[tnorgaard]

To be fair, it's not really capitalism he is arguing against, but rather Special Interest groups misusing their position in a capitalistic system. Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winning liberal / "capitalist", spoke against monopolies and Special Interest groups for ~30 years [1].

I would have loved to see a Milton Friedman and Thomas Piketty debate although. :-)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2T2Ee8zm6s

[nhaehnle]

Are you so sure about that? Capitalism is at its core about the (private) accumulation of capital in the sense of means of production. This capital is used by human labour to produce things. Technological change is ultimately a process by which the ratio of capital input to human labour input increases.[0]

In a sense, robots (automated machines) are the perfection of capital, where the ratio becomes arbitrarily high: human labour becomes decreasingly needed until it's basically unnecessary.

Private ownership of this capital - which is what capitalism is all about - is then absolutely the problem, because it pits a small group of capital owners against a majority which depends on the products produced by that capital without having anything useful to trade left.

[0] How you measure this ratio is an important but difficult topic, and in fact one must be careful not to let an implicit definition of measures frame the discussion.

[scotty79]

> Private ownership of this capital - which is what capitalism is all about - is then absolutely the problem

It's only a problem if you can't/won't tax. If you can tax owners of the capital and give away that money to other people (bureaucrats, army, unemployed, everybody) everything still works just fine. Everybody still has money to buy stuff and this keeps the game that capital owners play between themselves live.

The only way we can screw this up is to weaken the governments and strengthen the corporations to the point that governments won't be able to tax. So probably private armies are bad idea, also neglecting people so that they pummel their own governments.

So it's ok if billionaires own all the robots, that make stuff, sell stuff to poor (everybody who's not a billionaire), as long as government can tax billionaires 98% tax and bomb them if they don't pay up.

[TeMPOraL]

> The only way we can screw this up is to weaken the governments and strengthen the corporations to the point that governments won't be able to tax.

Sadly, this seems to be the dominant narrative among people these days. I can understand that when fighting for less taxes, they're thinking about themselves and their neighbours who run small businesses, but in the end this will likely turn self-destructive, as the businesses increasingly consolidate and governments are less and less able to protect the intrests of their people.

That most governments are run by openly corrupt media stars doesn't help either.

> So probably private armies are bad idea

Private armies are such, such bad idea that it's hard to believe there are actually people advocating them.

[Floegipoky]

Is that just a thought experiment, or do you really think that would work?

Because I don't think it would work. Why would producers give bombs to the government? Why would they give food to the populace? Why would they submit to taxation when they have more power than the entity trying to tax them?

[scotty79]

> Is that just a thought experiment, or do you really think that would work?

That's how it already works. Money is taken from capitalists and redistributed to bureaucrats and military and some expended to appease the populace.

> Because I don't think it would work. Why would producers give bombs to the government?

Because it's good money and government has already plenty of bombs to force people to make more bombs for them.

Similarly you could ask, why on Earth any company supplies stuff to IRS. Because it's profitable and because you could face consequences if you openly refuse.

> Why would they give food to the populace?

Because populace will pay them with money, for the cheapest, best quality food they can make. Money will come almost in full from producers pockets, but it won't be a problem for them because as long as competition pays the same or more then it's all good.

> Why would they submit to taxation when they have more power than the entity trying to tax them?

Wait!? US capitalists have more firearms, bombs, tanks and planes than US army?

What I am saying is that it's not some scheme that will get established. I'm saying that it's already the case. Governments are still stronger than corporations, same way North Korea is stronger than South Korea. Technologically and socially way behind, but with huge army.

I'm basically saying that monopoly on violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence is the factor that keeps capitalism from eating us, and right after that, itself.

[tsujamin]

This explanation seems to rely fairly heavily on the current, potentially unknown state of the system, and the ability for the military to respond without delay to stockpiling of weaponry by producers.

> Because it's good money and government has already plenty of bombs to force people to make more bombs for them. If the military could express force against a producer the moment they refuse to supply weaponry, and before they stockpile it for themselves, then this is true. However if the period of delay between producer non-compliance and military intervention is too great, the producer may have an opportunity to stockpile enough force to mount a realistic defence.

The government, nor the military, controls the means of production that their Monopoly on Violence depends upon, let alone the responsiveness and potentially not even the stockpile (I'm not sure of the figures) to mount a sustained defence against cooperating producers.

EDIT: The idea of producers acquiring legitimacy greater than that of public institutions is also an interesting idea with respect to Monopoly on Violence. Immediate self interest of citizens (taxation minimisation) could potentially lead to a "tragedy of the commons" type outcome for public services; leaving the private sector as the only viable and legitimate provider. This could also undermine the legitimacy of public institutions perhaps?

[scotty79]

> the producer may have an opportunity to stockpile enough force to mount a realistic defense.

I think you are heavily underestimating capacity of armies. Hardware that modern armies operate is absolutely horrific and knowing how to use it most effectively is the only thing they do.

Capitalists know how to make money not use military hardware and I don't think anyone could stockpile enough weaponry without any government organization noticing to carve out any sort of tax independence.

Closest to what you are imagining is mafia carving out tax independence from government in Mexico or wherever. But then you have another problem if government is too weak to prevent you from stockpiling weapons, it's also too weak to prevent your competition from stockpiling weapons and that's way worse for the business than being taxed (even heavily).

> ... to mount a sustained defence against cooperating producers.

Why do you things producers would cooperate? They can cooperate to some degree but they want to get ahead of each other. Having armed competition would be horrible.

You might potentially imagine scenario, where produces stockpile weapons, unite to abolish government (and army) that due to weakness haven't noticed the stockpiling and haven't defused situation and haven't stockpiled accordingly. Then they either fight among themselves or not and become new government and army (because it's easier to tax than to manufacture and sell, when you have an army). So even in catastrophic scenario everything is back to status quo.

If you like SF I recommend "Beggars in Spain". Nice vision about what might happen if 1% gets immensely more productive then the rest of humanity.

> leaving the private sector as the only viable and legitimate provider. This could also undermine the legitimacy of public institutions perhaps?

I know it's popular fantasy to think that governments are legitimized by services they provide to (poor) people. While in truth they are legitimized by armies that hide behind, them that give illusion by being civilly controlled in exchange for inordinate amount of resources.

[TeMPOraL]

Indeed. The government can now threaten to bomb a company because most companies are small enough not to pose a threat (though I wouldn't be sure if the USGOV would really be able to bomb Lockheed Martin). But as the companies merge and band together, at some point the government may start hearing demands to be met if they want to keep their satellite guidance active, or not accidentally showing capital city as an active target.

[nhaehnle]

That's an interesting argument and technically correct. I only wonder whether it's politically feasible/stable. My fear would be that the economic advantage of the capital owners (even if reduced) would eventually lead to a lobbyist capture of the government, which would then cut taxes and start a vicious cycle.

[scotty79]

Buying government is a problem, but not a terminal one. True force is army. We can see it in other failed countries. Whenever government stopped being efficient facade for collecting money from producers, military stepped in and replaced government with complete disregard of previous arrangements. That tends to make the corporations skip a beat.

[vixen99]

I love the way folk are so enthusiastic about punitively extracting wealth to hand over to an organization (in one instance) that's able to run up a sixteen trillion dollar debt waiting to be met by the as yet unborn. And what do these governments have to show for it? Not that impressive.

[tnorgaard]

Good questions you raise, nhaehnle.

First of, I don't try to pretend to be a scholar in economics, so please bare with me.

That a capital system contains people/entities that accumulate wealth is exactly why I finished off with the Thomas Piketty comment. His very interesting book, Capital in the 21st Century, argues that our current system favours capital owners and we should tax capital, not income.

About labour being displaced, I can recommend Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, however it does not contain silver bullets. :-)

I can only theorize on what Stephen Hawkings meant with his answer, but to me it didn't look like a general critic of capital, but more the system we have now.

[maratd]

> In a sense, robots (automated machines) are the perfection of capital, where the ratio becomes arbitrarily high: human labour becomes decreasingly needed until it's basically unnecessary.

Where is the evidence for this?

Your entire arguments falls apart when this isn't the case.

As manufacturing moved towards automation, labor moved toward rendering services.

The number of jobs is highly correlated to the size of the population. We didn't see a reduction in available employment due to automation. We simply saw a shift in the type of work performed, with jobs moving toward things that were more difficult to automate.

[TeMPOraL]

You seem to be ignoring the current wave of automation, and focusing on the one that started with the industrial revolution. Automation used to provide muscle, and thus replace manufacturing. Nowadays it starts to provide brains, which makes it replace services. As it continues, where will the human labour go?

The number of jobs was highly correlated to the size of population so far, but we already see the rise of bullshit jobs, that serve each other in closed loops, providing no real benefit except of wasting resources to give some people something to do. It's not as obvious as ordering people one day to dig up a hole and the next day to fill it up again, but e.g. a lifecycle of a leaflet - from commissioning, designing and printing it, to delivery, giving it to people and having it end up in a thrash can, seems really similar.

[maratd]

> Nowadays it starts to provide brains, which makes it replace services. As it continues, where will the human labour go?

Is there actual evidence of this? As in, actual statistics rather than grandiose claims of AI destroying the human race?

Yes, you might get replaced by a piece of software and you may need to retrain to a different industry, but this has always been true.

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

> The number of jobs was highly correlated to the size of population so far, but we already see the rise of bullshit jobs

This doesn't make any sense. At some point, someone is handing over money and expects a specific amount of work be done, which he finds to be a good exchange. It's far easier not to hire someone, than to hire them. So if you don't need work done ... you don't hire anyone.

Why would someone pay someone else money to perform "bullshit"? You only have instances of this when it is mandated by regulation, not in a free market.

[TeMPOraL]

> Is there actual evidence of this? As in, actual statistics rather than grandiose claims of AI destroying the human race?

I'm not talking about AI, I'm talking about replacing people in service jobs who were needed for some particular function provided more by their brains than by brute strength.

For instance, consider self-checkout machines replacing casheers in shops. It's already happening, it makes shops employ less people. Not zero, because automation is not a binary process, but less. (Also, n=1, I used to do inventory in a shop as an external contractor, because they couldn't count up everything in one night with the staff they had; that ended pretty much overnight when they got themselves automated inventory trackers with barcode scanners, which reduced the number of people needed by half.)

So is automation replacing people in services? Yes, you can see this everywhere around you. Do those people end up jobless? Not yet.

> Why would someone pay someone else money to perform "bullshit"? You only have instances of this when it is mandated by regulation, not in a free market.

Because it's not obvious bullshit, per leaflet example I described. The nonsense nature of work done only becomes apparent when you look at the whole chain of services provided. At each link, someone is paying someone else for a job they need to get paid by someone else entirely. And as long as you get paid, why would you refuse the job, or care what happens with the artifact you've built later? So there you have, some chains of services are direct mind-to-thrashcan work. Others run against each other, in a zero-sum-game, each cancelling out the results of another one. They exist, because at each step someone is paid to do something that the other party needs.

[maratd]

> For instance, consider self-checkout machines replacing casheers in shops.

In my experience, half the machines are out of order. The other half are working, but they need a person to stand there full-time to help the customers with items that don't scan and make sure that people don't just walk out of the store without paying. You also need someone to maintain those machines. If I had to guess, I'd say they don't really save the store any money since they still end up employing the same number of people. I'm also starting to see less of them than before, suggesting they were more of a fad.

> Others run against each other, in a zero-sum-game, each cancelling out the results of another one.

I think I understand where you're going with this. A competitor engages in a behavior that results in a benefit so long as nobody else is doing it (ie leafleting), but once everyone is doing it, it benefits nobody, but you still have to keep doing it because everyone else is?

That's not leafleting. That's marketing as a whole.

I suppose you can say that marketing/advertising is a bullshit job (and you wouldn't be the first), but that's just a fundamental outcome of human nature and capitalism. It's always been around and doesn't have anything to do with technology.

If anything, technology gave us things like AdWords, etc., automated ways of marketing. I imagine there are fewer people employed in advertising/marketing today than before largely because of those technological changes.

[Futurebot]

Yes, there is evidence, but you don't need AI, per se. Just automation in its various forms (robots, software, etc.):

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21594264-previous-tec...

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/03/141949820/how-technology-is-el...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html?_r=0

Automation is moving up the skill / knowledge chain.

[maratd]

That's not evidence. Just more hand waving. Those are ARTICLES. Where is the DATA?

[spoiler]

I kinda agree that jobs shifted, but you can't forget that not everyone is able or wants to shift. If you create a "perfect" car mechanic robot, the cat mechanic won't suddenly find a better job. He could maybe seek a job in another type of industry, but why should he have to? He was perfectly content working on cars.

[scotty79]

>> Technological change is ultimately a process by which the ratio of capital input to human labour input increases.

> Where is the evidence for this?

If you do more with same amount of people it still holds true. It doesn't mean technology causes people to loose jobs only that human labor needed for unit of stuff made per unit of capital decreases as technology progresses.

[pdkl95]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

The canonical introduction to why "better technology makes more better jobs for horses^Whumans" doesn't make sense.

[joesmo]

Special Interest groups misusing their position in a capitalistic system is capitalism. You can't separate the two. Wherever capitalism exists, special interest groups misusing their position exist. Thus, I'd say the problem is not divisible.

It's just like communism. Wherever communism exists, tyranny and oppression exists. Every single place. For capitalism, it's the special interest groups which in many cases rise to the level of tyranny and oppression and serve the same purpose.

I don't know if there is a solution for special interest groups in capitalist systems, but as long as people keep separating this as 'not part of capitalism' there won't be. There certainly isn't one for the communist equivalent.

[collyw]

>>Wherever communism exists, tyranny and oppression exists.

Like politicans, you seem to be confusing communism with totalitariansim. True communism, with the people making the rules has yet to be tried. Instead we have seen totalitarian regiems labaeling themselves as communism.

[lkjhgfd]

Special interests are less of a problem in capitalism than in any other -ism. (Communism, mercantilism, feudalism, socialism, fascism)

Tyranny and oppression are arguably worse in communism than any other -ism. (yes, arguably, even worse than feudalism!)

[reagency]

Fascism is totalitarian capitalism, just as Communism is totalitariam socialism.

Don't conflate economic models with government models.

[vixen99]

What is totalitarian capitalism? Can you give an example?

[Sammi]

Doesn't mean they still aren't a huge problem. Hawkins' concern still stands.