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I am a capitalist libertarian, with anarcho-capitalist sympathies, and I too support the long-term abolition of "work" as we know it. Ending toil is, in princi

I am a capitalist libertarian, with anarcho-capitalist sympathies, and I too support the long-term abolition of "work" as we know it. Ending toil is, in principle, impossible with our current level of societal wealth. We will need major, non-trivial technological innovation in order to truly escape our toil (through capitalism, of course :). Teams of innovators will need to build out AI & robotic infrastructure (among other things) in order to make this happen. I hope that humans will look back on us thousands (if not hundreds) of years into the future and look in horror at how hard we had to toil for our basic necessities. The leftist desire to redistribute wealth (which I think is strongly misplaced and immoral) will become irrelevant once we achieve a certain level of abundance that is unlike anything we are accustomed to today. It will be like wanting to redistribute oxygen or dirt -- two resources so abundant they are essentially free.

chongli 6y ago
We will never have an abundance of land, at least not without colonizing the galaxy. In a post-work society, people who own all the land will effectively own everyone else. How will people afford rent?
- Noos 6y ago
  I don't get this. Go out and drive on a highway sometime. I do, and I'm not in a particularly big state (small New England one.) Yet I pass empty miles and miles of forest, often without a single building in site. Even in normal streets I can go fifteen minutes down my road by car, and the houses thin out to nothing. Unless you restrict the world to maybe what, the 100 most dense megacities, there's insane amounts of empty land out there. We are not that dense. The owning and restricting of land through law in many ways seems to be more a part of capitalistic society than a requirement; people have to own land to make money or not make money.
  - AshWolfy 6y ago
    Maybe there is a reason housing isnt built on that land. Maybe we shouldnt be bulldozing every forest just so we dont have to rethink how we organize society
Bakary 6y ago
>The leftist desire to redistribute wealth (which I think is strongly misplaced and immoral) While not a leftist per se, I've always found this concept of redistribution immorality to be a little strange. Much wealth is already regularly redistributed from value creator to rent-seeker. Laws can be optimized to serve the needs of corporations. Much of wealth creation also depends on the previous work of others in the same environment, whether it's infrastructure or even the work that goes in having a decent place to live where people can afford to be a healthy consuming market. Would your typical software engineer have been as successful in Sierra Leone? The flipside of that concept is to have privatized profits but collectivized negative externalities. That's not to mention entire industries consisting in intelligent and skilled workers spending their lives redistributing wealth from a wealthy person to another (traders, corporate lawyers, etc.) That's why injecting the concept of morality feels misplaced: if the there already is redistribution, then workers taking a share through governmental action is just an actor exercising whatever power they had, where they previously did not and other actors did.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > That's why injecting the concept of morality feels misplaced: if the there already is redistribution, then workers taking a share through governmental action is just an actor exercising whatever power they had, where they previously did not and other actors did. My perspective is that people who allocate capital see this effort as workers becoming rent-seekers. So there are capitalists, and a capitalist rent-seekers; and there are workers, and worker rent-seekers. > if the there already is redistribution, So if people are opposed to the rent-seeking, they might fell that the correct decision is to avoid increasing the amount of rent-seeking. > The flipside of that concept is to have privatized profits but collectivized negative externalities. This exists and is terrible. > That's not to mention entire industries consisting in intelligent and skilled workers spending their lives redistributing wealth from a wealthy person to another (traders, corporate lawyers, etc.) So some of this is actual productive work that allocates capital or resolves disputes, and its not always easy to draw the line between parasitic activity and productive activity in these domains. Even if the line can be drawn in theory its not clear how to regulate it. And the regulatory effort is itself vulnerable to parasitism, rent-seeking, and capture by the object of regulation.
deleted 6y ago
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dsohn0 6y ago
You are totally disconnected from the real world that most people live in. Of course I wouldn't expect anything more from someone who can say "I am a capitalist libertarian, with anarcho-capitalist sympathies" without feeling a sense of shame. Also your Linux desktop project is dope as shit.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
> The leftist desire to redistribute wealth (which I think is strongly misplaced and immoral) will become irrelevant once we achieve a certain level of abundance that is unlike anything we are accustomed to today. What even is wealth if such abundance exists? I think you may misunderstand the left’s goal of redistribution. It isn’t about divvying scarcity equally, it’s about sharing and enabling the bounty you seem to be describing. > It will be like wanting to redistribute oxygen or dirt -- two resources so abundant they are essentially free. But not all oxygen or dirt is equal. Some people experience a greater abundance of safe, clean air and rich, profitable soil. They tend to be the same people who experience a greater abundance generally.
daralthus 6y ago
You can get rid of toil, automate the whole world and the day's needs, but it will be just used as a leverage for power. People don't not only have material needs.
AshWolfy 6y ago
> The leftist desire to redistribute wealth (which I think is strongly misplaced and immoral) will become irrelevant once we achieve a certain level of abundance that is unlike anything we are accustomed to today. It will be like wanting to redistribute oxygen or dirt -- two resources so abundant they are essentially free. This is hopeless naive. There are more houses than there are homeless people, and yet the prices of houses continues to rise. Dirt and oxygen are not hoarded because they are impossible to hoard, anything that can be hoarded will be hoarded.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  Homelessness is largely not a housing supply issue. In my country you can quite easily get government welfare payments for an unlimited time which can realistically cover housing and all essentials. And yet we still have a load of homeless people. The problem is these people don’t need a house, they need a full time caregiver to manage their addictions and mental illnesses. The government and people are somewhat happy to give welfare payments but not cover the expense of giving the level of care these people need.
  - tao_oat 6y ago
    > The problem is these people don’t need a house, they need a full time caregiver to manage their addictions and mental illnesses Housing may only be one part of the picture, but housing-first policies have proven to be the most cost-effective way of solving homelessness: https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/sep/14/lessons-from-finland-helping-homeless-housing-model-homes https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/sep/14/less... and https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housi...
  - AshWolfy 6y ago
    over half of homeless people in america have jobs, sixty to eighty percent dont have an addiction, seventy five percent dont have a serious mental illness and fifty five percent dont have any mental illness at all im sure for some people thats the reason, but it is clearly not all

chongli 6y ago

We will never have an abundance of land, at least not without colonizing the galaxy. In a post-work society, people who own all the land will effectively own everyone else. How will people afford rent?

Noos 6y ago
I don't get this. Go out and drive on a highway sometime. I do, and I'm not in a particularly big state (small New England one.) Yet I pass empty miles and miles of forest, often without a single building in site. Even in normal streets I can go fifteen minutes down my road by car, and the houses thin out to nothing. Unless you restrict the world to maybe what, the 100 most dense megacities, there's insane amounts of empty land out there. We are not that dense. The owning and restricting of land through law in many ways seems to be more a part of capitalistic society than a requirement; people have to own land to make money or not make money.
- AshWolfy 6y ago
  Maybe there is a reason housing isnt built on that land. Maybe we shouldnt be bulldozing every forest just so we dont have to rethink how we organize society

Bakary 6y ago

>The leftist desire to redistribute wealth (which I think is strongly misplaced and immoral) While not a leftist per se, I've always found this concept of redistribution immorality to be a little strange. Much wealth is already regularly redistributed from value creator to rent-seeker. Laws can be optimized to serve the needs of corporations. Much of wealth creation also depends on the previous work of others in the same environment, whether it's infrastructure or even the work that goes in having a decent place to live where people can afford to be a healthy consuming market. Would your typical software engineer have been as successful in Sierra Leone? The flipside of that concept is to have privatized profits but collectivized negative externalities. That's not to mention entire industries consisting in intelligent and skilled workers spending their lives redistributing wealth from a wealthy person to another (traders, corporate lawyers, etc.) That's why injecting the concept of morality feels misplaced: if the there already is redistribution, then workers taking a share through governmental action is just an actor exercising whatever power they had, where they previously did not and other actors did.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> That's why injecting the concept of morality feels misplaced: if the there already is redistribution, then workers taking a share through governmental action is just an actor exercising whatever power they had, where they previously did not and other actors did. My perspective is that people who allocate capital see this effort as workers becoming rent-seekers. So there are capitalists, and a capitalist rent-seekers; and there are workers, and worker rent-seekers. > if the there already is redistribution, So if people are opposed to the rent-seeking, they might fell that the correct decision is to avoid increasing the amount of rent-seeking. > The flipside of that concept is to have privatized profits but collectivized negative externalities. This exists and is terrible. > That's not to mention entire industries consisting in intelligent and skilled workers spending their lives redistributing wealth from a wealthy person to another (traders, corporate lawyers, etc.) So some of this is actual productive work that allocates capital or resolves disputes, and its not always easy to draw the line between parasitic activity and productive activity in these domains. Even if the line can be drawn in theory its not clear how to regulate it. And the regulatory effort is itself vulnerable to parasitism, rent-seeking, and capture by the object of regulation.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dsohn0 6y ago

You are totally disconnected from the real world that most people live in. Of course I wouldn't expect anything more from someone who can say "I am a capitalist libertarian, with anarcho-capitalist sympathies" without feeling a sense of shame. Also your Linux desktop project is dope as shit.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

> The leftist desire to redistribute wealth (which I think is strongly misplaced and immoral) will become irrelevant once we achieve a certain level of abundance that is unlike anything we are accustomed to today. What even is wealth if such abundance exists? I think you may misunderstand the left’s goal of redistribution. It isn’t about divvying scarcity equally, it’s about sharing and enabling the bounty you seem to be describing. > It will be like wanting to redistribute oxygen or dirt -- two resources so abundant they are essentially free. But not all oxygen or dirt is equal. Some people experience a greater abundance of safe, clean air and rich, profitable soil. They tend to be the same people who experience a greater abundance generally.

daralthus 6y ago

You can get rid of toil, automate the whole world and the day's needs, but it will be just used as a leverage for power. People don't not only have material needs.

AshWolfy 6y ago

> The leftist desire to redistribute wealth (which I think is strongly misplaced and immoral) will become irrelevant once we achieve a certain level of abundance that is unlike anything we are accustomed to today. It will be like wanting to redistribute oxygen or dirt -- two resources so abundant they are essentially free. This is hopeless naive. There are more houses than there are homeless people, and yet the prices of houses continues to rise. Dirt and oxygen are not hoarded because they are impossible to hoard, anything that can be hoarded will be hoarded.

PurpleFoxy 6y ago
Homelessness is largely not a housing supply issue. In my country you can quite easily get government welfare payments for an unlimited time which can realistically cover housing and all essentials. And yet we still have a load of homeless people. The problem is these people don’t need a house, they need a full time caregiver to manage their addictions and mental illnesses. The government and people are somewhat happy to give welfare payments but not cover the expense of giving the level of care these people need.
- tao_oat 6y ago
  > The problem is these people don’t need a house, they need a full time caregiver to manage their addictions and mental illnesses Housing may only be one part of the picture, but housing-first policies have proven to be the most cost-effective way of solving homelessness: https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/sep/14/lessons-from-finland-helping-homeless-housing-model-homes https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/sep/14/less... and https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housi...
- AshWolfy 6y ago
  over half of homeless people in america have jobs, sixty to eighty percent dont have an addiction, seventy five percent dont have a serious mental illness and fifty five percent dont have any mental illness at all im sure for some people thats the reason, but it is clearly not all