Ben Gilbert: prediction

Transcript context

…Yeah, that technology is a lever. It doesn’t mean technology is like an Excalibur. It’s not like it’s a sword for good. It magnifies what is going on whether that’s good or evil or indifferent. It just magnifies the consequences. So in having this ability to create incredible automation and incredible value without human input, I don’t think we’ve necessarily figured out what a societal structure is in a world where technology is so powerful. I think a lot of the things that we take for granted in a society that is a democratic republic and it has a capitalist economy function pretty well in a world where Aggregation Theory and automation is not so powerful, but I think we could be forced to do some serious rethinking in the coming decade as these new harsh realities come to light and think about like, “Boy, if we just…” Pure capitalism may not actually work anymore. I think I’m venturing into dangerous territory there. Well, we’re going to have call my wife Jenny onto the show as a guest expert for this as she’s a PhD in humanities and thinks a lot about this. But, I think channeling her, she would say we have been in a late capitalist world for a long time, I mean at least since the end of World War II. This is kind of the hallmark of late capitalism which is that you have rapidly increasing wealth and equality. Then the theory is that it ends in a communist or socialist revolution. We’ll see. Not predicting that that will necessarily happen.…

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