Man I miss old matt taibbi so much. What happened to him 😭

It’s like that for many vices such as alcohol- it’s harmful but banning it is much worse than regulating it (see the history of 1920s America). I’m not convinced porn consumption is harmful but even if it was, it shouldn’t be banned.

I love the culture books too but c’mon man.

First, how do you imagine transferring power to an AI overlord would sit with the people who currently have all the proverbial guns in our current society. That’s the problem we need to solve first.

Second, who in our society would you trust to build an AI up to the task of single handedly managing world affairs? How would you even test something so superhuman? Not to mention that we’re not close to superhuman, we’re already pushing the limits of our tech building a chatbot that can’t stay coherent for more than a couple paragraphs. The tech just isn’t there yet and not within orders of magnitude.

I would say a good argument for communism is the worsening side effects of capitalism. These problems simply cannot be fixed in a capitalist framework because they require global cooperation and capitalism is based on competition. Problems like over exploitation of natural resources (overfishing, carbon emissions) and the failure of the market to adequately provide services for which there is a fixed level of demand (housing, education, healthcare. The scale of college and medical debt is getting ridiculous). Many other problems like these.

The solution is more democracy and yes common ownership of the means of production. People are just allergic to the specific term of class struggle. but it doesn’t change the meaning - the ownership/ruling class benefits from the status quo even as everything gets worse. They will not give up control without a fight, and as you said they will use every tool, from propaganda and legislation up to direct violence to maintain that control.