is nihilistic: there is no solution; we all must die. A chronic case of lack of imagination and, frankly, laziness.
And, plus, it's a lie. The world can sustain our numbers, which are already beginning to naturally decrease in any country that reduces poverty and increases education.
What the world cannot sustain is our outsized appetite for fossil fuels and wasteful use of the earth's resources - statistically not tied to population size. This article is proposing one way to break from an old outdated industrial capitalist model. We need more of this - more creative thinking, less nihilism.
15
Karl Marx, in his theories regarding communism, managed to create the model for an incorruptible society. The problem, however, as we later leaned from examples of totalitarian communist regimes in the 20th century, was that he was mistaken in thinking that humanity's ills were the results of a corrupt society. That was just a consequence of a much greater reality: that we, ourselves, are corrupt. That the root cause of all the pain and suffering in the world isn't simply a political or religious belief, but rather is the basic biological actions of human beings at work. We can always strive towards higher, more Utopian ideals, and make moral progressive as a society, sure, but we will always inevitably fail in the end. We look for messianic principals to adhere to, to believe in, but we can't save the world because we are very thing the world must be saved from. Now, I'm now nihilist, I believe we should try to better those around us, but don't search for utopias. Because those don't exist. The very word means "no-place". So don't expect to find a single ideology that fixes everything, but instead search just try to be the best you possible, because that is something that will make the world a better place, not some delusions of post-modern Marxist grandeur.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves"
2
Yes to utopia visions! The sci fi world is strong dystopia while utopia is non existent. There is a reason for this. Cautionary tales are considered the better way to use one's imagination for planning the future, but why not both? Reduce the stress of population growth and leverage technology. In this case technology is not there to be an amusement or as apart predatory capitalism; instead, it is there to free man up to improve his relations with one another. Yes, bring peace and harmony, as well as preserve individual initiative, innovation, and one's sense of relevance and purpose. Evolve rather than stay on what is obviously a self destructive path. Man/woman, today, is not adapting. We live with short term thinking and impulsiveness. Leverage technology and accept that over population is part of the problem. That is the foundation for a wonderful world. Bring on utopia sci fi so we can imagine the possible.
2
This "communism" sure sounds like state-enforced "capitalism." The problem with communism, just like socialism in Venezuela, is that it works perfectly fine until it runs out of other people's money and labor.
2
What happens to the individual who hates the new meat? Or does not want his life controlled by faceless and nameless people? Or who shouts out about tyranny. He or she ends up in the gulag. Bastani's vision is horrifying. The human spirit gets crushed. We will become a society of drones, marching in lockstep, keeping our heads down and our opinions to ourselves. Being an individual will be deemed a crime against the state. How about a plan for more freedom?
3
@Tim Lewis
Millions of underpaid and precarious workers working long hours doing customer service at a fast food restaurant, precisely in service to "faceless and nameless" corporate interests, sounds much more like a society of drones marching in lockstep. A collectively and democratically controlled means of production means precisely that you have the right, by virtue of your status as a human-being rather than your stock of wealth, to whatever meat you want rather than that which is ordained by the owners of capital. The constraint is the collective rather than the private cost.
3
If luxury without freedom is the goal, let's just create a virtual world and let anyone who chooses plug themselves into the matrix to live out their meaningless lives in a virtual oblivion.
Just don't take the rest of us with you by embracing yet another round of state-imposed communism that deprives all but the most powerful of freedom and liberty while managing not to deliver any of the promised goods in the process.
I'll take my freedom and liberty, thank you very much.
2
After reading this article, I'm trying very hard to imagine a technology that liberates us from uncritical hubris and the pseudo-utopian nightmares it tends to foster.
3
Great concept. How many mink coats am I allowed to possess in a Fully Automated Luxury Communism? I want at least half a dozen (or more, depending how many my neighbor has).
2
Jeff Bezos has the right idea; populate the solar system. On the other hand, he's devoting his billions to do so with trillions of clones of his own irreplaceable wonderfulness.
1
The author begins by describing an innovative process that took place within a free market system. And the lesson he takes is that we should now embrace ... Communism?!
Free markets mean FREE-DOM. Communism is anathema to that. Take away freedom, and all the luxury in the world will just result in apathy and depression. You might as well plug us all into a virtual matrix.
Give me the blue pill every time, man.
2
Technological advances will not cause communism to work for the masses. It will, however, make it easier for the government overseers to use it to control the masses.
Give up your freedom, and you'll never get it back.
2
Surprised this isn't prefaced by a line saying "paid for by the committee to re-elect the President". There are other directions to point the gun other than at ones foot you know.
3
Communism is based on the conceit that a few all-powerful rulers can make as good or better decisions about what works than the collective masses of people operating in a free market system. They can't. No one is smart enough for the job, and even if someone were, no one with that much power is sufficiently incorruptible.
At absolute best, communism can take the current pie and redistribute the portions. The free market manages to continually make more pie.
2
The pathway to utopia is much more dependent upon the state of mind of those who would employ technology than on the technology itself. When hearts and minds are fully open to our interdependence and mutual humanity the way and the will to a better world will appear.
2
It's quite an accomplishment to write an op-ed that both trafficks in murky generalities AND makes numerous factual misstatements, but Mr. Bastani has succeeded. The world is wealthier than ever before, more democratic than ever before, and billions of people have been LIFTED out of poverty in the last 20 years. Slow growth? Hogwash. World GDP is growing at about 3.3%, and has been in the 1.5-4% band for the last 25 years, with the obvious exception of 2008-2009. The word "crisis" implies that things are worse than they used to be at some point in the past, but this is simply not the case. Only in the realm of climate change are things demonstrably worse than before.
I'm also growing weary of people using Brexit, Trump, etc. to demonstrate the collapse of democratic ideals. Just because a democratic process leads to an outcome you personally do not favor DOES NOT mean that democracy has collapsed.
2
@David L.
What does this chart of GDP Growth since 1961 suggest to you? It is from the World Bank.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2017&start=1961&view=chart
GDP growth is slowing. On top of that, WAGE growth has been stagnant in the USA since the 1970's.
On Democracy... I mean, sure, one could disagree with Bastani's (extremely brief... hardly even worth mentioning...) analysis on this point, but I have a feeling you're just trying to find anything about his essay that you can espouse disagreement with simply because of a gut-reaction to the word "Communism."
So... whatever. Cheers love.
1
@David L. Just because you are happy with the razor thin margins of victory on some votes based largely on misinformation DOES NOT mean democracy is thriving nor even in good health. By your argument, Hitler’s and Mussolini’s electoral victories presaged golden ages of democracy and freedom for the respective electorates. (They didn’t.)
ALL POWER TO THE IMAGINATION! --Paris rebel youth, 1968. The title is amusing but has more than a grain of truth. I've been arguing for it since 1975, when I read 'the fragment on the machine' in Marx's 'Grundrisse', then being translated from German to English for the first time by my roomie, Martin Nicolaus. It's also implied in Marx's ratio of organic capital to variable capital. I keep these ideas in mind, especially in dark moments, as my North Star, to keep a good sense of direction, even if I'll likely not see it.
4
Where the Soviets went wrong in their Communist experiment was when they stole everyone's land, businesses, and money. Perhaps the better path would be to do the opposite and give people money. A universal basic income, if it were enough to live on, would eliminate the desire for low wage jobs that could then be automated. The remaining jobs that could not be automated would have to pay significantly more and the whole process would fuel huge demand for high paying jobs designing and maintaining the automated systems.
The incentive to work would still be there since a universal basic income would not be enough to live the life of luxury that some desire, but jobs would no longer be a necessity to survive. This would be a fundamental shuffling of the world economy, yet it would allow capitalism and all it's benefits to survive. Rather than dragging everyone down to the level of the poorest as the Soviets did, a universal basic income would raise the poorest up to a livable level and leave everyone else alone.
If we automated large portions of government, military, and civilian services, we might not even need to raise taxes. Small government, smaller workforce, bigger public services.
4
Why the use of the word "luxury"? We don't even know how to live on this earth. The earth provided all the luxury that is needed but we have made it uninhabitable or the background to our privileged egos. Human beings are craven; all they want is MORE.
4
@Janet
Some human beings want enough. This be more for some and less for others.
1
Excellent article reminding us of possibility: many horrendous comments reminding us of the lack of kindness, will, and imagination that got us here.
And no, it wasn’t Trump that did this.
2
On the right track but missing on two closely related issues. First, the goal of communism, even in its most utopian sense, is wrong because its underlying thesis is that resolution of the class struggle will yield a model earth. But the trend towards economic justice -- sharing prosperity, hence increasing net energy consumption -- is the main reason for the accelerating degradation of the planet. Since economic justice is impossible given the quantity (and quality) of our specie, but that economic justice is a primary test of any model earth, the only rational management solution is to reduce the population to a level where all humans are more or less equally wealthy . Of course any rational social model must eliminate excess wealth, but excess wealth is not the main inhibitor of progress. In fact eliminating wealth and distributing it more equally only exacerbates the problem of an impending catastrophe of the biosphere. What is required is a massive and relatively immediate reduction in the human population, preferably in order of quality. In short, what any good planet management consultant would recommend if earth were in the business of survival.
2
Their are an infinite amount of differences between Medieval times & this technological age but one thing has never changed. Every one of those differences has been brought about by human beings. The catch isn't capitalism, it is how we think of success & power. It is as John Lennon said, we need to "give peace a chance".
2
I like Iain Banks too. Nobody else envisions where we are going, what we will do when we can do anything. But really public and private aspects of society--ie market and (hopefully democratic) state--are both necessary for optimal performance and security. When you eliminate one (" it's imperfect and needs the other so why not just eliminate it!") you put all the eggs in one basket and you don't have one checking the tendencies of the other. I'd prefer a mixed economy where the state ensures everyone is assured of necessities, but the market operates to provide luxuries for those sufficiently motivated to pursue them.
4
Creation of wealth as Bastani proposes, would be marvelous -- but only if we can avoid the gross inequality of wealth that the world now has. The problem is not inequality in general, but extreme inequality.
A startling statistic from Credit Suisse -- hardly a leftist institution -- is that the global per capita wealth is about $63,000. Redistribution of that wealth would not require impoverishing the wealthy, nor even prevent them from leading luxurious lives.
The newly created wealth that Bastani proposes will only help the world if it is distributed widely. Even some extremely wealthy people such as Bill Gates recognize this.
3
interesting to be sure , yet will require real attitudinal changes ,and youth MAKING it happen
1
The problem with techo-utopianism was laid out succinctly by E.O. Wilson when he said we suffer from Paleolithic emotions, Medieval institutions, and Godlike technology. We keep asking for brightly colored objects, when we should really be asking for more responsibility. Time to outgrow the toy box.
12
The real problem is that our economy doesn't intend, let alone attempt, to provide for the needs of everyone—and that starts not with a burger, but with the regime that seized control.
We near 2 years and 5 months without a President, nor a representative Senate or Court.
6
Luxury only exists through exclusivity, to have access to certain commodities that others don't have. Limited access makes something luxurious.
10
Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Speculative technology is speculative until it actually works as predicted. 70 years ago, nuclear energy was predicted to provide electricity that would be too cheap to meter.
5
Add this to the long list of writers who see the answers to the 21st century's crisis in technology and economics. That is the lack of imagination. I confounds me how the most basic concept, the one at the root of this whole conversation about resources and scarcity, can skip right over the obvious every time this subject comes up. Overpopulation. The unmentionable. I realize it stabs at the heart to suggest that we can't just go on breeding freely to preserve cultural dominance. And it confounds me that people will talk about eating insect burgers before even talking for two minutes about the possibility that limiting the human population on earth might be a better idea. Cue the shouting about first world nations being the biggest consumers. Go ahead and say it if you must but it's a weak argument that won't change the fact.
17
@Erich Richter
Want better population control make everyone richer. In most wealthy industrialized nations the population growth rate is flat or negative including our own. As children turn from a commodity to a expensive good then necessity to have many of them drops significantly. If you are a subsistent farmer you need lots of kids, because some ain't going to make it and the rest need to work for the benefit of yourself and your overall family.
2
@Erich Richter: from the article, "by 2020 there will be more people over the age of 60 than under the age of 5" - that doesn't sound like a recipe for booming population growth!
2
@Johnson That doesn't play out in the real world because as affluence increases consumption goes up exponentially and you end up with (empirically proven) even more resource scarcity. What griped me about this guy and dreamers like Yuval Noah Harari is their willingness to skip right over the glaring obstacle in their arguments. For this guy that is the premise that we should just go off-planet for what we need. What that says to me is we can't take care of this planet because we were raised to be throw-away consumers.
3
Whether you agree with the author's proposed solution or not, the observation that our society suffers from a basic lack of imagination about a truly better, transformed world, seems accurate. Especially if you spend any time talking to conservatives (the most boring, uninspired people on the planet). They'll grudgingly accept your critique of capitalism but claim that "it's the best system we have" (as is). At least those on the Left can envision something better.
4
The first step toward this is an improvement of societal balance and safety nets to ensure we can focus on other things other than the primacy of wealth.
5
The author talks about our failure of imagination. I see that playing out in the comments on this article. Just because communism was a failure in the 20th century does not mean that it would be a failure in a future world of automation. The situations are entirely different. Communism failed because it was dependent on human labor. When labor is no longer needed and only capital matters, it will be capitalism that fails. Central planning is still probably a bad idea, but we will need some form of the original idea of communism, which was that the people should own the means of production (the capital). I can imagine a system where everyone owned some part of the means of production and received benefits from that. If you allow people to choose what production they want to own, and how they want to spend the profits from that, then you still maintain market incentives.
8
@dj sims
Technology makes centralized control more feasible. That is a fact that should make us fear communism now more than ever, not embrace it. I prefer freedom.
2
All the technology in Star Trek, Star Wars and so many other films comes right out of science fiction stories and novels, which proposed asteroid mining in the 1950s: Robert A. Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones", or Isaac Asimov's "The Martian Way," or anything by John Varley, or...
I've been reading about these possible futures for more than 60 years. It's nice to see conjecture in the real world finally catch up to the ideas and societies first proposed in the pages of science fiction, which has been dismissed and denigrated for so long.
Maybe we knew something about the possible future after all!
5
I doubt people would tolerate a society where everyone is doing well and getting their needs met. As several writers/thinkers have said in the past, "It's not enough that I succeed, others have to fail"
12
Population control and an end to consumerism would go far to save our environment. We need to embrace and legislate the benefits of living well with less. Smaller homes, mass transit instead of owning cars, zero-waste for groceries and frequent-use products, more “make it yourself” or do without. For inequity, societies can engineer ways to assure everyone has a comfortable base from which to thrive: guaranteed housing, health care, and education for all. No more anxiety about losing it all that drives the worst human behavior and selfishness. Plus outlawing egregious disparities between executives and employees—earning more than $250K per person isn’t really necessary and just stokes rampant consumerism. And money should not fuel our democratic process, nor business needs matter more than the welfare of people and planet. Those days must end, or we will all pay.
Pure communal schemes have not shown success, but setting stronger ethical and moral limits that strive for fairness, balance, and the public good is inevitable.
9
Better living through technology . . . now where have we heard that before?
Technological optimism isn't new, but Mr. Bastani's version ignores the laws of thermodynamics. Biomimicry is a more realistic approach, along with drastic re-thinking of mass production, consumption, and global economic networks that exacerbate cruel inequalities, from which commercial media and the advertising industry effectively insulate those 'luxury consumers.'
Humans don't need to go back to the stone age. But that's where they're headed as long as techno'prophets' like Mr. Bastani can market their rhetorical snake oil as planetary salvation.
To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, modern societies are enamored with mastery of technique, blind to the wisdom of its application.
7
To quote the biologist E.O. Wilson, “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology."
Perhaps we should consider harnessing our god-like technology so that we live in better harmony with the planet we're destroying, rather than striving for some techno-utopia that doesn't address the fundamental moral and ethical challenges that have always plagued humanity. If we have a failure of imagination, it's not technological; it's philosophical and humanistic.
42
We’ve heard all this before.
Has the washing machine helped us do less laundry? No, because we kept acquiring new clothes, made cheaper by automation. And we were seduced by modern consumer comfort & competition. Business still has us in its grip with beautiful phones and tablets that become nonfunctional long before they wear out.
How do we imagine ourselves transcending that addiction?
6
You envision a world “where technological change serves people, not profit.”
I’m dubious that enough of us will care about each other enough to make that leap. Our capitalism is rampantly cruel today- “Luxury” apartment building rise in the city while families face eviction and homelessness.
Perhaps a few more tech billionaires will save us? Look what the petroleum millionaires do with their money. Fund more destructive consumption.
2
The flip-side of technological largess as a source of universal well-being is the constantly increasing, civilization shattering destructiveness of its weaponry. The seductive fantasy of world hegemony, by the possessors of said weaponry, historically overrides all other considerations . While the planet and our species were able to absorb the punishment in the past and recover, the present and near future are in doubt.
Let not Homo Sapiens be one of those countless species that have come and gone.
2
"Luxury" communism is still communism. Indeed, capitalism of today is egregiously and immorally one-sided. There was a time not that long ago when it worked well. The everyday American not only had jobs but also gainful employment. My dad was a teamster, a Democrat, a union man, and proud to be all three. Communism then was the dreaded word and philosophy. And that holds true even today. Like capitalism it also has and very likely can/will run amok. Look what happened to the USSR. It doesn't work. How about China and its little brother North Korea? In the long run, too many of our systems of government become corrupt within. It is not the ideology itself but the men who govern with power and greed in their blood and souls. Equal distribution of wealth is not communism. Equal distribution of working wages is not communism. It is instead called a democracy. No, sir, rather than go the way of "luxury" communism, let us instead begin treating and healing capitalism.
12
@Kathy Lollock
Capitalism has been dead and only hanging on because of elites in power. Capitalism is tied with slavery and colonialism. All these systems work together to create wealth for a small portion of people. Capitalism can't be fixed. It's whole point is to produce inequities and privatize our natural resources. China, NK, and the USSR never reached the goal of a communist state. What you got was differing levels of socialism and use of the free market. Perhaps we're at a tipping point where capitalism will be useless like feudalism and a communist state can work. Either way it capitalism that has lead to our environmental crisis and continues to exacerbate it
1
@Kathy Lollock
" It is instead called a democracy. No, sir, rather than go the way of "luxury" communism, let us instead begin treating and healing capitalism."
I agreed with you up until your proposed solution.
Healing capitalism would be like solving a paradox.
It's a system who very nature & characteristics are antithetical to democracy & equality. It is, by its very structure, an avoricious & ruthless winner-take-all, zero-sum game loop.
Let's instead aim for a FREE ENTERPRISE system, where those who "directly" produce are well rewarded for they labor. What we have today is the modern form of a slave plantation in the form of a rentier system (real estate, stock portfolios, hedge funds, commodities trading, etc) that profits from the underpaid labor in its service. Let's repopulate the world with millions of Mondragons (google it if you don't know what it is); this is where true democracy and economic equality starts.
I'm going to say you are headed in the right direction by slightly off center. The world is in the shape it is in because we have forgotten what is important. It is not "Things" brought to you by a different system, it is people. It is our relationships with each other and the world around us. It is treating each other with respect, having compassion, helping those in need, helping others to be successful, it is teaching our young people real values not greed. It is realizing that we are in a partnership with our world and we have not been doing our share of the work.
The Trump Experience is a graphic reminder of what happens when we take our existing values and remove all restraints. This is a painful, but necessary experience; it serves to show us that "this is not who we are or want to be, we are better that this."
14
I especially like the idea of asteroid mining. Moving large rocks around the solar system looks like a lot of fun, and what could possibly go wrong?
I bet the dinosaurs were working on asteroid mining before, you know, that unfortunate accident.
4
Sorry Mr. Bastani.
Entropy always wins and this planet is all we have.
Your "asteroid mining" ignores that gravity well in which we sit.
I will fully grant you we need to completely rethink unbridled capitalism and unregulated, broken, markets.
But we are well above the carrying capacity of the planet and techno-utopia is not the answer.
And no, actually your manifesto does not sound good at all. It sounds like a fun-house mirror view of Brave New World mixed with 1984 and a veneer of unicorns and rainbows.
8
'Your "asteroid mining" ignores that gravity well in which we sit.'
Good point. Any material "mined" in space needs to reenter the Earth's atmosphere. Reentry requires dissipating kinetic energy. If done on a large scale, there could be environmental effects. And any malfunctions during reentry could cause the material to crash to the Earth or burn up during reentry.
Also, energy would be required to move material from the asteroid's orbit to the Earth's orbit.
All of these technologies have the potential to make the world a better place but only if income inequality is fully addressed. In addition, at the present moment, we are led by a man who thinks the moon is part of Mars and who doesn't understand that human caused climate change is real. Until the Donald Trump and the knuckle draggers who prop him up are gone none of these technological advances can be fully explored.
11
Um, if something serves people, it makes a profit. It's not either/or. But thanks for your 'timetable' for future stuff.
1
This mindset the author desires, similar to the premise of Star Trek-- the Next Generation, where people work and do things for the good of humanity only happened after the apocalyptic World War III. So maybe Trump will be the cataclysmic force that ushers in a whole new era of luxury communism. One can only hope to survive.
4
Look at the countless fellow-travelers we've driven to extinction since 1750,with limited resources. What would we do with unlimited, concentrated energy sources? Humans are a clever weed species that is large enough to harness fire but not control it and we're managing to burn down the barn with our petro-hubris.
4
Our best authors took us to these idea a long time ago, and we seem to have forgotten.
The first full length novel written by Robert Heinlein was For Us, The Living (1938), which presented the world as he imagined it could be in 2086. That thinking was the basis for much of his later work, so although this text appeared later, this thinking was with us for his whole career. The core was exactly this idea of drudgery done by automation, and everybody provided for very well, so that people could do things like art because they are fulfilling.
As for a world too much what it is to think of changing, that was satirized by Voltaire, in Candide, as he ridiculed the Best of All Possible Worlds thinking, "since everything was made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose." His satire was sparked by optimistic thinking trying to address the destruction of Lisbon in a massive earthquake in 1755. This is what Voltaire discussed with Frederick the Great in the middle of the 18th Century.
So our current author is correct. He puts in new words what we should know from centuries of our culture. But we don't seem actually to know it, in practical ways that count. So say it again, and again.
6
Our world is fast and exponentially approaching a point where it extinguishes itself, so while we debate on what ''luxury'' actually is, all else is becoming cataclysmic.
Our world simply cannot handle another billion people (roughly per decade now), all consuming and utilizing dwindling finite resources and space. Working on, and ultimately achieving some sort of other than meat food stuff over the next decade is not going to get it done.
We have to get away from the idea that any single person/family just HAVING a billion dollars (or multiples there of ) which is obscene on so many levels. (again in light of half of the world's population having the same wealth as 36 people)
We are going to have to do away with meritocracy and probably money altogether if we are even going to have a chance to save ourselves. That is not an extreme statement at all.
It is going to take capitalism being put on hold altogether and most (if not all) of the worlds' governments, all working in tandem to combat climate change, and a whole host of issues for self preservation. It is going to have to happen in the next couple of decades. It is going to have to happen now. (or even yesterday)
By all means though, keep trying to perfect that burger.
18
@FunkyIrishman: "Soylent Green is ... people!"
... better yet,
"To Serve Man ... it's a cookbook!"
2
Lab grown meat does mean not more animal killings because it also means no need to have those animals live at all.
You suggest some future where all get the fruits of human labor, while ignoring the fact that's true today. The poor in the USA have cell phones, TVs, cameras, refrigerators, lights, indoor plumbing, garbage collection, medical services, cars, etc.
That you think the rich keep all the goods for themselves shows a complete lack of understanding of economics and capitalism. The poor today live lives of comfort, convenience and safety unattainable to even kings of old.
And that you think if you remove profit motives, all will work hard to achieve rather than all just accept the status quo and taking from others shows you don't understand game theory.
11
@David
First, most of those animals would rather never have been born. Watch food inc or any do a quick stint down the YouTube rabbit hole of the horrific food industry to know what I mean
Second, many of the poor people you speak of hav the commodities of modern day society but have slim to none chance of improving their standing in our society due to the capatalist system we currently have in place. People in this society the article discusses would have equal access to everything (especially education) and could spend time pursuing knowledge and jobs that allows them to pursue self actualization instead of jobs they hate that will be automozied in ten years anyway.
And finally, another point the article makes is that game theory as it relates to economic decisions would become obsolete. People wouldn't pursue their goals for money but for a multitude of other reasons (ex. I do research because I want to expand human knowledge). It just requires a bit of thinking outside of the box and some understanding of how exponential our knowledge of science/our technological growth is expanding.
4
@David
The poor in the U.S. have nice TVs and smartphones, which is all well and good, but they don't have equal access to education, healthcare or even public safety.
A new analysis recently showed that the richest Chicago neighborhoods have an average life expectancy of 90, but in the poorest neighborhoods that might be a couple of miles away, life expectancy is 60--in other words, the average resident in these areas doesn't even have a chance to collect Social Security.
2
@David
"The poor today live lives of comfort, convenience and safety unattainable to even kings of old."
Let me guess... You're not poor.
1
This better be a satirical piece. Otherwise, I suspect the author would benefit from a trip through the world to see how it really is and what the issues really are. But if he would like to sit and eat cultured meat while mining an asteroid, that would be OK, too.
30
Any frequenters of certain areas of social media have heard this idea, commonly referred to jokingly as fully automated gay space communism. It is gratifying to see it discussed in more mainstream media. Many people will most likely read this and shake their heads at it, it seems ridiculous. Yet much of it is possible now, we have enough food to feed everyone, enough clothing and shelter for all and yet people still starve and sit on the streets. There is great merit to the idea here that the only thing standing between us and a utopian future is ourselves.
13
To call it 'communism' sends a different economic system halfway to its grave before it gets started.
6
Thinking communism can EVER work is folly. Communism does not equal collectivism. Communism equals a state run effort to make everyone equal (except of course the rulers themselves who always manage to profit). It means powerful people control the rest of our lives, make decisions that are rarely efficient and always corrupt, and deprive us of freedom. Capitalism, on the other hand, is an economic system that facilitates cooperation and competition in a free market while giving everyone an opportunity to succeed.
Automated luxury? Sounds good. But communism can NEVER provide it, and even if it could, it wouldn't be worth the sacrifice of my freedom.
5
it's going to either be this or some dystopian future of extreme inequality.
4
The capitalism vs. communism discussion is a fun discussion for academics to bash each other with. The reality of say, Marx vs. Rand, is that both have solid points about the problems of the opposing side but their utopian solutions have proven to be failures. Over and over. Today's capitalism needs major reform, it's not working for a growing majority of people, but reaching backwards towards Marx is not the answer. There are no working models of Communism on a large scale being practiced today, (China still call's itself A Communist country but it's economics are a state controlled form of capitalism, heck there are millionaires and billionaires in China, If Mao was brought back to life he would promptly die from a heart attack.) And the countries that practice Democratic Socialism would be considered traitors to the prolitariat if the early founders of the First International were alive today. So if any author or academic has new ideas for economic reforms please stop with the communism or capitalism labels and just present the idea for reform. Whenever the two c words are introduced we get endless and fruitless repeats of late 19th and early 20th century political debates that have no relation to the reality of today's political structures and today's technology challenges
9
@KJ Peters: "So if any author or academic has new ideas for economic reforms please stop with the communism or capitalism labels and just present the idea for reform."
This notion -- of eschewing labels -- is appealing. Can those who comment on proposals such as this, please refrain from assigning labels dismissively as a means of avoiding discussion of the underlying ideas?
I fear that labeling and subsequent shutdown of thought is irresistible to many who seek to silence conversations about 'dangerous' ideas, hence the natural urge of the author is to self-label preemptively. Readers ought therefore to look past labels, whether or not author-assigned, to discover ideas that challenge their assumptions.
2
Growing “meat” from base aminos is almost inevitable, given the environmental impact of factory farming animals, and asteroid mining is a logical step. I’d rather not have Mr. Bastani, or worse the Trumps and Koch brothers, designing a “superhuman” and editing genes to achieve a caste system. The totalitarian governments necessary to enforce communist systems have always seemed to slip easily into the hands of a self-proclaimed elite. Thanks but no thanks.
1
Market capitalism today: I SELL my labor in labor markets to earn the wherewithal to BUY products in product markets. But now, drones, robots, and algos have cut me out of a job. No job, no wages, no purchasing power.
But those drones and robots, proliferating as they are, will flood the product markets with surpluses that pile up unprofitably -- which sounds like a "bid wanted!" market imbalance to me. Sounds like "the customer is king!" Sounds like an "every baby is a trust fund baby" future world.
Capitalism is about capital! Some is owned privately, some publicly. Tweaking that balance to create a stable system is where we are in political economics right now.
1
Compelling essay!
Since the earliest technical advances (the wheel, etc) humans have pursued inventions that would reduce how much work needed to be spent to achieve a certain standard of living.
We are now at a place where we have an abundance that can be shared and enjoyed with very small labor inputs required.
So, to deal with this we either have to reduce the work week (say, to 3 days per week) so everybody can still work, or we have to allow some people to pursue non-laboring endeavors.
I prefer the latter, because I think we'd be better off we encouraged those who personally find work rewarding to work... Because those individuals would be much more productive. (Imagine going to Home Depot or CVS and all the workers there actually wanted to be there and were devoted to doing a great job!)
Therefore, it seems to me that the clear path forward is a guaranteed universal income.
5
I would be happy to let robots eliminate drudgery, to eat synthetically-grown hamburgers, and to have new sources of metals and minerals. I would be elated to see the end of capitalism. But Aaron Bastani, mesmerized by technological utopianism, seems not to have learned one of the principal lessons of environmentalism: humans must abandon their hubristic belief that they can remake nature for their own purposes. Bastani writes that, "It is as if humanity has been afflicted by a psychological complex, in which we believe the present world is stronger than our capacity to remake it." I don't doubt that some technological breakthroughs will aid humanity over the next century or two, but humans' arrogant determination to remake our planet and environnent for our own prosperity and comfort has already brought devastation to many other species and habitats, and global climate change now seems likely to inflict devastation on our own species. So I am no Luddite, but I think that a big part of the solution to humanity's problems, if any solution is to be found, lies in the realm of ethics, not improved technology.
11
@Chris Rasmussen VERY well said. In some ways we need to go backward to go forward. Bastani mentions the increased efficiency of cultured meat; it would be much, much more efficient (in terms of both production and health outcomes) to simply stop consuming beef. Instead, start eating vegetables, which can be grown most sustainably using techniques from 1000 years ago (perhaps optimized with modern technology.)
Capitalism is a core problem, yes. But one level deeper than capitalism lies the faulty notion that the best life imaginable is one of extreme opulence and luxury. Science, philosophy, religion... nearly all forms of human wisdom tell us that wealth which goes beyond healthy subsistence has little effect on quality of life. The biggest failure of our collective imagination is to not see past our own blind faith in consumerism.
1
Lack of innovation and productivity is a hallmark of communism. If you want innovation, you need competition and reward. This is a basic fact of human nature. None of the idea put forth would advance under the system proposed.
6
@Stefan Not really The soviet system was innovative given the much lower starting point of the Soviet Union after WW2. I wonder if the current Russian system is an improvement. Politically connected Oligarch have replaced politically loyal commissars, The system is as corrupt as ever and fatalism rules the day. East German Communism was far more innovative and far more productive.
4
@Stefan -- Stalin was a monster, and Brezhnev ran repression for the sake of the State left by Stalin. That does not mean that vast numbers of people should be abandoned by a society that only seeks to benefit its betters.
3
There is a misunderstanding that capitalism = competition, and that communism would do away with competition entirely. Can you imagine playing a game with friends and finding your self heatedly competitive despite there being little to no material reward for winning? This happens all the time, and has happened in precapitalist societies as well. If anything, capitalism's systems of disproportionate rewards and punishments actually discourages fair play. Anticompetitive monopolizing is a predominant feature of contemporary society, the idea that the market is somehow "free" despite a select few corporations of extreme wealth granting themselves tax cuts etc. is absurd. Competition in the spirit of innovation can be simulated outside capitalism.
5
According to the author, capitalism was responsible for bringing us meatless burgers. But now that he would have meatless burgers, there's apparently no more need in the world for innovation. There's no need to worry about cancer, or climate change, or totalitarian governments. Supposedly, we can all kick back and enjoy a Communist utopia.
16
That’s not what he means at all. Capitalism works as long as people are needed to produce its goods. If a company can increase its bottom line exponentially by eliminating human labor, it will do so. Then a huge group of quondam workers can kick back and enjoy starvation. What the author is saying is that capitalism has fulfilled its own logic, and that we need to figure out what to do as that becomes apparent. Mass unemployment and misery under an untouchable plutocracy doesn’t sound like a good answer to me. But hey: we could embrace, in the nearer future, the creation of a huge green job sector.
P.S. Modern totalitarianism is arising from the a cooperation between corporate interests and government policy.
P.P.S. Do you really think drudgery is the driver of innovation? The millions chained to cubicles aren’t innovating anything. The vast majority of American nine-to-fivers aren’t mini-Musks.
9
@Amy They are the same ones who think rich people take money from the poor. They want more jobs, but hate corporations. They love innovation, but hate rewards and prefer the status quo. They claim empathy and multi-culturalism, while typically hating on their own history.
1
@MM
Kudos for your excellent analysis & comment!!
This is techno-utopian hogwash.
39
Compelling argument!
4
"Fully Automated Luxury Communism"
Sounds like the civilization portrayed in the Star Trek series.
4
@Matthew Hughes -- And that was a bad thing?
"We can't." Well, we have not tried, either. And no, Stalin was not trying to do this.
3
@Matthew Hughes
The civilization depicted in Star Trek certainly seems to have some positive aspects to it. I'd prefer it over the civilization(s) depicted in the Star Wars series wherein the lot of anyone not entitled by birth to wealth or 'the force' is doomed to suffer a life of scavenging.
The here and now is not as bad as some people like to think. Some loosening up on the status quo along with some truly critical thinking might go a long way.
3
@Matthew Hughes What's wrong with that?!
2
Where does the trash of 7+ billion people's luxury lifestyle go. This is the Star Trek Universe. Replicators could produce your every need, money had no value, personal achievement mattered. The 10th level of hell restricted to Trump in the updated Dante's Inferno. A place where Satan looks down on Donny. A place where money and greed are not valued, feared or respected. just pitied.
3
We've got over 7 billion people, and all of them want more stuff than they have right now. We're not inventing our way out of this one.
3
@O Au contraire, that's precisely what will happen. The only reason we got to 7 billion is due to invention.
1
@O
"Wealth" or "prosperity" does not correspond one-for-one with "atoms" or "stuff."
We could live excellent lives in compact Ikea-style urban apartments surrounded and cooled by layers of greenery, move about quickly via efficient public transit and/or small self-driving cars that can be summoned instantly (including visits to wild areas on our vacations), eat delicious multicultural vegetarian cuisine, and enjoy all the art, crafts, music, live theater, TV shows, movies and video games we could ever want.
This may be one of the greatest satires ever written, or perhaps not. We have human capital and imagination. We are mired in the muck of the world's fastest growing religion - so-called "free market" capitalism. It is a sort of religion with its own system of beliefs and dogmatic principles. Unlike other forms of organized religion, this one actually encourages bad behavior. It has been adopted without question by nearly every government, and its principles enshrined everywhere from Wall Street to the Supreme Court.
Greed is good.
14
@chuck
You have it completely backwards. Capitalism is neither a religion nor tied to any dogmatic principles. It is simply a name for people doing business in a free market. It needs government to establish rules of fair play and to enforce them, but otherwise it is independent of government.
Capitalism, like society in general, needs moral, principled people to flourish. And as in life in general, immoral people with no scruples do often get ahead by taking advantage of others. But no more ... actually quite a bit less ... than in societies that quash capitalism through government-imposed communism, feudalism, etc.
1
@Econ101
Exactly. But capitalism as well as communism fall prey to a religious impulse to dogmatically institutionalized paralysis. Laissez-faire capitalism tends to reward those most willing to cheat or game the system, hence the need for regulation - honest regulation.
2
@Cab
Sure, we need (and have) rules of fair play. But what do you mean by capitalism falling prey to dogmatially institutionalized paralysis? We live in a very dynamic time in which the tech giants are also dreamers, and they are using their freedom to explore all sorts of new wonders and innovations.
I see little paralysis outside of the handful of industries most dominated by anti-capitalist government interference: chiefly, higher education and healthcare.
1
Mr. Bastani is right: with all the shiny new tools at our disposal, you'd think all of humanity would be looking forward to a future of plenty and peace. But humanity is a combative, disagreeable lot and we would rather squabble than cooperate. It comes from our earliest days of existence, where competition equaled survival. Our emotional development has been outstripped by the fruits of our own cleverness; our lizard-brains still dominate the part that makes MRI machines and computers and rocket ships. The only hope is that we catch up with ourselves before our primitive selves spoil it all for our higher selves. (For the religious among us, think of it this way: our creator is putting us to the test. He gave one of his animals free will and is watching to see whether it's something that we can handle. He's not answering prayers, he's just watching, like a scientist with a Petri dish.)
6
@Jim Houghton Other animals exhibit free will, making choices that don't simply involve their own benefit.
Hating on humanity, though, that's pure religious expression to be sure.
1
These kinds of “think” pieces, which contain the most superficial consideration of a complex problem and propose to solve it with a simple (and wrong) solution, often annoy me (and from many of the comments, others too). What annoys me even more is that Mr Bastani will be treated seriously by the media, interviewed by late-night talk show hosts, and displayed by the right wing as an exemplar of where mainstream progressives would like to head.
98
@Mike But he says that the only thing we have to do is create "a new politics. One where technological change serves people, not profit." Oh, is that all?! Gosh, doesn't that sound easy?
7
@Mike Eh, I see what you're saying, and I know the stakes are high in the short term, but I appreciate voices like this from the Left. If our civilization is going to continue to exist in the face of climate change, we're going to have to make some pretty extreme, paradigmatic changes.
5
@Mike
You accuse Bastani of being superficial, and yet you don't offer any specific points on which you disagree with him--preferring to simply label his writing as "annoying."
Seems... superficial.
8
We could have an extremely close approximation of this via progressive taxation with high marginal rates, a universal basic income, and proper regulatory trust busting.
Yes, it’d make the government larger and more powerful, and that’s not great, but we’d all be a hell of a lot better off than we are now.
15
@Yoyo, You are forgetting one fundamental thing - peoples' desire for prosperity and to reach that prosperity, you need to work hard and be creative. With your "progressive taxation with high marginal rates, a universal basic income, and proper regulatory trust busting", the people will lose incentive for hard work and innovation. So, those of us who make a luxury living for themselves by putting their brains and energy on overload and creating jobs for others in parallel will think twice: " why do I need to work hard if I am getting paid the "universal basic income", same as for a person next to me who has no intention to even move his finger. So, there will be no motivation to exceed the average work expectation. Result? All the innovation will go to a total holt. Of course, your "larger and more powerful" government will make you work harder... in GULAGs.
2
@Yoyo Sure, because you know how future humans will be so well that central planning and one size fits all coercion is great. Authority never is abusive and always does the right thing. Giving up your power to others is empowering somehow.
Society as it is now is a mess because all of humanity prior to us were suckers, losers, haters and otherwise bad actors. You have the solutions and you know they will work. Sounds as archaic thinking as it comes...
2
One need only imagine Pharaoh and his ministers waking one day to discover that they no longer need millions of peasants along the Nile to make their food, build their pyramids, or defend the borders, because everything his clique needs is made by robots and drones. That is not going to turn out well for the peasants.
212
Unless, of course, the overwhelming number of peasants actually render Pharaoh’s wishes irrelevant, at long last. Pharaoh is strong because the peasants can be manipulated into demonizing and hating each other rather than questioning the ownership of all the land by one man and his poisonous bureaucracy.
That said, yours is a great comment and true to history—there’s a reason we can’t have nice things.
29
@MM We have more nice things today than ever before. Kings and Pharaoh's didn't have running water, electricity, instant communications, heating/AC, cars, a wide variety of food sources, medical services, education for all...
No, economics will force down the population as it already does as people get richer and better educated. If the poor rebel, they will just drive their own misery and destruction, but at least the remaining ones will all be equal in outcome.
7
@gnowell
Indeed. If only the peasants had controlled the Nile from the beginning.
8
I feel that regrettably we will have to go some kind on great upheaval before we get there...
This is due to the current distortions in "capitalism". The whole idea of capitalism was that excess money was allocated to new ventures (either R&D, manufacturing, etc.), to create more wealth down the road. Today is just an unproductive "financial dancing chairs" game, where you make the big money from money, not from products, and the market is captive of those that already have the money.
Of course there are exceptions to this point of view, but they are just that, exceptions. If they were the leading reason of wealth creation, we would never have had the 2008-9 financial crisis.
8
@Numas
"Making money with money", this country is now controlled by Investment Bankers and Venture Capitalists. We now have Facebook, perhaps the worst creation for humanity, Uber valued at $90 Billion yet with no real assets and may not ever be profitable, and Tesla valued higher while producing a fraction off the cars than either Ford or GM. Yet no shortage of investors for Facebook, Uber or Tesla.
5
@Numas The financial crisis was partly to do with bad governance and unfair tax policies. Then it was bailed out to save 'us' from their crimes.
Authority is what we have. There's no evidence of "kind and wise authority" over time. Once you give up your liberty and equal protection, you will continue to be victimized, and you will continue to look to someone else to solve your problems.
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@Arvee So if you are right, they will lose money. And funny that the worst creation of humanity is used by billions daily, presumably because they can't control themselves and need communism to tell them what "right living" is.
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Natural resources exist to sustain human life, not to make the few wealthy. Limiting ownership of natural resources to that necessary to satisfy personal needs would go further to eliminate structural poverty than all the nanny state schemes ever devised.
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@God Those natural resources have always existed, yet only became valuable because others found them, learned to extract them, and learned how to use them to an advantage. Natural resources of old were cutting down trees, and fishing/hunting wildlife.
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@God Natural resources sustain all the beings on earth, not just humans.
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This guy should spend a buck fifty for a used history book.Poverty and inequality have been around for ten thousand years or more. The real truth is that the current lame systems of governance have brought hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty and subsistence living in the last 50 years. It takes work and technology in agriculture and energy and communications to achieve this. Not daydreaming and semi hysterical politicians. HarryM
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@harry m 2.5 billion people don't have access to clean water. 800 million people worldwide are undernourished. We currently have the technology and resources to give them clean water and food, but the "developed" nations literally choose not to because it's not profitable. Just because poverty and inequality have been around forever doesn't mean we shouldn't try to end them. Have some perspective.
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@Riley I don't understand since it was capitalism that created all the good stuff you think the poor need now. Often, suffering in other countries is not because rich people are bad, but because local governments are. Central planning has never been shown to work, not even in large corporations.
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@Riley Are those people living in a market economy or is their government overbearing and corrupt.
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"Fully Automated Luxury Communism". Now there's a title to reckon with. So bad, in fact, that it's likely to stick...like that nickname they gave you in grade school.
The photo at the top of Mr. Bastani's essay may provide us with an answer to this dilemma...the photo over the caption: "A computer-generated image of spacecrafts mining a near-Earth asteroid."
That asteroid bears a striking resemblance to the asteroid 'Skyra', which appears in the 1959 CBS TV series 'Men Into Space'. In an episode named "Asteroid" (originally aired on Nov. 25, 1959), Skyra is hurtling toward earth on a direct collision course. Astronauts are then sent to land on Skyra. But then (using a bit of convoluted logic common to a 1950's kid's series), the astronauts decide that the asteroid is too rocky to mine for minerals, so they plant explosives inside it and blow it to smithereens.
Moral of the story: the earth is worth saving, so long as there's no profit in destroying it.
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It isn't clear to me what this article proposes at all. It could be summarized simply as:
Technology will create so much material abundance, and we should share it all more equitably.
The first part of that statement is pure speculation (and likely completely false), and people largely agree on part two, they just disagree on the methods.
Given that this article is devoid of any content, the only purpose it serves is to boost the ego and reach of an utter political charlatan in Mr Bastani, a great fan of despots everywhere (including Assad & Maduro).
Your paper has done an excellent job of trying to raise the level of our political conversation. When you invite charlatans to publish self-promotional pieces with no content, you do yourself, and that noble goal, a disservice.
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@Dhanushdhaari
"...an utter political charlatan in Mr Bastani, a great fan of despots everywhere (including Assad & Maduro)."
Are you serious? The real charlatan lives at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue...and he is in love with the Saudi Prince, the North Korean prince, the Hungarian & Polish demagogues, the Russian Czar, the Phiillipines & Brazilian psychopaths....
"The first part of that statement is pure speculation (and likely completely false), and people largely agree on part two, they just disagree on the methods."
Clearly, late-stage capitalism isn't going to solve the problems at hand---if anything it will exacerbate them.
Besides, accordingly, why fix something that isn't broke & enriching the top 10% ...why destroy the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs?
If all that futurist "speculation" is so repulsive, why did we even think in 1900 that we could make it to the moon?
Well, this will never happen. However, we can imagine it will in exquisite detail by reading the science fiction "Culture" novels by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. If only they could come true. Maybe, in another hundred years or so?
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Mr. Bastani,
Your faith in technologies to solve
life-threatening challenges brought on by
technologies is breathtaking.
We are clever enough to live peaceably
and sustainably forever after.
That has never been the question.
The question is, are we wise enough?
A rethinking of capitalism is indeed in order,
but first and foremost, our hubris in thinking
we can tech our way out of this--
mine asteroids, grow lab meat-- without
a fundamental acknowledgement of
just how much we don't understand
shows that we are not the least bit wise.
It is not a failure of imagination.
It is a failure of humility as we appraise our true dependence
on the natural processes that have always sustained us
and without which we will parish.
Instead, we we cleverly obscure the fundamental weakness in our cleverness.
We race ahead to islands of lab meat,
asteroids of gold; no wiser for the collective destruction
we heap upon an earth that has put up with us just about as long as she can.
Go for fully automated luxury communism and wave goodbye,
or ask a grey whale or a mule deer how to live here.
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@C. Whiting
I think the cows would thank us for the lab-cultured meat.
And places that endure environmental devastation and workforce exploitation from poorly conducted mining would be happy to get that extraction off-planet where it can't foul our air, water or soil.
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@Rita Rousseau
I don't eat meat. Cows can thank me without building one more contraption to make an artificial food we don't need.
Taking extraction off-planet means firing rockets releasing many tons of carbon into the atmosphere. To go get what? And we've got to have it, why?
You may remember DDT, and how it solved our mosquito problem without a single side effect. Now we're ready to move on to gene editing?
My point is that we are not wise enough to guide the bigger, bolder tech we race ahead with.
We need to reduce our impact on this planet until we better understand it, if we want to live here.
We have to realign ourselves in a natural balance with other creatures we share the place with.
Or we can build gold space cars and eat cotton candy clouds, at least for a little while.
If future generations think otherwise, they should have gotten here first, I guess....
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How about we recognize that it's not capitalism that is broken, but that it is instead the corruption of the basic market place by people in power and authority? That specifically includes politicians, large corporations and bureacrats who are against social equal opportunity, free education, competition and free enterprise.
It's not a political party thing: its a 'power' thing.
Go to the root of the problem: insatiable greed and vested interests stand in the way of our very survival.
To change our path, we need a better and more inclusive morality when it comes to wealth...plus an honest understanding of human nature and our innate insecurities, especially when it comes to acquiring material 'things'.
The problem is not the market place principle/program...it is the programmers. We will all end up in the same place after you throw in the magic pixie dust of 'high tech' and 'new politics'.
Morality, decency, sharing, long-term vision, self-control: those are the aspects of homo sapiens that we need to program into ourselves to overcome some of the increasingly dysfunctional programming that 'Mother Nature' gave us to enable us to get to global supremacy as a species. Reprogramming oneself: this is true sentience.
Are we up to THAT task? Ultimately, no matter what 'system' or 'tech' you imagine...those are the real challenges humans must overcome to get to any kind of Earthly utopia, and/or off-planet.
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@Blair
'Mother Nature' didn't give us any programming. It is the economic system that programs greed and hunger for power into us. That's what has to be changed. No, capitalism isn't broken; it's working exactly the way it's supposed to.
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Many of us here in the US probably never realized that such a post-capitalist system was quite believably portrayed in one of our most iconic Sci-fi shows on television: Star Trek. There was no money or interest in it (except for the greedy Ferenghi who were made fun of for it in The Next Generation and following), and all necessities of life were supplied by automated systems, just as this Opinion piece outlines. So, how "alien" would such a system really be, if millions readily suspended their disbelief and watched this most American Science Fiction show week after week?
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Gene Roddenberry merely avoided the issue as much as possible in his plots. He did not want economics in plots to clash with his vision. It crept in with traders and ore miners that obviously believed in full throated capitalism. The issues of how governments allocated resources did not appear as Shatner and gang traveled from one frontier fort to another. With Roddenberry gone, the post-original shows showed money everywhere. What was the purpose of Deep Space 9? Once you get out of the foxhole and off the covered wagon and Beagle, capitalism and money are very important.
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@Michael Blazin. Bingo. The slightest introspection regarding the Star Trek universe begins to break apart the suspended disbelief. I have to turn off the part of my brain that wants to understand it entirely to enjoy the series (in fact, that's probably why I enjoyed DS9 the most - because it actually encouraged thought on these issues).
The road to Soylent Green is paved with utopian fantasies.
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@God We are on a road to soylent green. Capitalism guarantees a soylent green future.
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A main problem with communism is lack of incentive to work to make the technologies that free people from work. Asteroid mining doesn't just spring fully formed from the foam. It takes thousands of incremental advances that, sadly, cost money to development, test, deploy, and refine - few people work for free to do this. Even Mr. Brin, the capitalist who fronted the money for a more woke burger, had to work to build the capital to make this happen and likely expects a return on it (or not, since Google is doing well, but he does require a return on something to fund these type of things).
It isn't just new politics that would be needed. Technological changes to serve people come from people (at least until the singularity occurs) rather than a vacuum. Those people have to have enough capital to fund that technology. The Platonic ideal of an asteroid miner isn't floating in the ether. It's built here on Earth by people who exchange their time and talents for little slips of green paper so they can exchange them for things they want and need. Absent that medium, I suppose somebody (a beneficent despot?) will tell me I must work (at gunpoint?) according to my abilities so I can receive what that somebody deems is in line with my needs. And when I'm used up, I assume that piggish somebody will send me off to the glue factory so I'm may give my last to the collective farm.
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@Steve Did MrBrin's empire just magically appear through Brin's hard work? Or did it take other people to actualize it?
The argument against socialist ideas, often lack any sort of creativity, that somehow magically exists in a capitalist framework.
It seems to me that you haven't read Kant or care to abide by a higher moral framework. Those that have, tend to see the greater good and fully endorse social change programs.
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@Steve If you think about it, there's already somebody telling you that you must work; it's either that or starve. The difference is that currently you believe you have some freedom of choice.
Imagine if your rent and food was already paid for -- every grocery store was free, and housing was guaranteed. What would you do with your time? I'd go back to school, personally. I'm sure some people would want to become scientists and innovate, or become chefs, or pilots, whatever they want. That would be true freedom. Innovation beyond that would just be icing on the proverbial cake.
Maybe innovation would slow a bit, but I think that's a fair bargain in exchange for ending world hunger.
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@Steve
" lack of incentive"? Well, that is the whole idea. There will always be people that would work out of pride, curiosity or boredom (you can only watch so much Netflix or NFL games).
The idea of that society is that nobody goes hungry or sick, which is the perversion of a rich capitalistic country as ours. Don't get me wrong, I am for capitalism, only not as Darwinian as the one we have today, with so many miss-allocated resources.
3
Capitalism may create artificial shortages to ensure profits, but pervasive government tends to create them to ensure its survival, or the luxuries of its ruling class.
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No it doesn't. Growth will erase anything you value. Anything that grows doubles, anything that doubles will consume it's resources and fill it's habitat. nothing will help Manning other than a decreasing population to a reasonable level and a steady state after that. We can choose contraception and education now or wait for nature to choose from the four horsemen later.
5
For every conceivable utopian technological advancement in the plausible paths forward for humanity, from gene editing to asteroid mining, there is the inevitability of exploitation, abuse and dystopian ruin guaranteed by capitalism that we as a species have lost the imagination to overcome.
The practical and moral urgency to adopt human-centered approaches to social and economic relations -- call them communisms, socialisms, syndicalisms, anarchisms, whatever -- has never been clearer, especially in the face of imminent ecological catastrophe.
Thanks to Aaron and Novara Media for bringing these important ideas to the attention of an audience that would normally not seek them out.
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It's a lovely idea; and yet.
I wonder what Fully Automated Luxury Communism offers its citizens as a reason for living. Not everyone can or wants to play golf, or write novels, or sew quilts for the rest of their lives.
I can imagine the parallel rise of Completely Bored and Frustrated Terrorism. People find their own purposes in life, and often the purpose is to be in opposition to the prevailing culture.
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@Nherplinck So we shouldn't end poverty and starvation because... people would get bored?
When people have the burden of survival lifted, they can work at what they want to do -- choosing to work rather than being forced to work. I personally would become a woodworker or a luthier. Others might choose to work as doctors or researchers or inventors. The important part is the choice, rather than the requirement, of work.
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@Riley
"When people have the burden of survival lifted, they can work at what they want to do -- choosing to work rather than being forced to work."
Yes. I spent my prime years writing speeches for corporate executives and politicians, making enough to raise a family. But I would rather have been writing novels.
Now, with my children grown, I have written and sold 22 novels and a slew of short genre fiction. That has supported a lot of other people's jobs in publishing and bookselling and reviewing.
I don't make $200 an hour anymore, though I do get two small pensions from my working life and from being a Canadian citizen. So I have cut my expenses by having few possessions and living in other people's houses as a housesitter.
And I travel the world, something I would also like to have done when I was young, but having been raised in poverty, that was beyond me. I've lived in 12 countries, learned Italian and French, and generally enjoy my life.
The guaranteed income from my pensions, plus what I make writing fiction, affords me a productive and interesting life: a life that is an argument for a guaranteed basic income.
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@Riley
Right. You will work with wood. Hopefully - for your sake - someone else will want to cut down trees; another will want to process the lumber; and another will take pleasure in hauling the wood to your house. Sounds like a great system.
2
Perhaps the replicators and the egalitarian societies reflected in the Star Trek movies, are somewhere within our grasp. I do like the writer's term imposed scarcity . The first law of Economics is all resources are scarce. Perhaps technology will liberate us from this tenet of the dismal science. One thing is for sure, capitalism will not go away willingly. If there's one truism about capitalism, is that it does not like abundance of resources, and is always fixated on eliminating competition, if it can. If there are fewer producers and fewer sellers in the market, then the producers, sellers and other rent seekers can maximize their profits. So although these ideas are wonderful, the crisis we are living through now may be exacerbated as capitalism moves to suppress any alternative route around capitalism.
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@Kjensen
Excellently said!
Unfortunately, the majority of the population is unable to deconstruct the problem--they are too busy shopping & are driven to shop by a 24/7 noisy, aggressive selling culture, and all sorts of bread-and-circuses.
Our form of "central planning" is administered by the corporate monopolies & duopolies: they manipulate the scarcity-abundance axis, which they will then profit from. The Monsantos are no longer fictitious players in a sci-fi scenario. Such power can only be dreamt of by would-be totalitarian dictators. That casino roulette is masterfully programmed & operated.
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@Kjensen
precisely. the model of competition worked nicely for traders of slaves, saltpork, rum, cotton, and pig iron. This system has built for us the global economy we now inhabit. it doesn't make sense at this point, with our knowledge of how this system damages the planet, to continue with an economics founded principally on competition. it makes no sense. the largest and most distructive wars in history were due to imperial competition. no more and no less.
1
"Aaron Bastani" is the pen name of a certain Dr. Pangloss.
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Except that communism results in exactly what I experienced in Cuba a few weeks ago--food rationing, poverty, poor health, a massive black market, lack of motivation, completely dilapidated buildings (the outside of Havana looks like Syria), and a dependency on other communist countries.
The only system that works is regulated capitalism (i.e. one that breaks up monopolies and prevents fraud) with a progressive tax structure, with the highest earners paying at least 70% in taxes.
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@Sarah I believe that is what you get with central planning, and that does not an inherent feature of FALC. I hate saying communism because of all the baggage that goes with it, but would note that it comes from the same latin root as community- so it can't be all bad. And Capitalism- yes- the decision making power is more widely dispersed- so far- but this is changing as the rich get richer - and more powerful. Why is it anything we consider apparently involves centralized Power- to me that is the problem.
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@Sarah This piece details an end to scarcity, thanks to never-before-seen automation -- tired tropes of cuba or venezuela are ignoring the premise of the piece itself, which is that of renewable, clean abundance; that which capitalism has always promised but never delivered. Is it really so outlandish to imagine something else?
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Cuba isn't communism. My political science professor used to say the closest anyone has come to communism is Japan. Japan has problems but it's pretty successful.
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