I think there should be a political movement that retries socialism with AI. Basically nationalize everything and then automate everything. I think people could get behind that. Basically fully automated luxury communism.
What part of it wouldn't work?
Or did you mean "human nature" (I'm using huge air quotes there) as you have experienced it in late 20th century / early 21st century United States?
The current arrangement does not compute (or work), and gets us straight to doom, "taking into account the nature of human beings".
Historically socialism and central planning have been inefficient. With recent technological advancements it may be that the purported inefficiencies are no longer there, and I think a democratic, socialist government will be better at having the interest of the people than private for-profit monopolies. A society where everything is automated and you don't have to work could be pretty nice to live in.
Capitalism with AI would be exactly the same thing, but zero compassion (unless the AI has been trained for it).
The attempt never materializes because some kindly clerk deliberately buries the letter from the enthusiastic engineer, who clearly does not understand that writing Stalin to tell him you figured out a way to build communism better than him, would be suicidal.
It's a fun counterfactual to think about, given that the vast bureaucracy needed for the command economy was one of its major limiting factors. Anyway, interesting book if you are into economic policy or quirky ways that systems can go haywire.
The government does not have an incentive to run anything efficiently as they cannot go bankrupt. Imagine if AI was run like the DMV.
Putting monopoly control of it in the hands of government also makes it extremely likely that whoever is in power will use it to manipulate public opinion + elections as well as encoding their political values into it.
What do you think a Trump-controlled AI would say if I asked about the war in Iran? We’ve already seen examples of companies encoding their beliefs into the system (see Gemini saying nuclear war is preferable to misgendering Caitlyn Jenner), imagine how much worse it would be if politicians were given control instead.
I went to the DMV in Oakland and it was the most efficient DMV I'd ever been to.
Personally I remember waiting for hours in a line wrapped around the building for the chance to take my drivers license test.
Another example: have you ever tried to interact with the IRS? The most nightmarish bureaucratic system I’ve ever had the displeasure of interacting with. And guess what my recourse is for them treating me like garbage? Nothing. A company, if they treat me poorly, I can take my business elsewhere. The IRS? The DMV? Not so much.
Like Chevron, or Verizon, or Microsoft.
Chevron: Exxon, ConocoPhillips, BP. From a customer perspective there are tons of competitors which make your life better ranging from QT, AMPM, to Buc-ees (a favorite which people literally LOVE to visit).
Verizon: Starlink, TMobile, ATT, Comcast, etc
Microsoft: Apple, Google, Cloudflare, Amazon (differentiates itself literally on quality of customer service)
The IRS or DMV? No competitor. Unhappy with their service? Go fuck yourself.
I dunno what reputation it has in your area, but my actual experience with it was indeed fast, efficient, and enjoyable.
The IRS is treating you bureaucratically and poorly because of lobbying from companies and politicians being bribed by said lobbyists.
My point being that you are beholden to a poorly functioning IRS because of capitalism; where companies have lobbied so hard against tax reform and simple filing that it more or less forces you to use their software.
How is this somehow the fault of “capitalism”? Regardless of how the system is structured, the government has a near-infinite budget, they could theoretically staff the agency with enough people to answer my call in a timely manner. They could also train their staff to treat me with human dignity. They don’t do this, and the reason is that they have no incentive to do so. If I am upset by being treated poorly what recourse do I have? Nothing. In fact if I ignore their system long enough, armed goons will show up with guns and arrest me.
There are many examples of government agencies that have this reputation, not only in the USA but the entire world.
“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome” -Charlie Munger
Also the only reason we have to pay for Turbotax (etc) is due to lobbying. We had IRS Direct File for two years and it was great before being gutted by the current administration.
They had to pass legislation to intentionally fuck the books to make them inefficient to fit their preferred narrative because government could be held accountable for inefficiency in ways private corps cannot.
Oh come on.
Here's another thing to get scared about: AI and other kinds of advanced automation has the potential to completely undermine the attributes that made capitalism work for the vast majority of people. Rehashing dated mid-century anti-Communist propaganda tropes isn't going to address that. You're gonna need some fresh ideas.
Also people who want to seriously recreate the Soviet Union don't practically exist (outside of some irrelevant weirdos), except in the minds of some really indoctrinated libertarians.
This is the self-defeating contradiction at the heart of progressivism: it is a cult of good intentions. It doesn't matter if the promise of socialism has already been proved, on a global scale, to be illusory. It's the intentions that matter, and in their minds no amount of failure will ever tarnish good intentions.
I'm convinced that susceptibility to such pre-enlightenment "thinking" is a Great Filter.
Curiously, capitalism will work the moment capitalists understand options markets, but in their case they need to also understand put options, which is to say that capitalism is impossible.
And the micromanaging from a distance produces catastrophic results.
Becoming a billionaire does not magically make you evil believe it or not.
Am I missing the sarcasm here? The difference from the current system would be...?
I think this has historically been true, but it is worth revisiting now with AI and general tech advancement. Might be more feasible now.
> Socialism CAN not work due to human nature. The sociopaths hijack the centralized assets while exterminating via reallocation all opposition.
You could also argue that capitalism CAN not work due to human nature. Just look at the state of climate change.
The socialism that did exist didn't take environmental preservation seriously and rather tried to silence reports about the damage.