Can you imagine a world where nobody has to work? A world in which people are free — really free, to pursue their hobbies and their interests. A world in which people don’t have to decide between watching their children grow up and working to provide for them. A world without poverty and the pressure to earn money. A world without bullshit jobs that have no use and purpose whatsoever. This vision, this utopia, is called fully automated luxury communism. . . . . But, according to Aaron Bastani, automation is not a threat, it is an opportunity. In 2019, the British journalist and author released a manifesto titled Fully Automated Luxury Communism. In it, he develops a utopian vision of a society in which machines generate our wealth and people can devote themselves to their passions, hobbies, and families. According to Bastani’s vision, technological advancements will eliminate shortages and the need for people to work. Everyone will live in luxury and spend their time as they please. Everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, will have equal access to education, health care, and information. Thousands of years of human progress should finally result in greater happiness and freedom. This time not just for the rich, but for everybody. Nobody who lives in poverty is truly free.
Maybe I'm just cynical. Maybe I'm just too old to get it.
Maybe you were just born too soon in history to be part of this... but yes, it does come across as "not yet ready for prime time" and "still needs some work." All I did, though, was scroll quickly through that one article that you posted.
What if the right kind of technology to bring this into at least the realm of possibility is what actually lies ahead? Are you against it on principle? That it shouldn't happen, even if there were the technical foundations for creating a human society that could theoretically function in this way?
174 YEARS of the history of Communism that has been tried and FAILED EVERY TIME, hundreds of times, in hundreds of places, clearly shows that there is no such thing as "Luxury Communism"
There is only ever poverty, despair and oppression, accompanied by the claim later on: "We'll get it right next time."
The LAZY LEFT has always been consumed by their fantasies of a Utopia where everything is free and it all started with that penniless bum and freeloader Karl Marx.
[This message has been edited by randye (edited 03-29-2022).]
Originally posted by Hudini: What happens if everything is free? The earth's population would explode. The climate change advocates would have a meltdown.
"Everything" includes sex ed, contraception and likely some allowance for abortions. People wouldn't have to think of having children on the premise that their children could support them as they age out of their working years. People wouldn't have any reason to think that way, if everything were free.
I don't think there's a straight line to be drawn from a "free ride for everyone" to "human population explosion."
"Nanobots", possibly the technical foundation of an entirely new way of supporting human life.
Imagine telling 1.3 billion Chinese that, or 1.7 billion Indians. If you were 21 years old and didn't have to work and didn't have to worry about anything, you really think you would slow down to consider birth control? You are living in the fantasy land that's one step beyond the luxury commieland.
This whole concept infuriates me. I get so angry that people think the world and the fruits of other's labors should just be presented to them because they don't want to have to struggle for it. Society, life as a whole, is about meritocracy. This is NOT a wrong concept. We encourage growth in ourselves, and we encourage people to seek to better themselves. Not live fat on the land. Who would even want to live in a world like this...? One in which you've accomplished nothing, and all you've ever done is get stuff for free?
This whole concept infuriates me. I get so angry that people think the world and the fruits of other's labors should just be presented to them because they don't want to have to struggle for it. Society, life as a whole, is about meritocracy. This is NOT a wrong concept. We encourage growth in ourselves, and we encourage people to seek to better themselves. ...
The concept of "we all get basic income" is even more outlandish, it is essentially:
People think the world and the fruits of IMAGINARY labors should just be presented to them because they don't want to have to struggle for it.
Yeah we all get stuff from the magic stuff giver til a short time later when we see that that can't work, then what? I think the then what is the agenda.
Not to mention we forgot how, and we'd no longer have the intrastructure to labor ourselves...
Look at all the stuff we used to know that is passing with generations. Hey do you know your relatives phone numbers, or need to look at your phone?
[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 03-30-2022).]
Ah the classic appeal to classism to motivate the short sighted and move the agenda:
"Everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, will have equal access to education, health care, and information. Thousands of years of human progress should finally result in greater happiness and freedom. This time not just for the rich, but for everybody. Nobody who lives in poverty is truly free."
Nothing new under the sun
By the way will law enforcement also be robots or do those poor folk still have to "toil"? Doctors? Lawyers and courts?
[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 03-30-2022).]
The mistake that "you all" are making is that you are reacting to this "Luxury Communism" idea as if it were something that could be put into effect right away, or in some immediately foreseeable future.
It's not even being "pitched" that way by the people that are talking about it. They are "Futurists" and this is a Futuristic idea. Like the human colonization of Mars or interplanetary commerce and space tourism.
This "Luxury Communism" is something that could only be achieved in gradual stages. First you would see enlargements to the social safety net. Thirty-hour weeks as the work week standard. Universal Basic Income. And more technical innovations involving (likely) automation to lower the cost of producing goods and services. "Nanobots..."
There's no direct path to Fully Automated Luxury Communism, and it could not become a reality until the world is already much changed and transformed from how it is today.
That's why a lot of the reactions here are off the mark, and non-sequiturs. And of course, we have the usual suspect bellowing about "Karl Marx" and taking the opportunity to "rant-post" about "Leftists" for the sole purpose of vicariously smearing Democrats.
Maybe I've missed something, but has there been any talk of Fully Automated Luxury Communism from "The Squad", or AOC, or Bernie Sanders and his ilk, or from Nancy Pelosi? (You can enlarge that question in your own mind.)
That's a rhetorical question, and the answer is "No." But this isn't the way that Pennock's number one practitioner of rant-posting wants you to think about it. He wants you to think that Fully Automated Luxury Communism is at the very top of the Democratic Party's agenda. On the top of every Democratic officeholder's mind, at all levels of government, and at the top of every person's mind that doesn't think or vote exactly as he would like.
He's a canard on steroids.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 03-30-2022).]
This "Luxury Communism" is something that could only be achieved in gradual stages. First you would see enlargements to the social safety net. Thirty-hour weeks as the work week standard. Universal Basic Income. And more technical innovations involving (likely) automation to lower the cost of producing goods and services. "Nanobots..."
This is why leftist philosophy is called "Progressive".
"We are not coming for your guns (just your high capacity magazines)"
Several of us here on the Forum, and most citizens of this country, realize that the Progressive Left is a CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER to the continuance and prosperity of this Nation.
The mistake that "you all" are making is that you are reacting to this "Luxury Communism" idea as if it were something that could be put into effect right away, or in some immediately foreseeable future.
It's not even being "pitched" that way by the people that are talking about it.
This seems to echo the similar argument put forth about CRT. It doesnt exist, no one is doing it. Nothing to see here. So its just another Utopian dream it seems. Utopian like what I said, see my two posts.
But then you nullify your remark by saying "This "Luxury Communism" is something that could only be achieved in gradual stages. First you would see enlargements to the social safety net."
Yes indeed, that is clear.
You see: "taking the opportunity to "rant-post" about "Leftists" for the sole purpose of vicariously smearing Democrats"
I see: "talking about people and ideas that are being strived for and generating a following for the sole purpose of exposing their flaws, putting forth reasons, debating."
"foreseeable future" indeed. The foreseeable depends on the eye of the beholder right? Some only see so far...as I mentioned in my post.
Classic appeals to motivate the short sighted and move the agenda forward.
[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 04-01-2022).]
.... we have the usual suspect bellowing about "Karl Marx" and taking the opportunity to "rant-post" about "Leftists"......
Because IT'S A THREAD ABOUT COMMUNISM you dimwit.
An ideology proposed by an alcoholic German deadbeat, penniless, moocher, named KARL MARX that lived off of his "friend" Friedrich Engels, who in turn mooched off of his own wealthy father.
An ideology that for 174 years has been pushed by every other parasite that has accomplished nothing worthwhile in their life and contributed nothing worthwhile to society and, fittingly, here you are are pimping for communism too.
The writer of that "luxury communism" bullshit, Aaron Bastani, whose name is really Aaron PETERS, before he took on the name Bastani after he was arrested multiple times during communist riots in the UK, said himself:
"the concept is based on Karl Marx's Das Kapital and Grundrisse".
There you have it, straight from the self-proclaimed LEFTIST'S mouth himself.
[This message has been edited by randye (edited 04-01-2022).]
You see: "taking the opportunity to "rant-post" about "Leftists" for the sole purpose of vicariously smearing Democrats"
I see: "taking about people and ideas that are being strived for and generating a following for the sole purpose of exposing their flaws, putting forth reasons, debating."
I think the difference between what you see and what I see in that other message is that you are not as closely familiar as I am with that individual's body of work on this forum over the (many) years.
You're not "reading between the lines."
"Prove me wrong"
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 03-30-2022).]
Never going to happen. As work continues to be automated, there will be more work to be done in other places, more efficiencies to be had and more horizons to be reached.
Never going to happen. As work continues to be automated, there will be more work to be done in other places, more efficiencies to be had and more horizons to be reached.
Never going to happen. As work continues to be automated, there will be more work to be done in other places, more efficiencies to be had and more horizons to be reached.
Work will never be fully automated - it'll shift.
I agree with this. It's always been this way in history with all the inventions that people said would lead to people being unemployed. Sometimes it does temporarily... but there's always work to be done.
I think the difference between what you see and what I see in that other message is that you are not as closely familiar as I am with that individual's body of work on this forum over the (many) years.
You're not "reading between the lines."
I think that type of reading between lines as you are mentioning, becomes a crutch for not arguing the actual argument. Also I'm talking about the whole thread and its ideas being communicated. "you all" ???
[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 04-01-2022).]
Never going to happen. As work continues to be automated, there will be more work to be done in other places, more efficiencies to be had and more horizons to be reached.
Work will never be fully automated - it'll shift.
The possible problem is it should shift, but they don't let it / make it shift.
Originally posted by 2.5: I think that type of reading between lines as you are mentioning, becomes a crutch for not arguing the actual argument. Also I'm talking about the whole thread and its ideas being communicated.
I was referring specifically to "randye", and I hold fast to what I said to you, about the difference between what you see in his remarks, and what I see in his remarks. It's because you are not as familiar as I am with his "body of work"... all of his forum posts, over all the years.
He uses the word "Leftist" and its various analogues as kind of a "smear tactic."
He rants about Karl Marx and the legacy of Communism, but as he continues his rants, his words reveal that it's not just Communists in his crosshairs, or Communists and Socialists in his crosshairs. It's the "Left."
In this thread, he has called out the "Lazy Left."
So who's among the "Lazy Left"..? Could be just about anyone, considering the reckless abandon that is the way that "randye" continually repeats the words "Left" and "Leftists" in his rants. It's like a shaman's chant.
Is the famously "not very liberal" West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin part of the "Lazy Left" in randye's eyes? Manchin is affiliated with the Democratic Party. He caucuses with the Democrats.
Joe Manchin, Bernie Sanders, AOC, "the Squad", the more moderate or "centered" House Democrats like Elissa Slotkin, Abigail Spanberger and Cindy Axne..? All they all part of "randye's Lazy Left"..? Are they all equally culpable and condemnable in "randye's" eyes?
Like many of the infamous demagogues of history, "orator randye" is purposely not careful with his words.
This forum topic is about some speculative future that is not all that much closer to current and foreseeable realities than interplanetary commerce and Solar System space travel on the grand scale. The topic was framed by a brief column about the ideas of Aaron Bastani, who emerges in this column (the original post) as a Futurist. I don't think the temperament of the discussion here, on Pennock's, "gets" that. At last, not entirely. And "randye's" part of it, certainly not.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 04-01-2022).]
The obvious. All of the forces and believers pushing for socialism and things like basic income, free school, free medical, handouts etc. Not a trivial number of people. Legal voters or not.
I think people here are trying to troubleshoot the concept before they've even gotten their feet wet with the concept.
Forum member "Zeb" started this thread by posting a brief report on the Fully Automated Luxury Communism concept that's been published on "one" Antonio Melonio's Cosmos page. A blog with an interest in Futurism.
It's such a brief report, though. Skeletal. Hardly more than an Executive Summary. A pittance of a prospectus.
If people want more ammunition to "beat up" on Fully Automated Luxury Communism, I recommend going to YouTube and using the YouTube search bar by entering the text string "fully automated luxury communism Aaron Bastani", without the quotation marks. There are YouTube videos in a range of sizes, from just 2 minutes, all the way upwards to over a full hour.
Fully Automated Luxury Communism floating offshore wind energy turbine generators. Since Capitalism is no longer a "thing", everyone enjoys joint ownership of all essential infrastructure like these turbines.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 04-01-2022).]
Fully Automated Luxury Communism floating offshore wind energy turbine generators. Since Capitalism is no longer a "thing", everyone enjoys joint ownership of all essential infrastructure like these turbines.
So, the wind spins the blades, the blades kill the birds, the birds feed the fish. Luxury automated fish feeder.
Later, the blades disintegrate, the bits fall into the ocean, the fish eat the bits, people eat the contaminated fish and die. Global warming solved. Utopia realized.
I think it raises the question of whether Capitalism would make sense in some future world in which there need not be any scarcity of any product or service that's essential for an ordinary human life. After technical innovations have progressed to the point where only a skeletal human work force is needed to create the products and services to support a much larger global population.
I'm not really "into" this question, because this future scenario that it's premised upon seems still quite distant to me.
Arguing about solar power generation as it currently stands... not really engaging with the idea of Fully Automated Luxury Communism. By the time FALC could become a reality, there would be much improved photovoltaic (solar) technology and/or other means of generating electrical power.
That's my reaction to it. Perhaps that's not how it's being "pitched."
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 04-02-2022).]
