Our current situation is a lot more dire than I think most people could even imagine, and we need to do something about it immediately. This is what I mean:
We as a civilization are quickly approaching an unprecedented point in history where we can, have to, choose whether to create a utopia or dystopia.
The key to this choice is the advent of complete automation of labor, which is something that is inevitable and even becoming common. The fact that humanity can now build workers who do not experience want or need, or require water or food or sleep is an opportunity we've never had before, but if we allow that opportunity to only utilized by the already-powerful in the world, the rest of us will become slaves forever.
The fact is that, if, in a future where robots produce everything every human could ever need, only a few people own those robots, they could demand anything they want from us. This is easy to see, and it means we must prevent this from happening.
The most common objection to taking a corporation's, or person's robots from them is always that “they earned it, so what gives you the right to steal what they've earned?” While the justification for this idea in the first place is perhaps flawed, its implications are terrifying.
To show why, I'll mention the Romans.
At the founding of the Roman Empire, there was an original senate of 100 members chosen from the current population. These 100 members conspired to maintain their power and pass it on to their bloodline, and so they passed some laws. First, the 100 members assumed the title of “Patricians”, while everyone else became the “Plebeians”. Secondly, these titles were passed down to children, and later one, another law was passed that outlawed marriage between the two classes.
The effect of these laws was that, for over 300 years, all government power was held by the decendants of these original 100 senators. And so even if we assume that the first senators were entirely deserving of being senators, and that these senators would be the most adept at raising a second generation of senators, the fact remains that by the fourth, fifth, or even sixth generation, over 100 years later, the class distinction had become entirely arbitrary.
Rome became a society in which ability was a nonfactor in the government. Society was split into two classes based on a genetic distinction that took place over a hundred years ago that had no meaning to the people of the day, and yet it was perpetuated because it gave power to the upper class, and prevented power from accumulating in the lower class.
When a Roman citizen was born, it was entirely random and out of their control which class they would be born into, and yet if they were born into the “wrong” class, they were arbitrarily barred from rising to the prominence that they otherwise should have been allowed to.
It may seem that society should have learned its lesson from this, but this system threatens to reemerge.
The richest people and corporations in the world can now afford to completely automate themselves. Automation of large-scale farming is already underway, most manufacturing plants are already almost entirely automated, with human workers mostly there to make sure everything is running properly. Any job dealing with information processing with soon be automated through the use of advanced AI, which is only a few years out.
It will not be long before most jobs are, or can be automated. And it will be those in society who are already extremely wealthy who will be the first to purchase automation.
Imagine a world, in the near future, where all labor has been made obselete. It would be unnecessary for any person to toil away at any work, and where all humans could pursue their own interests at their leisure. Rest assured, such a future is coming, unless we nuke ourselves to extinction beforehand.
However, such a future can occur in two ways. Either, the robots that produce everything we needed are owned privately, or publicy. And if owned privately, this seals humanity's fate to be slaves to the upper class until the end of time.
It is foreseeable that the most powerful of this upper class will seek to extend their power. To buy more land, to build more factories, to expand into more industries, to become a monopoly. Even without automation, we see companies do this all the time. Automation will only expedient this process.
Oligopolies, even bigger than the ones that already exist today, will form. Oligopolies without pesky employees to pay or unionize or house or feed. A complete separation between the masses and the means of production. One group of people totally dependant on the other for survival, and the other group with no dependency on the first. Breeding grounds for subjugation. And if you think our current government or military will try to stop this from happening, you couldn't be more wrong.
The government will have nothing to gain by shifting power away from the upper class and into the lower class. The government's power, combined with the upper class's power, will create a situation in which both can team up to perpetuate their own strength. By continuing to produce goods for the government, the upper class can buy its loyalty. And by putting down uprisings and outlawing stealing from the upper class, the government can ensure that it has a ready supply of desperate citizens willing to do anything for scraps of food.
Nevertheless, it will be argued by the most stanuchly capitalistic that the owners of these oligopolies “earned” their power through ingenuity and smart business practices. EVEN IF we assume this to be true, even if we give the capitalists as much leeway as possible, the danger of allowing power to concentrate like this cannot be ignored.
I'm sure by now you've guessed how this ties back into the Patricians. If we allow it to happen, there will become two classes in America: those who own everything, and those who must rely on the upper class for everything. And if the upper class is allowed to pass on what they own selectively, most likely to their own children, then four, five, or a thousand generations from now, a person must roll a dice to decide whether they are lucky enough to be born into the affluent class or the slave class.
There will be no justification for why one class has it all and the other does not. Children born 100 years from now have no bearing on current events, and yet our children, mine and your children, will be born into a slavery they never could have anticipated, escaped, or done anything about. All because of the actions of people now. Likewise, the great-great-grandchildren of the ultrawealthy now will enjoy a freedom that will not be afforded to those outside of their class. They will enoy access to resources beyond depletion, the ability to live their own lives free of need, the ability to exert power over others. All luxuries afforded to them not because of their own actions, but because they were lucky enough to have decended from the correct great-great-grandpa. While others in the same country suffer the exact opposite fate for being born to the wrong great-great-grandparents.
How depressing is it to imagine a future 10,000 years from now where we've tamed the planet and the galaxy, where we've generated enough electricty to last everyone a trillion years, and mined enough asteroids to make new technology forever, and discovered a million new planets, and it all belongs to Billy and Billy gets to decide who does and doesn't get any of “his” stuff, because of something his 500th great grandfather did, that Billy never could have earned. And because us today, me and you, never did anything to stop it. This is the future awaiting us if we do nothing.
So what do we do to prevent this from happening? To steal a famous quote, we must “seize the means”. We must destroy our dependency on the ultrawealthy before they become powerful enough to prevent us from doing so. And they get more powerful each day.
Humanity can now create workers who do not want rest, or feed, or fun, and we need to take advantage of that. We must use automation for the good of everyone, not just the powerful.
As I mentioned before, large farms are already utilizing self-driving tractors and other farming equipment. Before they can buy up all the farmland and use it for themselves, then, we must enact legislation to buy or take land back for public usage. Or, if that doesn't work, by any means necessary. If future generations were here right now, they would be begging us.
For 1.7 trillion dollars, we could build enough desalination plants to supply everyone in America with a year's supply of freshwater, the majority of which will never have to be re-desalinated again, only treated. If we capitalize on this alst principle, for only 400 billion dollars, we could build enough plants to inject enough freshwater into circulation that no American would ever experience dehydration or drought in 4 years. To put that number into context, that's LESS than the combined net worth of just the TWO richest Americans combined.
Many (if not most) rural internet lines are already government subsized, because it otherwise wouldn't be profitable enough to justify installing them. Meaning that YOUR money has already been spent by internet companies to put in lines that they then call their own, and then charge YOU for using.
And housing. Our generation is experiencing a housing crisis unlike any other: a housing oligopoly. More and more living spaces are being bought up by corporations which exist only to drain every last penny of rent possible out of their rentors. And a housing crash won't do much good, especially for future generations. These corporations, which have payed in full for most if not all of the houses they own, won't loose any of them. A housing crash will only make it cheaper and quicker for these corporations to accumulate even more houses.
We are a desperate people, now. All over the world. Stripped of the ability to feed ourselves we can't fight against being drafted into wars we do not want to fight, we have to go to work eight to twelve hours a day, we have to send our children off to daycare because we have no time left to spend with them. But it doesn't have to be this way.
We can build utopia today, if we were to just put our power together against the modern Patricians.
I believe we must start with political reform, which begins with reforming the Congress. Term limits are a must. In my opinion, any one person shouldn't be able to be elected more than twice to the Congress, regardless of which house they serve in.
Of course, Congress won't hand this over so easily, so we must protest. Write in, picket, VOTE. WE MUST VOTE. Nothing makes it easier for public officials to do nothing than us not voting. We must create a new amendment enshrining term limits in Congress.
This is no longer about Democrat vs. Republican, conservative vs. liberal, capitalist vs. socialist. This is about long-term humanity goals. It is a separate political party, an Anti-Patrician party, the goals of which are to prevent the formation of the slave and master classes of humanity.
Thank you for reading this far. I've had an extremely hard time writing all of this down, so if you think you could put it better and repost it PLEASE do. Regardless, the importance of our action CANNOT be overstated. We must act now, or one day it WILL be too late.