[vidarh]

What I'm seeing is that people are raising the questions, but are largely oblivious to the historical discussions of the same questions.

E.g. people are constantly - especially in tech circles - raising the spectre of automation of production and how we will deal with it in terms of unemployment, worrying about large numbers of people being plunged into unemployment, as if this is a question nobody has considered.

But that was one of Marx' core criticisms of capitalism: That he believed that while it would bring production to a point where poverty could be entirely eliminated for the first time in history, rather than doing so, its dynamics would instead lead to the paradox of overproduction and plunging millions (back) into poverty at the same time.

People didn't use to ask these questions, and when they did, if you brought up Marx' you used to get into a flamewar, and death threats were not uncommon well into the 90's. Today you tend to get a reasoned discussion and honest questions.