This comment is spot-on. We've traded actual productivity for the appearance of productivity as thrift. Yes that's primarily due to capitalism, specifically ne

This comment is spot-on. We've traded actual productivity for the appearance of productivity as thrift. Yes that's primarily due to capitalism, specifically neoliberalism, crony capitalism and late-stage capitalism. Unfortunately socialism isn't enough to save us, because even democratic socialism demands full employment, which is increasingly at odds with automation and UBI. I don't believe that we have come up with a system yet that incentivizes the kind of one-off revolutionary invention that most of us got into programming for in the first place. The kind of economy where a single invention frees millions of people from forced labor. Sergey and Larry come up with PageRank and suddenly everyone wants their search engine and they're set for life. Google wins the internet lottery and keeps all of the trillions of dollars. What about the rest of us? We invent something and our business fails due to long-tail effects and we die broke. 90% of businesses fail in their first year. So it's becoming increasingly competitive as tech improves - the ultimate tragic result. Which self-evidently trends toward a crisis of techno-capitalism in the future: The Singularity. Probably the last failure in human history. We're looking at a situation by the end of the decade where one guy generates an entire movie from notes scribbled on a napkin with some future variation of DALL-E 2 and makes a million dollars. Meanwhile another guy who doesn't have the right connections spends his life working in the service industry as a wage slave. Meaning that the most likely indicator of someone's success is a coin flip as we enter this era of neo-fuedalism. Meaning that civil unrest and violence are all but inevitable now (just turn on the TV to see it everywhere). Now, I think a lot of people on HN and the world at large have not tried working for themselves, so have no idea how hard money is to come by. Sure, we can make a quarter million dollars every year working 40+ hour weeks at a FAANG company. But make that from a personal project? Highly unlikely. Writing this now, I have given up on a solution to this coming from the top. People close to me, even the majority of people on HN, don't seem to get it. They'll never get it. Something in the idea of UBI irks them deep down inside, just like with student loan forgiveness. So it's over. On a personal level, I'm looking towards solarpunk and local cooperatives that create resource streams for people outside of the financial incentive. I think it's possible to invent robot kits that provide things like hydroponic produce for very low cost. Once people have their basic needs met, it liberates them from having to beg for grants or even a job. Which is why the entire status quo is geared against this. Rents and basic expenses will squeeze us even harder before the end. Expect crushing regulations against off-grid living, just like how rain barrels have been criminalized in the southwestern US.