[owenmarshall]

I'm not sure a capitalist system makes sense in a techno-utopia. If the robots make themselves, mine the minerals, smelt the ores, assemble the smartphones, and deliver them to me, there is not a labor cost associated with assembling the smartphone, so why should there be a price?

Maybe the "cost" comes from the loss of the mineral in the ground, but if we're going full on techno-utopia the robots would reclaim the mineral through recycling, so does it become negligible?

Marx touched on the paradoxical nature of automation and advanced technology: "Though machinery be the most potent means for increasing the productivity of labour, that is to say for reducing the amount of labour time necessary for the production of a commodity, in the hands of capital it becomes the most powerful means... for lengthening the working day far beyond the bounds imposed by nature"

And damn, he hits the nail on the head there.

[krapp]

Companies don't automate to reduce potential profits, though, but to reduce the cost and inefficiency of human labor. Presumably, even with a fully automated infrastructure, there would still be a human-run corporation at the top, otherwise why would they bother creating the system at all?

But then I may simply not have gone far enough down the rabbithole in my conception of 'techno-utopia.' If the automation is truly self-sustaining and self-contained, in essence, a complete AI economy in and of itself, then perhaps the "cost" comes in the burden of including humans at all?

[owenmarshall]

> Presumably, even with a fully automated infrastructure, there would still be a human-run corporation at the top, otherwise why would they bother creating the system at all?

IMO you're looking at the system before it reaches an endgame.

Investing in automation is a rational decision to reduce costs & increase profits, so companies are going to make that choice. As automations continue to improve more and more jobs will be eliminated in order to continue increasing profits.

But as jobs are eliminated the people that used to do the jobs are still there - still wanting to earn money to feed and clothe their families. And as they don't have jobs, they don't have money, so corporate profits begin to suffer.

The system will eventually reach a tipping point. I just hope we end on the side of "we run the machines and distribute their output for the good of the people" rather than "we run the machines, keep their output, and give the people worthless scrip".

>If the automation is truly self-sustaining and self-contained, in essence, a complete AI economy in and of itself, then perhaps the "cost" comes in the burden of including humans at all?

Hopefully our robot overlords would see it as an opportunity, rather than a cost.

[schrodinger]

I think that art would remain the thing that humans alone can produce - good tasting food (the production can be automated, but not generating a recipe) - music - entertainment...

In my theoretical future, capitalism will still exist, and we'll still trade and buy things from one another, we just won't need to do so for our basic needs, only for our entertainment desires...

[owenmarshall]

http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html -- Bertrand Russell agrees with you.

I think (and hope) this is where we'd end up.

[arethuza]

I'm pretty sure Zakalwe asks Sma in Use of Weapons what the humans in the Culture are for - given that the machines are so much better than humans at pretty much everything - the answer is essentially "for having fun".