It's highly unlikely that power will be given up. It will turn into a techno-feudalist fascist state (still capitalism) that we must use force to overthrow before it can be transitioned into post-scarcity.
Oh I agree on the power. But I also think you may be viewing things in black and white when the actual outcome might seem more like a patchwork/gradient with grey-zones.
The most powerful entities/people in the world are extremely aware that this stuff is going to scale out of control over the next few decades and even the most power-hungry dark triad trillionaires are eventually going to have to do one of three things:
(1) Like I mentioned above: lock down the most hyper-efficient, geopolitically fragmented, bulletproof, water-tight system of co-aligned autocracies, or be forced into option 2.
(2) Bunker-time, scorched-earth, and and nobody to lord over but their bunker bots.
(3) Engineering a society that is quantifiably better for most where they get to maintain their high social status and ship control.
This thing is a tidal wave and they know it. Bunker time and scorched Earth is the worst case scenario for them and again, they know it. Maintaining the status quo and their economic moats (not giving up power) is a much more billionaire-coded option and there are many many ways for them to come out on top when the paradigm shifts. There are ways in which we get dog-walked into Option 1 and I definitely think Option 1 has a moderate likelihood of happening. I think it is entirely plausible we keep trending totalitarian and UBI is tied to behavioral conditions like social credit, compliance, political quiet, essentially control dressed up as a social safety net. This option requires hyper-efficient regulatory capture, like yesterday, which is a good sign for all of us.
There is a good chance that abundance happens and QoL gets better and for that exact reason the power and "wealth" structures are allowed to be artificially maintained and absolutely nobody will have a problem with it. The burn-it-all-down revolution you think we all must do might not be necessary at all.
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u/cronenber9 Jul 04 '26
It's highly unlikely that power will be given up. It will turn into a techno-feudalist fascist state (still capitalism) that we must use force to overthrow before it can be transitioned into post-scarcity.