Mmm, kind of. Scarcity is definitely fundamental under capitalism. But what do we do in a theoretical, post-scarcity society?
The digitization of information and media combined with the Internet and widespread use of electronic devices practically means that in some important ways, we are already grappling with post-scarcity in certain fields. 600 years ago, "books" and other texts were rare and valuable, then there was an explosive transformation with the invention of the printing press. But while much easier, there was a still a laborious printing process and a copy of a book was still a valuable thing. Now, a "book" can exist as an .epub and be copied perfectly a million times practically for free. It is similarly true for movies, photos, recorded music, news articles, etc.
As a capitalist society, we've really struggled how to deal with this post-scarcity arrangement. We understand in the abstract that this stuff is important, and that creating it is a laborious process, but we do not really know how to assign copies of those works value (because, once created, they immediately become infinitely abundant). The best idea we've seem to have settled on is articifically creating scarcity by locking the digital works behind paywalls and subscription services that require an account, or maybe DRM paired with a EULA. But I think people generally, and the HN crowd specifically, understand that is a lousy arrangement.
Could energy become so abundant that it is also post-scarcity? Between fusion energy and advancements in solar, wind, and geothermal energy, maybe! It is a tantalizing vision to dream of, but what does that look like under capitalism?
I know what you're getting at, but for the Socratic sake of things, I have bad news! :D
Electricity that is too cheap to meter is possible today. I'm pretty sure that we are technologically capable of producing enough solar panels to supply reasonable energy needs (ignoring AI data center nonsense, for now). I think this is happening already in certain countries, but the economics of it get weird, because even as a public utility, you have to charge something. A market that drives prices down to almost nothing will then cease to exist, and powerful people don't want that to happen.
The real solution is that governments should just build out power capacity and provide electricity as a service to its citizens, like healthcare and education. The solution we'll probably get is some Dickensian torment nexus where orphans are pushed into a meat grinder and our electric bills go up.
I basically agree all value is derived from labor, but a lot of modern economists do not.
There's are an interesting book called "This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom" by Martin Haaglund. Part 2 of the book is really concerned with the Labor Theory of Value, and it articulated it in a way I'd never really understood before. It's hard to summarize in a short post, but here's an essay that engages with the ideas in a span of a few pages: https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/the-revival-of-heg...
Really, I encourage people to check out the book. It was at times challenging, and but always thought-provoking. Even when I found myself disagreeing (I have some fundamental disagreements with part 1), it helped me articulate my own worldview in a way that few books have before. It's something special. Anyway, the book really cemented and clarified my views on the labor theory of value.
I don't think it is a coincidence that the areas with the wealhiest people/corporations are the same areas with the most extreme poverty. The details are, of course, complicated, but zooming way way out, the rich literally drain wealth from those around them.
Thanks for pointing this out. Sorry you're getting downvoted. I visited San Francisco about ten years ago, and seeing a homeless person sheltering themselves under a flag or some sort of merch from a tech company really drove home just how bereft of humanity corporate power centers really are.
"It's capital that belongs to people and those people..."
That's not a fundamental law of physics. It's how we've decided to arrange our current society, more or less, but it's always up for negotiation. Land used to be understood as a publicly shared resource, but then kings and the nobles decided it belong to them, and they fenced in the commons. The landed gentry became a ruling class because the land "belonged" to them. Then society renegotiated that, and decided that things primarily belonged to the "capitalist" class instead of noblemen.
Even under capitalism, we understand that that ownership is a little squishy. We have taxes. The rich understandably do not like taxes because it reduces their wealth (and Ayn Rand-styled libertarians also do not like taxes of any kind, but they are beyond understanding except to their own kind).
As a counterpoint, I and many others believe that one person or one corporation cannot generate massive amounts of wealth all by themselves. What does it mean to "earn" 10 billion dollars? Does such a person work thousdands of time harder or smarter than, say, a plumber or a school teacher? Of course not. They make money because they have money: they hire workers to make things for them that lead to profit, and they pay the workers less than the profit that is earned. Or they rent something that they own. Or they invest that money in something that is expected to earn them a higher return. In any scenario, how is it possible to earn that profit? They do so because they participate in a larger society. Workers are educated in schools, which the employer probably does not pay for in full. Customers and employees travel on infrastructure, maintained by towns and state governments. People live in houses which are built and managed by other parties. The rich are only able to grow wealth because they exist in a larger society. I would argue that it is not only fair, but crucial, that they pay back into the community.
Well said. I would add that corporations exist because we choose to let them, to let investors pool capital and limit risk, and in exchange society should benefit, and if it doesn't we should rearrange that deal.
You know, we created the US government as an expression of the fundamental rights of man, with the idea that the government would provide for the common welfare and preserve these rights.
In rebellion against a king who seemed to want to exploit us and felt that his being king made him the source of the rights we had.
Maybe we need to re-think the relationship with corporations the same way? Re-structure so that they serve the common good?
We can, and we should, regulate some things. AI has, quite suddenly, built up billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and become pervasive in people's daily lives. Part of how society adapts to ridiculous new situations is through regulations.
I'm not proposing anything specifically, but the implication that this field should not be regulated is just foolish.
I'd love for the cut to be smaller, but it is absolutely not a "death sentence." With traditional consoles (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft consoles, and those before them), the barrier to entry is very high. If you are an indie, it is practically necessary to work with a publisher to get on those platforms. The publishers demand their own cut (in addition to Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft), and as they are running a business, they only take on games that they expect will make a profit. In that environment, weird little developers making weird little games will almost always be shut down before they can even see the light of day. I think it is a little easier in the modern day (you don't need a blessed dev kit to make a console game, for example), but I think the barrier is still not trivial.
The PC games space has always been more open. If you had a weird game you wanted to share, you could share a disc with your friends or make it available on your website. But, again, if you wanted to make some decent money, you probably needed a marketing department and to have a boxed copy on store shelves (which, again, means working with a publisher). With a few exceptions, hardly anyone would ever find your game otherwise.
With modern-day Steam, an indie dev needs only to pay $100 to put a game on Steam (and I believe that $100 is refunded if the game crosses a certain threshold of sales). Discoverability is still a challenge, but just by existing on Steam, an indie game has a chance to make a bit of money. Steam itself has some discoverability features that can boost the visibility of even quirky little titles. The indie dev needs to do their own work, of course, to get visibility, but they don't need to have major resources behind them to get that visibility. They don't necessarily even need to host a website anymore - the game has a page on the Internet through Steam after all. The indie dev can direct anyone who will listen to them to go there.
All that said, I do agree that Steam is practically a monopoly. If Steam decided they hate you for some reason, then that's it. You almost certainly do not have a viable path forward for selling your PC game simply because they have such dominance (see the recent controversy where major payment processors suddenly decided they would not facilitate the sale of lewd games, and Steam reacted by pulling any game that seemed to fall into that category. Although, even in that case, the harmful monopoly tactics are coming from different actors in a different industry). For the time being, I just think they are kind of a benevolent dictator.
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