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Tom Valovic's avatar

Good analysis. Public debate is going to be difficult because most Americans have no clue about the force and rapidity of the megatrends you’re pointing out. Congress is certainly clueless as well. Either that or they're ducking the issue entirely. The only social movement that I can think of at the moment that makes any sense is not to use AI as a form of protest. That of course is highly unlikely to happen because we're all are being groomed and herded toward its use, like it or not. AI is showing up in many of our Web-based resources and other digital systems including search which will soon be highly AI-dependent. There seems to be no escape or immediate solution on the horizon which means that our fundamental human agency is being slowly eroded and stripped away.

Very interesting points about Bezos and Kindle. And the Hartman quote. In this context, it also seems fair to ask why Zuckerberg is building his incredibly expensive bunker. This suggests a survivalist mentality of take the money and run while the ecology of planet Earth and the stability of longstanding economic systems get trashed. As a sidenote, I have never believed that UBI could be fairly implemented as it seems to have originated with the WEF crowd and just seems like some kind of high-end welfare system, bribe, or consolation prize for a wider swath of disadvantaged economic classes.

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Malcolm's avatar

"But if labor is no longer the central engine of value creation, that cycle collapses. The owners of the AI models—typically large technology firms or their shareholders—will accumulate exponentially more capital, while a large proportion of the population finds itself economically redundant, ruined and marginalized."

This is just primitive accumulation in a new era. Ths is what happened with the enclosures between the 16th century and the 19th century. During this period of time, the Rates provided UBI for anyone who could not find work. Why were the Rates ended? They were ended because of the Speenhamland system:

"Under Speenhamland, society was rent by two opposing influences: the one emanating from paternalism and protecting labor from the dangers of the market system; the other organizing the elements of production, including land, under a market system, and thus divesting the common people of their former status, compelling them to gain a living by offering their labor for sale, while at the same time depriving their labor of its market value. A new class of employers was being created, but no corresponding class of employees could constitute itself. A new gigantic wave of enclosures was mobilizing the land and producing a rural proletariat, while the “maladministration of the Poor Law” precluded them from gaining a living by their labor. No wonder that the contemporaries were appalled at the seeming contradiction of an almost miraculous increase in production accompanied by a near starvation of the masses. By 1834 there was a general conviction—with many thinking people a passionately held conviction—that anything was preferable to the continuance of Speenhamland. Either machines had to be demolished, as the Luddites had tried to do, or a regular labor market had to be created. Thus was mankind forced into the paths of a utopian experiment."

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (pp. 84-85). (Function). Kindle Edition.

What we are seeing now is a continuation of enclosures. Now, it is not just land, but people's bodies, words, etc., that are being enclosed. Social media is a form of enclosure of the commons—even Substack.

The only way is through, and the only way through is the creation of real communities of flesh and blood people, not abstracted relationships through computer screens, the dominant mode of soclal interaction today. If one wishes to build a new mode of production, what could that possibly be? The challenge of the mass disruption (read primitive accumulation) that may be caused by AI is huge and will not be solved by UBI.

Silvia Frederici asks:

"tWhat do we mean by ‘anticapitalist commons’? How can we create a new mode of production no longer built on the exploitation of labor out of the commons that our struggles bring into existence? How can we prevent the commons from being co-opted and, instead of providing an alternative to capitalism, becoming platforms on which a sinking capitalist class can reconstruct its fortunes?"

Federici, Silvia. Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons (Kairos) (p. 86). (Function). Kindle Edition.

People who have no role in capitalist value creation still can work. They just can't work in a capitalist system. They need to create a different means of production. They may have to return to subsistence farming to feed themselves and their families etc. They can still create value. They just won't be able to sell it on Amazon or trade shares of it.

And what if we choose to devalue the products of the technocrats by refusing to use them, if it comes to that? Value is only produced by human beings and can only be used by human beings. Machines themselves create no value and use no value. Their activity is meaningless without a human context to give it meaning. If AI causes the collapse of the economy by throwing millions out of work, who have no income and no means to participate in the economy, then the technocrats havw hoisted themselves on their own pitard. Who cares if there are a million robots in Tesla factories making trucks to carry goods if there is no one to buy them?

Resistence will be found in communities nearby, not flung across the world. Fairly soon the walls are going up, travel will be restricted, and we will have only our neighbors to rely on. The era of state revolutuons is over. We can only resist though developing commons together.

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