Yeah, but capitalists have all the guns. Not directly, but the hired guns (police, military), work for the capitalists.
In fact, if you watch The Rules for Rulers, there’s the possibility of turning the entire world into a 3rd world corrupted structure: a few people at the top enjoying the riches of full automation, a few more people with guns to protect them from the unwashed masses, and everyone else.
If democracy really comes from the fact that we need everyone’s labour to make a country, we may actually lose it as automation makes most of us economically irrelevant. We need an alternative before the window closes. If we’re lucky it won’t ever close, but to be honest I won’t bet on it.
The tipping point is when some „unwashed masses“ decide to go to a billionaire mansion and explain them (forcefully) that they aren’t billionaires any longer, and neither the security staff nor the called police will step in, since they are part of the masses (family ties, defunding, …). Why should they do cruel work for a salary if they can take their part of the wealth directly?
That’s possible as long as the police aren’t robot, and the mansion isn’t orbiting in space. Now Elysium doesn’t have to happen (and good luck with the giant space station) but a sufficiently walled garden guarded by sufficiently automated defences supplied by a sufficiently automated workforce could in fact repel anyone else trying to get in with nothing more than small arms.
Though I reckon an organised unwashed mass could most likely do something.
I see the reasoning but in practice it’s just sci-fi I believe. Even if you have the _perfect_ walled garden… there you are with your wealth. What will you do with it if everyone else refuses to deal with you? What are shares of corporations worth if no one cares that you own something? Why would the military listen to you, when they could obliterate your escape room and take over your wealth directly?
All this stuff you mention relies on the the „fact“ that capitalism and guaranteed private property rights are absolute truths - when in fact they aren’t, actually more like a temporal fashion wave in some parts of the world, and faith in this destructive obsession in „the economy“ is on the decline finally. :-)
In fact, if you watch The Rules for Rulers, there’s the possibility of turning the entire world into a 3rd world corrupted structure: a few people at the top enjoying the riches of full automation, a few more people with guns to protect them from the unwashed masses, and everyone else.
If democracy really comes from the fact that we need everyone’s labour to make a country, we may actually lose it as automation makes most of us economically irrelevant. We need an alternative before the window closes. If we’re lucky it won’t ever close, but to be honest I won’t bet on it.