this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
91 points (100.0% liked)
askchapo
22764 readers
10 users here now
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
-
Posts must ask a question.
-
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
-
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
-
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Others have given good answers (The reserve army of labour) but may I give another one. They're fantasically, transcendentally stupid and they've got nothing left but cruelty.
They are running out of productive forces to centralise, have rotted innovation from within, and have gone all in on AI as their last hope. They've not so much drunk the kool aid as injected a kool aid producing gene directly into their cells. It's their last gasp as China's natural productive capacity outpaces them.
If you really believe in AI, you believe that most labour will be replaced. But, you can't have labour be replaced since it causes a crisis of consumption and there's only so many ivory backscratchers you can own. So you need a minimal UBI to maintain capital flows in the medium term (using it as guillotine insurance has only occured to a few in DMT fueled fever nightmares). Additionally you need to fuck over China by outproducing them and maintaining the living standards of the upper middle classes in the imperial core.
On the other hand, UBI costs money and you like money and your shareholders are literally legally obliging you to give them all the money in the universe. So you have the contradiction of
a) Needing to prevent a crisis of domestic consumption
b) Fucking over the third world with over-production to screw China
c) No tax, only spend.
d) If everythings a robot we don't need third world slaves anymore!
So a UBI (or more likely a bullshit jobs generator to make middle management tyrants happy) inside the core (for Pell grant recipients etc etc) and a air gapped populace outside being sold stuff they increasingly can't afford, kept in check by bombs.
Some might say, this is just Generalplan Ost with robots, to which I say "yeah, good thing AI is mostly bullshit huh?"