Raw LLM Responses

The only way the technology gets directed towards improving ANYTHING other than the bottom line for a few billionaire capitalists & their fellow major corporate shareholders is if it’s not owned & controlled by capitalists. That’s it. I mean, after an extremely long & hard-fought battle, after years & years of organizing, maybe we get some legislative reforms in place. But look what’s happened over the last 55 years since the last time they crushed the labor movement. Look what’s happening faster & more severely than ever under this admin & Project 2025. They’re eliminating the hard-fought reforms we DID have in place, even on much more basic issues than this. As long as you leave the class hierarchy as it is, eventually they’ll get back into a position where they feel they can put the working class “back in its place” & put whatever policies maximize their profits at our expense back into place, all over again. Maybe if you can create a trucker’s worker co-op where the truckers themselves owned the trucks, you could implement some of this “platooning” stuff on the scale of that business, & at least give some truckers some kind of alternative besides corporate exploitation… But as long as corporations/capitalists own the bulk of the industry, & the bulk of the economy at large (because similar issues are about to be all over the place), this is basically the nightmare we have to look forward to. They aren’t going to stop, as long as the class hierarchy puts a small monied elite in the position of being perversely incentivized to screw us over in pursuit of their own maximal profit rate. Coming up with theoretical ways of implementing new tech that benefits workers is great— & there are MANY we already know very well would work, even with much more more primitive technology than AI or quantum computing or any of this stuff that’s being developed now, which already isn’t being implemented because the capitalist class owns the bulk of the tech & the businesses. But the class who actually owns & controls the means of productions gets to decide how they’re implemented, & capitalists will choose a more destructive, more wasteful, less efficient, less socially beneficial approach every single time of its more profitable for them in the short-term. They don’t care how costly or devastating it is to workers/consumers/anyone else as long as it maximizes their profits, period. It’s unfortunate— I wish these issues were as easy as “Oh we just need to lobby Congress for a year or two.” “Oh, we just have to win this battle once & the change is made forever.” “Oh, we can continue to just accept capitalist class hierarchy forever & still have a wonderful world for workers & consumers, & a free & democratic society…” But I’ve been studying this stuff for a long time (since I was maybe 15, & I’m almost 33 now), & I cannot see how that is a possibility. Not historically, & not theoretically. These problems are fundamental to having a class-hierarchical mode of economic production/distribution— having a class of non-owner workers who have to rent themselves for whatever is on offer because they don’t own the means of production they need to work, & a class of non-worker owners who own all the means of production & profit, in some cases to the tune of billions, off exploiting many workers each, extracting the value they produce. I’m all for whatever social democratic concessions we can organize & get out of them, because I believe we have a responsibility to reduce harm to human beings as much as we can in the short term… But again, as long as the ruling class contributes to dominate our economy/society, as long as all the amazing technology we have at our disposal continues to be implemented only towards maximizing their profits, while they continue to do everything in their power to suppress wages into real decline & drive prices upwards, maximizing profits by squeezing us on both ends, it’s very predictably where we end up… We had social democracy in America & much of Western Europe before, & we don’t now. There’s no reason to believe it turns out any differently next time around unless we actually resolve these fundamental contradictions at the heart of the capitalist class hierarchy. Unless we work towards actual class abolition & a truly free & democratic society in the long-run, where no one exploits anyone else & every worker is entitled to the fruits of their own labor as an equal owner in their workplace (or else in a democratically-owned/controlled public sector utility/service, which are mainly just crucially necessary when it comes to basic needs with inelastic demand).