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Comment by derptacos | Hacker News Reader

Seems very dystopian, but truth in it. Is a revolution really the only answer?

God I hope not. Revolution has always been a shitshow and I don't even want to think how it would look given technological advancement since the last time around.

There's reason to hope. As a nation we have faced bigger issues than this and come out on top. Besides, there are still a handful of decent ways out. Social policy like reducing the workweek to restore supply/demand balance in the labor market could work. So could basic/minimum income, although I suspect that it's politically untenable even though it would be cheaper in the big picture. The least efficient but most probable (IMO) approach would be to grow the size of our creaking, bloated menagerie of inefficient social programs.

So far, capitalist societies have generally been far better than Marx assumed at figuring out how to implement the minimum possible social policy to stave off rebellion. I don't know whether to call it optimistic or pessimistic, but I suspect the trend will continue. Hopefully we won't go full Orwell in the process, but I wouldn't put money on it. We're already turnkey-Orwell and I think most of us can tell which way the wind is blowing.

More optimistically, I think there's also a chance that market dynamics will shift for the better due to technological change. Sure, 3D printing has been overhyped to the moon and back, but if rents are increasing while the inefficiency of distributed production is decreasing, then eventually there's going to be a crossing point. Once everyone has self-replicating farms, power shifts back to the people and free market dynamics start working for the masses instead of against them. It'll require a ton of effort and investment to make it happen, but that makes it just the sort of thing to provide opportunity to the HN crowd :)

/crazy speculation

What makes you think a technological shift will happen that suddenly allows people to own the means of production?

Rent-seeking and leasing of equipment are more likely, ensuring that the power relations of today are secured for the future.

Self replicating production facilities dramatically lower the barrier to entry for leasors, giving market leverage to consumers. If you can download open source specs for a personal farm and pit manufacturing shops against one another to build the thing, you're still going to get a nearly rent-free price (in this ideal future where the technology exists to, e.g., print an automated tractor). To be more efficient, you could lease rather than buy, but this doesn't change the underlying power balance: if production infrastructure is sufficiently cheap you can disintermediate the system for less than it would cost to be "financially independent" by subsiding on investment revenue. The system would be forced to compete.

Is there any public analysis of copyright/IP threat models for distributed manufacturing, both on equipment and content?

You still need the land to farm, something that can be taken away relatively easily[1]

Especially now, with police force having citizenproof MRAPs, drones and all that lovely toys. Or they could tax you to hell and back and then use the toys.

[1]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

I can't think of a single revolution that ended with a better government replacing the existing one except for the American one. Russia, Cuba, Iran, etc.. don't make the odds seem likely.

I can, specially in Europe.

One good example might be the Portuguese Carnation Revolution that took place in 1974. It overthrew a corporatist dictatorship where private enterprise created a feudal system based on state sponsored monopolies handed out to a few families. The dictator himself was apparently modest in his life style, but his friends running the monopolies were very wealthy. Life for the common person improved significantly after the revolution with access to free health-care, more education and better worker rights.

1989 eastern germany - we call it revolution

please note, that 1989 in eastern Europe was specifically towards democracy and capitalism, against communism and revolutionary state socialism!

Sounds like the American educational system at work

Ever heard about the French Revolution?

In the short run they got Robespierre. However, in the long run things certainly got better. In the meantime the UK still has a queen and the House of Lords. So maybe having Robespierre was worth it.

England also have a revolution few years before the French one, only that it was much less bloody and radical.

You mention Russia, and I'll add China. Both countries were massively feudal and got brought forcefully into the 20th century for one, and into the 21st century for the other, over the course of a few decades. The GDP increases of both countries were astronomical once they settled into state capitalism (early for the Soviet Union, after a few decades for China).

Cuba is a more mixed bag because they don't have the benefit of the massive geographic and population sizes that the previous two countries have, but for the ordinary Cuban, for a few decades, the gains were astronomical.

The seeds of the Iranian revolution were that of a popular, anti-colonial revolt, before it got high-jacked by the clerics and turned into a theocratic shitshow.

The Russian one improved greatly the life of the Russian people. They ended living oppressed under a dictatorship, but it was miles better than starving under the Tsar's monarchy.

Are you trying to be ironic? You're aware that they (and numerous neighbour countries) ended up starving oppressed under communist dictatorship, as opposed to starving oppressed under Tsar's monarchy, yes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD#NKVD_activities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_political_repressions

etc, etc...

I'd like to call you on that. Russian communism led to gigantic starvation and mass executions (pre WWII), i believe the biggest one yet

I absolutely agree with you, but it's worth mentioning that communism brought some temporal and local improvements to the lives of some people that is used for arguing for communism. E.g. an individual from a poor family who could study engineering was probably satisfied with the changes. But the big picture is pretty bad anyway.

I have an alternative, but I'm not sure how you implement it. The crux if the problem is the greed for profit. As consumers we act as individuals and the corporations like it that way. The key to controlling corporations is hitting them where it hurts, I.e. their wallets. If we could unite as consumers we would have the power to crush corporations who do not play fair. If we could find a way to unite consumers such that tomorrow we could get 99% of the population to boycott a company until they changed their practices, then we could demonstrate to consumers that they had a trenendous power to wield. At the moment people don't think like this.

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