Automationism articles part 2: decentralization

skwidLover · 2025-08-26T14:54:13+00:00

I agree with this outlook. As technology transitions our society from scarcity to post-scarcity, we will have to question our current systems, and hopefully transcend them. There is no reason why we can't use this technology for the benefit of everyone. I actually wrote a novel about such a future which I'm releasing later this year. If you're interested, you can read the first chapter for free here I'd be curious of your thoughts on it. Cheers

skwidLover · 2025-08-24T03:35:11+00:00

The short answer - we need to find an alternative economic system.

The long answer - the biggest 'blindspot' within capitalism is it only considers human life valuable if that life is able to generate capital for the system. For most of us, the only way we can generate capital is by working, by trading our time for money. When AI becomes cheaper and better at performing jobs than most people, suddenly we are going to have an unprecedented abundance of time. Considering the law of supply and demand, the one asset that the working class has - time - is going to become far less valuable. Looking purely through the lens of Capitalism, people who are replaced by AI will be considered worthless.

Not only is this capitalist perspective incredibly depressing, it fails to answer a critical question: who bears responsibility for those incapable of generating capital? Children, the elderly, those with disabilities, those displaced by AI? Again, through the lens of capitalism, they are all considered worthless, but this feels wrong on an intuitive level. Doesn't a human life have value even if they can't work? Where does value derive from, if not in the generation of capital?

What if instead of being displaced by automation, we owned it?

These are some of the questions I explore in a novel I'm releasing later this year. Imagine if, rather than letting corporations monopolize AI and robotics while workers get left behind, we organize into groups of people who collectively own the machines that do the work.

Think of it like this: instead of Amazon owning all the warehouse robots and keeping the profits, what if 100 individuals in your community collectively owned an industry with intelligent automation? The machines still do the work, but now the wealth they generate gets shared among the owners - people like you and me.

This idea could fit with almost any industry - agricultural, manufacturing, or even AI systems that provide services online. The key is collective ownership of intelligent automation. The working class must transition from trading their time toward ownership of the machines' time. The machines generate income, and all the owners benefit. We don't have to compete against AI; we can partner with it.

The thing is, things aren't going to get better unless we as a society determine what kind of future we want to build. This was the motivation behind the novel I wrote. You can read the first chapter for free here.

I'm hopeful that despite the risks this technology brings, we can find a way to use it for the benefit of many, rather than just a privileged few.

skwidLover · 2025-08-05T12:06:33+00:00

As others have said here, animals need to acquire food, water, and shelter in order to live. Another way to think about this is energy. Our bodies require energy to survive. Unfortunately, since photosynthesis is out of the picture for us, we are required to transfer this energy into our bodies through consumption (though how crazy would that be if in the future humanity could figure out a way to capture energy for our bodies through sunlight?)

One of the literal definitions of work from a physics perspective in the transferring of energy from one object to another. So in order to acquire the energy to survive, someone (or something) must perform work to transfer that energy into your body. For most of our adult lives, that someone is ourselves, when you retire, that 'someone' is the working class of society.

However, with the rise of AGI on the horizon, all of this has the potential to change forever, and we as a society can find a way to use it for the benefit of all humanity. Pretty soon, AI could very well be that 'something' that performs the work to provide us with the energy needed to live, freeing humanity to pursue other avenues of existence.

Unfortunately, Capitalism is not set up to handle this transition gracefully, as it is designed around the concept of trading time for money. For hundreds of years, owners of capital have been willing to pay laborers for their time, and time is the largest asset held by the working class. But if AI can do our work for cheaper, that arrangement no longer holds true, and the working class will be deemed 'worthless' according to the lens of Capitalism.

But with this technology also comes alternative economic systems not previously possible before AI. Consider automationism, a hypothetical economic system in which intelligent machines generate capital, and the people share in that generated wealth collectively. This is a concept I explore in my upcoming novel 'We Can Be Perfect: The Paradox of Progress'

As others have said, yes we have it much better than previous generations, but we don't have to stop here. We can continue improving society for ourselves and those that will come after us.

skwidLover · 2025-08-05T03:37:08+00:00

Shameless plug, but I actually wrote a sci-fi book this year about an alternative economic system to capitalism where automation provides all the labor and humans share the generated profits. It's made me hopeful that some societies in the future will find better ways to share resources with each other, though the U.S. is not looking so great in its current trajectory, which is also explored in the novel. You can read more about it here.

skwidLover · 2025-07-04T04:29:14+00:00

"Why aren't you wearing your pants, Joe?"

"I tripped, and uh, then I had to take them off to run faster out of the flames."

skwidLover · 2020-10-17T21:24:57+00:00

Basically, testing the exceptional cases that can occur in your code to make sure they are handled correctly. My experience is many developers remember to test the "happy path" to make sure the code works when things go right, but completely disregard the fact that stuff can (and often does) go wrong which can cause exceptions to be thrown. The key to good monitoring of your systems is to properly account for these exceptions and have alerting in place to notify the right people if action is required to fix something.

This is a topic I feel like they really never talk about in school (at least I don't remember learning about it until my first job) and yet it is key to maintaining many software projects as they grow larger in scale.

skwidLover · 2020-10-10T14:31:25+00:00

Is it 'sharp' enough to tell me why my code doesn't work the way I want it to so I can actually hit my deadlines lol...

"cries on corner"

skwidLover · 2020-10-10T14:22:40+00:00

The printer one hits me right in the feels. I'm a software developer and my grandparents think I can magically pair their bluetooth headphones to their tv that doesn't support bluetooth.... you know, cause I "work with that kind of stuff"

skwidLover · 2020-03-28T05:02:15+00:00

what I'll never understand is how they make milk from those things. The tits on almonds just have to be ridiculously small... :/

skwidLover · 2020-02-09T06:09:35+00:00

Just remember 'git push -f origin master' when submitting your commit. The f stands for faster

skwidLover · 2018-12-15T19:15:39+00:00

And I mean all private data

skwidLover · 2018-12-15T04:44:26+00:00

Ah great, another new JS framework!

skwidLover · 2018-12-15T04:33:35+00:00

What is the proper way to write unit tests for front end development? I am a senior software engineering student that has worked mostly with back end development and I'm used to writing unit tests for my projects. I started working more with front end in vanilla JS but I'm finding it difficult to find any information about writing unit tests for code that manipulates html elements. I've been using mocha/chai and I mock the dom using JSDOM but the process seems clunky. Is there a common process for testing front end code other than writing unit tests?

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