Do We Need Fully Automated Luxury Communism? – Forbes

Rear seat of autonomous car. 3D rendering image.

Forecasts suggest that we are entering an era of massive automation. According to McKinsey, close to half of all work activities could be automated using existing technologies. But what happens after artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics? What happens after automation? According to Aaron Bastani, a London-based researcher, the answer would appear to be Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Strange as it may seem, Bastani believes that automation is driving capitalist societies headlong into a post-capitalist utopia: Think Star Trek or Ian Banks Culture Series.

The truth is that this is not an entirely new idea. As Peter Diamandis, founder of Singularity University and Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation explains: the exponential acceleration of technology promises a new era in social and economic abundance. What is perhaps more counter-intuitive, however, is Bastanis belief that this technology-driven abundance is now making actual communism possible for the first time in history. As he frames it, we are moving toward an economy of extreme supply in which capitalism has reached its evolutionary conclusion.

Smart robotic farmers in agriculture futuristic robot automation to vegetable farm,Smart farm concept

Like Jeremy Rifkin, Bastani argues that technological innovation is driving the marginal costs of goods and servicesfood, healthcare, housing, softwareto near zero. Just as the domestication of animals and crops produced the Agricultural Revolution (10,000 BCE), and machine technologies produced the Industrial Revolution (1800 CE), so computers are reshaping history around what Bastani calls Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC). Capitalism it would seem has given birth to a technological revolution that is accelerating the long-term collapse of prices and eventually markets.

Interestingly, a similar argument has been made by Viktor Mayer-Schnberger and Thomas Ramge. In their book Reinventing Capitalism, the authors argue that technology is disrupting markets, spawning data-driven platform monopolies set to reshape the nature of buying and selling. In their view, AI is driving a new automation era in which the ever-evolving capacities of algorithms has begun displacing price signals. As a consequence, the increasing precision of algorithms is set to replace human social coordination even as big data replaces capital.

There is no doubt that we are facing sweeping changes in the structure of capitalist societies. Driven by social lethargy and the parasitic power of the fossil fuel industry, the worlds zombie governments now seem incapable of averting global catastrophe. Indeed, the excesses of capitalism are now converging toward an unprecedented set of crises: an environmental crisis, a demographic crisis, a democracy crisis, and a crisis of socioeconomic stratification. All of which requires serious political attention.

Enter Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Where premature attempts at communism produced industrial-era prison states, actual communism through automation is leading to an era of AI, bioengineering, clean energy, near-earth asteroid mining, and universal basic services. Like any good Silicon Valley pitch, Bastani suggests that this technological revolution is only just beginning. In fact, capitalism is just the prologue to a new stage in history. In the shift to luxury communism, we can expect limitless abundance and a classless society. Or as Marx once phrased it, a new mode of production.

As technology undermines capitalist markets it is simultaneously opening the way to massive changes in governance and political economy. Unfortunately Bastanis prescription for managing the transition largely echoes strategies of the pastnationalism, worker cooperatives, state ownership, and socialized banking. Rather than the technological modernization that animates much of his vision of the future, Bastanis policies for the present simply reduce everything to the power struggles of the last century. And this is where the FALC manifesto becomes far less radical. As one reviewer puts it, Bastanis proposed system of hyper-politicized banking and hyper-politicized local government contracting, meant to boost worker cooperatives and other types of organizations of which he approves, is a surefire recipe for patronage, nepotism, subsidy fraud, and waste.

Pudong Lujiazui Financial District Roof, Shanghai, China

Fully Automated Luxury Communism is a tantalizing vision of the future. But what seems more likely in the near term is fully automated algorithmic governance. After all, automation is not reserved for the private sector alone. Advancing democracies into the era of Big Data could go a long way towards reducing systemic dysfunction within the public sector. Estonia, for example, is developing one of the most advanced digital governance systems in the world. Indeed, as Silicon Valleys Tim OReilly explains, government regulations should be regarded as algorithms that can be adjusted based on fresh data. OReilly is right.

Software is eating the world and this includes the worlds institutions and governments. Using sensor technologies and the Internet-of-Things to reinforce government oversight could begin to more effectively manage the various crises we now face. The most recent advancement in AI and machine learning could provide revolutionary tools for reshaping public sector decision-making, forecasting, data classification, and resource management. All of which could avert disaster.

The future may be automation but will we live to see it? Bastanis overarching concerns with the excesses of capitalism are entirely legitimate. Can the institutions that sustain capitalism be transformed in time to avert global catastrophe? If capitalism is allowed to continue as usual, then class polarization, demographic imbalance, and ecological destruction will lead us to collapse. What is clear is that with growing markets in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, enlightened policies are needed to remake energy, technology, and governance before its too late.

See the original post:

Do We Need Fully Automated Luxury Communism? - Forbes