re: What the heck? They really want to ethnically cleanse whites.

Levine. It’s always one of those pieces of genetic junk. ALWAYS.

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Soy when

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This is disingenuous if not outright dishonest. Antisemitic attacks are not coming from the right.

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You noticed this, too.

Levine.

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A very fair question. Let me explain myself. Let's compare Tesla to Ford. Tesla employs ~125k people with a market cap of 1.43 trillion (much of that comprises Elon's wealth via ownership). Ford employs ~171k people with a market cap of ~50B. Ford's market cap is 270k per person, Tesla's is 12.2million per person. Smart companies are figuring out how to do more work with less personnel.

I really love that Tesla is getting more productivity about of each employee by using automation and scale (innovate or die), but I also think this is a canary in the coal mine for how advancements in productivity are going to continue to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The way forward has to involve fixing this problem, or we're going to be back to the feudal system.

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Got it. My original answer was terse because I was thinking you were going to delve into arguing MMT and/or UBI insanity. Apologies for my arse-umption.

I agree with the assessment, but I think it goes deeper than that. These increases in technology are pushing us towards trying to create a post-scarcity society (think: Star Trek). Most people simply are not built for that.

Physiological needs are "basic needs" for a reason. They are the most fundamental things a person needs to survive. If those things are met as a default, especially from birth, it shifts the understanding of what a "basic need" is (it doesn't shift the reality of it, just what people assume it is). In other words, if a group exists around plentiful clean drinking water but fewer options for shelter or food, they are less likely to see clean drinking water as much of a need as they do shelter or food. If they are sheltered enough, they may even have trouble comprehending a desert.



The more a need is fulfilled by default, the more likely it is to be taken for granted. Fulfilling this need means people have the time to focus on fulfilling other needs. The further up Maslow's Hierarchy you go, the less physical and more emotional those needs become. As emotional needs become more of a focus, the more society becomes unstable. We have only to look at Calhoun's Universe 25 experiments to see this at play.

Humans are a lot more advanced, self-aware and intelligent than are rats but not infinitely so. Contrary to philosophy from some sectors, people are not all the same. What that means in this context is that we all don't have the same "behavioral bandwidth" (no idea if that's an actual term, if not then consider this my copyright of it ;) ), meaning that people have different levels of ability at using spare time (time no longer needed to meet physiological needs) in positive or productive manners. For example, our welfare programs are filled with many who engage in continual self-destructive behaviors rather than productive ones (as evidenced by poor, urban areas with high welfare use also being the areas with the most violent crimes, and that's in every major and medium sized city).

That said, those pushing us toward a more post-scarcity stance are those who also have the higher bandwidth to make productive use of that extra time. By contrast, those on the lower end will find themselves with more time, thus becoming more self-destructive and pushing their self-destructiveness into group actions.

This is what it looks like when the advancement of a species runs into the boundaries of Darwinism. Those on the upper end of the behavioral bandwidth can create all the pathways and programs possible to help those on the lower end, but in the end it will always be up to those on the lower end to understand what they need to do to be more successful and then to follow up on that by doing it.