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Perhaps we live in a post DATA scarcity society. But information is still a scarce commodity
Capitalism won't overthrow itself.
It's collapsing by itself but I don't think that's fast enough. (And a hard crash will mean a lot of trouble, we need a transition)
And for the accelerationists in back - no, a crash doesn't imply anything nice will come later. We could end up back at feudalism.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
– Buckminster Fuller
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Your premise is wrong in like... A bunch of ways. We sure as shit do not live in a post-scarcity society lol
I specifically said we are in a post-scarcity information society. I didn't say everything is post-scarcity.
So a post-information-scarcity society. It means something else with different word-order.
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So you're saying that everyone has sufficient and easy access to information? How does that relate to capitalism?
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Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely. Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services but that all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services. Writers on the topic often emphasize that some commodities will remain scarce in a post-scarcity society.
lol. Tell that to the scientific papers you have to pay for otherwise they’ll run out and the researchers won’t be able to research.
A post-scarcity society doesn't mean a post-resource society. We have enough resources to make sure everybody has what they need. None of it is scarce in the slightest. We just need to distribute it equally.
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Capitalism will collapse eventually, whether planned or not. The best we can do is build up parallel structures that can weather that collapse, like complex networks of Mutual Aid, strong Unions, FOSS software, and more.
I like this view of parallel structures
Best we can do is fascism and climate apocalypse.
Fascism is similarly unsustainable, if we fail and can't achieve Socialism from Capitalism then fascism will take its place, and will also collapse. Same with climate, if we fail to properly handle it we will almost certainly go extinct, but the door remains open for life in millenia.
Even Socialism seems transitory to me. Much better than Capitalism, but once labor can be more broadly automated, we need to think of something other than money quickly.
Communism is just that, same with Anarchism (though Anarcho-Communism skips Socialism). You're correct, but that is for after Socialism.
Shhhhh, im trying to lead them to that conclusion without the big scary C word.
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We do not live in an post information scarcity society. Also information doesn’t work like electricity, so even if we did this is still stupid.
We live in a world where it costs essentially nothing to replicate a piece of information 7 billion times and distribute it everyone on earth.
A world where the pirate bay does that for the couple of grand that they get from some porn banner ads.
We live in a world where there is no reason for information to be scarce. The entire systems of copyright and patents and IP are hamfisted ways of creating artificial scarcity so that information retains value in a world where it could be ubiquitous.
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I'd be willing to bet 3 out of 4 people in this thread couldn't even define capitalism. I count myself among them.
Capitalism is a Mode of Production by which the Means of Production are bought, sold, and traded among individuals. This results in Capitalists, ie owners of Capital, and Workers, those who Capitalists employ to create Value using said Means of Production.
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I think the simplest way to put it is "an economic system where individuals are allowed to have exclusionary ownership of capital"
Technically, Monarchism falls under that definition as well, which is why it gets a bit more complex than that.
A monarchy can be capitalist as long as peoples property rights are respected. The moment the monarch decides to lop somebodys head off and take their stuff you'll be back to the old-school feudalistic "might makes right" societies.
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The reason you are post scarcity is because other people around the world are not. This imbalance in wealth is because of capitalism
You fail to understand in your eagerness to jump on a soapbox.
The numbers simply do not lie:
There is not one reason for anyone, anywhere, to go without food, water, or shelter. That some regions lack the production is irrelevant, others over produce and still refuse to meet the needs of their own, much less others.
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Unfortunately for the post scarcity information society, the capitalists are in fact moving on — to fascism.
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ITT : People who want to argue about dictionary definitions and ignore the topic of the post.
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The rubes need something to collect so they can lord over you. They don't want an intelligent society. They want something they can game to get big numbers.
In 1980, 'middle class' was still defined as one job paying for a family of four. In those days $1 million was still considered a vast fortune. By the time Bush Sr. left office 'middle class' was two salaries to support a family and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
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I, and I alone live in a post-info-scarcity world. Everyone else is just dojng the best they can.
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The problem is that while we have infinite information we do not have infinite energy/resources yet. The shift when we get it to remove power from the structures will be larger but reminiscent of the piracy/copyright battles lately
We absolutely have enough to shower every single person in lavishness. Its just not distributed. We arent post resource, but we are post scarcity.
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What's the alternative then?
Firstly, capitalism isn't going to just "poof" away just because there are more resources available. The rich will just hold them back to create artificial scarcity - like is done with diamonds.
Secondly, even discounting that, there are plenty of resources that are genuinely scarce no matter how much money you have to throw at the problem.
But if you're referring to just the scarcity of information - then you're still not quite right as not all that information out there is good information - a lot of it is misinformation (i.e. propaganda, etc.)...
And even that discounts the fact that for many people, they don't have the tools/capability to access the information, or simply can't access the information full stop (I.e. due to censorship, etc.).
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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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