💀 𝓕airchild 💀
Can we talk about the future that oligarchs actually want, vs the one they tell you they want?
And the mechanical elephant in the room: The #automationparadox.
The automation paradox goes like this:
"We are going to automate jobs with robotics and #AI. You won't need to work. We'll do something like Universal Basic Income (UBI), I guess. Or whatever."
That's not what the oligarchs actually 'want', it's the outcome of their actual want: To eliminate the cost of human labor and increase profit. But that ends in a paradox.
Who buys the goods and services if the fruits of human labor do not result in income?
My thesis is this: "You still do."
That works not by removing income completely, but by quantizing ALL income (except their own) so that we, the masses, are ALL equally poor. Not so poor that we cannot still buy a new Smart TV, a new smartphone, pay for media subscriptions for that new Smart TV. Captive and controlled consumers. Money, wealth, becomes less about the amount of currency* than about the level of control, power, and privilege. Control of access to energy is related topic.
Quantizing income takes the excess that people who are doing better than average, and people who are considered 'rich' but not yet powerful, etc. - taking that and leveling that playing field down to a mean. That above-the-line public wealth then goes to the oligarchs. This 'wealth' actually equates more to power than money, but that's a whole 'nother post.
The #oligarchy who poo-poos socialism wants to institute what I'm calling Capitalistic Communism; replacing the state with the Oligarchy. The people are, as in Soviet-style communism, equally depressed financially. No one, except the pets of the state (Oligarchs) is more affluent than anyone else. And most will still need to work in some form or another. But never with any ability to rise above the quantized floor of 'allowed income'. Or the ability to own _anything_.
The oligarchy will extract the remaining wealth from the middle, upper-middle, and upper class, leaving only The Masses on one end and The Oligarchs on the other.
And then we will well and truly be the consuming slaves they 'want'.
* It already is, Elon Musk doesn't 'make money', he accumulates financial control.
Tim Green
Teixi
friend