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civilrunner t1_ivb0tqj wrote

Reply to comment by apple_achia in Becoming increasingly pessimistic about LEV + curing aging by Phoenix5869

I would say that democracy and government is the most critical thing we can do today to protect the future. Doing that will go a long way to taking care of the rest.

I personally expect the developers of longevity medicine to want to profit from it so they'll make it widely available and likely sell it to the government because a biologically young workforce can be far more valuable than an aging one.

Although for instance Bezos may be rich, Amazon does provide substantial value to the majority of people at least in the USA by competing and lower cost and increasing quality across a lot of markets. Similar things can be said for bill gates and making computers accessible to mass markers.

While extraordinary wealth may be generated, it will only be generated if the technology affects a mass market.

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[deleted] t1_ivcob28 wrote

Amazon takes substantial value from people, their profits come from their workers labour. It doesn’t provide shit; it’s workers do that with or without Amazon, but it can’t do shit without them.

What’s worrying about your comment is that I don’t think democracy can exist without destroying companies like Amazon. Amazon is a great example of how capitalism is taking us back to feudalism with petty lords in charge (ie NOT elected democratically)

As you say we must protect the future by protecting democracy .. but democracy is way further gone already than you might think. Capitalism is a direct threat to it because it’s fundamentally about preserving privilege often passed down over generations, like feudal monarchs, so completely mocking democratic power.

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civilrunner t1_ivcon7g wrote

That's a taxation problem. They keep prices lower and provide substantial competition across countless industries including web services.

Their pay for workers is also pretty high and they offer to pay off tuition and more. I know it's fun and popular to hate them, but I personally blame the politicians who write the tax code.

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[deleted] t1_ivcpzg9 wrote

Monopolies crush competition, they don’t create it. Amazon buys out its competition it doesn’t bother trying to better them. It is probably the worst example for “encouraging competition” you could pick in our global economy.

And you’re now deviating significantly from your initial statement about protecting democracy when you advocate that a company employing millions should be run by 1 unelected dictatorial owner.

Which one is it? Democracy or dictatorship?

You can’t advocate both; these push us in opposite directions.

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civilrunner t1_ivcqeja wrote

Amazon is a lot of things, but a monopoly is definitely not one of them. Walmart still controls more market share for retail than Amazon does by a pretty wide margin. Even AWS has healthy competition with Microsoft and others and is therefore not a monopoly...

Amazon is a public company in the private industry. They aren't part of the government obviously... The government taking over them would also be devastating to our economy. Private Public partnerships and taxation with reinvestment is the way to go...

I get that you like to doom, but at least know what to doom about. Moore v Harper, the SCOTUS case that may allow state legislators to ignore voters and send electors as they please and therefore end democracy is the biggest threat today.

We should elect officials who may enable reducing inequality and creating opportunity through government investments but that's a separate issue...

Edit: also you can always buy Amazon shares and then vote about the direction of their company if you'd like...

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[deleted] t1_ivcr2wo wrote

Hard to swallow fact: a country cannot claim to be very democratic at all when millions of its people are made to spend the largest share of their waking hours languishing under a dictatorial power structure. That’s absolutely how 99% of hierarchical capitalist businesses are structured.

So you don’t in fact advocate for democracy, you need to admit you have no problem with authoritarianism dominating the majority of peoples lives.

That’s a direct threat to the sort of socialised life extension I think most people assume is desirable

I would expect that people with an interest in the singularity should all expect us to move on from barbarism’s like this. You can start by advocating for democracy to be expanded into all walks of life; I’ve little doubt a singularity would lead to workplaces returning to common ownership as worker coops or similar; if for no other reason than that it will recognise that all human history has represented the struggle to free ourselves from authoritarian oppressors

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