Marxism doesn’t even explain how human civilizations have thought about property rights, let alone anything else. I am deeply afraid of the fact that so many move about as learned scholars and academics, but fail to discuss a comprehensive view of societal evolution up to modernity.
Consider that property rights have been a concept since Ancient Mesopotamia, and were definitely not something the English cooked up during Industrialization. People have entrusted resource protection and allocation to sovereigns or collectives for as long as people have moved around as groups.
Why is there an underlying assumption that there were any “commons” to being with? Everything belonged to somebody at some point, whether or not there was a legal contract which mitigated bloodshed or confusion is another thing. But people would fight to the death to make their claims over land and other natural resources, and that’s how things went till codes were developed to bypass that, and resolve disputes via exchange instead. I’ve never understood why Marxist start out with this underlying assumption, it’s a very self-serving narrative.
As far as AI is concerned, if it does turn out that AI can replace 50 workers with 10, then that just means that you can do that too, and the cost of production is lowered by such a tool. Isn’t then AI shifting the means of production to many except to the few? There are other work modes out there than just being someone’s worker, and maybe AI will enable those. I don’t know, it remains to be determined, but we’re better off making those kinds of work modes easier as opposed to wishing about turning back the clock.
You can disagree with the commons definition, and thats fine. But the point I wanted to make was about the exploitation. The open Internet was built with a code of sharing. Now they are trying to put walled gardens around all that knowledge. Lets remove Marx from the equation if that becomes a bone of contention. But we as a society need to come up with better dialogues to decide how we will treat our creators and how we will deal with the AI copy machine. We cannot expect that profit mongers will do the right thing.
nis0s•1h ago
Consider that property rights have been a concept since Ancient Mesopotamia, and were definitely not something the English cooked up during Industrialization. People have entrusted resource protection and allocation to sovereigns or collectives for as long as people have moved around as groups.
Why is there an underlying assumption that there were any “commons” to being with? Everything belonged to somebody at some point, whether or not there was a legal contract which mitigated bloodshed or confusion is another thing. But people would fight to the death to make their claims over land and other natural resources, and that’s how things went till codes were developed to bypass that, and resolve disputes via exchange instead. I’ve never understood why Marxist start out with this underlying assumption, it’s a very self-serving narrative.
As far as AI is concerned, if it does turn out that AI can replace 50 workers with 10, then that just means that you can do that too, and the cost of production is lowered by such a tool. Isn’t then AI shifting the means of production to many except to the few? There are other work modes out there than just being someone’s worker, and maybe AI will enable those. I don’t know, it remains to be determined, but we’re better off making those kinds of work modes easier as opposed to wishing about turning back the clock.
Some reading for the curious, https://babylonian.mythologyworldwide.com/hammurabis-code-a-...
nutanc•11m ago