[qsera]

>but you have to pay for the privilege too...

You are not considering the fact that if there are robots to do everything, then they won't be interested in you paying them. This applies to the programs that you listed as well. The equation changes completely when automonos robots do everything.

>now they have the means to not only control production + its consumption but also have the military means to enforce it.

Tell me, how many elites have a nuclear weapon.

[shimman]

If you don't understand how elites have used the US military to strong arm their holdings throughout the world, IDK what to tell you. US imperialism is a real thing that has existed for the last 120+ years, it has also only benefited a small minority of rich Americans.

See the banana wars, see the US oil interests in the middle east. These are just two major examples.

Acting like the US won't do this again when the elites have captured the political apparatus is the foolish part, especially when this is the current operating procedure at the moment (protecting money over basic human rights).

[danaris]

> The equation changes completely when automonos robots do everything.

Yes, but how it changes depends entirely on who owns the robots.

There is zero current evidence that benevolent governments will own the robots, and huge evidence that self-centered wealthy billionaires (and trillionaires!) will own them.

In such a case, the response to "the robots will make everything" isn't "so give it away to the people for free! :-)". It's "so what do I need all these stupid people for? make killbots to keep them away from my fully-automated luxury oligarchy compound!"

[qsera]

>There is zero current evidence that benevolent governments will own the robots,

But that is up to the people and their governments to decide. You seem to miss the fact that governments are made by people and for the people, and not made by the billionaires. Even a billionaire have a single vote.

Government can outlaw the private ownership of combat autonomous robots if that is what the people want.

[danaris]

> But that is up to the people and their governments to decide.

This is laughably naïve in 2026. There's been massive amounts of voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other forms of legal vote-rigging in the US, not to mention the tremendous amount of propaganda that's been fed to the country for decades in support of the oligarchs' agenda.

And then we get into the even darker possibilities, such as Trump's repeated suggestions that we don't need to vote again, that he could have a third term, his thanks to Musk for delivering him the election, etc.

And frankly, if you think that the disposition of the hypothetical robots is up to the people to decide, then surely you must believe that the current state of Western governments in 2026 genuinely represents the will of the people. If you extend that line of thought out logically, then just as surely you must conclude that there is, at least, a very high probability that the people would decide to give the robots to the oligarchs, even knowing that those robots would kill said people.