People with money (or in other systems, people with birth rank or status or strength) definitely have more power than people without. So, what’s the alternative to the individual freedom to choose to serve the powerful over the powerless?
I guess we can make all humans into serfs for the great AI. Not terribly appealing to me.
To clarify, I think capitalism is pretty great (applause light). I’m pointing at something that I think is a not-great feature of capitalism, but I don’t have any better ideas.
I get that. From my standpoint, this isn’t a not-great feature of capitalism, it’s a not-great feature of human choices, or maybe of a universe that contains limited resources and independent-goal actors. Capitalism is neither great nor problematic, in fact it’s not a thing at all. It’s a side-effect of individual agency and individual decisions about resources.
(edited to add) you can argue that it’s also a side-effect of our particular consensual popular conception of “property”. Ok, stipulated. But there’s not much hope in having ANY system of persistent ownership that doesn’t include lots of elements of capitalism. And without the idea of property ownership, everything goes to hell (well, to the strongest/cruelest/luckiest risk-taker).
People with money (or in other systems, people with birth rank or status or strength) definitely have more power than people without. So, what’s the alternative to the individual freedom to choose to serve the powerful over the powerless?
I guess we can make all humans into serfs for the great AI. Not terribly appealing to me.
To clarify, I think capitalism is pretty great (applause light). I’m pointing at something that I think is a not-great feature of capitalism, but I don’t have any better ideas.
I get that. From my standpoint, this isn’t a not-great feature of capitalism, it’s a not-great feature of human choices, or maybe of a universe that contains limited resources and independent-goal actors. Capitalism is neither great nor problematic, in fact it’s not a thing at all. It’s a side-effect of individual agency and individual decisions about resources.
(edited to add) you can argue that it’s also a side-effect of our particular consensual popular conception of “property”. Ok, stipulated. But there’s not much hope in having ANY system of persistent ownership that doesn’t include lots of elements of capitalism. And without the idea of property ownership, everything goes to hell (well, to the strongest/cruelest/luckiest risk-taker).
Yes, I agree with that too.