AngelOfDeath642

The difference is, those people are capitalists. They are competing with other capitalists for scarce resources and new ways to increase profits because they want to be on top and not end up like the workers that they exploit. And even if there was corruption going on, the AIs wouldn't take kindly to that.

I doubt an AI would have any preference that wasn't created out of in depth analysis and extensive simulation determining that its preference would actually be beneficial. Even if they did, just have multiple AIs in addition to a human imput. I also doubt that there would be much corruption going on in the Human committee at that point due to the ability to provide everyone with the same high quality of life due to the abundance of resources.

Yes, in capitalism they wouldn't use full automation, basically for the reasons that you said. My post was outlining what would happen if capitalists were dunb enough to try. In the second setting, maybe money would be needed initially but advances in automation would allow automated resource gathering on scales previously impossible for humans due to various factors. The same would go for agriculture too. This scenario is going to be atleast several decades into the future so there would be the opportunity for more efficient spacecraft propulsion and possibly SSTOs with high payload to orbit capabilities allowing large scale asteroid mining. With the new abundance in resources and widespead access to the means of production it will be possible to get rid of money. Any waste can be handled by recycling, again on a larger scale than humans can currently achieve but well withing the capabilites of a fully automated society.

No one. If complete automation happens under capitalism then nobody would have any money except for the few people who own the robots because competing businesses would crumble and the workers would all lose their jobs. If it happens under socialism or communism then the robots would give their products to humans for free since robots don't need a profit motive. Either way full automation is incompatible with money.

I like how you assume that you are the absolute authority on how Eastern Europeans think about socialism. Did it suck near the end? YES. Does thats stop, for example the CPRF (with most of its members having lived through socialism) from being the second largest party in russia? Nope. It doesn't stop the fact that multiple polls in several former socialist countries (Russia, Romainia and East Germany) showed support for socialism to be as high as 60%, with most support coming from people who had LIVED THROUGH IT. So again, I know that nearing the end of the cold war life in socialist countries sucked. I also know that many people prefer it to the quality of life they have today, especially those who have seen socialism before the crippling economic problems. Furthermore, as you would know if you had actually read the thread rather than attacking me on my word choice, I was talking about how automation could help fix socialism so it works as intended. - - - Updated - - - A possible scenario is that assuming that they use automation to replace sweatshops first, the millions that were once employed there will have nowhere else to go. Considering that many of these countries already have large guerilla movements it is highly likely that the countries' governments would be swiftly overthrown. Although at that point they wouldn't care about sweatshop labour, they would still have been extracting resources so the US goverment will probably try to bring them some "freedom and democracy". Unfortunately for them this would probably happen in several countries at the same time so the American military will once again be fighting a prolonged conflict on multiple fronts with no real prospect of victory. The large anti war movement this will create, combined with the social unrest from even further automation and the existing unrest from police brutality may lead to the collapse of the US government, the few capitalists with control of the robots will try to prevent them but at that point there is nothing they can really do.

Yeah, decades of cold war propaganda and centuries of institutional sexim, racism etc wouldn't be solved by this. Luckily another major part of socialism is undoing that over a few generations through education and culture in general. The extreme improvements in the quality of life and immense free time combined with abundant resources will probably show most people the flaw in their logic though.

That's assuming that capitalism creates them. A socialist state with the required technological development could implement it. Infact they would prioritise it since that's basically the whole point of socialism.

Yes, the decline of socialism resulted in the state being unable to provide luxury goods. Because gorbachev, yeltsin and their co conspirators were busy wrecking the economy and selling the entire eastern bloc out to the west. Meanwhile in my supposedly wealthy capitalist country there are so many homeless people that people are uso used to seeing them that they often go multiple days in a row without getting any money. Most of the workers have to rely on foodbanks, which are like socialist breadlines except they are always empty and are supplied mostly by charities. They can't possibly afford anything approaching luxury goods and the capitalists are now introducing zero hour contracts, which mean that workers aren't even getting real wages. Many have to take multiple jobs just to afford the food that they need (they don't get enough at foodbanks alot of the time) and people who are unemployed (mainly because the capitalists are moving all of the jobs to countries with lower wages) need to do "volunteer work" (unpaid labour) just to avoid their benefits being sanctioned. I'm fully aware that life in socialist countries at the end of the cold war wasn't good but capitalism is a whole other level. But as ComradeWolfe said, my original point is about how automation would make socialism/communism work as intended. We should stick to the topic because this is getting derailed fast.

The Soviet Union declined near the end due to revisionists taking power and making bad economic descisions and outright selling the country out to the west. Yes, the industry developed in capitalism is a prerequisite for socialism, the industry is in place now. The workers gain slight improvements in their quality of life while capitalist profits soar and more workers are made unemployed because the capitalists move their factories to countries with lower minimum wages. The entire point of imperialism is to gain resources and cheap labour. Sometimes thay did it to stop the progress of the Soviet Union but they still used that as an excuse to steal resources. It's not about simply putting the countries in a global market, it's about stealing all of their resources and installing a puppet regime. The Norwegian labour party, while largely uninterupted, has only been able to provide minor concessions to the working class. Regardless of the minimum wage the Norwegian proletariat is still oppressed. Furthermore, the British labour party was in power for decades after world war 2 and provided just as many reforms as their Norwegian counterparts. Then thatcher got in, cut everything, imposed the poll tax and nearly caused a revolution (miner's strikes). When thatcher was then voted out, the labour party had been taken over by career politicians that push the exact same agenda as the tories. That will happen in every country that uses liberal reforms as an alternative to socialism. Compared to the state they were in pre-revolution, Zimbabwe and Venezuela are doing fine (aside from the regular attempts by the US government to overthow their governments). I live in Europe (Scotland) so I can say with complete confidence that it is nowhere near as good as people say. I live in an area with a high standard of living but the town next to me has like a third of the average wage. The average life expectancy is in the 50s despite some areas haveng it in the 80s. Also, countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela started out with next to nothing and their quality of life (while increasing rapidly) is still a long way from surpassing countries with a long history of imperialism. Can we get back on topic? This tangent is probably only going to end in a complete derail.

The problem with central control being unable to handle the production of absolutely everything was maybe applicable in the early years of socialism in larger countries. The limits of early 20th century technology did make the management of everything difficult but the way you word it you sound like it was the central comittee literally dictating evety stage of production. The actual management process was delegated to dozens of branches of government which would in turn delegate work to even more branches. Individual factories and design bureaus actually had a relatively great deal of autonomy and many even competed in the same role. This meant that for the most part, the economy functioned well enough to produce everything. There were attempts to streamline the process, a good example was socialist Chile in the 70s which tried to create a version of the internet to make management easier. Unfortunately the CIA funded pinochet to stage a fascist coup so the plan barely got started. On your second point, since the advent of capitalism there have only ever been two classes: the working class ( who operate the means of production) and the capitalist class (who own the means of production and allow workers to operate it in exchange for a tiny fraction of the actual product of their labour). The increase in productivity due to industrialisation did not even slightly change the quality of life of the workers. Workers were still paid extremely low wages for the same amount of work, the only difference was that their work produced more for the capitalists. Obviously, workers do not like these exploitative conditions so the governments decided to allow them some concessions: Parliamentary democracy is used to mediate the conflict between the workers and the capitalists, the more liberal of the (usually two) major parties introduces legislation such as the minimum wage to appease the workers in an attempt to avoid a revolution. These measures will never (despite what liberal politicians write in their election manifestos that they immediately abandon) allow the workers to control society or get even close to the product of their labour as they are designed to allow the capitalists to stay in power. Additionally, the capitalist class is opposed to the minimum wage and other restrictions on their exploitation so they use the government to invade other countries to gain access to more resources and cheap labour. They also use more right wing parties to periodically undo some of the liberal reforms so that liberals are only ever capable of winning the same meagre compromises every time. It is not easy to become a capitalist. While in theory, anyone who (somehow) obtains a large sum of money can start a business and make profit, they then have to compete with not only people on their level, but capitalists that hold monopolies on the market, outcompeting anything approaching a competitor. Tax on the rich will do nothing. The only solution is to expropiate the means of production that they own but do not use, creating socialism which (for all its percieved and actual flaws) is actually capable of providing for everyone.

Lolwut. Europe and the US don't have anything even remotely approeching socialism. Socialism is worker control of the means of production overseen by the state (USSR etc). What the US and europe have can be generously described as liberalised capitalism (private ownership of the means of production in which the bourgeois state grants some concessions to the working class to avoid civil unrest). This whole empty public shops thing is just a cold war lie. What really happened in the USSR is that citizens would get a basic allowance of food and supplies completely free and could then spen their (relatively high) wages on luxury goods. The high tax rate and lack of availability of western goods (due to a lack of trade) did mean that some western luxury items may have been out of the affordability range of most citizens but: A: high ranking party members weren't paid that much more than most workers. B: most western citizens can't afford luxury items either. Your first point is generally correct. Capitalism is unable to function with full automation because it will lead to a small amount of people controlling all of the capital while nobody is able to pay for anything because human labour is obsolete. This can only possibly lead to a fascist dystopia in which nearly everyone on the planet is unemployed but they can't do anything about it because the bourgeoisie is too powerful. There are only two modes of production that can be compatible with full automation: Socialism: Where the state directs the massive productive forces to provide a high quality of life to the entire population while coordinating the transition to... Communism: Where everyone has common ownership of the means of production and produce what they want/need while a loose central administrative body ensures that everyone has their share.

Or just provide it for free since robots are doing all the work and don't need pay. Automation makes the fundamental principles of money and capitalism break down as humans are no longer involved in the productive process.

What has this got to do with socialism? the scenario you describe would fit a capitalist country, a socialist country would benefit from AI as socialism is driven not by the profit motive but by the creation of material conditions necessary for communism. Therefore a socialist AI would prioritise the living conditions of the people as it is programmed to do so while a capitalist AI would act like you described because it is the most efficient way to increase profit.