I think it's a mistake of false dilemma to say, "Not capitalism, therefore communism!" because the options/choices for economic systems are broader than communism or capitalism.
No capitalist country today is "pure" capitalistic. They all pretty much have a mixed system, where state is supposed to regulate the market and provide some welfare to the more economically vulnerable. Some countries do it more, some less.
If we're talking about a succeeding system to capitalism, and nore merely reforming capitalism which has been done time and time again, and it's not some form of socialism, then what do
you propose it will be?
I mean, in your original post, you said :
When the costs of production have essentially been reduced to zero, why maintain a monetary system at all? What's the point? When the costs to produce something have been reduced to nearly zero, why not just make everything free? What would a society look like where anything anyone could ever want is readily available? The notion of material possessions becomes kind of meaningless. Who cares if your neighbor has a 52 inch television, when you could order one and get it at any time you wish? The concept of measuring worth by material possessions becomes antiquated. When our daily pursuits for mere survival are replaced by pursuits of leisure, I think the natural human tendency is to become creative and to share our creative works with each other (game development being one of those creative pursuits).
What you're describing is...communism, dude. Like, straight up. Why does the mere word scare you? A stateless, classless, "everyone according to their needs" post-scarcity society is exactly what communism is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy#Marxismhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society
Marx's concept of a post-capitalist communist society involves the free distribution of goods made possible by the abundance provided by automation.[26] The fully developed communist economic system is postulated to develop from a preceding socialist system. Marx held the view that socialism—a system based on social ownership of the means of production—would enable progress toward the development of fully developed communism by further advancing productive technology. Under socialism, with its increasing levels of automation, an increasing proportion of goods would be distributed freely.[27]
This is, like, exactly what you described in the post I quoted, but at the same time you say "it doesn't have to be communism!", merely because the word itself scares you because of its associations. I don't blame you entirely. But the (future) society you describe already has a name.
You guys realize "Communist Russia" didn't ever actually *achieve* communism or even came close to it, right? It was called "Communist" because it was ruled by the Communist Party whose stated goal was to reach communism at some unspecified point in the future, after overthrowing capitalism and passing through the necessary(according to Marx-Lenin) states of socialism and "dictatorship of the proletariat" and all that. No official of the Party in their right mind ever claimed they had achieved communism. That would be entirely laughable, considering that, by definition, a communist society is a stateless one, and they would have to dismantle the Party and the State in that case as unneeded and obsolete. :P
I get your point that the initial post was about how sustainable capitalism is as a system, but you can't really keep real-world politics out of discussions like this.
But anyway, if we're going to steer the thread back on course, let's consider this, because yours is hardly a new idea :
Marx did not believe in the elimination of most physical labor through technological advancements alone in a capitalist society, because he believed capitalism contained within it certain tendencies which countered increasing automation and prevented it from developing beyond a limited point, so that manual industrial labor could not be eliminated until the overthrow of capitalism.[28] Some commentators on Marx have argued that at the time he wrote the Grundrisse, he thought that the collapse of capitalism due to advancing automation was inevitable despite these counter-tendencies, but that by the time of his major work Capital: Critique of Political Economy he had abandoned this view, and came to believe that capitalism could continually renew itself unless overthrown.[29][30][31]
So, basically :
1) Elimination of most physical(or even menial-repetitive intellectual one, due to AI) labour will inevitably come through technological advancements alone, so we basically wait until that happens, capitalism grinds to a halt because of this, and then we replace it with a more sustainable system that allows everyone to enjoy the fruits of this technology.
or :
2) Capitalism will find ways to re-invent and reform itself, limit the technological advancements and their application exactly in order to avoid breaking down, and if we want this post-scarcity society to happen, political action must be taken in order overthrow capitalism and replace it with a system whose stated goal will be to reach this post-scarcity society as soon as possible, and not avoid it.
I have never read anything by Marx, but it sounds like I should pick up some of his writings and give it a good, critical reading. But, before I read his works, I should probably write my position out in full detail so that I'm not influenced by his work and merely create a derivative copy of it. I won't do that here though. It's something worthy of spending a couple months thinking and writing down.
I know "true" communism has never really existed as an economic state for a large number of people. There are small scale versions of true communism at work in the world, however: There is a remote tribe of indigenous people in the deep jungles of the amazon rain forest which have no concept of money or wealth, and everyone works to provide for the betterment of the community. I have no idea what kinds of rules they have in place for people who don't work though. In their society, work is manual and seems mandatory for the sake of survival, so... they're not exactly the best example of a futuristic economic system.
I may be totally wrong here, but it's my understanding that in the modern definition of communism, "private property" is non-existent. Everything is owned by the "state". This personal laptop I'm on could theoretically be taken and used by someone else. That would be a huge setback for me because it has a lot of games, personal preferences, and files I personally own and want to preserve. So, whatever economic system is in place, absolutely has to respect the idea of personal property and possessions. I have to be able to own my own house, my own bed, my own car, and anything else that could be considered a personal possession, and I can't worry that it would be taken by anyone else for any reason.
So... I'm personally not scared of using the word communism, or thinking about it as a viable economic system; I just avoid using that term because I think that is a pre-defined system which may not be exactly right on what a post-labor society actually needs or uses.
One interesting argument someone could throw at me is the claim that there will never actually be a shortage of work. And by work, I mean meaningful, real work. We could create thousands of fake jobs for the sake of keeping people busy, but that would be both redundant and demeaning the ultimate goal of humanity: less work.
Someone could also say that it's impossible to eliminate all work. You would most likely want a human being to be your heart surgeon. Heart surgery takes skill to perform well, and experience to know what to do when things go wrong. It would be very difficult to create an equally adept robot. So... heart surgery will most likely always be done by a human, and heart surgery requires about a decade of study and work to become proficient at it. In a capitalist / materialist economic system, that time and effort is rewarded with huge paychecks. Pure altruism is insufficient motivation. I know this is not really an original argument against communism, but the point is to hopefully illustrate that not all jobs can be eliminated with technological advances, and there are jobs which have a lot of value and necessity, so we'd want those jobs to continue to be done in whatever economic system we end up with.
Another interesting solution would be to gradually reduce the length of the work week. Instead of working 40 hour weeks, the hours people work are reduced down to 35, then gradually down to 30, then down to 25, etc. until people are working 5 hours a week, maybe less. They're not paid as hourly employees, but as salaried employees, so whether they work 40 hours or 5 hours, they still make $75k / year.
Another argument could be made, where someone says that capitalism is just fine and will always be sustainable because the laws of supply and demand dictate the price of goods and services. The ability of the market to pay for a product or service would dictate the price of it. If nobody can buy a 52 inch plasma TV for $800, the price will drop until people can pay for it, even if it drops to $5. Products like the 52 inch TV are made of components which each have costs of production, with each component being created from raw resources; So the producer is continuously playing a game of margins and mark up against the production costs. If the cost of product eventually decreases down to $0.25, selling a plasma TV for $5 would still be a huge markup from the production costs, and most people could afford something that costs $5. That price is so low that it's nearly indistinguishable from free.
Anyways, maybe the true solution lies somewhere in between the modern capitalist economic model and a socialist / communist model? Or, maybe there's something else superior to both, waiting to be discovered / invented?
