Let’s see. What do you call information, which used to be time-consuming and expensive to acquire, and is now basically free? Anybody can go to my local library, sit down at the free computer, and have instant access to information that 20 years ago would have taken years and large amounts of money to access.
Productivity is the amount of human effort it takes to produce X amount of stuff. It’s been going up since the start of capitalism. Project the curve at any exponential rate of increase and eventually you reach a point where (almost) infinite goods are produced with (almost) zero human effort.
If machines are doing all the work, do we just give those who happen to own the machines at the point they become self-sustaining and their descendants dominance in human affairs forever?
Capitalism has always been renowned most for its creative destruction. Quite possibly its last act will be to creatively destroy itself.
Here’s the problem. The purpose of a market is to efficiently distribute scarce resources. What purpose does a market have if resources aren’t scarce? If the work most people are capable of doing has no economic demand, or if at least the number of such jobs greatly exceeds the supply of workers.
Unlike the authors of this piece, I think such a future, with government distributing resources produced by machinery, is an object of fear and loathing. It’s certainly unlikely to be more fair and just.
I would much prefer some kind of libertarian alternative to government distribution of goods and services, I just don’t know what it might be.
To the hunter gathers in an essentially unpopulated world, the abundant food that often surrounded had a cost, often a steep cost. The markets and barter system of Neolithic people can be understood in capitalist terms though they weren’t strictly capitalism. Communism has an extremely high cost of goods and often existed thanks to underground or black markets.