[acatnamedjoe]

Focusing on the state misses the point. The state is a relatively modern abstraction for society. Society, state-based or not, has always been dominated by class of elites and governed primarily in their interests.

However, for all of human history those elites have needed workers, and in complex societies, they need LOADS of them. The elites have always needed to ensure that the working people are sufficiently fit, healthy, motivated and skilled to do the work required.

For the last 500 years or so the elites have also found it convenient to maintain a mass of relatively affluent people with a reasonable amount of leisure time, who will purchase the products that make them rich.

Thus the typical person in the world today finds themself able to exchange their labour for basic necessities and increasingly, consumer goods. Most people receive some form of protection from bodily violence and for their property - whether from the state or from some other arrangement with the elite class. Most people also have access to some form of education and healthcare (although of course the level of provision varies massively). Most people have some amount of leisure time, some level of autonomy over what they do with that time, and an increasing range of options for leisure activities.

All of this happens because it is convenient for elites - it gets them what they want.

AI presents us with a possible future where a small group of elites could generate infinite wealth, and would have absolutely no need of the working and middle classes. The benefits we currently enjoy (however meagre) would dry up.

At best, we'd be ignored and left to scratch a subsistence living out of whatever is left of our natural environment by that point.

At worst, one could imagine a scenario where AI-wielding elites compete against each other, and need access to as many natural resources as possible to stay competitive. Then you'd suspect we wouldn't just be ignored, our very existence would be an opportunity cost for the elite class.

e.g. It's 2056 and Musk needs every square meter of solar panels he can get to ensure his AI army triumphs over Zuckerberg's. The plot of land where you've been quietly growing your potatoes and trying to stop your children dying of cholera doesn't get much sun, but it gets a bit - and that's more than enough for him to have you murdered (or, if he's feeling merciful, evicted to die of starvation).

[keybored]

I don’t buy your history but we seem to agree on the conclusion.

The “thus” is misplaced. Nothing was given from the elites. In two senses of the word: labor created that standard of living, elites took a lot of it, and then labor forced them to give a bit more of if back. And labor has always created that value.

And the future when labor is displaced? Does the fully automatically manufactured “largesse” of the elites dry up because the elites made it and they don’t have to give it to anyone else? No to the first part, yes to the second. Labor first created the value. Then the automation. Then they let the elite steal it wholesale.

So discussing the elites as having inherently something to give away is misplaced.

[acatnamedjoe]

They have something to give away because they have power, which is the only thing that matters in the final analysis.

It doesn't matter who created the value - it's who controls it.