Submitted by Sieventer t3_zi4s1x in singularity
Future_Believer t1_izq8lv3 wrote
A good friend of mine who is no longer with us but who at one time managed the best performing mutual fund in the USA was fond of defining capitalism as the (re)distribution of scarce resources.
I don't know if he came up with that himself or if it is a standard definition but I have heard others say very similar things.
Nanotechnology has long been understood as the death of material scarcity (or the death of humanity if implemented badly but that is a discussion for another thread.). Robotics will eventually remove all necessity for human labor. I would imagine some humans will continue to work but there will be no necessity for them to do so. Manufactured Intelligences (or AI if you must) will exceed human capacity and will be responsible for engineering and research & development. Mining and smelting and various other dirty industries will likely be moved off planet as soon as that is feasible.
Where exactly do you see room for capitalism? There can be no Marxism without a labor force to protect. All of our current systems of economics will be found wanting if the things we discuss come to fruition in any meaningful way. It isn't that folks here are opposed to capitalism (though they could be), it is that there is no way to arrange the Vinge, Kurtzweil, Stephenson, Asimov, Roddenberry future so that it includes capitalism.
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