If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter or the writings and social media postings of others considered part of the loose “pro-progress” movement, you’re familiar with the criticisms of “degrowth.” Some extreme left-wing environmentalists think continued global economic growth, much less accelerated growth (Faster, please!) is unsustainable. Growth must stop, and we must redistribute existing wealth from rich to poor. As activist Greta Thunberg has famously put it, “We are at the beginning of mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.”
To degrowth proponents, the notion of a) artificial intelligence accelerating growth and b) increased civilizational material consumption may be as worrisome as AI taking all the jobs or subjugating/eliminating humanity. Less prominent, it seems to me, are the left-wing proponents of techno-socialism. They imagine a near utopia where technology solves almost all problems, not the least of which is the need for humans to do much of anything. Let smart machines do all the work, while carbon-based life forms relax and collect a bountiful universal basic income. “Fully Automated Luxury Communism,” or FALC, as not only the Next Big Thing but the Final Big Thing.
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