https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361314 (95 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10369153 (160 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11202172 (165 comments)
Can you please not be intellectually dishonest? I don't agree with his endorsement of socialism but don't pull a Trump and try to twist his words.
What do you think "the machine-owners […] lobby against wealth redistribution" means? Machine owners are obviously the capitalists, who own the means of production. And they do currently lobby against wealth redistribution. It's only natural: they have wealth and power, they intend to keep it.
Linkbait, sure. But I don't see any misrepresentation of Hawkins' words here.
(Edit: Of course, I'm not talking about strong AI here, which is obviously much more dangerous if realised. I'm imagining dumb stuff like the Star Trek replicator.)
I'm more scared about the ideological aspects of anarcho capitalism, which seems to be embedded in the libertarian ideology. Basically it would imagine a society without state or authority, which to me is the return to an uncivilized world.
So the knot here seems to be about basic income (based on Friedman's negative income tax), and how it would be financed. Somehow it seems to boil down to the problems talked about by Marx, which are about the means of production. Except now, the means of production require so little labor, but I still think Marx is relevant here.
I'm sure politically it's currently almost impossible to make companies give money back to non-contributing citizens in a form of taxes, especially in the US. But ultimately, that's where all the money will be, and I don't think special interests will always be able to argue to not give back.
That will be the case ONLY IF absolute power comes in the hands of one or few individuals (or capitalists). Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Hence, in an ideal world, there should be no state authority, but the authority/power should be DECENTRALIZED within a vast number of individuals not a single or few capitalists with vested interest.
I'm a Software Developer and as an implementation of this decentralization, I can think of open source projects. In large open source projects like Linux or Debian or Java, one might imagine that a few elite programmers can control everything like you say. But there is no return to the uncivilized world, because the power to influence the development is decentralized into millions of contributers, testers, security researchers and auditors across the world! As Eric Raymond says in on of his famous writings, "if there are enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". I think this same aphorism applies to the real world too if you replace bugs with general societal problems.
One can support income inequality, while also supporting a safety net for everyone.
Actually, I think a universal income plus free healthcare is desirable. But I also think rewarding people with more income for their achievements is key to sustain progress.
Hawking is probably concerned because the UK is getting a bit too capitalistic, while ignoring that many decisions are suboptimal for most of its inhabitants. For example, the healthcare system is struggling to cope with more patients and an ever decreasing budget. A subpar transport network makes shipping and commuting inefficient and very contaminant. An artificial limit on housing pushes prices up and extracts rent from the majority to hand it in to the ruling class.
But the argument here makes not sense.
If "machines produce everything we need" then, by definition, there is not human labour. Without labour, it doesn't makes sense call it capitalism. I don't know what it would be.
Besides, those countries don't dominate the world and impose their ways on the rest of the world. Capitalists countries like the USA, Russia, and China do.