[thehardsphere]

> Capitalism is the ultimate paperclip maximizer... a zombie that feeds on growth rather than brains.

The "paperclip" that "Capitalism" seeks to maximize is money in exchange for goods and services that people want.

The robots aren't going to be built in the first place if they're not going to serve somebody, and if they no longer provide things that people want in exchange for money, their owners will turn them off or repurpose them.

"Capitalism" isn't the problem here; it might be that robots could be paperclip maximizers, but that's a danger regardless of whether you have Robot Capitalists or or Robot Communists or Robot ISIS or whatever.

[CuriouslyC]

The problem with the current incarnation of capitalism is the assumption that goods and services will make people happy, and that their wants are intrinsic rather than indoctrinated. In truth both of these are false more often than not. Thus, while capitalism is very efficient, at this point that efficiency is mostly allowing us to crank up the speed setting on the hedonic treadmill, while we rack up debt, work soul crushing jobs and destroy our environment. This is sad, because in theory capitalism is awesome - we just need to stop letting the people with all the money write the rules of the game.

[pygy_]

Robots are not the maximizers. People are at this point still driving the demand side of the equation, that's true, but there's not reason why they can't be replaced as well on that end.

The economy is a self-maximizer, bootstrapped on human labour. As automation progresses, it will become self-hosted.