[ilaksh]

It's a structural problem in our socio-technical system. You can't separate money and government, because "corruption" to some degree is the default state. Yes there are exceptions, but the opposite if the bad apple concept. You have to get lucky to find the good apples. Which means there is some structural insufficiency in the concept of money and government.

[dgellow]

FWIW the original meaning of the bad apple idiom is that a single one spoils the whole set

[andsoitis]

> It's a structural problem in our socio-technical system.

it has always been like this, has it not? almost by definition the more resources you have the more power you have. this is how the universe works.

[ElevenLathe]

There have historically been obstacles and countervailing forces preventing accumulation to get to the point it is now. The classical example is labor organizing, which has been decimated in the last few decades, but that is just one symptom of how improvements in communication and transportation technology (often shorthanded as "globalization" due to the new political forms it has incentivized -- free trade, "decolonization", financialization, etc.) have radically tilted the table toward capital. Money is now transnational, but people, culture, and solidarity are not. There were once very severe practical limits to how closely one could control an expansive international portfolio of capital (mercantilist trade policies, primitive/incompatible/nonexistent financial infrastructure, slow communications, etc.), and those have been relaxed considerably.

[afavour]

Yes but there are degrees of it and right now we're pivoting towards that power being centralized with the rich once more.

Once upon a time only landowners were able to vote. Eventually that changed as the powerful realized that it was in their interest to share power, because they are vastly outnumbered and can have their riches taken away from them. It feels like we're getting closer and closer to today's rich classes having to learn that lesson again.

[ilaksh]

Yes that's what money is almost by definition and government has always had that relationship. But realize that money and government are technologies and we can create new versions or even new paradigms.

[andsoitis]

> But realize that money and government are technologies and we can create new versions or even new paradigms.

I'm intrigued. What is a paradigm to replace money?

Musk is predicting that in around 10 years' time money would no longer be relevant, but doesn't have a framing of what would make up for the things that money does. I think he misunderstands money.

[everforward]

Not really, because converting resources into power required other humans.

A huge pile of gold isn’t inherently powerful, you need someone willing to accept gold to do what you want. They would also generally be intimately involved in doing the thing, so you paid premiums for dangerous or unpalatable work.

These days technology lets you turn resources into planes, tanks, drones, etc in a way where 100 soldiers with limitless resources probably beat 1000 with a constrained supply line pretty consistently.

You see the same with domestic conflict. Once upon a time, finding and tracking down revolutionaries was a tedious, labor-intensive process that usually resulted in failure. Now those resources can be converted into surveillance that is much more effective, and much less reliant on another human being willing to help.