Agree that I don’t think anticapitalism is tractable for anticapitalism’s sake, never mind as a solution to specific AI companies’ behaviour.
I also agree that it’s worth understanding why various anticapitalist regimes—most obviously Marxist-Leninism - failed[1]. Perhaps the biggest cautionary tale is that self-styled “revolutionary” Marxist-Leninist regimes ultimately evolved from extrapolating trends into a theory of a big, happy future after radical change. But two of the biggest reasons Marxist-Leninism failed, corruption and authoritarianism, are not unique to socialism, and the most distinct reason (centrally planned economies didn’t allocate enough resources to serving consumer demand and rewarding work ethic and ingenuity) lose significance in a hypothetical long term future in which resources aren’t particularly scarce, human work ethic isn’t a constraint and maybe the “ingenuity” comes from computer-based processes you probably don’t want to restrict to capital owners. If you think an era of AI-driven growth taking us close to post-scarcity is near,[2] it probably doesn’t make much sense to worry about preserving the twentieth century growth model. But at the same time, also too early to experiment with putative replacements.
Agree that I don’t think anticapitalism is tractable for anticapitalism’s sake, never mind as a solution to specific AI companies’ behaviour.
I also agree that it’s worth understanding why various anticapitalist regimes—most obviously Marxist-Leninism - failed[1]. Perhaps the biggest cautionary tale is that self-styled “revolutionary” Marxist-Leninist regimes ultimately evolved from extrapolating trends into a theory of a big, happy future after radical change. But two of the biggest reasons Marxist-Leninism failed, corruption and authoritarianism, are not unique to socialism, and the most distinct reason (centrally planned economies didn’t allocate enough resources to serving consumer demand and rewarding work ethic and ingenuity) lose significance in a hypothetical long term future in which resources aren’t particularly scarce, human work ethic isn’t a constraint and maybe the “ingenuity” comes from computer-based processes you probably don’t want to restrict to capital owners. If you think an era of AI-driven growth taking us close to post-scarcity is near,[2] it probably doesn’t make much sense to worry about preserving the twentieth century growth model. But at the same time, also too early to experiment with putative replacements.
though I’d probably choose somewhere other than the IEA to start that research process...
personally I think we’re a long way from that, but many longtermists evidently feel differently.