The World After Capital

[@ozzitor8]

It would never cease to amaze me the lengths people go to avoid engaging with Marx, Engels, etc. All of this has been said before. Although I have to say it’s good he’s arriving to the same conclusions so no one can accuse him of being ideological 💁🏽‍♂️

[@patrickdaly3628]

Maybe he didn't make the connection to Marx on purpose

[@waleednoor6590]

Well it’s either cowardice or ignorance….neither is a good look for them

[@mathewbrown9371]

It's true, they're part of the conversation either way. It's difficult though, for all the ideas and criticism that Marx articulated well, there is all this ideological and historical baggage you have to engage with. I mean, Marx was extremely doctrinaire in how he believed his ideas should be implemented (dictatorship of the proletariat and all that).

[@tonic4120]

His arguments are quite different from Marx. Not every criticism of capitalism is Marxist. There are many angles from which to critique the current system.

[@visicircle]

But Marx embodies the main problem that the author identifies: No viable alternative narrative. Sure the ideal of socialist society is admirable. But the adversarialism Marx engages in when building his argument for socialism is awful. Whether or not he accurately described the labor-owner relations is beside the point. A system that must be destroyed before it can be replaced is not a viable option. Not if we want to preserve a complex industrial society.

[@arash8761]

He focuses on technology as if agriculture became irrelevant for industrial countries. And now for technological countries, industry becomes irrelevant. No, the labor has just shifted to poorer countries. You can't just look at the bubble of the Western world and not all the lands and people it exploited.

[@OneEyedMonkey9000]

He dances around the idea that capital and profit isn't the answer, it's even in the name of his book, but he hasn't let go of the idea of the American 'aka capitalist' Dream. Like you say it's from a USA perspective, and he admits he loves markets...

[@andrewzhou4228]

He forgets the most important thing about agriculture, arable land, and how much population that supports. Many countries are not food secure and import food.

[@andrewzhou4228]

What is true is that as countries modernize their agriculture, it is less labor intensive and more capital intensive. But same is of industry. Agriculture also makes up a smaller percentage of GDP of Industrial countries, but that does not mean production dropped. While agriculture is limited by arable land, industry can produce as much as necessary. Which creates the huge difference of economic output. But that too is not exactly true. The exchange value of agricultural and industrial goods is set to stabilize food prices, most industrial countries subsidize their agricultural production.

[@andrewzhou4228]

In addition, international trade is designed purposely to create unequal exchange between agricultural and industrial products. This allows for industrial countries to exploit those that export agricultural products. When he says technological country, there is a better term for it, imperialism. The merger of industry cartel and finance banks, that allows for export of capital overseas, i.e. foreign direct investment, and multinational companies that control the core technologies that dominates the supply chain. They can outsource lower end jobs to produce locally at a lower cost, and sending expat managers, advisors, engineers and experts for high end jobs. On the broader policy level, the IMF and world bank, lends money on a basis of political reform and structural adjustment, to allow for super profits that were mentioned, cheap foreign labour, low taxes, etc.

[@andrewzhou4228]

The unequal exchange of high end core technologies and low end industrial commodities, are maintained by having a monopoly on the technology. But ultimately, the reason the system stands, is because with superior technology and productive forces, builds the superior military, that can enforce such rules.

[@paulkemp4664]

A noticeable aspect of current lifestyles, especially in industrialised countries, has been the atomisation of lives, where individualisation dominants mindsets, and ultimately the lost of the ability to build healthy relationships that up until the past 50-100 years provided a cultural & personal security and sense of attachment we all desire. Without the capacity and experience of living within healthy relationships each of us rarely follows their aspirations because we are blinded by the productivity narrative; it’s hard to get yourself of that tread mill. We therefore have a moral responsibility towards our offspring and networks, something that Capital doesn’t achieve.

[@danielhutchinson6604]

Money has been used so long that Humans appear to be having a difficult time adapting to the thought of living without that social program? Removing Capitalism as a failure, seems to bother only those with the investment ability to own Media..... We do need to understand what is Propaganda, and what is of value?

[@Nine-Signs]

I enjoyed this, I have my differences with his perspective in places but I did enjoy it, just to give an example of where I would differ, The good chap mentioned: "We've allowed many markets to become highly concentrated" My reply: Very true He then said: "I have a chapter on why concentration is being driven by digital technology" To which I dont suppose on thinking about it we actually differ, but I would add that the incentivies of capitalism to maximise internal profits at any externalised cost is what drives market concentration, the technology just allows them to do it quicker because under capitalism technology only ever works for the capitalist minority who are no more than 1% of a given nations population, to either lower the number of waged labor hours worked or stagnate pay increases of those employed or both simultaneously. His utopia as nice as it sounds, will never be allowed to come to pass under capitalism. Contrary to popular belief and barring the odd exception, most bosses are not nice people, and they usually become nastier the longer they have been a capitalist and the wealthier they have become over that time. They like miserable workers, it helps bosses / owners / capitalists, feel above and separate from their fellow humans, as if wealth alone can make them immortal. What do you think all these daft boys clubs like skull and bones or the freemasons or Bilderberg or other such nonsense, even Davos, are about? It's ego, them, vs us and apart from us, and as the capitalist minority of this world own vast chunks of right wing and centrists MP's of many nations, who act as a tag team to ensure the actual left is kept from debate never mind high office, achieved through bribery or intimidation via the media the rich own, I see no possibility for change in what little time humanity has remaining for it to be able to adhere to what immutable physics demands of humanity for it to have a viable future. Whoever said it is always darkest before the dawn was blissfully ignorant of thermodynamics. You want to know why so many of older millennials to younger Gen Xers between 30 and 60 are drugging themselves to oblivion and blowing our brains out while also occasionally blowing the brains out of others, well there you go, the inevitable results of capitalism over time. The UK has chronically similar problems though mercifully less guns. There are for example four hundred thousand fewer children under 5 today in the UK than there were just 10 years ago, that is an astounding rate of the younger gens deciding not to have kids, and how could they, they can barely afford their own lives no matter the hours they work due to being locked into an abusive capitalist rental market with no hope of EVER owning their own home due to houses in the UK being 15 times the UK average wage, which 63% of the population earn less than anyway. Capitalism incentivises contempt for those without wealth by those who have it, psychopathy to protect that wealth, and greed to make it grow, all the behaviors working class mothers across this earth ensure their child is taught the exact opposite of. I understand you both as classical economists and are probably 20 to 30 years older than me, and were raised to like or love capitalism in an age of plenty, but I am telling you now from the moment my generation, millennials, were born post circa 1980, it has been the greatest blight on our life chances since economic records began on intergenerational wealth and prospects. The vast majority of my generation in the UK as in the US, have been rendered poorer than their parents, despite working longer hours than their parents did, and with more people in work per household than their parents day. With a miserable circa 30% on the housing ladder, with up to 25% of them barely clinging on, doing so via the bank or mum and dad now being depleted at a rate of £7 billion a year just to keep their kids, who are mostly in work, afloat. Capitalism is crushing my generation for the benefit of handfuls who mostly came before it, and the price of that in the end within a handful of generations at most, well, it will cost everyone, everything.

[@nitrojoe2010]

This doomer, grimdark thinking about capitalism is actually antithetical to the type of change you wish to see in the world. Imagine how many people died thinking it was the end of day. The Roman citizen who watched as barbarism destroyed the city. The people of Pompeii, the Londoner & Parisians at the height of the bubonic plague. You’re not achieving anything by saying things suck, we know. It’s obvious. But every challenge brings about new understandings. That’s the point of the video. The agricultural revolution happened, people died, and now we live in cities. The industrial revolution happened, people died and now we have cars and weekends. We need to understand what works and doesn’t work with capitalism, and use it with socialism to create the best possible solution. The people lies in that people don’t have time to think due to the very structure you described. That’s not a people with capitalism, that’s a problem with human nature, and we need to look past it.

[@daniboi1st]

Well said

[@Nine-Signs]

@@daniboi1st Much obliged.

[@mexoburm5066]

✅

[@Skylark_Jones]

Beautifully, elegantly written. And I agree with every single word you've said, ArmyOfAll. I assume you are from the UK, so am I: and it's grim.

[@halfwall]

Only a VC could ignore his own role in this entire "loop" - the real "loop" we need to shrink is the cycle of power investment capital. VCs have spent decades turning non-capital activities into monetizable markets (e.g. social connections). Everything is a subscription, everything needs to ROI - mostly because of VCs driving "the venturization of the world" for shares and 10x unicorn rainbow exits. The irony of a person writing this book claiming we need to live in a world "after capital" (yes, he redefines capital as "output" but I don't think that's valid) when he has spent his entire career creating capital markets is baffling (he literally talks about how education should not be based on profit, then goes on to mention the education startups in his portfolio!!).

[@eaglechawks3933]

At the end of the day the real question is still the same -- who gets to make the decision about the economic factors that affect your life? Do YOU get to make those decisions -- using your capital in the free exercise of the market where you decide what to buy and invest in? Or does some group of elites who supposedly know better than the combined thinking of everybody else make those decisions for you by taking your capital and investing where THEY think it should go?

[@sirmclovin9184]

You very much got to the core of the point he was leaving out.

[@ericbruun9020]

Great vision of Phase 2, where industrial society should go. But first, we need Phase I, to do the actual physical investments and resource conservation to keep global warming from getting worse and drought from spreading. Technology cannot be counted on to come to the rescue.

[@Anatolij86]

Universal Basic Income is paramount. We need to spread the concept while also being aware of capitalists trying to exploit it.

[@corujariousa]

There is a constant, and huge, focus on capital and productivity being affected by technological development. The technological evolution is good and natural. We must reverse, and stop, the shift of focus from consumers and allowing extreme capital concentrations to happen. Increases in productivity will be useless if the markets keep shrinking due to the middle-class becoming smaller and with a smaller purchasing power. These undesired effects increase security risks (criminality, terrorism, etc), reduce quality of life, are immoral and create additional costs (to reduce effects in society through policing, surveillance, etc) for which the resources could be better used in society's favor instead. We keep seeing how the extreme capital concentration corrupts all aspects of society given the ones w/ most resources influence the entire system (government, Media, etc) in their favor. There is nothing wrong with being rich but if the level of wealth is so large that becomes a tool to acquire increased levels of power and rigging the systems in the favor of a powerful minority, then we repeat history and make society implode. We have plenty of historical examples of that.

[@nathanielknight1838]

we 'shrunk' agricultural attention by increasing the effective labour a single person could do by factors of hundreds and more. We did the same with many branches of other economic sectors as tech drives innovation which makes manual labour obsolete more and more. so, most jobs now are actually bullshit jobs because people have to do something or the firms aren't ready yet to make the switch to automatization (or the customer isn't, it's why we still have cashers despite them being 100% pointless).

[@summawub]

Amazing conversation Thank you

[@MarkoKraguljac]

Well said but for the last 20 years without any consequences. Too many people are existentially bribed and tied down, assuring perpetuation. We are like a hypnotized car driver who is approaching a wall at full speed. We have lucid thoughts about steering the wheel but there is a disconnect between brain and hands. That disconnect is created by structural incentives which emerged over a long time and no one seriously dares to even start to think how to change them.

[@DodgyBagehot]

Nice description of cultural blindspots/iimbecilic institutions.

[@MarkoKraguljac]

@@DodgyBagehot

[@P4DDYW4CK]

Those three freedoms shouldn’t be separate freedoms. Economic freedom, informational freedom, and psychological freedom are interconnected, especially in a epicurean sense. Epicurus actually believed education could provide true fulfillment. And I’d agree: a well structured learning environment can provide all three. It provides you with a network of likeminded individuals, potential mates and friends. It’s a challenging, fun, and stimulating environment. It provides enormous utility to a nation yet the value of much research is not immediately appreciated. Our technological development came from people spending a lot of their time experimenting in a space they felt free and relaxed, not knowing if they’d make a breakthrough but giving it the old college try anyway. I think we’d be more fulfilled these days if America turned itself into one enormous Advanced Research Project Agency. For those who are not academically inclined, or artfully inclined, there will still be plenty of traditional work that must be done, and it will all be very well paid because everyone else is eternally in school haha

[@williamforrestall2161]

Add Human Rights UDHR 1948 ... You are spot on "Economic freedom, informational freedom, and psychological freedom are interconnected, " and interdependent ...

[@danielhutchinson6604]

We stop learning when we know it all...... Who the hell likes a Know it All?

[@waleednoor6590]

Why can't they just say its because of class interests rather than tiptoeing around class as the explanatory factor for market ideology

[@tangledfish]

Because they both belong to the ruling class. Which is also why the conversation revolves around a hand wavy concept of a transition with no specifics. They want a post-Capital society but can't see that their own class will never allow that to come to pass.

[@waleednoor6590]

Couldn’t agree more…never ceases to amaze me how effective the ideological blinders that one’s own class location places can be…

[@adamrosendahl8090]

I like how he talks about the early industrial age where people lived in squalor and there was child labor in capitalism. That hasn't changed, its only been shifted from the rich countries to the poor. Capitalisms roots will always be at the exploitation of people, always.

[@Noland55]

The point is missed that all the other changes were economic. He wants us to now focus on non economic activity that is being paid for by who? The reason why the other changes were successful was that the knowledge needed for the transformations was not large. Famer to line factory worker. As you move further toward a more sophisticated & automated economies, a higher level of knowledge is needed. Those unable to do so get left behind. So how much do you think we should subsidize?

[@BobQuigley]

One of the best.. Thanks INET

[@musiqtee]

To me, a problem that the things that don’t / shouldn’t have prices, are inevitably targeted for a market mechanism (now water and natural sustainability). Our current policies are fully in capital’s hands, society itself measures everything in economic potential, growth and competitiveness - or lack thereof in welfare. Who or what will change this narrative, as many individuals also reject the huge body of knowledge we already have - and try to share? Human nature isn’t really compatible with large scale change that also feels existentially threatening. Those threatened will violently defend their beliefs, even in spite of knowledge. We’re theoretically able to, but historically fail to accept that our basic needs are the same across every arbitrary invented divide…

[@RuthmarieHicks]

You are saying something very similar to what I have been saying. A friend of mine and I keep having this argument. He says that the problem is that there isn't enough work for everyone. I say that that's not true for 2 very different reasons: 1. There is a TON of work that needs to be done that is not profitable. For example, fixing the US infrastructure so people aren't having their brain development stunted by lead, converting completely to clean energy before we fry ourselves, ensuring our ecosystems survive, dealing with pandemics BEFORE they kill millions and drive the world economy off a cliff...The list goes on and on. But you aren't going to make $20 billion + on a unicorn IPO - so no one is interested. 2. Because massive profit margins have become "expected" for shareholders and investors, the need to increase the productivity out a single employee has exploded as has the trend to downsize everything to the leanest and meanest thing imaginable. We now have 1 employee doing the work of about 3-5 people. The lack of ANY slack in ANY system is dangerous. Look at what happened to the hospitals during COVID surges. That was in part due to the fact that they took out ALL the slack, making them incapable of responding to a crisis. But no one seems to care.y Sorry this is so long. But you make a very important point.

[@musiqtee]

@@RuthmarieHicks I fully agree. BTW, my views reflect those of Stiglitz, Mazzucato or UKs Murphy. They are (unlike me) economists, but (like me) not working for finance itself. Obviously, we can’t maintain financial “growth” in a global market economy, while also as separate nations competing for dwindling resources. The total worth of ownership & assets today, would (according to some) cover for de-growth and a small basic income for all. The model based on waged labour is highly questionable, as it caters for concentration of wealth, instead of that surplus carrying over to work needed to be done - as you pointed to. De-growth is just that, a less “profitable” model of social & economic control, possibly a base in sustainability for local and individual needs. As humans, we’re just too messy to solve our problems with deregulated capital combined with highly regulated humans. The opposite may work better…

[@Rnankn]

Yes commodification is a problem. But it should be seen with moral disgrace, not as an opportunity. Prices devalue and destroy. It seems a minority of people will defend their beliefs, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up and die for their preferences. At a point, they are wrong, and don’t have a choice. And it’s almost like they have anticipated this by arming themselves…

[@corinnapetry65]

Your point about individuals rejecting the huge body of knowledge we already have is very true and valid and that behavior is a huge obstacle to progress.

[@dugfern]

It's not Revolt of the Masses (that title is by Ortega y Gasset) it's Revolt of the Citizens by Gurri (an ex-CIA analyst--and remember once in that agency you're never totally outside of it). Perhaps Wenger is also an affiliate?

[@keeflookeem]

I wish I could listen to a debate between him and David Graeber

[@coryc.9709]

We seem to be in a problem-solving paradigm where the solution to a problem is another problem that needs a solution. Hopefully we come to the place where there's nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be.

[@kathryntate6809]

I have been focused on the US raising quality standards; for example, children's public school lunches: instead of just okay to exceptional and a lunch a kid can get excited about--a lunch that says to all children "YOU ARE WORTH IT"

[@anthonyward8133]

How has research been going?

[@charleshubbard3573]

Good for people to work on problems, like gravity, cellular life cycle, and peace of mind and soul.

[@andrewahern2289]

I think anyone who has read The Dawn of Everything will immediately have a problem with Albert's interpretation of history. City's existed before agriculture; agricultural systems existed, in varying ways, before 10,000 years ago, and society did not just "switch" from egalitarian to hierarchical systems.

[@patrickdaly3628]

Just read Debt by Graber, similar thought, any anthropological evidence for that?

[@Eastbayrob]

That book is really super scetchy though. I’m a David Greaber fan but I don’t know what happened with that book.

[@esketeske3495]

But on a broader scale, that was a general trend. I’ve read the book. But I feel that in this context it’s a reasonable simplification.

[@patrickdaly3628]

Robert...sketchy, how so? Just curious, I did feel the last chapter was speculative like how he started talking about the great rhythms of history and stuff but how could it not be really?

[@iamheasyouareheas]

It sounds to me like he's just simplifying for the sake of painting a picture of the general arc of things, to support and keep focus on our present challenge.

[@pilard3135]

21:22 It's not "reassure manufacturing" but re-shore manufacturing.

[@bgiv2010]

Why does the trust always get lost at the institutional level? It's as if people think researchers and public servants are immune to the profit motive and should be above accepting money from Big Corn or Big Sugar or Big Dairy or whatever industry. Why is trust lost in the academics when industry leaders attempt to influence facts rather than the industry leaders or the economic system which fails to regulate the use of money in politics, journalism, and academia, at best, or encourages it, at worst? After so many cases of corruption in institutions, it starts to sound like the corruption runs all the way to the economic foundation of society. Only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch. What do you think a diseased apple tree does?

[@pazitor]

_"People ought to do this for their/our/everyone's own good"_ is incompatible with governance unless you want forced reeducation camps. This is the problem with utopian visions. Also with religion. A real revolution would be teaching people to argue and think from genuine first principles, which has the advantage of allowing for rapid knowledge acquisition. Easiest to build when there is a strong foundation. From that point onward, one can entertain -- and in this case, more quickly dispel -- woo when one hears it.

[@billthompson7072]

Yes. Chapter 4. Capital 1. Seminal.

[@SpencerRoyalcom]

There is money and price for anything that is viewed as of value in the market.... If there is no market for something it means that it does NOT have Value to the market.

[@SolidAir54321]

Home schooling is not always a good thing. Some of the home schooled only have an equivalent 4th grade education. Can't make it in college.

[@corinnapetry65]

Home schooling, to date, is primarily for the Christian right or the white elite (well-paid tutors). It is undemocratic being as many poor families of color tend to have parents working in a gig economy, two people working two to three jobs each to put food on the table and a roof overhead. When do they have time to learn how to become competent educators? The Christian right doesn't care about the quality of education as long as the kids believe Jesus battled dinosaurs. Charter schools are purely about the profit motive, not about real education. Wenger didn't even talk much about the fact that public education is so behind the times. Toyota, in America, is still dictating curriculum in school districts near its factories to turn out unquestioning human robots.

[@jtheo1450]

Interesting video. First question, you make the case for human attention to fight new problems from the knowledge we used to create things. If this is the logic, wouldn't new issues come from new use of knowledge. It feels like a paradox. I understand the new pressing issues on the rise but I wonder if unintended consequences happen.

[@Anatolij86]

Unintended consequences always happen. And we should be very alert of them and try as best we can to predict them. Then again, we must try to improve.

[@SolidAir54321]

Yanis Varoufakis is saying similar things.

[@Other3.5]

It’s hard to stomach listening to most VCs. One wonders if they’re completely oblivious or too lazy to step out of their echo chambers of friends to actually ask people what they’re experiencing. In the 1970s, CEOs made 30x their average employee. Today CEOs make 500x their average employee. If wages kept up (as they did prior to 1980s) with inflation and productivity gains, minimum wage would be $25-$30. Instead of investing profits in their companies to improve their companies and raise the stock price through that improvement - ie capitalism (R&D, innovation, their employees’ training and compensation), CEOs use profits to manipulate their stock prices through billions and billions of dollars in stock buy backs (made legal in 1987) which is the worst business practice, but is great for executives’ stock options. When he talked about American schooling, lamenting how poor it is, instead of using his wealth to fund pressure on our government to increase public school funding, he used his wealth to provide his kids with private tudors. How about the widowed Walmart worker who has to home school her kids during the pandemic - whose minimum wage is looted every paycheck by subtracting $18 an hour by her company reducing her work to $7 an hour. The 2017 tax kickback act, made moving factories overseas more lucrative for companies than keeping them here in the US. That’s not tech, that’s policy choice. Our tax code favors sending our factories overseas and promotes the most wealthy to pay the least. All perfectly legal (the wealthy have enough money to make sure the tax code and our government policies favor them and harm most Americans and the economy). People with wages stagnating at indentured servant levels, know that Bezos pays $0 in taxes, that Amazon pays $0 in taxes, that Musk pays income taxes on his $87k salary but nothing on his billions. They’re not stupid, just voiceless. Legalized tax evasion (called avoidance) is tax shifting. It shifts the taxes from the wealthy and corporations onto the backs of the middle class in higher taxes and lost services. This interview is absolute nonsense. As Rutger Bergman so accurately put it: I feel like I’m at a firefighters’ conference and no one is talking about water. Skip the philanthropy, it’s taxes, taxes, taxes, all the rest is BS. This VC should help where it’s actually needed, tax code reform, policy reforms and not just where the shiny, easy button platitudes will get him pats on the back.

[@tomt55]

The sooner we get past capitalism the better. A good interview. Please have on a Marxist like Richard Wolff, David Harvey and Paul Jay on to discuss current economic status and events.

[@prism8289]

Ya, because it has worked so well elsewhere.

[@tomt55]

@@prism8289 What has worked so well everywhere else? Marxism? Socialism? The prior Marxist or Socialist experiments were just that, experiments. Some things that these experiments did are worth keeping, discussing, refining and improving and some things are not. One thing is for sure - staying on the present path where the elites are running things for their own benefit is leading the planet and us to massive destruction. Either nuclear war or the climate catastrophe will do us in. A people and planet first system must be put in place, and soon, if we're to have any chance of survival.

[@prism8289]

@@tomt55 just experiments. You bet. Try explaining that to Mao, Lenin and Gorbachev. Capital has unquestionable problems, but it BY FAR has been the most successful at raising people out of poverty and into productive, stable lives, with opportunity for their children. Just ask several hundred million Chinese if they would rather go back to the rice fields, even with the problems the life has created for many there. Everything, education, health, life expectancy, qualify of life is far better under systems of capitalism WHEN REGULATED. Capitalism provides the gas pedal, and regulation provides the brake pedal. The problem has been that the brake pedal has been removed, and it is on a runaway course. Marxism/ socialism is fundamentally flawed and has never worked. They aren’t just experiments. If you want an experiment, see democracy, and that is one worth saving.

[@prism8289]

@@tomt55 i am by nature an extreme idealist, but at some point in your life, some reality has to set in. The Founding Fathers understood that there is simply human nature, so in creating the absurd, idealist notion of representative democracy, they understood there still be the greedy, power hungry, and corrupt, which is why they create systems to check it. And let’s not forget, the “people” voted for Hitler and Trump. Look at Plato’s cycle of governments. It could have been written yesterday.

[@Rnankn]

@@prism8289 Marx is an economic theorist, and his analysis of how the real economy works is exceptionally accurate. What you do with that, is an entirely different question. The world after capital that the author described, draws on many of the basic insights Marx advanced, but it is also quite original. As for discrete systems, both capitalism and communism are ideal types, they are aspirational and not actually viable. States simply can’t plan everything, and markets cannot self-regulate - so we have always had a mix. Plus there is more to the world than states and markets. Finding solutions isn’t about making false dichotomies to justify the status quo, it is about being open and thinking creatively to what could work given the constraints we face.

[@estitt1973]

@21:28 they start discussing education at this point, and I must ask, given the very real issues with college student loans and graduates not being able to find jobs in their chosen fields, I would think that academics would recommend other ways for kids to live their lives and still be able to support themselves. Yet here is this man saying he homeschooled his kids and those kids are soon to graduate from College, and do what exactly? I would imagine that this man has a plan for his own kids. But what if the others? I will admit, I stopped the video to make this comment, so it’s quite possible that he addresses this in his comments, but it still seems to be a big issue that needs to be addressed in this modern globalist world.

[@taconobaka1688]

In this hamster wheel we are currently in, if you look at it, we are all slaves to employers. Sure, we are free to change jobs (exchanging Masters) and what we do in our free time is our own business (usually), but we will never have true freedom until we no longer need to be employed to survive. This is where the wealthy reside. They could decide to never work another day in their lives and their wealth would only continue to grow. This would hold true for their offspring as well and could well go on for generations before any of them needed to work. However, because they have that freedom, they can opt to pursue things they enjoy that also increase their wealth and as the saying goes, do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life. It's hard to imagine anyone loving digging ditches, being a convenience store cashier or working in a fast food restaurant. Having a disabling Anxiety Disorder, I would probably not work even the part time job I've managed to hold if I didn't have to work to survive. If there was a UBI, I would likely be much healthier and and free to find some cottage industry I did enjoy that would allow me to further increase my wealth. Still, it's a difficult thing to cast off decades of social conditioning that says you have to work to survive, just like everyone else that came before you, from the agrarians back to the hunter/gatherers. Most people aren't mentally capable of going through the mental gymnastics to stand outside their conditioning and see things from a different perspective. Even I have difficulty doing so, even though I can see the obvious benefits. Instead, my mind takes the next step in the conditioning and asks where the funding for a UBI would come from? The obvious answer is from the upper 1% of society through wealth taxes (which my social conditioning screams is unfair to the wealthy that they should have to pay everyone else's way as well, but my rational mind points out that they are also the predators who have been gutting the lower classes for decades to amass their wealth) and through taxing the mega-corporations. Of course, taxing the businesses would be more palatable if there was no more minimum wage, but that would also mean that labor would be able to negotiate their own contract with any benefits they valued, like sick time, vacations, working hours, maternity leave, etc... I also flat out reject anything that smacks of communism and I'm not mentally limber enough to separate communism from Marxism, if there even is a difference. We have far too many examples in history that show where communism invariable leads...oppression, subjugation of the populous, totalitarianism, and elimination of personal freedoms until the populous is basically a slave caste to the State.

[@opanike87]

Interesting analysis but his notion of history is super inaccurate. After listening to the Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow on Audible, there are dangers in this misunderstanding as it limits the possibility we have as humans.

[@terryloder6339]

Ages are determined by ownership of necessary components of existence, communal, feudal, capital, and that's where it ended.

[@mexoburm5066]

👀

[@Rnankn]

Ownership and control are values and choices that are unknown to most organisms, and most of human history. It takes considerable effort to convince people to dislike sharing and cooperation. Obviously, communal makes sense if we must have a regime because at this point, we sink or swim together.

[@Rnankn]

His economic periodization is pretty technologically determinist - so it is imbued with this progress bias. By all accounts, health and quality of life declined with the agricultural revolution. But the outlier is the last 150 years of industrial capitalism. I don’t think was built on top of the past, but replaced it. So, yes life after capital should shrink the economy, but by looking back to what was lost. The problem with the Right is they want to restore 20th C industrial capitalism, and the problem of the Left is they want a digital utopia. Industry is unsustainable, and digitization lacks a material basis. Only an ecological civilization can solve this by restoring human-nature and regulation by natural cycles and limits. Agrarian living probably is realistic (the 17th century with internet), but ultimately, freedom is being a nomad and hunter-gatherer (something like camping for 20 years at a time).

[@billmclaughlin5375]

Stanford High School Online has annual tuition of about $28k. Well, Rob, who can pay that tuition? That's exactly what is driving people with median family income nuts.

[@anthonyward8133]

I had no idea!!! WTF?!? Lol

[@CharlesBrown-xq5ug]

Thermary is a plausible practical Breakeven Perpetual Motion Machine. The thermicay mainly consists of two electrodes closely face to face (~1 micrometer) in a vacuum wired to an external electrical circuit. The face of the [Emitter] electrode is covered with a uniform array of LaB6 tipped small diameter carbon nanotubes grown straight out. The face of the [Absorber] electrode is covered with small scale graphine flake char. [Rice U 2014] Thermal energy mobilized unattached electrons will tend to free themselves outward from the emitter tips and drift at ~1 million meters / second @ 25 millivolts (thermal electron energy @ 20 C) to the absorber which tends to collect them. A negative charge accumulates on the absorber. This repels oncoming electrons slowing their forward drift, cooling them. The absorber electrode charge is simultaneously the repelling cooling and the external electrical circuit voltage. The drift current and external wire route current are the same. The DC electrical power consumed by the electrical load depends on the load resistance. Thermal energy absorption always equals the electrical yield. Wire resistance is a practical loss not a true loss so lt is overcome by added thermary output. The extra cooling balances the heat given off by the wire loss even though it is diffuse. The performance of the device is expected to be modest in the beginning but improve rapidly. Even early devices are expected to last a long time. There is little place for obsolence if the first installed thermary works adequately. They will withstand being short circuited indefinately up to electromigration limits.

[@krcalder]

Why aren’t we getting reliable price signals from the markets? We are making the same mistakes they made last time. Relying on price signals from the markets. “Everything is getting better and better look at the stock market” the 1920’s believer in free markets In the 1930s, they were wondering what had gone wrong with their free market beliefs and worked out what had happened. What had inflated the stock market to such ridiculous levels in 1929? 1) Share buybacks 2) The use of bank credit for margin lending. The US stock market is doing really well with share buybacks and margin lending driving prices ever higher. A former US congressman has been looking at the data. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bavYZIadjd1mp5Y He is a bit worried, hardly surprising really.

[@indieeasmr7101]

I am literally writing a book about everything this guy is talking about and this video got recommended as I was writing today... what the fuck man. KZbin get out of my head lol.

[@rhclark6530]

Most of the work that needs to be done to maintain civilization is shit work. Boring and or dangerous. Completely unfulfilling, that nobody will do unless they are forced to by the whip of scarcity. This is changing gradually as automation crosses a tipping point of generalized capabilities; and one can envision a technologically advanced enough world which is much less complicated than the one we live in. But this will be a long time coming. In the meantime the obvious next step away from the dominance of Capital over human political economy is to replace the joint stock corporation with the limited liability worker cooperative. This will inherently spread power, profits and responsibility across a much broader range of players and completely change the role of Capital in society. This obvious next step is right there in front of us and yet nobody seems to see it.

[@coryc.9709]

If you want people to trust experts, research needs to be publicly funded. Private funding to be anonymized in the general fund. Research proposals likewise anonymized and selected by committee based on merit alone. Industry research deemed low quality and used for in-house use only and cannot be used to form public policy. Remove profit motivation out of research, education, healthcare, and anything that comes from the earth for commercial and industrial use or is consumed. The mind of the expert, the innovator, the educator, the genius has been nurtured by the collective and the things that come from that mind belong to us all. In this way patent law stifles innovation and honest collaboration. Imagine where we would be technologically if all human knowledge was open sourced. Do you think great minds want to compete for resources, to to compete to be heard? Do you think greatness is relegated to a few? Cultivate the minds of everyone and we will see truth and beauty emerge from the depths of our collective consciousness. May it be so.

[@bgiv2010]

It has always been about resource distribution, not technological wizardry. It's about the political will to make profits secondary to good health and social outcomes. What can labor do or the consumer or (heaven help them) the neighborhoods near sites of production do about the uniquely high costs of health care in the US?! How can we not see that the foxes are running the henhouse?! Look at who is writing the laws then look at who funds them. Follow the money is a rule insofar as bribery is effective. In other words, profit growth for the wealthy is inversely proportional to poor people accessing basic needs. The fact that so many people would still rather only explore solutions that indemnify corporations boggles my mind.

[@brt042]

What is missing from the current transition is motivation. The transition to agrarianism was a means to achieve food security. The transition to industrialism was a means to achieve a cornucopia of material goods in which everyone could have nice clothes, shoes and indoor plumbing. What does the information economy offer as incentive? Leisure time? OK, but what then incentivizes our current lords of to facilitate that? Also, he overestimates the percentage of people who would use that leisure time for any higher purpose. The vast majority would simply go fishing, drink beer, and have sex. That might be OK, but not exactly straining the boundaries of human greatness or happiness.

[@ttrons2]

Home schooling deprives a developing child of day to day experience with children their age.

[@danielhutchinson6604]

When the majority of the Earth's Inhabitants are no longer served by Capitalism, it seems to be time to abandon that social program?

[@anthonyparella2005]

What this guy failings to recognized is all the tech companies he is yammering about survive on cheap money which is a social program.

[@danielhutchinson6604]

@@anthonyparella2005 When the Values that Money represents, fade away, as the struggle between Nations to dominate the flow of Capital, we become aware of the fact that our time is measured by dollars? Overcoming that belief, is difficult for Humans to now notice? We need the ability to see through the bullshit that money presents? Fiat Dollars are Promissory Notes, that offer the prospect of cashing in your Federal Reserve Notes, for empty promises....

[@danielhutchinson6604]

@@anthonyparella2005 I believe the concept is an old and accepted principal that continues to have supporters who profit from the use of Money. They have enough to control government. The only way to remove their grip on power is to take away the Money? You can drop a Social Program much easier than to rob the Rich...... Abandoning Capitalism is well within the reach of the Majority of the inhabitants of the Planet. The actual issue is do Humans have the strength to make that decision?

[@pseudo_ra]

This guy is blaming our woes on technology. How about we start with corruption and the fact that the corporations have effectively bought the government and all our institutions of power/culture. He’s saying some good stuff, but his focus betrays his biases and privilege.

[@CharlesBrown-xq5ug]

The second law of thermodynamics began to be a strong science paradigm during the mid 1800s euphoria of progress in steam engines and industrialization. Steamships could voyage on course - on schedule mostly regardles of nature's awesome winds and currents. Mechanical power became cheap and without manure. Sir Arthur S Eddington popularized the ideas that the second law of thermodynamics was a proof of God and more fundamental than Maxwell's equations. He based his proof of God on the acceptance that the universe would die of thermal stagnation, therefore God had to start it. I have been on a quest to disprove the second law of thermodynamics after a distinct inspiration in 1964 from Isaac Asimov's carefully unpacked fact based but imaginative depiction of machines that fully conserve energy [View from a Height Doubleday 1963]. When Asimov continued unpacking, moving his text to cover entropy, I disengaged. His example there that dropping an egg was irreversible was too cluttered for me. Do you think it is reasonable to consume a lot of energy by cyclicly moving a large sealed robust container of water (a large thermal mass) back and forth between a stove and a freezer both requiring electric power? You aren't making any permanent changes as you alternately melt and freeze the water. The container and its water aren't becoming less orderly as the exercise continues. The unreasonableness of this waste is a challenge to the second law of thermodynamics. It is more symmetrically elegant for freezers to release energy as they cool any initially warmer thermal mass put inside them. Please consider a thought experiment that may work because it avoids the failing parts of (1)Maxwell's demon thought experiment which fails because the demon needs strong light and (2)Feynman's paddlewheel, pawl, and ratchet wheel thought device which Feynman clamed would fail to rectify random thermal mechanical motion. He accepted that even small paddlewheels will move in response to the thermal random motion of fluid they are immersed in. The purpose of the thought experiment below is to create self powered thermal diversification. This would refute the second law of thermodynamics. The thought experiment is impractical but easy to visualize and check for mechanical workability. Sketch made with keyboard characters: COLD ROOM())--::WALL::-->>HOT ROOM >~1000 NM< Key ()) = Paddlewheel. -- = Axle. (Continuous from end to end) ::: = Axle tunnel going through a wall. >> = Lumped friction element Please visualize two roome full of air separated by a very thin wall that allows the rooms to hold their heat independently with minor leakage through the wall. The wall is thin to delicately support billions of separate nanometer scale short axles running straight through loosely enough to rotate freely but not leak very much heat so the rooms can hold separate temperatures. On the left side, a very small paddlewheel is mounted at the left end of each axle. On the right side, lumped friction elements are mounted stationary in place on the wall, one for each axle, for the right end of each axle to run through. The lumped friction elements connvert the mechanical rotation of their axle into heat. Brownian motion (a nanometer scale effect) turns the paddlewheels at random speeds randomly clockwise or counterclockwise. This random rotation is turned into heat by the lumped friction elements. The lumped friction elements do not impart Brownian motion to their axle. The committed functional roles of the paddlewheels, axles, and lumped friction elements in differnt places should systemically produce a divergence in the thermal energy in the two rooms without adding external energy. Water in a sealed container could be endlessly cycled without cost between melting from the heat of the lumped friction elements' side and freezing from the cold of the paddlewheels' side. l was granted US patent 3890161 DIODE ARRAY, for a refrigerator that absorbs thermal energy in an insulated compartment and releases a corresponding amount of electrical energy using the intermediary of rectified Johnson noise (the Brownian motion of electrons) aggregated by a multitude of consistantly aligned diodes. [Not exactly the abstract] It has been open for anyone to develop since 1992. I had a report of a working very low power prototype I commissioned in ~ 1980 but naively lost. It was made from a chip containing ~1400 gold pillars abutting N type GaAs. A VA Charlottesville department made it. They specialized in THz diodes. They could not align very small diodes well enough in 1980 to make ~1 um dia diodes individually so they made them in patches. I found a lab that put conductive paste on the face of one patch chip to bring all the diodes in parallel and test it in an oil bath in a sealed test chamber. They went out of business but I thought they should keep the prototype for a while because they had the test chamber. I lost contact with them and never received the prototype. U VA refused to sell me any more patch chips and stopped making them. I am not interested in any more patents. The diode array patent gives me enough of a reputation. The exclusionary power of patents breaks up synergistic benefits to civilization. Wide exposure to the public (as needed for wide scientific and spiritual discourse) renders invention concepts unpatentable. Applications of thermarys may be too obvious to patent. The thermary has been discribed too openly to patent. To have this refrigeration / electricity pair benefit civilization at large, I must give it away free, unconditionally, widely and in clear though perhaps specialized language. I am inviting people throughout the world to coalese into teams and expediently research and develop proof-of-concept and initial-recipe-establishing prototypes. Reliable nanofabrication requires the smooth and well practiced operation of expensive delicate equiment which is best done by a team. The development teams need to keep a lot of people informed of their progress and setbacks along the way for accurate mass understanding. Cultural pressure should be ready to keep early developers from using early positioning to exclude other developers. I think thermarys should be manufactured in AI operated human managed cooperative conglomerates (cooperative both internally and externally). Business details would be open public knowledge. Associated people should freely talk and move as negotiated among those whom it may concern. semicustom products would be sold at honest accounting commodity prices. No wealth draining top commanders are needed. It may be partly capitalized by factoring and they may have parts of the conglomerate somewhat dedicated to production of their preferred products. Financialization may be highly off culture but tolerated in niches. The conglomerate may operate with wide participation for the betterment of civilization. A heat to electricity type of breakeven perpetual motion machine under a regime of planetary air, water, or ground ambient heat would coproduce cooling and equal electrical power. The pair is available everywhere all the time though performance would be greatest during tropical days and least during polar nights. Most uses of electricity release equal heat so this is extremely sustainable. It would be scalable from microtiles to gigawatts. lt can be stand alone or pooled. Chemicals wòuld be kept at special temperatures cheaply and reliably. Reducing Bauxite to Aluminum, Rutile to Titanium, or magnetite to iron would have a net cooling effect. Decomposing CO2 also produces cooling. Gigawatts of energy or gigatons of material changes in sensitive places can modify the environment. Costs are unknown now but should drop with experience and succession in the production foundries and supply webs. Cell phones wouldn't die or need power cords or batteries They would cool when transmiting radio signal power. Frozen food storage would be reliable and free or value positive. Vehicles wouldn't need fuel or fueling stops. Elevators would be very reliable with independent power. Nomads could raise their material supports out of the box pay as you grow. Indoor gardens could be well supported cheaply. Factories and warehouses could be inside mountains. Costs are unknown now but should drop with experience and succession in the production foundries and supply webs. Thermary arrays would not be unreservedly good. Some foresight of the consequences is needed. For a gentle example, endlessly powered boomboxes would be so portable and easy to operate that very young children could carry them around and make a lot of disturbing sound. This could provide teaching moments where children learn to consider more effects of their actions. Music talent may emerge too. Abundant autonomous,clean, nonmaterial, always available (especially when warm) energy would help everyone - but the wealthy marginally less. This may shift the present austerity oppressed lower classes into a middle class of people equally under God that contribute cultivated deep inner talents synergistic to everyone else's talents also synergistic to a valuable drudgery accepting AI network. With free electricity / refrigeration (breakeven perpetual motion)there is abundance, progress, and leasure. Aloha Charles M Brown lll Kilauea, Kauai, HI 96754

[@space.youtube]

I have to admit, I sort of lost interest after Albert's "carbs" take. He sounds well informed about many things, the "Diet Heart Hypothesis" and it's history is not one of those things. That the interviewer cited "The China Study" immediately after made me chuckle.

[@bill8985]

Get out of the labor trap? Easy for a VC to make the leap.

[@P4DDYW4CK]

When he said there was no price mechanism for asteroid hunting, I immediately thought of asteroid mining. Imagine the U.S. spending billions of dollars on robotics and astrophysics predicated on the very rational idea of tracking the trajectories of potentially hazardous asteroids, landing nuclear-powered robotics on them, and changing their trajectories. You could also mine precious metals and minerals from them and sell those resources (obviously at a subsidized price) to companies on Earth in order to pay for part of the program.

[@rabokarabekian409]

His choosing as an example of asteroid tracking is unfortunate. The scientific world is multiple decades deep into this area of study. The spate of asteroid "scifi" horror videos was prompted by the confirmation that it is not uncommon for there to be extremely accurately predicted near-Earth asteroid paths. Specifically targeted asteroids beyond Mars have had direct contact research conducted, including a recent NASA explosive acceleration experiment. A better example might have been GMO foods.

[@caitape20022]

Let's play the Guitar !!!

[@cragkeeper]

No one likes change. Look how the masses reacted to Christ's radical views. As humans , we are drawn to systems that are effective for survival. Even at the cost of extinction as a species.

[@stevenkabai1971]

By reading the comments below shows how much "naivite" is out there. Most of the commentators assume that the current sytem is the most effedtive and the most rationally constructe one for the benevolance of a humansistic society. It's a Darwinian, dog eats dog , world out there designed to serve the corporate the sector. We're driving toward the environmental precipes and all you can hear is the bottom line for the next quorter. Should we call that "animal insticts" or " homo stupidus".

[@rudyrissone4298]

What happened to Drug Money ? They make Billions.

[@estitt1973]

I must take issue with the comment at @20:45, doesn’t Nike still use what basically amounts to slave labor to produce their shoes?

[@paperheartzz]

Yeah. He’s saying things that are “true” but not universal - agriculture’s shrinking has made any individual farm extremely vulnerable, and so they spend more time lobbying to strengthen their importance. Slave labour is bigger than the individuals who want to play guitar, and (politically) smaller than corporations/countries that are responsible for greater purpose. He’s just making a common mistake, ignoring a certain group to make the argument flow.

[@indonesiamenggugat8795]

❤❤

[@wolfsden3]

Vote Libertarian 💯 noobs 🔥🔥🔥

[@kathryntate6809]

Networking worker cooperatives, where you have democracy in the work place--one member, one vote--could bring us out of this. We keep saying we want to save democracy, but we don't have a working democracy; we have a republic. Worker cooperatives would, by their nature, organically force a democratic government.

[@mexoburm5066]

thanks for Capital 😍

[@augurcybernaut4785]

Bill Gates lite here is no solver

[@robbiep742]

I have a strong feeling that the decline of capitalism as a result of demographic decline, AI & automation exploitation, and the end of globalization is going to be a rocky road. The nation-state institution that we all enjoy is based entirely on either subjugation (China, Myanmar, Russia) or trade (US, Singapore, EU), otherwise it's a failing state in which the population suffers low quality of life (most of Central Africa, Central America). As the decline of low skill labor continues, huge swaths of the population will be left behind. The early 20th century was horrific and resulted from a volatile blend of imperialist dreams and broken economies, and we see shadows of that reality even today. The capitalists won't go down without a fight, and I doubt UBI could actually work at scale. In short, as we find less people with satisfactory quality of life, the darker side of human nature will flare up again.

[@arash8761]

EU and US are based on subjugation of other countries. Russia and China have problems but the US and EU are totally fascist entities.

[@prism8289]

And then the Enterprise flew in and saved everyone. Apparently human nature doesn’t exist in this guys world. I got to 30’minutes, and by then he had literally said nothing.

[@gregorysagegreene]

I got to a third of it, and my post - essentially agreeing with you - is five paragraphs!

[@nicholaskostopulos8631]

This guy critiques “incrementalism” yet he can’t criticize the capitalist system in which there’s a small number of owners and the vast majority have no control or economic agency. His answer is to improve software?? Geez. Expected response from a technologist / capitalist, aka a VC ! He is the technologist in Don’t Look Up! Omg.. the ultimate elitist .. sorry but really, he speaks like a priest. … he’s not ready to give up power; he wants to consolidate it into better software .. the public spirited monopolist

[@Rnankn]

To be fair, he’s proposing a radical change away from capital-centred to creation-centred. It is an entirely new logic of social existence. You’re right, it is unclear why those who control wealth and resources would endorse this, and how they could ultimately co-exist together. Yet, I think it is smart, because we need a material basis of existence, so rejecting capital entirely would be like rejecting agriculture entirely. It sure would be worth trying, because there are about a million other things I wish I was doing other than worrying about the f*cking economy yet again.

[@anthonyparella2005]

He is a Capitalist who focus on the tech sector.

[@anthonyparella2005]

He is really not saying much of anything.

[@psusac]

One question - this model assumes people are at least of average intelligence. What do you do with the billions of stupid people in the world?

[@The.world.has.gone.crazy...]

I dont no what they will do with them, but im sure you will find out.

[@rabokarabekian409]

You give people the story narratives referred to in this video. One thing that most people are acceptable adept at is recounting stories. Consider how even young children hunger for stories. Consider the powerful lessons of tales such as Cinderella, the three little pigs, or Alice in Wonderland. Nearly all humans have now been raised through professionally produced stories, and these strongly influence the feelings we then rationalize.

[@psusac]

@@The.world.has.gone.crazy... Do you mean "I don't know what they will do...?"

[@jiriskala25]

this is how capitalism imagines the future. not a word about political participation and parties; most vague references to anonymous politicians. utopia one of many elitists who live off a certain type of investment and only want to accelerate it into greater profit; while thinking that it will lead to the good of all.

[@georgeflitzer7160]

For Women? They need to delete any period trackers in America today. Bc of the Roe vs Wade decision!

[@seannelson3006]

Communism type of ideology

[@baddudecornpop5226]

Why is he talking about fkn space when a half million people are living on the street? What a joke!

[@kevinshoaff7457]

Cause he’s in a very privileged bubble. Too distanced from street. Beware of population reduction policies from these groups. They need us now…

[@mouwersor]

imagine if we stopped any progress until we were all equal to the lowliest creature.

[@imperator_odin]

He sounds like Stalin

[@imperator_odin]

He sounds like Hitler