[larsiusprime]

If all labor is automated and nobody can earn anything selling their own anymore, all that’s left are the other two factors of production: capital and land.

Land is scarce and cant be produced, so whoever already owns it will benefit after the change.

Capital can be produced, but what produces it? Labor. Even worse, capital depreciates over time so just owning some now doesn’t guarantee you an income in the post labor future.

In a fully automated world where human labor is truly of zero value it seems the main returns in the long run are to those who can gate keep valuable land, natural resources, and other fundamentally scarce assets.

[Jupe]

Which is already happening. This is why stock buy-backs, IPO-less/private companies and private equity rule the future. This "wealth" will NOT come from government subsidies or UBI. It will stay where it is, with enough income doled out to the masses to keep the supply/demand economy chugging along.

[dangus]

The article asserts that as wealth has increased, so has spending on social programs.

I think what isn’t said here is that there was a lot of blood involved in getting weekends and 8 hour workdays. Labor strikes used to be violent, and social programs are pitchfork insurance for the global elite.

If the owners of capital control all means of production, all automated, they will control literal robot armies - we already see this developing with drones and the like.

It’s entirely possible that the global elite succeeds in fighting off the underclass and their reality looks a lot more like Elysium where the owners of capital do not have to worry about the angry masses reaching them.

[ryandrake]

Every time I say we are headed towards an Elysium-like world, it gets downvoted pretty quickly. Yet all signs are pointed to that trajectory! The rich are getting richer, they live in essentially their own world already--they're buying islands and building fortresses. They are more and more just selling to each other because the rest of us are essentially irrelevant to commerce. It's reasonable to assume we are moving towards a society where a mere 1-10M or so people live walled-off somewhere in luxury (not necessarily a space station) while the remaining 8B people are economically irrelevant, scraping by in the periphery.

[android521]

Well , if that’s the case , it would be much easier to tax the land owners. Can have exponentially bigger tax so the more land they own, the more tax they have to pay until they can’t afford to own the land. They can’t run as they can’t bring the land with them . Socialism might work in that world

[scoofy]

You don't even have to tax the monetary value of the land. You can require a percentage of the land, itself, over time. If we're really moving to a post labor world -- which I sincerely doubt -- I think the concept of private property is going to have to be narrowed only to things that have a limited lifespan.

[some_furry]

> Well , if that’s the case , it would be much easier to tax the land owners.

No, the land owners have bought and paid for every politician. Not gonna happen.

[larsiusprime]

> Socialism might work in that world

Technically, what you've just described is Georgism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

The real question is, in a truly post-labor future, how do workers have enough leverage to negotiate for any particular change in the economic system?

[DeusExMachina]

Socialism "might" always work in an immaginary world that does not take into account the reality of the human condition.

One of the many flaws of such immaginary worlds is thinking that people will be content to live in a system where they have no creative outlet left and nothing they do will have any ultimate meaning.

People in those conditions might burn down the system for the mere excitement of novelty. Even experimental rat utopias quickly degenerate.

[myth_drannon]

That's why the tech billionaires buy islands. It's easier to protect the land in the coming conflicts.

[optimalsolver]

How will they protect themselves from their own security forces?

[mopsi]

How many divisions does Zuck have?

[cool_man_bob]

Notice they’re building castles too. Look deeper you can even find insane sounding manifestos describing feudal style martial-loyalty oaths.