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Is the Future Socialist? |
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#1 |
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Join Date: Mar 2009
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Is the Future Socialist?
Just looking at the rise of Artificial Intelligence to replace people in many "middle-class" job areas.
Companies will no doubt do this as the technology becomes available, just as they did with "working class" jobs. Which political mantra will resonate with the public? |
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#2 |
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I'm no history buff, but it seems that The Labour Party became increasingly irrelevant because there were not enough "exploited masses" to vote for them.
Artificial Intelligence/Robotics seems likely to change all that. |
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#3 |
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Join Date: Feb 2007
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Quote:
Just looking at the rise of Artificial Intelligence to replace people in many "middle-class" job areas.
Companies will no doubt do this as the technology becomes available, just as they did with "working class" jobs. Which political mantra will resonate with the public? The movement if anything is away from centralisation, to more bottom up decentralised system. Indeed take energy generation - I suspect what we will see is micro-generation becoming a large part of people's energy consumption with the excess sold to the grid. |
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#4 |
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Join Date: Nov 2010
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Quote:
I'm no history buff, but it seems that The Labour Party became increasingly irrelevant because there were not enough "exploited masses" to vote for them.
Artificial Intelligence/Robotics seems likely to change all that. The typical exploited worker today probably works in an office of some description. |
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#5 |
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A large number of those who don't regard themselves as exploited are. They seem to think it is only the blue collar, manual workers who can be so.
The typical exploited worker today probably works in an office of some description. |
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#6 |
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Quote:
Am I exploited?
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#7 |
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Quote:
Am I exploited?
Many in banking are, of course. |
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#8 |
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Do you as a worker own the means of production? if not your exploited
![]() ![]() Most self-employed people earn very little for instance, and suffer the same travails as employees on a low wage. |
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#9 |
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Ideally it likely would be some sort of utopian society, who knows what will happen in reality
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#10 |
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Couldn't tell you - I don't know what position you hold.
Many in banking are, of course. What are the "means of production" in a Bank? Am I exploited? |
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#11 |
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Ideally it likely would be some sort of utopian society, who knows what will happen in reality
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#12 |
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What by you mean by position? I am not the CEO, but a reasonably well-paid employee.
What are the "means of production" in a Bank? Am I exploited? Exploitation is not just dependent on lack of ownership of the MoP (their boss may not own them either), but a person on £50k could be seen as being exploited if their company makes £10m a year out of them in my view. |
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#13 |
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I would have thought that is a simple question - all people have positions in a company.
Exploitation is not just dependent on lack of ownership of the MoP (their boss may not own them either), but a person on £50k could be seen as being exploited if their company makes £10m a year out of them in my view. The employee a resource exploited by the capitalist to make profit. |
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#14 |
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I would have thought that is a simple question - all people have positions in a company.
Quote:
Exploitation is not just dependent on lack of ownership of the MoP (their boss may not own them either), but a person on £50k could be seen as being exploited if their company makes £10m a year out of them in my view.
![]() Many people in a company are just in a cost centre rather than a profit centre so it's not possible to assign revenue from let's say a finance function so how will that work? |
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#15 |
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Is not all waged labour employed to make a profit exploitation?
The employee a resource exploited by the capitalist to make profit. |
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#16 |
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Socialism is failed experiment, just look at state of health care in Easterern Europe. Freedom of movement has ment the qualified doctors are leaving and not being replaced. All
thanks to socialists in the EU. |
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#17 |
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Socialism is inevitable and has to happen in the event of mass unemployment due to the development of robotics and AI.
Guaranteed basic income, low working hours, and more time spent on leisure and hobbies, are the only alternative the public will support when the capitalist alternative would force mass unemployment, starvation and homelessness across the populace. If half the population is unemployed the only way to support the populace is to raise taxes on businesses, or take businesses into public ownership and reduce the prices to the level the lower earning population can afford to pay. Cost of production would be low enough to provide goods and services at those low prices due to the lower levels of staffing required to provide them, and businesses not in public ownership could afford to pay those extra taxes, and still make suitable profits. |
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#18 |
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Socialism is failed experiment, just look at state of health care in Easterern Europe. Freedom of movement has ment the qualified doctors are leaving and not being replaced. All
thanks to socialists in the EU. Oh, and the only reason that socialism has failed is the economic warfare that the dominant capitalists have waged against it. |
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#19 |
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I would have thought that is a simple question - all people have positions in a company.
Exploitation is not just dependent on lack of ownership of the MoP (their boss may not own them either), but a person on £50k could be seen as being exploited if their company makes £10m a year out of them in my view. Clearly exploitation happens - the cockleshell pickers who were made to work for a pittance in dangerous conditions and no thought to there safety - they are exploited. But for many people they are not - employment is a tacit agreement between the worker and the employer. We have rules which will alleviate some of the excesses of capitalism, and workers have the right to withdraw labour should that agreement fall down. But as for socialism being the future - poppycock! There is not a single attempt at socialism which has created an equal society, nor one which has avoided shortages and poverty. These are the very things promised of it and none have delivered. The only way you can make life better for people is from the bottom up - where individuals are free to create and sell goods with only enough control to ensure that too much power is not centred on a few. 150 years ago this was not the case as much of the finance was held by a few - now most people (at least in the Liberal West) have access to sufficient capital, that they are not always reliant upon a few. Even in areas of extreme poverty - giving people the freedom to control their lives creates more opportunities than the controlling centralisation typical of attempts at socialism. That is what has happened with things like Funding Circle and it has made a material difference to people's lives for the better - they may not be as wealthy as the poorest in the West, but these people are better off. The future may be uncertain and change the fastest it has ever been, we are going to see change - I can see fundamental changes in the tax and benefit system since the assumptions underpinning it are no longer true but Marxist/Leninist socialism is not the answer - it was a possible answer to the problems of 19th Century England, not of the 21st century. |
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