[asdff]

You've needed a job to live for all of human history going back to whatever ancestor you like. That job is called survival. All modern life is doing is delegating that effort across many people such as to benefit from economies of scale. I don't need to fish for my sustenance because someone else is doing the fishing. I contribute in some other way that gives me credits to access the fishing take. People act like capitalism is some new evil but it is little different than the delegated labor you might find in a prehistorical tribe. The fundamental rules of this system are really the only way our species survives. The issue is sometimes compensation is uneven for the effort, but that is really it, not that the system itself is a failure. I'm not sure of any system that wouldn't be like this. What is communism but capitalism where compensation is more evenly distributed? It is still a game of delegating certain tasks to certain individuals such that one individual is not responsible for 100% of their own survival.

[kranke155]

Survival didn't involve a CS job at FAANG until very recently.

Capitalism is not a new evil, you're absolutely right. It's just the system that, according to our current framework, came after feudalism, which came after something else.

the point is that actually seeing the changes in systems as consequences of massive technological change is likely directionally correct and it is not clear whether current capitalist logic survives the AI era.

[asdff]

What is a CS job at a FAANG in practice? Many hats. For example if you work at Netflix on content delivery, you are the modern version of someone involved in the boring logistics of theaters and plays. If you work at Google on search, you are the modern version of a librarian establishing ways to catalog information. If you work at say facebook, you are the modern version of a propagandist or even town crier perhaps. In all these cases, these workers were delegating their basic survival needs to other members of society. Ancient Rome even had its own slop bowl restaurants not all that different than what you see in SF today, and many ancient romans did not cook for themselves but instead traded credits gained from labor elsewhere to eat at these establishments. No different than lunch time in SF today.

The actual tasks being done have always been done even if the technologies used to do the work have changed and the work itself looks a little different. Our base needs have not changed. We are the same apes bound by dopamine. The functionality we require is pretty old. There is probably little we experience that is truly "new" compared to what one might experience in a classical civilization.

Capitalism is far more ancient than feudalism. Phoenicians were famous capitalists, likewise most any group of people involved in trade. Trade and accumulation of capital representing labor is ancient.

[kranke155]

You're just confusing definitions. Capitalism as its commonly thought I would think just about what it says on the wikipedia page

"Capitalism in its modern form emerged from agrarianism in England, as well as mercantilist practices by European countries between the 16th and 18th centuries. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century established capitalism as a dominant mode of production, characterized by factory work, and a complex division of labor. "

[asdff]

You are conflating the modern form but I am considering its most base definition. From Merriam Webster:

"an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market"

This would satisfy the modern interpretation of capitalism as well as the ancient Phoenician traders engaging in real time free market price discovery when on trade voyages. Trade has been complex for a very long time. Consider the famous complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir. These men were clearly capitalists little different than the commodity traders of today. They probably did not do their own fishing either, leaving that for the fishermen, focusing on copper and perhaps other commodities profiting off arbitrage and using that to pay for their survival.

[kranke155]

Then what do you call the post industrial economic system