[6d6b73]

Automation will turn capitalism will turn into somewhat benevolent corporate city-states. Imagine a city run by a corporation which tries to automate, and optimize everything that is not its core business. To make the employees and their families happy, the corporation will provide the best care (child, health, environment) possible. In time this will turn some of these city-states into efficient, clean, healthy, happy places to live, but only relatively small groups of people will be able to enjoy it. Some of these city-states will be very dystopian and people living in there will be miserable. Technological and societal progress in these "utopian" cities will be much faster than in "dystopian" which will possibly lead to wars.

We will not solve automation driven unemployment by taxing robots, and UBI will generally not work on a country wide scale. Partial solution will be Corporate UBI, which basically will mean that if you work for Corp X, you and your family will have everything they desire provided for them. As for everyone else..

This is already happening on some smaller scale. All these corporate campuses are beginning of that. They will eventually grow to become self-sufficient cities.

Now the question is - when you and your family depend on one entity, i.e corporation that has hired you, are you not a slave to them?

[oblio]

> This is already happening on some smaller scale. All these corporate campuses are beginning of that. They will eventually grow to become self-sufficient cities.

Heh, that's actually funny. Corporate campuses are nothing new. Corporate cities have been a thing for the last 60 (70?) years. They're actually on the decline, not on the rise. I doubt automation will change anything about that.

[6d6b73]

I could be wrong, but I believe automation will change that simply because it will be easier for the corps to provide more services to employees without having to hire/control more people that are not necessary for the corporate city to function. It will also be easier to manage all these people using advanced automation/ai, and make the whole enterprise more profitable. It might not look like the old school corporate campuses with one corporation controlling everything, but more like cities with high concentration of similar businesses. These corporations usually have so much power in these cities that they basically control them.

Also, when automation starts to really impact most jobs on the market, we can expect that there will be some increase in crime. People will move towards safer areas, and corporations will be happy to provide them.

[lprubin]

> Now the question is - when you and your family depend on one entity, i.e corporation that has hired you, are you not a slave to them?

It depends on if there are other viable/satisfactory (or better) options that you can voluntarily switch to.

[6d6b73]

But switching might not be that easy. When you have kids in schools, your wife helps at a local X , and your parents depend on health care provided by the corp, it could be virtually impossible for a person to switch.

[lotu]

Comparing the inconvince of having to switch schools, not being able to volunteer and depending on healtcare/insurance to slavery is a massive insult to people that where and are actual slaves.

Actual slaves did not legally own themselves or their children. Their owners can did take children, parents, and spouse and sell them to different slaveholders so they would never see each other again. A slave could not say fuck this my master is rapping and beating me daily so I'm just going to leave.

If you want to a simple question to determine if someone is slave or not ask what happens if punch your boss in the face. An employe will be fired and never work their ever again, a slave will have to continue to work their for the rest of their life.

[Qwertious]

That definition of slavery is debated - the phrase "wage slavery" being key.

[6d6b73]

True, but there are different levels/types of slavery.

[lprubin]

If that's the definition of slavery you're using, do you feel that there is anybody who is not some level of enslaved? Honestly asking.

[6d6b73]

To define slavery first we would need to define freedom. I think you can agree with me that everyone defines freedom differently. For a person born into slavery, freedom will have a different meaning than for a person that never knew slavery, hunger or misery. I know that this is really a non-answer, but honestly I don't feel qualified to even attempt to define what slavery is and what it isn't.