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Tag: capitalism

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    AI Marxism

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    1–2 minutes

    Artificical Intelligences promises broad, populist access to once-elite crafts, like writing and art creation. It levels the playing field of drafting and illustrating your ideas, denying class distinctions and privileged hierarchies.

    This conception of “AI as a leveling tool” highlights its neutralizing, even socialist or communist potential: equity of outcome, despite circumstances, and populist access to lofty realms.

    AI, in this regard, de-centers and disincentivizes traditional skills. Devoid of these meritocratic virtues, your worth could be valued by your humanity alone, not rarefied traits or pathological diligence or supportive access.

    And yet, those who make the AI platform and decisions that govern the LLMs and Generators maintain distance with their rarified skills and wealth: the pinnacle of capitalism and meritocracy. In this regard, the intelligent coder and platform backer outmaneuvers mass humanity to further dissuade or reprogram resistance by removing the friction of process and thinking, which is itself a rarified skill.

    Similarly, capitalism once again dissuades skill acquisition, like the industrial assembly line wasting talent on monotony. Meanwhile, utilizing the “tools of capitalism” hollows the revolutionary spirit into platitudes since we develop a symbiotic reliance.

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    Beyond Capitalism: Post-Materialistic Order

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    Capitalism was initially revolutionary. It broke ideological and feudal barriers, uniting people through mutual self-interest, yet also perpetuated the disposability of humans, similar to feudalism and religion.

    This system -equally stabilizing and disruptive- reshaped social dynamics but hinged on efficiency, materialism, and unending growth.

    As we consider post-capitalist revolutions, we may ask: is capitalism a transitional phase that has lasted too long? A new revolution, not into Marxist communal notions of governance, but a period where society learns to transcend the human-breaking thrill of efficiency and eternal expansion.

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    Corporate Zealotry: Fleeting Bonds

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    I overheard two men bitching about work as a means to bond. They both aggrandize their superiority in navigating and adhering to policies, portraying themselves as paragons of corporate responsibility, zealots that sacrifice to make up for the flaws in the system.

    This conversation, seemingly typical or mundane, underscores a deeper societal tendency: bonding through competitive allegiance to corporate structures. Such alliances, intense and short-lived, are rooted in bureaucratic fervor and often negate fundamental human values.

    Paradoxically, to create the human bond we are missing within corporate alignment, we announce and parade our commitment to inhumanity as a worthy attribute.

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    tyrannical reaction to the competitive instinct

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    The competitive instinct is the desire to excel and be honored for it, not the power to dominate.
    – In a confused overreaction, clamping down on any who would want distinction through winning is a means to dissuade a possible tyrant.
    Ironically, those clamping down are tyrannical in forcing egalitarianism, which enforces fragility and similarity.

    The competitive instinct is not always about dominance but the pursuit of excellence and recognition. This drive for distinction (excellence) is often misinterpreted as the potential for tyranny.

    This reaction itself can become tyrannical, as it enforces a rigid egalitarianism. Ironically, this approach fosters a culture of fragility and homogeneity, stifling the very individualism it seeks to protect.

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    the state as platform

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    Suppose our state is sponsored by capitalism (shaped by it), and corporate platforms have supplanted free-market capitalism (platforms set the market participation terms). In that case, the state has been inverted to be controlled by platforms rather than being the platform from which markets arise.

    The problem is that citizens can be controlled (limited), but pixels are sovereign (not recognizing borders.)

    The inversion (from state to corporate) requires the state to appropriate dominion from corporate platforms to remain relevant: setting the terms of participation.

    from Benjamin Bratton

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    uniqueness, happiness, and capitalism

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    Our uniqueness is at hand; it is merely a matter of believing in its value.

    The rub: People say “Follow your passion,” but that rarely provides payment (which is tangible value.)

    Over time we undervalue uniqueness by aligning it with what the market will pay, devaluing it, and, therefore, ourselves.

    Capitalism, mostly, pays people for things almost no one wants to do: painful chores, abnormal skills, or sociopathic cruelty are well compensated.

    The intersection between your passion, how you are paid, and your unique ability becomes the overlapping Venn diagram: what you care about, can do happily, and get paid for is a very tiny cross-section.

    Consider instead of getting paid and narrowing this range of happiness, you can freely and complicity contribute to the “invisible hand” that keeps society moving.

    The economic side will attempt to take a bite out of the hand that feeds it, that is the hand of passion and uniqueness.

    Still, you can refuse to devalue yourself by separating your passions from payment: you can forego bland contentment and false subjugated uniqueness. Instead, save you for yourself.

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    The artificial intelligence Threat

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    The threat of artificial intelligence seems to be the culmination of our dedicated efforts:

    1. We made tools to help us rise above nature.
    2. Machines to expand and proliferate.
    3. Text and computers to help us think.

    We worked extremely hard to make ourselves altogether irrelevant.

    This is an extension of competitive, capitalist labor into the digitized world where we labor against ourselves until we are extraneous. We have replaced our enslavement to the cruel master.

    Perhaps now free of our servitude to machines/data we can return to being human and caring about human things. But I doubt it.

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    is avarice good?

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    When the economic conditions were a fixed pie avarice meant one person taking more for themselves, which meant hurting others.


    However, in today’s economy, the poor do better when the economy booms and expands the pie.


    In reverse morality, the greed of the wealthy -who are responsible for much of the economic growth- benefits the poor.

    In this myopic economic or capitalist view greed is positive, but it intentionally avoids the systemic ramifications of discarded dignity or global environmental catastrophe.

    from Yuval Noah Harari

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    Competing against time alone

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    People assume they are competing with the top 10% of the world, and they work to be the most attractive, compelling option.

    It is not another guy, girl, or business you are competing with: you are attempting to replace their time alone.

    sent to me by a friend

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    Capitalist contradiction: conservative defense

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    Capitalism is a revolutionary and destabilizing force.
    So why do conservatives defend it? It maintains a sameness (of inequality) that has become traditional.

    To maintain and stabilize power, destabilize everything else.