Labyrinth Capital

A civilization in which the poor live more comfortably but have almost no realistic prospect of becoming powerful, independent or exceptionally successful through their own merits is not a superior civilization - it is the death of meritocracy in service of mediocrity under the banner of efficiency. Why would anyone bother trying to become the best at anything? There is no point. A machine can do it better so it's not economically viable to do anything other than own the compute that powers that machine, meaning even if you're really good at it, it won't do anything for you - class positions becomes entrenched, with no amount of effort or talent being enough to transcend them if you're on the wrong side of that line, because the market will stop rewarding your talents. Millions upon millions of people who define themselves by their jobs will be left purposeless. Most of humanity will be a serf class collecting welfare with no incentive to be brilliant or excellent or bother with anything, and will drive themselves mad descending into infinite leisure. I want to be wrong about this. But I don't think I am. After all the condescension of the flawed analogy between the car replacing the horse, and then the cope about adapting by keeping a human in the loop and augmenting your workflow, only to end up at "so yeah you were right actually you will be made obsolete" is just fucking wild.