This has been cooking for a while, like since the alarms started getting sounded about an AI bubble; but I had a dream recently where the AI bubble popped, and we were all happy, and the industry really did bottom out, but then peter goddamned thiel ends up basically owning the entire market share, then buys up artistic supplychains and stores and shuts them down entirely to force people on the slop machine.
and reflecting on it, that’s when i kinda came to the conclusion: that’s a real ass possibility.
I think of the 2000s dot com bubble, levelled the landscape, and the companies that survived and the ones that emerged in its wake had staying power, and dominate the technological social landscape to a frankly dangerous degree
the money behind this AI shit is immense, and some of these guys are deranged enough to just force the matter, like who could even contest this?
I’d love to get talked down from this position if it’s more unreasonable than i think but… yeah im kinda anxious about it now.
Agreed. So far this tech hasn’t found a purpose which generates more value than it consumes, but the US economy is basically floating on a bubble of fake money generated through circular dealing between a handful of companies.
It is highly likely that there will be “a correction” and as always when markets crash or economies go into recession, wealth and power get transferred to the usual suspects.
If I understand correctly, we should expect this.
Capitalism doesn’t work in reality in the long run and inevitably the contradictions inherent to it become evident and observable as things like circular trade predicated on the promise of record breaking future profits becoming more valuable than everything else, companies consolidating into monopolies and vertical monopolies, entire industries losing the demand side to their supply as money leaves the citizens hands and stops circulating, etc.
So even if the bubble somehow doesn’t burst, or manages to deflate gracefully, the whole state of affairs is a symptom of a sick system that approaches failure again and again in new and exciting ways. Again, with each crisis that is endured, wealth is consolidated in the hands of the capitalists.
I figure either the thing you’re worried about happens or we abandon capitalism and the cult of the unregulated free market. Or both, one after the other.
I’m very anxious too, but more about the short to medium term implications on quality of life, consolidation of power, etc.
It seems to me that the major competing interests in the capitalist power struggle (finance, tech, governments) are acting as though they are terrified and desperate to clamp down on people, their ability to share ideas freely and the space to offer and consider serious critiques of what we have and ideas of what we could have instead.
Eventually capitalism ends, regardless. We want that, I think, mostly.
Capitalism has to end because infinite growth is impossible. However, what replaces it without active organization is likely going to be whatever those at the top of the dogpile set up as an alternative, which will likely be some sort of quasi-feudalism.