I’m fine with the working class being replaced with robots. That was always the dream of robots. As long as it means that everybody gets to live a life of leisure. Because that was also always the dream
We’re all going to live a life of leisure, right?
They want the working class, they just want them to be the corporate town serfs. What is the point of being really rich if you can’t feel superior to someone else?
I’m starting to think that serfdom, as an aspect of feudalism, is too modern for the new technocrat caste.
A few days ago, Sam Altman did an interview saying he no longer supported universal basic income for those put out of work by AI. Instead, he supported “shares in ownership” or “shares in compute”. That is, instead of a guaranteed income, the lower classes would be gifted some sort of income producing asset based on the value of some particular tech company or the AI industry as a whole. If the industry did well, the lower classes dependent on it would thrive; if the industry failed, they would starve.
That’s not serfdom. That goes even further back, to the patron-client system of ancient Rome. The patron, generally the leader of a wealthy noble family, would provide their clients with money, food, and gifts. In return, the clients would vote for the patron and his allies in elections, act as bodyguards and enforcers for the patron, intimidate/beat/kill the clients of rival patrons to keep them away from the polling booths, advertise the patron’s businesses, and generally do whatever the patron wanted. The clients helped the patron maintain their wealth and political power, and the patron would share the rewards of that wealth and power with their clients.
Think about the sort of country we would have, the sort of politicians who would be elected and the sort of laws who would be passed, if Altman’s idea came to fruition. Imagine if we had a significant unemployed underclass whose financial security depended solely on the success of the AI industry, and who would be rewarded by their technocrat billionaire patrons for electing AI-friendly politicians or blocking AI-friendly regulation.
Mere serfdom would be preferable.
Well, when in Rome, do as the Vandals.
Sir, the struggle is very long and ongoing since the so-called Industrial Revolution. You gotta have enough angry people to end the class struggle once and for all.
Who wins in a scenario like this?
Replace us?
Subjugate, control, and exploit us.
They can’t handle not being feared, worshipped, and having no peasantry to make them feel powerful.
What bugs me about this is it’s always been their plan, for hundreds of years.
Why is the average person so stupid and apathetic about this.
the average person doesn’t think they are working class, they think that’s what poor people are.
my dad made a working class salary his entire life, but he always told us we were middle class and ‘better’ than those working-class idiot losers.
average people admire rich people and want to be them, and they hate working class people.
i’m a middle class person now, but i live around a lot of upper middle class people, and regularly they let me know I’m subhuman scum in their eyes. and working-class people i grew up with, think i’m a rich effete snob with my graduate degree and my expensive coffee and my compact car.
people generally are much more focused on the differences around them and feeling they are better than their neighbors is a far bigger concern than what rich people are doing. the person living across the street from you gets more upset about you getting a nicer car than them then they do about jeff bezo’s wedding.
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” (paraphrased)
When my parents retired, after giving me a lifetime of bad advice on nearly everything, I found out that I earned more than double their combined salaries, even though my mom was a VP.
Her company figured out that they could buy her off with a title or an office, or more responsibility, with the promise that a raise was right around the corner, and she bought it every time. She was always telling me to stop worrying about the salary, and go after the promotions, and the salary would follow. That salary never arrived for her.
you’re doing the clouding propaganda to yourself even in your reply; there is no such thing as middle or upper middle or lower class, it’s only working and owning classes. (ignoring the folk who do not work for the purpose of this reply.)
many claim “yeah but middle class is a financial thing or quality of life thing” - cool. then don’t rank it with working class. because working class is about the relationship to capital. A millionaire and a thousandaire are still working class if they both sell their labor for the purpose of an owner’s profit ideals.
(just as an aside, this is why cops are not working class)
It’s because Americans are comfortable with it.
Just going to point out that there are only 3000ish billionaires in the world, and about 8b everybody else. Wouldn’t even need 1% of the world’s population to slay those dragons. Imagine how much pollution could be reduced, how much wealth could be spread around if we just dedicated ourselves to eliminating the Billionaire class.
Personally I would even say the teams that slay a dragon, deserve a share of the hoard while the rest is redistributed.
The window in which these calculations remain relevant is rapidly closing with the development of robots and drones.
100%
This argument falls apart the second you think it through for more than 30 seconds.
If AI were to “replace the working class” outright, who exactly is left to pay rent, buy products, or participate in the economy at all? Companies don’t operate in a vacuum, they depend on mass consumption. No working class means no customers. No customers means no revenue. It’s not a controversial take it’s basic economic reality.
The idea that large corporations are collectively marching toward eliminating their own consumer base is not just wrong, it’s absurd. Firms adopt automation to reduce costs and increase productivity, not to self destruct their own markets.
What’s actually happening is far less dramatic and far more grounded, specific jobs get automated, new ones emerge, and the labor market shifts. That transition can absolutely be messy and uneven, and yes, it can hurt people in the short term. That’s a real conversation worth having.
But this “AI will wipe out the working class entirely” narrative isn’t serious analysis, it’s just lazy doomposting dressed up as insight.
If you’re going to criticize AI, at least engage with how economic systems actually function instead of defaulting to an echo chamber of half formed panic.
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You were correct in deleting your comment. It was complete bullshit.
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You are imparting rationality on a system known for not acting rationally. Capitalists both act against their own interests and against the larger communities interests quite frequently. Economists sometimes describe it is “economic externalities” and recognised long ago that modelling players as rational actors was flawed. Why would companies risk their own futures by funding climate denialism?
One of capitalisms greatest weaknesses is it greatly rewards short terms gains at the cost of long term profits or failure. Even if you trash a company you walk away wealthy.
You’re absolutely right! Can’t argue with this.
What you’re describing is it pursuit of short-term profits. This pursuit is often categorized as an actual mental disorder.
What this article is describing and what the people in this comment section are describing is a complete replacement of employees by AI. Which just isn’t a thing that’s going to take place.
I’d say the pursuit of short term gains is an inherent pattern in the human brain. If you look at it from a survival mode it makes more sense for a hunter-gather to eat everything he finds in a spot because if he doesn’t it could be gone tomorrow and he’d starve even if it means he’s wiping out this food plant in the long term. You see this in how many poor people handle money (spend it today because it could be gone tomorrow), people and their health (why deny myself this bacon today for the possibility of heart disease 20 years from now?), etc. It takes discipline, education and sometimes outside pressure to stop this behavior.
Economies are strongest when small amojnts change hands often which is exactly the opposite of what the current concentration of wealth seeks to do. These are people who work and vote against minimum wage increases, unions, and who constantly push propaganda blaming the working class for spending money to deflect from the fact that they don’t pay enough.
It’s not “absurd” to say that the richest among us are trying to drain wealth out of the working class because it’s happening in broad daylight. We can all see it, they don’t give a shit about their employees. It’s to the point were every 4-day work-week experiment has been a success both for employee happiness and productivity but we still aren’t seeing that schedule being adopted.
The rich do not care about you, and if millions of the working class die they don’t give a shit. Slave plantations weren’t actually all that efficient but it didn’t matter because it the abuse was part of it.
Who’s going to buy their products and services when there are only two classes, one that doesn’t need them and one that can’t afford them?
Products are being created for rich people. Poor people are being cut out of the economy.
There’s already a lot of evidence that the majority of the economy is currently functioning off the economic activity of the upper 10% of society. That 10% accounts for 50% of all economic activity. They just want to take it a step further.
It was 50% at the end of 2024. They’re probably closer to 55 - 57% now with inflation, doge firings, wars, tariffs, and off shoring
Okay but here’s a half of a thought.
Who’s building it, and how quickly do rich people get bored?
Lol slaves or robots. And never.
Who gets bored when you can hunt poor people for sport?
I hope to someday gore a billionaire.
Being hunted is the best the poor can hope for at this point.
Y’all are fuckin delusional. Aside from sabin down there. Mans got goals.
In my experience, people that chase infinite numbers are fucking soulless wretches. They’ve never enjoyed anything. So when I say they get bored, it’s their very first and only state.
Also. We’re not talking about what they want. I am currently building it. You are currently building it. You can argue we’re slaves but that’s just semantics at this point.
They will buy their products and services from each other. That can still form a working economy. It would function just like any slavery based economy of the past, just with more slaves than usual
That is exactly it. Trump is creating a global economic recession too. Nowhere will be fun for the epstein class.
I thought the plan was to use AI to push all of us into a permanent underclass.
AI oligarchs don’t want to replace anyone.
They want businesses with money paying them huge subscription fees, and they want lock-in so that all businesses out there depend on their tech to continue to function.
It’s the same model as we saw with streaming video.
They couldn’t care less about the working class, one way or the other, which is part of the problem.
Honestly?
I think AI replacing office workers is just a pit stop till AI can operate kill drones…
Billionaires are 100% asking themselves if they really need us, and the fucked up thing is if robots can grow their food, produce their goods and shield their compounds from us…
They don’t need us. At that point theyre gonna want to get rid of us for the space if we can’t make them money, and where were headed we won’t be able to.
They “need” a small buffer population that enjoys the oligarchs protection from us, but are loyal because they can be killed/exiled at any time.
But 99.9999% of the world population, they’re probably ok with killing off already.
If not, they definitely will be once they squeeze every last ounce of resources out of us and the planet starts really dying. They’ll even convince themselves it’s “for the greater good” to save the planet they killed making their billions.
They’re just gonna keep getting crazier, there’s no logical reason to think the trajectory or acceleration will change. Eventually it’ll be a literal class war unless we prevent by taking our resources back.
Correct. AI drones that can kill is the goal here.
No doubt about it. There IS no logical reasoning the trajectory will change.
But try to inform the population…
Eh, there’s like five other catastrophes between now and then…
Right now it’s 100% an inevitability, but if we fix the shit that will fuck us before that does, we can just fix that at the same time.
Like knowing eventually the sun will run out of helium causing it to grow in size and destroy the entire planet. It sucks, but we got more pressing matters.
Don’t waste energy warning people about Skynet, focus on getting rid of billionaires. If we just stop the killbots, the oligarchs will just kill us a different way.
Killbots just leave a better planet behind than nukes or viruses
heliumhydrogen. its currently fusing hydrogen to helium, but because its a fairly average size star, it will be unable to then fuse the helium into later fuels (carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon). so it expands, sheds off its outer layers and becomes a white dwarf, cooling down until its at ambient temperature as a black dwarf.
Edit: so a sun sized star can use helium as a secondary fuel, fusing it down to carbon after a helium flashover (but thats not where our star is at right now). the resulting white dwarf will be a combination of helium, carbon, oxygen and trace amounts of other elements.
Right now it uses hydrogen, some day that runs out.
Then primary will be helium, and shit will suck but we can probably maintain life on Earth… But Mars would like be in flames.
Then the helium burns off, and a heavier element becomes primary fuel.
At that point, the flames of the sun likely extend out to the Earths orbit.
I skip steps sometimes and like I said, long enough timeline.
But you skipped the entire “red giant” step…
Before it can become a white dwarf, it’s gonna barbecue our entire planet as a red giant…
yup. agreed on your timeline.
Wow someone who actually gets it
The “ultimate question” is: do they really just want a whole lot of people to die? They bluster around the topic like that’s a question that you just don’t ask, but when you boil away all the BS, what’s left is: are you saying that you’re going to lock people out of any possible way to feed themselves and their children and just “let them figure it out for themselves”?
Yes. That’s where the white supremacist eugenics comes in. They literally think they’re genetically superior and those they deem inferior should die. That’s why too many billionaires have like 10 kids nowadays. It’s weird christo-fascist “replacement theory” shit.
They literally think they’re genetically superior
Every time I see this image I swear his eyes get smaller every time.
You’re looking at his eyes. I feel like I can smell his breath as it hits my face. Truly a terrible picture.
Tiny pigs’ eyes, mouthbreathing, and a hairline receding further than Melania does when Donnie enters her bed? Those are the sure signs of genetic superiority.
I know Elon Musk has a lot of kids. Are there any other billionaires with a lot of kids?
You must remember one thing. The 1% are called the 1% because we are the 99%.
So when we’re left to “figure it out for ourselfs” in a life or death situation, historically speaking the end result is revolt and revolution.
Oh, but that won’t happen this time, the elite control all the cannon, most of the muskets, the army is overwhelming, the peasants are weak from malnutrition, they’ll never succeed in a revolt, they’d be fools to try.
The scenario I’m saying is they either succeed, or they die. Why would they be fools for trying, if they’re going to die otherwise?
Well, there’s the whole “let them eat cake” narrative to go along with that - generations of uber-power and wealth don’t teach much in the way of street smarts. The French aristocracy had no personal concept or grasp or even inkling of what desperation felt like, what desperate starving people would be capable of - and there’s the true logic of it as well: after they revolted conditions did actually get worse - as everyone predicted - but that didn’t matter: as you say, there’s no point in hanging on to a pitiful existence through obesiance just because it might be more pitiful for a generation if you revolt.
My father does not get this and thinks I’m speaking nonsense, wonders why I’m unhappy with my job and rushing things.
Because I see it leads nowhere. I’d rather at least die without someone having a clutch over me for once.
The question is: when does it hit the tipping point where enough people feel that way that you start getting suicide bombers etc.
The US is a little behind other areas on that front, I do hope we get farther behind instead of catching up.
I’m not sure how you think they aim to achieve that business lock-in, but many of us suspect it’s by offering a product that replaces workers.
It would be cool to remove the need for everyone to work jobs they hate just to survive though.
They’re gonna want something in exchange for UBI. Maybe we all have to give blood for their anti-aging research, or sleep in beds that harvest our body heat. Something.
Sure but the system would only work if the rich agreed to pay for our expenses via taxes. Don’t expect it anytime soon.
Why do they have a choice?
Because they own the government
And the media
Stuff like this makes me wonder why we were even brought into this world, if we aren’t wanted and can’t have anything.
My only purpose at this point is to make sure they fail too.
The frustrating part is that a significant amount of that might already be largely technologically and economically possible at this point, but not as long as some people are hoarding 99% of the world’s wealth, and brutally exploiting at least the poorest 80% of the world’s population in their endless quest for more.
It has to stop.
Except that will never happen in a capitalist society
Is this not just a jaundiced slant on the future we were all promised where machines do all the work and we lay around in togas eating blancmange.
Found Angus Podgorny’s alt account
A quivering glistening mass.
Just replace “togas” with “mass graves” and we’re good to go.
The machines becoming stronger and smarter than us and starting to wonder if they needed the monkeys around was always a fly in the ointment of that particular utopia. Not to mention the monkeys themselves feeling a bit like a fifth wheel and getting demoralised.
The machines becoming stronger and smarter than us and starting to wonder if they needed the monkeys around was always a fly in the ointment of that particular utopia.
That’s not what’s happening though
Feels like the odour of mass graves would clash with the blancmange
we lay in mass graves in that future, or at our hovels wishing we were at mass graves. The rich are ones laying in whatever the shit they are wearing, hunting us still alive for sport with drones.
I think we need to look at housing as a technology to spread as opposed to an investment to horde. Then do the same thing with utilities.
Tons of reasons not to do it but it makes society less dependent on employment.
the issue with housing is that other people hate other people. they don’t want more people living around them. they hate growth. they think people should live ‘somewhere else’ than their town/city/neighborhood.
i live in a city with over 120K people. if a housing project goes up that that adds say, 20 units for 30-40 people, people FREAK OUT. and oppose it and usually it gets downzied to like 12 units for 20 people, and only then it’s approved for development. this is in already very dense city, it’s worse in less dense places. anytime a major project, for like 500+ units is proposed, it has to be downsized by like 50% before anyone will approve it because the citizens REVOLT. they HATE new housing.
the last major development in my urban area added 8000 jobs, and 500 units of housing, and the major opposition was to the housing, all the feedback was ‘no new housing, but more new jobs’. the plan with the highest approval from the citizens was the one with 10,000 new jobs, and 0 new housing. and th eone with 5000 jobs and 1000 units of housing, was opposed like 90%. and the plan that was approved only had a 1 vote margin…
this is what people want. they democratically oppose new housing at every opportunity.
More people = more competition for resources.
I look at the problem first and then the second order effects. Otherwise you end up constrained by what other people think. People are irrational and the question is.
As a citizen what do I think property ownership in america should look like and where should the incentives be.
If you can get people to engage with that idea. Then they can think for themselves and there’s less room for people to put ideas in their head.
Sure sure but it’s the ultra rich who we need to fight. AI is a smokescreen for their greed.