I was having a discussion in the comments of the last blog I made and about how my comments regarding AI controlled corporations would end up with a system where the 1% that owned those corporations would benefit. Really I was more talking about a situation where the AIs them selves 'owned' the corporations and made programed decisions set in place for the good of human beings, and would naturally take over most human-run corporations by being better at the stock market. However, AI or not, the central criticism is more about capitalism as a whole really. That is, the rich 1% that own most of the means of production will never give up control of that means of production because they want to hold on to the maximum profits. But this isn't necessarily applicable anymore. The world closer to embracing a economic model where specialized skills and big ideas are much more valuable then industry and manufacturing and there are real tangible benefits to giving up total control.

This is why, for example, we have organizations like the IEEE which work to hammer out standards and protocols. It has been shown time and time again that when companies like Microsoft and Apple attempt to enforce their own propitiatory way of doing things or when formats are constrained by use of patents like GIF or MP3 there is always backlash witch births a major open competitor (Such as Linux, Android, PNG, OGG). Of those only OGG hasn't seen that wide adoption even if it is well supported, though most of MP3's patents are kinda expiring anyway.

Of course things still need to be made, but I think it's becoming much harder for people to matter in that field. The endless quest for efficiency in factories and mining operations have always marginalized the human element, and now with technology like 3D printers, small computers like the Raspberry Pi, and modular electronics like Modulo, the economy is moving more and more I think to one that favors individual creators and small flexible companies that can act without much of the large bureaucracy of a giant corporate system. We still have a long way to go of course before a total lack of dependence on operations, but it's becoming more and more feasible to just do stuff ourselves either online or in real life.

Corporations still have a role of course, as do factories and industry, but it's not unfeasible that it won't last forever. Eventually everything will be automated, interconnected and decentralized, maybe one day we will all employ lots of cheep easy to make mining drones on asteroids, have self-replicating reprogrammable nanofactories, and so on. If we get into space, let alone the shaky possibility of warp travel, it's not far fetched to assume that instead of a grand unified empire, it will be a scattered collection of people homesteading with high technology. That future may be far off, but we are making slow steady steps in that direction.

In the meantime, it's understandable to not trust capitalism, or at least not the kind of 'crony capitalism' so often seen in the world today. Even in the best case there are still many many people who can not meaningfully contribute to this new kind of economy for various reasons and will get left behind. The backlash over globalism is as much a reaction to that as it is anything else. But I honestly don't think those jobs are coming back. The middle-class blue collar worker just isn't as relevant anymore, and I doubt it will be again.

But I still feel leaning to socialism isn't the answer either, or if it is it needs to be a drastically different kind of socialism then most people are used to. The idea of 'collective ownership' is a dubious one, but then again the idea of 'ownership' is pretty dubious to begin with. Socialism to me means that everything has to be centrally managed and controlled, and that involves some sort of state (which is often easily corrupted) running around deciding how to redistribute everything. Really my idea of AI owning corporations and most means of production is actually kinda socialist, but the only reason I even suggested it is because AI isn't human and doesn't necessarily have to have a concept of self interest and it's not actually simply taking and redistributing resources from humans.

Still some socialism may be okay I guess. I was kinda a fan of Sanders, and I wish he was president instead of the clown we have now. But no use dwelling on what could have been, the more pressing question is what do we do now? I don't think the government is going to make things better any time soon, so maybe people outside it will? A lot of time and money has been invested in developing new technology to do all sorts of things, maybe we should all think about how to use it to make the world better for ourselves and everyone else instead of waiting for policy from above.