[daseiner1]

meaningfully, this is equivalent to the parent commenter. "technology"

I loathe the "pop critique" employment of the phrase, but this is definitionally late-stage capitalism.

obviously capitalism is named as such because it is founded upon the concept of (private) capital. capital serves to lower margins and increase profitability. it has been remarkably successful and has immensely raised QoL for virtually the planet's entire population. we are now reckoning with its inevitable consequences. manpower is unreliable. it gets sick. it has children. it has eccentricities. it is fundamentally unpredictable. Capital seeks efficiency and reliability. What percentage of the population is capable of building data centers? Of engineering massive scale LLMs?

What happens when Capital no longer needs labor?

[colechristensen]

It's got nothing to do with that. People that don't need it are hoarding wealth.

It's real estate value all the way down. Apartments getting tinier while getting more expensive, homes being out of reach or taking up an enormous amount of total pay in order to finance.

People who own aren't living off their own labor's fruits saved for the future but on the massively increased value they're selling something they didn't have to pay nearly as much for. (not talking about inflation but actual hours of labor)

You have middle aged people doing not much better than introductory jobs because the people who needed to retire haven't.

The CEO pay multiple is just ridiculous.

[daseiner1]

I don't believe we disagree.

[SimianSci]

The answer is and always has been "paperclips."

without human influence or directive, capital ceases to be become anything meaningful beyond [insert data type] at which point, it spreads like a cancer, ie: universal paperclips

Capitalism is revered due to how it has significantly impacted the living standards of populations that participate in it. But increasing the living standards of populations was never the purpose of capitalism, it was a simply a side-effect.

[daseiner1]

Indeed. It is a blind force of nature.

[_DeadFred_]

Capitalism started with the East India Company. That is the real Capitalist world choice. We treat our strongly regulated society as 'Capitalism' for some reason (while the Capitalists tell us we need to get rid of all the regulation that keeps them in check).

Capitalism left to it's own authority creates payment in company scrip and company towns. Capitalism WANTS labor trapped with company script/company towns. Just because society outlawed that doesn't mean Capitalism isn't working in other ways to recreate that. What Capitalism does not want is empowered labor or labor lifted out from dire situations. Society is what has done that, not Capitalism.

Without strict government oversight Capitalism is horrible and gives horrible results to society at large. It just has done an incredible job of painting modern society as Capitalism and claiming all benefits of things that aren't inherently from Capitalism but from Government oversite.