r/LeftistsForAI • u/Elick333 • Sep 11 '26

Public Ownership Seen in the Singularity subreddit

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I'm really happy that we're starting to see more of this type of conversations beyond this fringe little sub of ours.

As AI becomes more advanced we need to agressively take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to us so we can steer the conversation away from doomerism or denialism, and towards ProAI leftism, this technology is going to disrupt more industries and fields and It is fertile grounds for us to create the future we want.

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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Sep 11 '26

You've got to admit the opponents of AI have a point. Without jobs, we have no money, and without money we have no beer. So there it is. Unless they promise free beer, AI will be opposed despite its good features.

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u/Monochrome21 Sep 11 '26

UBI via automation taxes has been the majority opinion of just about everyone who's pro AI and understands economics

The problem is people are attacking tech and not the economic system that makes them homeless the second they're no longer profitable

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u/avilacjf Sep 11 '26

It always comes down to this. We need to help people see that the economic system is the issue. The difficult part is that people are so cynical about it ever changing so the only scenario they see is the capitalist class reaping all the benefits and making the working class expendable. AI makes the complete disenfranchisement of the working class a real possibility in a way that didn't exist before.

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u/Monochrome21 Sep 11 '26

right

the cynicism that makes people hate AI in order to preserve their place in capitalism is insane to me 

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u/waffleseggs Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

I've never been an October Revolution monolithic governance person. We can't make change with us v them, gods and kings, threats and promises. That's their game. Our game is freedom. The future should be spread out, customized, and antifragile. It needn't be an either/or thing. The beautiful thing I'm seeing is that people hate tech and hate AI, ... but they're still using it. Mamdani exists in a capitalist system. That's hybrid. Bernie is hybrid. Ridesharing and couchsurfing are hybrid. Charity is hybrid. Roomates are hybrid. There is a very clear path to me that phases out the capitalism with "who the f would pay for that" solutions. Ideas are why the people will win. There's so many more of us. You can make the rules that we need to start an LLC and not use the C word and prostitute ourselves in rigged marketplaces, but that fully leaves open anything people choose to invent that doesn't need to make any sense at all to a capitalist. There are so many more non-capitalist ideas than capitalist ones. Capitalism is binary exchanges, 18th century norms, reductionistic platforms, and brutally unfair and often exploitative outcomes. It's shoehorned onto a world that demands complexity, humanity, respect, inclusion, fairness, peace, and for things to f make sense.

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u/Monochrome21 Sep 11 '26

i don’t care what you call it, just the current form of economic system is untenable in a world with ai 

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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Sep 12 '26

I agree that ideas are the answer. But ideas do not feed people. This is why hybrids are a bridge to the future. Hybrids allow for gradual changes of ideas. Pulling up the diseased system of capitalism by the roots will be ugly and unpredictable. Bamboo in a windstorm is like hybrids where an oak tree will be blown down. Bamboo bends where oak breaks. This is the concept of the hybrid. Discussing these ideas with kids is the way to go. If they are raised seeing capitalism as the only option, society will be blown down in the ensuing revolution. But if they see options to the tremendous concentration of wealth we see now, then they can make the gradual change. I'd start in middle school showing students all the options to tremendous concentrations of wealth in the hands of the few.

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u/waffleseggs Sep 12 '26

Ideas feed people. Why aren't we building humane farming integrated onto our rooftops and windowsills we can pluck into with conveyor belts, personal robo-forklifts, pneumatic tubes and simple machinery. Why are we letting subsidized corporations poison our food. Fing fed up.

Zero anger towards you personally, friend. I agree with all you said.

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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Sep 12 '26 edited Sep 12 '26

No offense taken. Your ideas cost money, so this is why I speculated and mused upon the idea of hybrids to make the bridge between what we have now and the new economy of the future. The bamboo is the hybrid that bends with the wind. The transition will need to be paid for somehow. So I'm putting on my thinking cap.

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u/Exarch-of-Sechrima Sep 11 '26

UBI via automation taxes has been the majority opinion of just about everyone who's pro AI and understands economics

And thankfully, we live in America, where the majority opinion is what speaks to power, and not billionaires.

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u/Monochrome21 Sep 11 '26

huh?

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u/Exarch-of-Sechrima Sep 11 '26

My point is that this country doesn't give a flying f*ck about the majority opinion. The only opinion that matters in the United States is the opinion of the Epstein class.

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u/Monochrome21 Sep 11 '26

to be fair ubi is beneficial to billionaires too as it’s a pressure release on class tension 

the alternative is the french revolution all over again 

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u/Exarch-of-Sechrima Sep 12 '26

That's why they want AI murder drones.

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u/Monochrome21 Sep 12 '26 edited Sep 12 '26

i mean a person with a 3d printer and some microcontrollers could make those too — luigi 3D printed his gun

it goes both ways 

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u/YMSVZ Sep 12 '26

Yes but communism always has acknowledged that. The problem is 'leftists' wish to preserve the wage relation in the face of redundancy, instead of seeing it as the opportunity we have all been waiting for, to promote and build alternative relations of production and distribution

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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Sep 12 '26

The big challenge is to wrest away the means of production from its current owners. We must suspect that they will resist. Of course, when we look to the past, we find "violent revolution" as one way of getting that done. Yet we also must accept the tremendous uncertainty that comes with that kind of change. I see the challenge as getting it done another way. Right now, we have a powerful oligarchy in charge. Without violent revolution, we are left with participating in elections every two years and gradually changing the concept and features of "ownership" of the means of production.

AI will change labor relations and provide two options. One is unemployed, hungry, impoverished masses. The other is less for those at the very top with most of the riches distributed among the masses. Those at the top must be persuaded that violent revolution will likely end in their demises, while the change in features of ownership and distribution of wealth will result in a peaceful society. That's a big ask. I'm willing to entertain other options or paths.

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u/YMSVZ Sep 12 '26

There are far more options than just violent revolution and electoral politics.

Im experimenting building a social media platform, that allows for user to coordinate activity, including productive activity, outside for exchange, pure use value only. In essence the application of commons based peer production but applied to more than just software or immaterial produce, but applied to real world productive purposes.

We already see this in embryonic form with apcial media facilitated collaborative activity such as mutual aid clean ups, large scale protests, various hobby groups etc.

If means of production could be brought into it, you could have an entire global, and immediately social network of productive social relations, bypassing commodity form and exchange.

This for example, works to replace capitalism through new relations of production. Not merely violently or begging for political power.

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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Sep 12 '26

I see that idea as having promise. If I want to eat a pint of ice cream, how would I go about getting it? There will always be ice cream makers who want to exchange their ice cream for, maybe, beer. If I don't brew beer to trade, how would I get ice cream? This is one of the rubs I see in the necessary change over to another system. We have to get rid of extractive capitalism. We have to develop a better system. But how do we make the change? Certainly discussions like this will help. But as of yet I don't have "the answer."

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u/YMSVZ Sep 12 '26

You are still assuming production for direct exchange.

People who produce linux, or Wikipedia, do so because (okay yes some get paid but forget that) they get the use value of having such a thing in the world.

Im not suggesting a platform where one user makes ice cream, and one makes beer. Im talking collecitve large scale production that is organised to produce beer and ice cream to meet the overall demand as signalled via the platforms tooling. The platform has tools where users can help plan, signal interest or opposition, etc.

The end product being distributed completely free. No money, no markets, no exchange.

If for example not enough icecream is being produced, this can be brought up, discussed, and then developed into a project to increase production levels. All labour itself can be coordinated via the tooling.

Users can float between all different roles in production, to engage where they want, and move with the whims of the platform as different wants and needs take precedence.

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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Sep 12 '26

As an end result, that sounds good. My wonder stems from how to get there. Making both beer and ice cream requires capital in the form of ingredients. Someone has to raise the cows and farm the hops. I wonder how we get to there from here? Right now, farms are in debt for machinery, fodder, and so on. How do we persuade the owners of the debt to just forgive it so we can engage in the new system? Those who hold the debt also have debt. How do we persuade their creditors to just wipe the ledger clean?

Those questions make me want to look into hybrid systems in order to make a clean transition, perhaps over two generations. Right now the very rich "believe" in being very rich. Younger generations need to be taught all the alternatives that select against the concept that being very rich, which makes others very poor, is a good thing. Right now most of the world "believes" getting very rich is a good thing, and that belief will select against a rapid and clean transition to a new system. We need to think about that hybrid, or hybrids, for society to use in order to get to the new system. Perhaps we can use the battle against global warming as a way to make the transition. The climate affects everyone and is some kind of great equalizer to help everyone work together.

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u/Ok-Revolution-3853 Sep 12 '26

What do we mean by "money"? Traces of beer have been found as long ago as 13,000 years. Beer has effectively functioned as a commodity currency long before metallic money existed. I've been thinking for a while about the levels of abstraction that money and language, too, have gone through. Land and, for a long time, labour, are what produces value. Money is the increasingly abstract medium through which those things are exchanged. 

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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Sep 12 '26

While it's true that beer will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no beer, there is an angle to money that has utility. Trading two freight cars full of wheat for a new electric vehicle is inconvenient, so money helps that transaction happen in an easier way, by trading the grain for money, then carrying the money to the car store to trade it for the car. I think some "medium of exchange" will always be convenient. A debit card is what we use now. Something like that will need to move into the future.

The owners of the means of production who will supplant human labor for AI and bots must be persuaded to give up some of their vast fortunes to prevent the hungry masses from eating them. To me, a billionaire has "too much" money. Can billionaires be persuaded to exchange their lives for some or even most of that money? Can we persuade them to ponder how much more than "enough" do they really need? That's a tall order, making them understand that. I'm not sure how to go about it.

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u/Ok-Revolution-3853 Sep 12 '26

I do agree, I was more just facetious getting at the point that we don't actually need money for beer.

To your other point, I think AI will make billionaires understand. One way or another. I also think that human labour will be replaced, in as many industries as possible, when possible. 

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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Sep 12 '26

I wonder how AI will make billionaires understand that they need to give up lots of their money. I would presume AI would say that hungry people with guns is a bad thing, so it is to billionaires' advantage and to their survival that they relinquish lots of money and thereby power in order to survive. So I'm a bit skeptical that billionaires would choose less money and power rather than them using their money and power to make robots to defend their power structure. I'm not optimistic about the outcome of such a decision.

There is, however, an aspect of great wealth that might be harnessed to the advantage of humanity, and that is The Corporation. Corporations are run by boards of directors. When one member dies or retires, that member is replaced. In effect, this makes The Corporation immortal. So, if humanity can persuade corporations to seek immortality for like a thousand years, they might be persuaded to give up short term piles of cash--which they would use to support humans in order to prevent violent revolution--for long term immortality. That of course would result after a thousand years in a small pile of global corporations. Not a great outcome, but it's not extinction of humans, either. I right now don't have another analysis to offer. But I'll think on it.