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Comment by wavephorm | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to Peak Capitalism. This is the peak of our current socio-economic system, and I'm fairly certain that everyone in the White House is now well-aware and convinced of what's likely going to happen over the course of the next 10 years. I hope they're preparing for it right now.

I believe the coming collapse of the capitalistic-democractic system is imminent, and America needs to very seriously start planning for a conversion to Socialism/Marxism because the current system is not going to work for very long.

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Because that worked out so well for Russia and China. Command economies have never efficiently allocated resources, and they never will. Economies are just too complicated for a single central authority to control successfully. They can never have enough accurate information, and can't be flexible enough to rapidly changing circumstances.

Just look at the hopeless response to the financial crisis from European leaders. You really want to put politicians in charge of all business activity as well?

Human-commanded centralized economies, perhaps. But what about e.g. a Google-commanded centralized economy?

Actually, it's working great for China (in the short-term at least). Though they probably wouldn't call their system "communist" anymore, in preference for the new description: "state capitalism."

If the alternative does turn out to be unemployment on a massive scale due to automation, the Soviet Union doesn't look so bad in comparison. It's probably not optimal, but at least we know that it works (badly, no doubt, but life went on under the Soviets). I seriously doubt Friedman's idea of sending everyone to college would work at all.

The Soviet Union killed 100m of its own citizens. Now what doesn't look so bad?

That's a grossly exaggerated figure, and if you skip the Lenin/Stalin era and go straight to Khruschev it's not nearly as bad. And if, by hypothesis, the "average" person become redundant and unemployable, they would simply starve to death in lieu of government intervention, which would lead to a death toll that would make the Dekulakization look like a traffic ticket.

I still haven't seen any convincing argument that socialism is going to result in anything besides "trickle up poverty." How that's supposed to be better than what we have now remains a mystery to me.

I'm also unconvinced that the basic premise of this entire discussion (that technology is going to completely obviate the need for human labor) is sound. Alarmists have been crying this out since at least the Luddites[1] and it hasn't come true yet. But since economies tend to be cyclic, and since we are in the midst of a pronounced (and unfortunately long) downturn right now, it's hard to say if the current malaise is just a "local minimum" of sorts, or an actual sign of some long-term trend. My feeling is that it's more the former than the latter.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

Alarmists have been crying this out since at least the Luddites[1] and it hasn't come true yet

It hasn't come true yet. That doesn't prove or disprove anything. Either they were far ahead of their time, or it will never happen. That's not sure yet, and that depends on what people do today.

Either they were far ahead of their time, or it will never happen. That's not sure yet, and that depends on what people do today.

The more I think about this, the more I'm thinking that the Luddites and other alarmists might have been right AND that things might not come to the worst imaginable "post human labor" dystopia. Like you said, "it depends on what people do today." And that's been true all along.

I don't believe the future is set in stone... so the question is, what do we need to do now, that is both more and just and respects individual freedom, while also trying to guide us away from a future where most humans can't find gainful employment, and wind up living some sub-human lifestyle, disconnected from the rest of world.

One thing that history has demonstrated, is that technological innovation tends to create new jobs to replace the jobs it destroys. This process is part of what Schumpeter[1], referred to as "Creative Destruction"[2]. One open question, then, is whether or not this process will continue indefinitely, or if there's a "top" where no new jobs are created to replace the old ones.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction

I don't claim to have the answer to this (I doubt anybody does, actually) but it's definitely an area worth spending some time and thought on. Being a technologist and entrepreneur, I find the idea that innovation and technological progress might ultimately prove to be a Bad Thing a bit discomforting.

How about searching for new economic models. Are 200 year old models really relevant anymore?

At the very least an update is probably in order. To really over-simplify (somewhat unfairly), my read of the "socialist alternative's" theorizing is that it's gone in waves roughly like this: 1) extensive analysis of 19th-century economic systems, especially factory production (Marx et al) and agriculture (Kropotkin, the kibbutz movement, etc.); followed by a period of 2) focus on culture/ideology/hegemony as the place the "real battle" is fought (Gramsci, neo-Gramscians, post-structuralist Marxism); but not really followed by 3) extensive analysis of 21st-century economic and technological systems.

I think even for people who disagree with them, it'd be healthier for there to be a Left that paid close, scientific/analytical attention to present-day material conditions, rather than focusing mainly on culture/ideology like the neo-Gramscians, or tying themselves too strongly to 19th-century analyses of 19th-century conditions. Or, for that matter, just taking an amorphous "against the greedy bankers" line like the populist left does, which is probably good politics, but not a deep analysis.

In a way, they are. People haven't changed that much since then.

However, economic models need spring into existence from the ground up. They are emergent. The world is too complex for them to be designed by theorists. This is why base capitalism (not the complex beast it has become) works, as even without any pressure people start trading. USSR communism collapsed because it needs to be enforced from the top, and you can only keep up a lie for so long.

The same is true for our current zombie-capitalism. We do need to give new systems some room to form and grow, though... and not label it as EVIL communism/capitalism/someotherism too soon, as that will cause typical path lock-in.

Yes they are relevant, because fundamentals don't change. Human nature hasn't changed.

Supply-and-demand is still in effect. A thing is still only worth what another gives for it. And when you try to mess with these two rules, they don't go away, they just adapt to what's imposed.

"Functional poverty" is, for most practical purposes, illegal in this country. Employers can't pay what a job is worth if that worth less than a given wage; ergo, economic fundamentals dictate commerce find an alternate solution which does match the supply-and-demand rule, which unsurprisingly often is manifest as either international outsourcing or robotics (loosely speaking). The "average" gets skewed because the lower end of the bell curve gets chopped off, and those chopped find themselves unemployed because it's illegal for them to earn what their skills warrant. Yeah "average" doesn't cut it any more, because someone tried to impose a new economic model and large segment of society is finding out the hard way it doesn't work. The demand is still there, but since it's illegal to supply that demand with human labor, the supply gets filled in other ways - ways which create more demand for high-end skills leaving the low end further behind.

You can't violate these basic models without causing (or relocating) the very problems you're trying to solve.

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