- Eat the rich
- Luxury gay space communism
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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If AI takes most of our jobs, money as we know it will be over. What then?
(theconversation.com)
You joke but post scarcity anarchism is probably the only truly viable post capitalist society where the state actually has a real chance of withering away. That means good praxis is anything which reduces scarcity - both in the form of technological developments and sustainability/ecology. And yes, harm reduction measures which foster collaboration and social cohesion and create actualized humans with real agency and a real stake in their own communities.
The problem with so much leftist thought is precisely that it denies agency to those it seeks to liberate. "Luxury gay space communism" is a meme, but it's based on a post-left idea which is actually far more rooted in reality than a lot of ML orthodoxy.
When democratic governance withers what fills the power vacuum is feudalism.
Technofeudalism is feudalism with computers.
Ironically, to create a space that selects for and protects distributed decisionmaking (the desire of most sane anarchists), you need a strong government!
Anarchism is a project. It's not just a matter of eliminating the state. That would just result in Mad Max.
You need people to work together to help each others needs. I help you because I might need help someday, too. That builds a real community. And then maybe, just maybe, we solve each others problems enough that the state is unnecessary.
Is it a pipe dream? Maybe. But the steps towards that are worth doing, anyway.
Of course the power dynamics cannot ever be eliminated (either by breeding or enculturation) from the interpersonal relationships.
Instead, power can be regulated and managed, to maximize distributed decisionmaking, and to protect those decisionmakers who could not or would not protect themselves.
In a free for all, feudalism will always result. The strong and the willing will rule over the weak and the unwilling.
There have to be limits to the power dynamics. Those limits will have to be enforced to protect the vulnerable, the gullible, and the unwilling (those who have the capability to exercise power, but refuse by choice), etc. This requires advanced democratic governance with a very strong government.
Doing away with the government is just a speedrun toward technofeudalism.
Working to create a protected space that selects for distributed decisionmaking is the actual project. That's an actually sane, worthwhile and achievable goal.
I think we're fairly close to agreement.
The things I do to encourage anarchism are things like makerspaces, community gardens, and bike fixup workshops. Anything that helps people rely less on capitalism and more on each other.
It's not feudalism, it's the usual fascism in making. Maybe with some capitalist mechanisms.
The problem with so much leftist thought is precisely that it denies agency to those it seeks to liberate.
Which is why at some point I decided that I'm fine with explaining my opinions though Trotskyism and not anarcho-capitalism. I didn't stop being ancap in essence (recently went to an ancap group in TG and was glad to see that the main principles haven't been lost), but in Russia most people around use communist terms and logic on politics without even realizing it. Even the right-wing and nationalist kind talk like that (the official "communist" party doesn't, though, it sounds like moderate nazis with weird symbolic). And if I want to find a way to improve something, it very clearly doesn't lie in conceiving a structure and then trying to make it real through power or deceit.
"What then?"
"Same as it ever was!"
We all fight over resources that actually matter (like food, water, shelter and security) instead the previous things (money), for the enjoyment of our overlords.
Seriously, the people who have power to change the outcome of the future seem to either straight not be planning for this future scenario, or are planning for a horribly distopian version of this future scenario.
Same as ever…was that money wasn’t needed.
Do you need money within your neighborhood or your family? Do you pay people for giving a favor?
Money is a way to get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.
If you don't have automation you either have to have money or slavery. One of the other is required to keep society going otherwise no one's going to do the crappy jobs. Since someone has to do the crappy job you have to find a way to incentivise them and that's money or whips. Don't kid yourself into believing that money isn't necessary, it is.
I wonder how human societies survived without money, if this is so essential for the crap.
I wonder why people do crappy jobs for money? Is it because they need much money for things such as car, smartphone, playstation? For some food, you do not need much money. Actually you can grow it for yourself if you do not live in a big city.
Sure, if one got in this consumption trap, one needs a constant inflow of fresh money.
I think you've answered your own questions. Money doesn't have to be actual cash it can be bartering, I.e. I'll give you five carrots in exchange for your help to build this barn
But what if they don't need carrots right now, well you can give them a IOU for carrots whenever they want, and now you've invented money
Sorry but this is a primary schools‘ view on money. I know this is how it been taught at school and this is entirely wrong.
A favor is just a form of debt, and debt is money. It does not matter whether it's written down on paper, or just remembered.
It does matter. How much worth is helping a friend? Or how much money for your neighbors for caring your pets while you‘re in holidays?
Don’t you think they will refuse to take money for this favor? Not everything in humankind can be paid for.
Oh, they've planned for it. They have their billionaire bunkers. Bezos has three that we know of.
Who is he going to staff it with? There is zero chance he will cook and clean for himself and he will need a substantial army to protect himself from the collapse of the human race.
If he goes with people how long before the security guards realise they can dump his scrawny ass off a cliff and have a better quality of life as money becomes irrelevant? If he goes with robots how long before they break beyond what they can self repair? If he goes with robots with human engineers, how long before the engineers realise the same thing as the security guards and program the robots to kill Bezos?
I think that, in a world where legal systems have collapsed completely and billionaires have survived, I don't think labor will be a matter of choice anymore. I think they'd turn to slavery and likely already have designs on how they'd do it.
But how do you pay the overseers to enforce it when money is no longer valid? And the overseers are bigger and tougher than your average billionaire?
Slavery only works when there is money to pay the overseers and a legal system to protect the owner class from being extorted by the overseers.
ICE is in a similar boat and they have to pay significant amounts to attract people to carry out ICE fascism.
Could be you're right. I don't know, and I hope I don't live to find out.
Ok great. He can go and live in there while we ignore him.
These bunkers are a boondoggle, what's the plan here, is he going to stay in there until civilisation rebuilds itself into a capitalist system. If so he's going to be waiting a while.
Ever had an "AI" show up at 2AM on an emergency call to fix a gas leak? How about an "AI" to cook a breakfast sandwich? Maybe an "AI" is taking over babysitting while you're out of town...? No?
"AI" doesn't do anything. But if your job primarily revolves around words or pictures on a screen, maybe "AI" can help you with that.
Imagine pretending like things pertaining to "words or pictures on a screen" cannot be doing anything. I get it, everyone hates AI, no need to invalidate many real peoples' jobs.
OK Grandpa. Come back to me when AI writes a novel that isn't absolute Dogshit, or writes an academic paper that isn't hallucinated horse shit, or code that isn't insecure Spaghetti, or Art that isn't garbage, or analytics that isn't out the arse.
"AI" is shit and overhyped. It usually means LLMs that can only steal and remix shit people already made, it can't make anything new or sometimes, it just can't make anything good or usable. Problem is, the inbreds who run our companies don't understand that.
Just because a job involves working on a screen doesn't mean it can be taken by AI.
I get what you're saying but an AI cooking me a sandwich (also what's "cooking" a sandwich) is like the easiest thing in the world. That could very easily be automated.
AI can't do my job.
I'm the guy they call when the machines go down.
I fully suspect some billionaire will invent "vibe repairing".
Followed quickly by "vibe bankruptcy proceedings"
They fantasizes about it so vibe research
If an AI puts you out of work it should have to pay your salary.
Hell, even just like 3 quarters of your salary would be ok for most. You'd have to cut your cost of living, but you'd never have to ever work again
Or more likely it was a shitty job that shouldn't have been done by a human in the first place.
Oh no, money will keep being money. We will just never see a penny and finally be doomed to be full slaves. As intended by the system and those that designed it.
But the billionaires won't need us as slaves once they have their fleets of robots.
You can always repurpose an asset and use it in another way or resell. They won't need us for what we do today but maybe they'll get a liking for human flesh afterwards. Always useful.
They do need concubines and harems to maintain their fantasy dynasty
Depends how good the robots get.
The current tech/IT sector is heavily relying on and riding hype trains. It's a bit like the fashion industry that way. But this AI hype so far has only been somewhat useful.
Current general LLMs are decent for prototyping or example output to jump-start you into the general direction of your destination, but their output always needs supervision and most often it needs fixing. If you apply unreliable and constantly changing AI to everything, and completely throw out humans, just because it's cheaper, then you'll get vastly inferior results. You probably get faster results, but the results will have tons of errors which introduces tons of extra problems you never had before. I can see AI fully replacing some jobs in some specific areas where errors don't matter much. But that's about it. For all other jobs or purposes, AI will be an extra tool, nothing more, nothing less.
AI has its uses within specific domains, when trained only on domain-specific and truthful data. You know, things like AlphaZero or AlphaGo. Or AIs revealing new methods not known before to reach the same goal. But these general AIs like ChatGPT which are trained on basically the whole web with all the crap in it... it's never going to be truly great. And it's also becoming worse over time, i.e. not improving much at all, because the web will be even fuller with AI-generated crap in the future. So the AIs slurp up all that crap too. The training data gets muddier over time. The promise of AIs getting even more powerful as time goes on is just a marketing lie. There's most likely a saturation curve, and we're most likely very close to the saturation already, where it won't really get any better. You could already see this by comparing the jump from GPT-3 to GPT-4 (big) and then GPT-4 to GPT-5 (much smaller). Or take a look at FSD cars. Also not really happening, unless you like crashes. Of course, the companies want to keep the illusion rolling so they'll always claim the next big revolution is just around the corner. Because they profit from investments and monthly paying customers, and as long as they can keep that illusion up and profit from that, they don't even need to fulfill any more promises.
Current general LLMs are decent for prototyping or example output to jump-start you into the general direction of your destination, but their output always needs supervision and most often it needs fixing.
This.
LLMs do not produce anything that can be relied upon confidently without human review, and after the bubble pops, that's only going to become more true.
Hell, I'm glad the first time I ever used it it gave me a ~~bugged~~ hallucinated and false reply. I asked it to give me a summary of the 2023 Super Bowl and learned that Patrick Mahomes kicked a field goal to win the game.
At some point AI will end up using their own AI generated slop, which is themselves derived from other Ai generated slop
There will still be money, we just won't have any. The rich will have armies of robots and watch us all starve to death.
Then perhaps communism, modern fiefdom, same thing with more inequality, or matrix.
I think money as we know is already over. We don't need AI for that. Just look at prices, wages and economy.
If.