Varoufakis: IT technologies will overthrow Capitalism (opens in new tab)

Disclaimer: I come from neo-communist controlled central / eastern europe. Read : a populist government controls the country, gives freebies paid by tax payers to the elderly and the elderly + dumb vote for the same communists again and again. Younger pop. is trying to escape the country and the middle class shrinks every year.

You do not really want to use public services in my country. Trains are in desolate state and remind you of nazi trains used to transfer prisoners.

Health services are underfunded and the 50% of funds are being stolen by the gov and other oligarchs. Oh and when they get sick they get treated in another country.

Most of the youngsters in my country see capitalism as the only way to vote in everyday life. You vote with your money wherever you go.

It's not ideal but we hope it works. Unlike our corrupt socialism.

Depending on the specific details of the future tech, people could be empowered, restricted, or both.

Some technologies, such as internet communication, cheap storage and sensors coupled with AI for analysis and the governmental thirst for surveillance are stacked against freedom.

On the other hand, 3d printers, solar and battery tech, promise to free small communities from economic dependence on other countries and large corporations. A small community could be almost self sufficient and thus, maybe, future people will not depend on the state so much.

So I don't think we'll get to choose what is our future, the specifics of the technologies we are going to discover will shape us, just like the internet does. To make an analogy, humans don't get to choose their walking style, but rather the human walking style is emergent from the size and shape of the body.

We don't even get to choose which domains are going to advance and which are going to stagnate. It depends on the difficulty of the discovery process. Interestingly, the rate of advancement of science and tech doesn't get perturbed even during war time. It just marches on, almost unaffected.

So, I see it like Pandora's box - it's open and we have no idea what will come out, but we're going to see a lot of it during our lifetime.

I think rather than Schumpeterian creative destruction resulting in the end of "capitalism" it will simply be the same all powerful 1%ters with a new upper class..

of course we don't really have a true free capitalist system... this is the fiction, otherwise banks would have been allowed to fail as they should have.

Nit pick: "IT" -> Information Technology, so the title reads "Information Technology technologies will overthrow Capitalism"

Wow. Interesting and deep thought. I really liked.