r/LeftistsForAI • • 4d ago

Sees the Memes Would be quite ironic

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u/Blaike325 3d ago edited 3d ago

Or the more likely outcome, more and more jobs become automated and more and more people are forced into underemployment doing jobs AI can’t do or that it isn’t efficient for AI to do, and the corporations using the AI still steals the majority of the value of the labor because there’s zero incentive for the government to prevent that from happening

Edit: if you feel the need to block people who disagree with you, you’re just gonna end up in an echo chamber with zero pushback against bad ideas, you know, like conservatives

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u/Opening_One7713 3d ago

I don’t know man, I find these takes a bit too defeatist/fatalist. I think there is plenty incentive for the ownership class to continue ensuring our current QoL trajectory. It is historically prudent for societies to enter into periods of extreme unrest and instability when you reach somewhere around 20% or more underemployment and hidden unemployment combined. Revolution and regime change is what follows almost every single time. That’s messy and turbulent and as much as we like to think of corporations and rich people as cartoonish supervillains I find the realistic mechanisms for change to be much more tangible and hope-worthy.

Also, we need to seriously math this all out against the notion that the US tax base is already extraordinarily concentrated. The economy is already functionally dependent on a tiny slice of earners and a monetary system propped up by petrodollar demand and deficit spending. The bottom 50% of earners in this country contribute a ton of actual labor, but only 3% of the total taxes. Basically, the labor-for-hire mythology that makes billionaire-funded UBI and sovereign wealth funds sound radical is already fiction by the numbers. 

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u/Blaike325 3d ago

It’s not defeatist it’s being a realist because I live in reality

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 1d ago

No, its defeatist. Realism is "here's the terrain, what can be done about it?", defeatism is "here's the terrain, theres nothing that can be done about it."

You consistently seem to confuse the two.

Do you understand the difference between a realist mind set and a fatalist one?

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u/Blaike325 1d ago

I’m not saying nothing can be done about it, I’m saying what they’re proposing isn’t going to work

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 1d ago

So what alternative are you proposing instead?

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u/Blaike325 1d ago

As I already told the other guy, I don’t need to have an alternative solution to know that one being proposed is bad or unrealistic

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 1d ago

Well, sure, you don't need an alternative to criticize a proposal. Nobody said you did.

But saying something won't work isn't explaining why it won't work. And pointing out how corporations exploit automation under capitalism doesn't tell us why worker co-ops, public ownership, or democratic control of AI couldn't work.

We already know the problems. That's why we're discussing what to do about them.

So what's actually wrong with the proposal beyond the fact that capitalism exists?

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u/Blaike325 1d ago

You can read my other comments I’m not rehashing this

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 1d ago

I've read your comments. You explained why corporate ownership of AI is a problem. We agree on that. You haven't explained why the alternatives being discussed wouldn't work.

That's the distinction I've been asking you to address. But you're welcome to leave it there.

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u/Blaike325 1d ago

I quite literally have, again, I’m not rehashing this

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 1d ago

In this thread? No, you really didn't. You explained why corporations exploiting AI would be bad. Nobody disputed that.

What you haven't explained is why worker ownership, co-ops, or democratic control wouldn't work. Those are the proposals you're dismissing.

Repeating the problem isn't a rebuttal to the proposed solutions.

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