Ask HN: Will capitalism survive the robot revolution? - chamoda
======
jacknews
I think people often confuse capitalism, and competitive free markets.

The later certainly have their place, driving efficiency and innovation, even
if it's only between the robots, although they do require regulation and even
intervention to keep them dynamic.

The former (individual ownership of the means of production, be it machinery,
IP or branding, and therefore the profits generated by other people's labor)
is already an anachronism IMHO. Only a single step up from feudalism, except
instead of strict heredity etc, in theory anyone with the resources can do the
equivalent of build a castle, raise an army, and own serfs.

It's demise wouldn't need to wait for the arrival of robots, in a fairer
world.

~~~
desdiv
What would be a good alternative to capitalism? Employee-owned corporations?
Worker cooperatives?

~~~
pdkl95
While those can work well in some situations, I think one of the key problems
is thinking in terms of whole ideologies. Capitalism has some good features
and it's a great system _if and only if_ its prerequisites are met. The same
it true for every other system.

Use capitalism (or variant) if a proper market exists. When a natural monopoly
contraindicates market-dependent methods, use a cooperative or publicly
managed service or whatever is more appropriate _for that specific situation_.
A pragmatic approach should use all of the available tools. Pretending that
one ideology is "better" without first considering the local context is the
political equivalent of seeing every problem as a nail because you only use
hammers.

Replacing capitalism with another system that has a different set of problems
isn't the solution. The core problem starts with the consolidation of power
and resources, amplified by the unbounded risk created by rapidly increasing
complexity. In software we (try to) manage complexity with various types of
modularity. Separating the problem into manageable pieces limits risk and
prevents some forms of common mode failure.

Thus, a good "alternative to capitalism" is probably capitalism with a strict
upper limit to the size of business and other organizations. if your business
grows to more than N employees, it must be divided into pieces smaller than N.

~~~
wnkrshm
That is a very interesting idea - a kind of meta-ideological legislature for
the management of markets. I wonder how such a system could be balanced
properly, I can imagine it's difficult to do with little quantitative data on
the alternatives (but a huge dataset for our current system).

A pitfall could be the legislation itself: How do you fight lobbying at the
fringes of each system - although maybe it's not too bad that it exists, since
there is a ceiling for how much a lobby can profit before it is basically
disbanded.

------
chmike
I believe that capitalism is doomed. The sooner the better for humanity
because capitalism is more dangerous than communism.

The best way to expose the problem of capitalism is with this joke "Give a man
a fish, and he will eat for one day. Learn him to fish, and you destroy a
market." Capitalism is also leading people to harm (health) and exploit other
people.

Communism was clearly a false good idea. Liberalism and capitalism (with
competition) clearly provide a motivationnal power for which owe most of the
health, technical and scientifical progress.

However, it also come with its perversion like the war, junk food and
entertainment business and human exploitation as producer or consumer.

Humanity is going through a continuous evolution process and capitalism is one
stage of it. New models will emerge fixing the problems of previous models and
preserving their good properties.

It's a long time that I think about this and try to find what could be the
next evolution step.

My conclusion is that the working model used in science and more recently with
open source could be a good candidate because it provides exponential growth
which beats capitalism. Some kind of high level control will be needed so that
humanity doesn't shoot itself in the foot as would happen soon or later with
pure liberalism and capitalism. It already exist today but it is currently
frequently corrupted by greeediness of capitalists.

The robot revolution will not suppress all human work. So I don't think that
it might affect capitalism that much. I believe that it would make trade
business more prevalent.

~~~
forumuid
The capitalism pursuiting money by human labor may be doomed. The Capitalism,
which pursues knowledge or a higher level of human nature, may survive or
flourish,imagine that all people do not seek money but higher levels of
knowledge. Human labor is transformed from a passive machine to a knowledge
doctoral worker

~~~
atmosx
Let's make sure we understand the difference between a community where
scarcity is inexistent[1] with Communism. Under a Communist regime your
choices are _forced_ , thats not a minor detail.

[1]: Like a Star Trek community, where you have an accessible _machine_ that
can create any material you like, from a glass of wine to a macbook pro.

------
abecedarius
Suppose we get to robots doing almost all the productive work, with humans
living on basic income. Would markets still direct the work? I think so.
[http://e-drexler.com/d/09/00/AgoricsPapers/agoricpapers.html](http://e-drexler.com/d/09/00/AgoricsPapers/agoricpapers.html)
explores the idea of an economy of programs that needs to face the economic
calculation problem just as much as an economy of people does. It's relatively
little-known early work in the lineage of smart contracts and Bittorrent.

Perhaps your best bet to survive the robot apocalypse is to accumulate some
savings so that you're one of the capitalists by the time competitive wages
fall below the human subsistence level. Robin Hanson discusses this in
[http://ageofem.com/](http://ageofem.com/)

~~~
Kbelicius
You are mixing capitalism with markets.

~~~
abecedarius
I'd say there are different opinions about the meaning of the word
'capitalism', and I'm choosing to focus on one that affords an interesting
answer to the question. It's compatible with anything from a socialism-for-
humans (if we can somehow get to more rational politics) to anarchocapitalism
to Yudkowsky's singleton superintelligence ruling the world; that question
seems much more uncertain.

------
haser_au
Very good question.

If we presume the cost of good drops to near zero if robots are creating
everything, and maintaining themselves, then there will be a race to the
bottom for cost. For example, if a T-shirt costs US$0.001 to make (including
raw materials), then anything above that is pure profit for the seller.
Suddenly people need less money to buy things that were very expensive.

I think you need to look at the portion of cost that is associated with labour
and defects, and assume this will be the cost of the good until raw materials
are reduced in cost as well.

Personally, no. I don't think capitalism in it current form can survive robot
revolution.

~~~
visarga
You mention things falling down in price. That surely will happen to a degree
(there are still costs associated with raw materials and energy, even in
automation). But on the other hand, when most of the population will be
jobless, who will have money to buy expensive iPhones and cars? What will
happen to advertising when they advertise to moneyless people? This is a real
danger to economy.

It is unfair to sell products to humans while not hiring humans and not
contributing to BHI. It's a one way transaction where money accumulate to the
capitalists while the population is depleted. Money should circulate, like
water in nature. It should not be captured in some lake (offshore account)
from where it goes no further.

Companies are ahead of a big choice: they need to take a loss (accepting to
support BHI for population) in order to keep their economic cycle running,
otherwise they will all suffer a huge drop in sales. But can they prioritize
long term necessities over short term profits?

~~~
Nevermark
Unfortunately, capital/corporations don't need humans to have an economy.
Let's say 1% of the population owns the capital. Then all capital (resources,
automation, etc) can be used to serve the 1%. As their wealth grows, and their
capital capabilities grow, so may their demand for thing such as space craft
or other ridiculously expensive things.

The result would be an economy with fewer and fewer people, and yet the
economy is "healthy" in that both production and consumption continue to grow.

Now add in machines capable of a survival imperative, competing with each
other to open up new resources to enhance their long term survival. Now an
economy grows without any people.

This is the default we are heading toward.

I don't know what the best answer is for humans, except to view all humans as
retirees, and give future machines the benefit of retiring in the future too,
so that both humans and machines are aligned in the desire to subsidize
themselves eventually as they become obsolete.

------
adventured
There isn't going to be a robot revolution.

There's going to be a gradual, century long process of integration between
humans and robotics, which will radically improve productivity while
population growth turns steeply negative across most of the planet and for the
better.

What will happen to all the truckers (standard example)? We'll stop making
more of them, just as we did with farmers and radio DJs and newspaper delivery
boys and phone network operators and gas pumpers; existing drivers will
gradually be phased out. If I ask you what you think I mean, when I say:
"robot helpers" \- what would you answer? Robots that help people, right? No.
There are going to be millions of people working as robot helpers in the next
~30 years just in the US - humans will help the robots work better; the robots
will be far more productive at what they do than humans at the exact same
tasks, but most of those robots will not be able to function fully
autonomously in the next century (in fact, economically it'll never be
desirable to build fully autonomous robots for all tasks, quite the opposite;
as such, there's no scenario where millions of human robot helpers won't be
necessary). The dramatic gain in productivity the robots will bring to said
tasks, will more than offset the cost of continuing to have humans that act as
robot assistants.

Absolutely nothing will be fundamentally altered in regards to market
economies, when it comes to the rise of robotics / AI etc. The premise about
mass unemployment is a fear based fraud and will be proven so only as the
years drift by and the mass unemployment never materialize. Unfortunately, in
the meantime, the fear angle will continue to draw clicks.

~~~
Nevermark
When my company can accomplish everything it needs to more cheaply without
human labor, using automation for both physical and informational and even
creative work, there will be a fundamental change in the economy from the
perspective of humans.

I assume you realize that lost of things have gone obsolete. We are talking
about humans becoming obsolete. How can that not radically impact humans?

Your argument comes down to saying, the past didn't have this problem,
therefore the future won't. But that is not a good argument.

------
paulbaumgart
My bet is that we'll just transition to an economy where the vast majority of
jobs are service jobs.

(There will be bumps on the road, and, as technologists with increasing
economic power, we should vote for politicians who support smoothing out those
bumps.)

~~~
SwedishChemist
I like the concept of a universal basic income. AI could also handle service
jobs. I picture myself having more time to travel, continue learning the
things I'm interested in, and sailing. I can keep myself quite busy without
the need to work for merely a pittance.

~~~
paulbaumgart
I agree that it's a good idea to start phasing it in, whether or not we still
end up having jobs. A basic income would transition society to a more status-
driven instead of survival-driven economy. And that sort of society would
hopefully offer a lot more opportunities for finding meaning in life to people
who are currently lacking them.

------
rvern
Yes, it will:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy).

"There is no limit to the amount of work to be done as long as any human need
or wish that work could fill remains unsatisfied. In a modern exchange
economy, the most work will be done when prices, costs, and wages are in the
best relations to each other." (Hazlitt, _Economics in One Lesson_ )

~~~
saintgimp
The "lump of labor fallacy" isn't really relevant here because we're not
talking about _work_ going away. We're talking about the usefulness of human
labor as a means of production going away. No, not entirely, but enough that
our economic system as it currently exists will fail and we'll need a new one
of some sort.

You know the old illustration about the buggy-whip makers complaining that
automobiles were destroying their jobs and putting them out of work, and how
could anyone possibly survive that? Then, oh look, there were tons of new jobs
created in automobile factories and everyone was better off than before.

Well, in that story, we're not the buggy-whip makers any more; we're the
horses. Horses didn't move on to better and more productive forms of
transportation employment. They simply became useless except in a few
remaining highly-specialized working roles, or as pets. Or glue.

------
dlss
Capitalism is the most fair (symmetric) solution to the class of multiplayer
games in which the participants have asymmetric access to many kinds of scarce
goods. [okay, that's somewhat speculation, but I expect it's right.]

Since scarcity ceasing sounds improbable, and I expect people will continue
preferring fair systems to unfair ones, I expect capitalism will survive.

~~~
wz1000
How can capitalism be fair if the initial distribution of scarce resources are
widely recognized to be unfair?

The current distribution of resources and capital have arisen as a result of
hundreds of years of human history and unfair practices, from feudalism to
slavery, colonialism to imperialism, racism and casteism to sexism.

~~~
thomasfoster96
I think that the intended meaning of the comment was that _given_ an unfair
initial distribution of scarce resources, capitalism has the most fair outcome
(I would disagree to some extent).

You may argue that capitalism has increased the ‘unfairness’ of the
distribution of resources, but capitalism can’t be solely blamed for the
various geographical, religious and other reasons for the ‘unfair’/unequal
distribution of resources.

~~~
wz1000
> given an unfair initial distribution of scarce resources, capitalism has the
> most fair outcome

Doesn't that go against the fundamental principle of capital accumulation?
Those with the most capital are the ones who earn the most profit.

~~~
dlss
You earn profit in a capitalist system by providing more utility to your
consumers than you cost them. So no.

"[Capitalism] is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." \- John Updike

~~~
nicky0
I thought capitalism was where rich people owned things (land, buildings) and
charged poor people to use them.

~~~
dlss
Right. The funny part is that for rich people to maximize their profit from
poor people, they have to make their (land, buildings, websites, products,
services) as awesome as possible. Think Disneyland, Google search, Apple
hardware and software, etc. Hence Capitalism being a conspiracy to make poor
people as happy as possible, short of switching places.

~~~
wz1000
The part you miss is that products, land, buildings and services mostly aren't
targeted towards people in general. They are targeted towards the section of
the population who will result in the most profit for the capitalism. Out of
the examples you give, Disneyland and Apple hardware has its target
demographic as the top quartile of the population. The people who spend all
their money on basic necessities such as rent, food, water, heat can't ever
access these "awesome" services. Homeless and people are criminalized by
society and ejected from businesses and neighborhoods.

The conspiracy is to extract excess capital from people, not make them happy.
If someone has no or little excess capital, the capitalist doesn't want
anything to do with him.

Moreover, speculation leads to capitalists hoarding productive and useful
resources such as grain, land, water for their own benefit, and often to the
detriment of society. A particularly chilling example of this would be the
1974 Bangladesh famine, when food production in Bangladesh was at a local
peak, yet speculative hoarding of grain drove 1-1.5 million people to
starvation. This region is not a stranger to famine, exacerbated by
speculative hoarding. In 1943, due to a combination of Churchill's policies
and hoarding, an estimated 4 million people starved to death.

~~~
dlss
1\. Economics, unlike the other social sciences, is built off of mathematical
assumptions about behavior. Computers are built similarly off of the math that
is Von Neumann's modification to Turing machines, so I'll use them as a
metaphor: if Windows 95 crashes, it's probably not a problem with the Von
Neumann or Turing's work.

This is to say that if you believe the 1974 famine in Bangladesh (which I also
discuss below) is indeed a counter example to the optimality of markets for
allocating scarce resources without violating natural law, I encourage you to
examine the foundational assumptions and theorems in Economics to locate where
the error is. That would be big news to a lot of people!

2\. In response to: _" Disneyland and Apple hardware has its target
demographic as the top quartile of the population. The people who spend all
their money on basic necessities such as rent, food, water, heat can't ever
access these "awesome" services."_

The result of capitalism is not that everyone gets the same outcome. The
result is that everyone has a _better_ outcome than they would have with a
system other than capitalism. This is why I above mention that if we could
modify the laws of physics, we could do better than capitalism. Put another
way: you and I do not have private jets. But we also wouldn't in any other
system, at least on average. That's not a fault with axioms of capitalism,
that'a a fault with the laws of physics (if only metal and rocket fuel were
plentiful enough!... :p)

3\. In response to your examples I generally encourage you to google the
benefits of allowing others to speculate ("speculation economic benefits" in
google looks good to a first glance). The gist of it is that speculators add
liquidity to a market by moving risk to themselves (who demonstrably are
happier to hold the risk than the other market participants). My understanding
is that most speculation ends in financial loss.

Re: _" A particularly chilling example of this would be the 1974 Bangladesh
famine, when food production in Bangladesh was at a local peak, yet
speculative hoarding of grain drove 1-1.5 million people to starvation."_

I'm not so familiar with this example, however looking at Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_famine_of_1974](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_famine_of_1974))
there seems to have been a major flood following a war in Bangladesh at this
time. These seem to be pretty large confounding factors, but let's assume they
are not and play a little game:

\--> Imagine you're in Bangladesh in 1974, and you are in possession of food
enough to feed 100 people for 1 month. How do you decide what to do with this
food? Remember that you do not know in advance when the food shortage will
recover, and that if you don't save enough, you'll have to buy it at even
higher prices or starve. Also, if you give all the food away, another famine
may come along in the future, and you will have no capital left over to save
those people.

(For a reasonable ethical framework you can use to build an answer, consider
reading the material provided for free at
[https://80000hours.org](https://80000hours.org))

Re: _" In 1943, due to a combination of Churchill's policies and hoarding, an
estimated 4 million people starved to death."_

I've often wondered by people use famines which happen in freer markets as
examples, while ignoring the tremendous numbers of famines and shortages that
happen through government intervention. Thank you for listing one.

4\. For an example of what happens when scarcity occurs and speculators /
hoarders aren't allowed to operate, consider the current situation in
Venezuela
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_in_Venezuela](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_in_Venezuela)
. You can also find the a tremendous number of (Godwin's law skirting)
examples from Russia and China (countries which acted similarly to Venezuela).
You can find good economic analyses of all of these btw, if you are curious
about how they were caused on a mathematical/game-theoretic level, and how to
minimize the chance of such shortages happening in the future.

~~~
wz1000
Analysis of the famines in Bangladesh and the role of speculation in them has
been done by Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen, and the examples I've
given are taken from his work Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and
Deprivation(1982).

Regarding economics as a science, it is widely accepted by economists that it
is not a precise science, and has no inviolable axioms like math, or anywhere
approaching the experimental accuracy of physics. It is a messy, complicated
thing because humans are messy and complicated. In particular, it is well
established through the works of people like Kahneman than people are not
rational actors.

In addition, you seem to be resorting to a false dichotomy between capitalism
as it exists today vs command economies. You don't have to choose one or the
other. Markets are certainly an important and useful way of distributing
resources, but they are dominated and controlled by a small, powerful,
capitalist class, who are also able to abuse regulatory institutions for their
own benefit. The problem is that this class appropriates wealth created by
society at large. They have the power to set up rules and conditions in their
own favor.

Any "just" and "fair" system could only begin by returning this wealth back to
society.

~~~
dlss
> Analysis of the famines in Bangladesh and the role of speculation in them
> has been done by Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen

Then, assuming he agrees with your above summary, I encourage both you and
Amartya to locate the foundational assumption. It really would be big news to
a lot of people.

> Regarding economics as a science, it is widely accepted by economists that
> it is not a precise science, and has no inviolable axioms like math

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_economics)
would be a good starting point if you are wondering at economic axioms, etc.
The Austrian School generally did a good job building models worth thinking
about, rather than devolving into econometric-style silliness.

> Any "just" and "fair" system could only begin by returning this wealth back
> to society.

A lot of us disagree.

~~~
wz1000
>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_economics)

Like I said, mathematical models of economics are a simplification, and this
fact is widely accepted by most economists. This is not by any means a
dismissal, as it provides valuable insight into the behavior of human society,
but viewing it as the beginning and end of economics will place massive
limitations on any analysis.

In particular, as I mentioned, the study of sociological conditions and human
psychology provide valuable insights. Take a look at behavioral economics and
the work of people like Daniel Kahneman.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics)

> A lot of us disagree.

It is a simple conclusion that follows from three premises, the first of which
you seemed to accept earlier, the second is self evident, and the third of
which follows from simple economic principles

1\. A lot of the wealth today has been created through illegitimate and unfair
means.

2\. Wealth gives its owner power over society and the direction it takes.

3\. People who have power/wealth will do anything in their abilities to
maintain and further increase it.

~~~
dlss
(Going meta for a second: I'm sorry this took me so long to notice, but I
think this might have become a political discussion. I had believed we were
principally discussing mathematical fairness as it applies to markets, with
maybe some colorful/relaxed examples to keep thing interesting, but that the
examples were all relating back to mathematical fairness. Sorry for being
dense :/)

> This is not by any means a dismissal, as it provides valuable insight into
> the behavior of human society, but viewing it as the beginning and end of
> economics will place massive limitations on any analysis.

My personal interest in economics has roughly nothing to do with understanding
human behavior -- I'm interested in incentive structures/mechanism design,
mathematical fairness, agency, decision theory, optimal play, optimally
exploitative play, cooperation/coordination/defection in partial information
games, etc. This is to say that, for me, economics becomes uninteresting as
soon as you worry if human behavior matches the model. Econs are so much
cooler than humans! It's much more fun to ask what they would do, and what can
be done to improve their outcomes.

>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics)

Yes, I am familiar, especially as it relates to faulty decision making in
professional life (base rate neglect, availability bias, etc). I don't think
he's considered to be part of the field, but I've also found George Polya's
How to Solve it to be related here. He explicitly discusses heuristic search
for math proofs, and how this can amount to a blind spot.

> It is a simple conclusion that follows from three premises

(This was what made me realize what had happened). My disagreement is with
respect to the question of "can a fair game be created within an unfair game,
even in a context where you can't correct historical unfairness?" \-- to that
I say yes (with my earlier caveats about physical limits of fairness in our
world).

Perhaps now that I've explained more about my background and perspective, you
can consider this thread
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13442034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13442034))
again from the perspective of "Will capitalism survive the robot revolution?"
\-- the econs I love will (I hope/expect) finally be a reasonable model of
economic behavior. Therefore I hope capitalism will survive, since that would
ensure I got to live in a good/fair world. If you are aware of some way in
which a capitalist system, when populated by robots/econs, could be improved
with respect to fairness, I'm skeptical but quite interested.

Re: the political question you asked. If there were a way to say for sure if
wealth was unearned I'd absolutely support confiscating it, if not I'm
skittish and afraid of causing more harm than good.

------
andrewclunn
Yes. Capitalism will exist so long as there is scarcity. Humanity has proven
that when technology gives us abundance, we will reproduce until there's
scarcity again. Machines can make things more efficient, but not faster than
humans breed.

~~~
matt4077
Birth rates have taken a massive hit in all advanced economies except for the
US. I think we're well beyond the "expanding until food runs out" stage.

~~~
adventured
Birth rates have taken a massive hit in the US in fact. The only reason the US
population has continued to expand, is courtesy of vast immigration over the
last 40 years.

In 1980, the US was about 80% white demographically. Today it's about 63%
white and falling rapidly. The difference between those two, is tens of
millions of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. The US has absorbed 10 to
12 million immigrants from just Mexico since 1980.

Remove the immigration from Latin America + Asia and US population growth over
the last 30 years in particular falls to barely a trickle; it'd likely be flat
at this point.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The only reason the US population has continued to expand, is courtesy of
> vast immigration over the last 40 years.

Untrue; the US still has a positive rate of natural increase. Immigration is
responsible for a hair more growth than natural increase, but isn't the sole
source of increase.

~~~
Kbelicius
Untrue; US natives have a negative rate while immigrants from poorer countries
have a positive rate. Among immigrants the birth rate dramatically falls with
the second generation. In 2014 the fertility rate was 1.9 which is below
replacement.

~~~
dragonwriter
No, it's absolutely true that the US has a positive natural rate of increase,
and that not all population growth is due to immigration; increase due to
immigration is the increase from people crossing the border.

Naturally increase in the non-native population isn't increase "due to
immigration", either in the terms normally used in population dynamics, or,
really, in any meaningful sense other than the way in which all population
increase in a place where humanity didn't arise is attributable to some past
migration.

~~~
Kbelicius
Wherever I look at general, completed, and total fertility rates are below
replacement rates for US. Do you have any source on this positive natural rate
of increase?

~~~
dragonwriter
Fertility rate below replacement isn't the same as not having positive rate of
natural increase; like you, I find every source on fertility rate has it below
replacement, but every source on natural increase has it positive. [0]

That's entirely consistent; below replacement fertility doesn't imply a
current negative rate of natural increase, though if maintained indefinitely
it implies an eventual negative rate of natural increase. [1]

[0] examples: [https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-
America/topics/Dem...](https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-
America/topics/Demographics/Population/Rate-of-natural-increase)
[http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-
population-...](http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-population-
growth-decline.aspx)
[http://www.susps.org/overview/birthrates.html](http://www.susps.org/overview/birthrates.html)

[1] Assuming the replacement rate is accurate, but current replacement rates
are based on projections into the future based on past mortality trends, and
can be inaccurate in projecting what is needed for replacement for that
reason.

------
deepnotderp
I believe so. But it will be accompanied by an UBI and markets will simply
shift to higher level functions being sold in a capitalistic markets by people
whose basic needs have been taken care of through robots.

------
emmanvazz
This is basically the new Industrial Revolution. It survived the first one
pretty well. It will take the workforce a bit to adopt to it but I think it
will survive.

------
Joeri
New jobs always arise when technology makes old job categories disappear. When
agriculture became mechanized, farm jobs evaporated, but in exchange we got
supermarket cashiers and insurance agents. The same thing will happen now. Job
categories will disappear and others will get created, that we can't imagine
yet. The transition will be rough, but capitalism will survive.

------
walrus1066
Yes, in the same way it survived previous revolutions, which were much more
disruptive than the current one.

The voluntary exchange of goods and services, at prices set by the competing
producers of the goods and services, is the most efficient way of matching
supply and demand, whether the supply is generated by man or machine is
irrelevant.

------
SwedishChemist
I've started a list of government positions that AI could take over. Probably
do a better job. It would save tax payers some money.

~~~
thomasfoster96
And what are these positions that you’ve listed?

------
pdq
Of course.

That's like asking if gravity will still exist in 100 years.

No system has ever been more efficient than free markets, and robots will only
help with efficiency. The only way to kill capitalism is by the state.

~~~
rorykoehler
It could, and has been, argued that the very efficiency that makes capitalism
work so well is the exact reason why it will fail. Once total efficiency is
achieved capitalism will eat itself.

~~~
Nevermark
Total efficiency? Other than a perpetual motion machine, what could that
possibly mean? Infinite energy sources?

I don't think you are saying anything rational.

------
rmanolis
Technology free the markets. Now not even the state will not be able to stop
black market thanks to the technology. Also technology gives more types of
jobs. Before we were only hunters and gatherers , however now with technology
we have more types of jobs. So even if robots do all the manual jobs then all
the people will work on arts and science. My point is that capitalism will
never die because we will never stop wanting unique and expensive things.
However by the time the robots do all the manual work then we will be able go
to space. That means more space for each person to have a farm with robots and
exchange things with other people without the need of the state. Actually the
state can be replaced today by a cryptocurrency that tax each transaction 5%
and let the user to choose with his digital signature where to spent it. We
are close enough to fire all the public workers thanks to the technology and
replaced them with the private sectors and coupons for giving free services.
Technology destroys any type of socialism.

------
rebootthesystem
It has been my experience that those who speak ill of capitalism have never
risked it all to launch and run a business after identifying a need or
dreaming-up a new product or service. Words like "greed" are then flung about
in complete disconnect from reality.

Here capitalism and free markets become evil as they are "watched" from the
outside. Little do they know just how hard it is. Little do they know what
degree of effort, dedication and tolerance for risk it requires.

They look at entrepreneurs and companies and eventually see evil from their
flawed frame of reference while neglecting to notice all they have thanks to
precisely the people they vilify. Nothing funnier than an anti-capitalist
using a computer, and iphone, a car or enjoying the benefits of modern
medicine. Even wearing a pair of socks manufactured through modern means while
criticizing capitalism is nothing less than hypocritical.

Will capitalism survive the robot revolution?

Of course it will.

What will create the robot revolution in the first place? It certainly won't
be people not chasing dreams or taking risks. It will be people willing to put
it all on the line to chase their passions and ideas and, yes, to make a
profit while doing so. Profit is the feedback that says you are doing
something people want. It's the result of a voluntary relationship between
producer and consumer. It's a good thing.

Capitalism doesn't require advanced technology. It has nothing whatsoever to
do with it. Robots, horse-drawn carriages, cookies or light bulbs, it makes no
difference.

