[ExI] socialism

spike at rainier66.com spike at rainier66.com
Mon Feb 25 06:48:10 UTC 2019


WOW that post is insanely... sane.

spike

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
Stuart LaForge
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2019 8:18 PM
To: ExI Chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] socialism

It is my observation that neither capitalism nor socialism is capable of
managing the markets of the 21st century. As people have pointed out in the
past, pure socialism is unproductive and inevitably runs out of other
people's wealth to redistribute. And as the wealth gap increases, pure
unregulated capitalism will likely run out of consumers able to afford the
goods and services that the market has to offer.

Simply put, this is because while robots make great workers, they make very
poor customers. So in accumulating wealth and denying social spending in the
process of ensuring that that they are the last to starve, the rich have
nonetheless ensured that they will eventually starve.

Now more than ever in our history, capitalists and socialists need to sit
down with each other and stitch together the best welfare state that a
robust healthy market economy can afford. And by welfare, I mean welfare for
everybody and not just subsidies for factory farmers and oil companies.

Unfortunately, these days capitalists and socialists and more likely to
punch each other at Trump rallies than have a meaningful conversation with
one another. But ultimately no matter how passionate the proponents, both of
their ideologies are obsolete. Both socialism and capitalism are outdated
socioeconomic pardigms because we are in uncharted technological territory
right now.

Economists like von Mises and Marx that died over a century ago have very
little to say that is relevant regarding the effect of the Internet,
robotics, AI, life-extension and other H plus tech on the economy. So we as
a society need to shelve those outdated ideas and come up with a sustainable
economic model that fits the modern reality we find ourselves living in
because we are running out of time and the political divisiveness threatens
to kill us all.


Stuart LaForge

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