[_yosefk]

It's a good thing that states and state-owned enterprises always optimize for the well-being of their citizens and customers - after all, that's what they're supposed to do! It never happens that, being largely unaccountable, people working for the state and its enterprises act to maximize their own well-being and minimize their own effort at the expense of the citizens and customers.

This is why the enemy is capital, not human nature. All you need is employ people in properly-named organizations with properly stated lofty goals (the constitution of Stalin-era USSR is a good source of inspiration), and none of their bad traits will ever rear their ugly heads!

[ricksplat]

So towards the end of your post, I began to get the impression the tongue was somewhere in the cheek. But up to that point I was thinking there was some good insight there. The dichotomy of business vs the state. The roles of each: A business to make money; the state to look after her citizens, and the ongoing struggle for dominance between each - firmly skewered by the citation of the USSR, where "it was tried before". Poor businesses fail, whereas a poorly run state will limp along, but at the end of the day it is the businesses that fail into the state, and if a business is badly run it is the state (and her constituents) that have to pick up the pieces.

[_yosefk]

You got that "cheek" impression towards the end, and it was the USSR bit that did it? Meaning that the first paragraph, states always caring for their citizens, sounds sensible? Now that scares the shit out of me.

[ricksplat]

what can I say, your post was poorly written.

[erikpukinskis]

The State is not the only alternative to capital. Another is individuals.

Corporations (and the State) are mostly useless now that we have software. We're just in transition while we finish building AIs that usefully model the means of production and the body of available contracts.

An individual with a powerful AI partner that can do those two things is no more powerful inside a corporation than out. The AI makes the collaborative structures of public space just as reliable as the collaborative structures within a corporation, so the entire value of the corporation to the worker disappears.

[vezzy-fnord]

AI is a factor of production, therefore it is a capital good.

The rest is delusional science fiction. "Ethereum contracts will magically grant every individual land, labor and capital goods for self-sufficient production." No.