And we're already burning the future to the ground by decimating our environment and doing absolutely nothing to prepare for the incoming AI revolution. Society as we know it will not survive a 50% unemployment rate.

The insatiably greedy, sociopathic capitalists have planted the seeds of their own destruction, just as Marx predicted.

Trump is just Reagan stripped of the sunny pretense, isn't he? He was elected by the same coalition that put Reagan in office back in 1980 and on which the GOP has been winning office ever since. To date, his government has delivered the same governance that any GOP president would have delivered - massive tax cuts for the rich, deregulating crackpots for the courts, boundless plunder for the crony capitalists. There is nothing new here at all.

"The insatiably greedy, sociopathic capitalists have planted the seeds of their own destruction, just as Marx predicted."

If AI is successful then AI is the logical ideal of capitalism. No workers to pay.

Yes. Society as we know it will not survive that form of AI.

But "capitalists" — the ownership class — aren't going anywhere. They will condense into hyper-rich feudal lord type capitalists that will have more power than any nation state in history.

It's totally delusional to believe that an apocalyptic economic wave as total as AI owned by the mega-wealthy will destroy anyone but the poor. So holding out some fantasy that Ai will bring about some communist revolution is idiotic. It will consolidate massive power and wealth into even fewer hands.

@1

Yep, any day now, capitalism will collapse.

Right around the corner.

Coming real soon, definitely.

Any minute, I tell you, just give it a little while longer...

Lots of fancy words, all in one article.

Calling Obama a neoliberal is stupid. Calling Trump something other than a neoliberal is stupid. The two might have switched hands on trade policy, because free trade is good for the global poor and Trump is a racist who hates the global poor, but measured on literally any other terms it's Trump (tax-cuts, spending cuts, deregulation, privatization) who's the neoliberal, not Obama.

The is the world that the alt-left wants - radicalist, be it the left (Jill Stein!) or the right (Trump). They have no place in their world for centrism which is why Trump was a perfectly fine alternative to Hillary for them, even if their "preferred" candidate wasn't going to win.

@4, dogs and cats living together... MASS HYSTERIA!

@5:

No, it probably won't happen overnight, but it in reality would only take a few key disruptions of vital systems to start a chain-reaction collapse. For example: a massive disruption of the power distribution grid, and resulting loss of access to electronic banking and transactional systems, and communications services would probably be sufficient to start the snowball on its way rolling down the proverbial hill.

@11 What you posit would indeed actually happen but the likely result would be some form of martial law fascism.

The use of the term "neoliberalism" is deliberately meant to confuse.

Jimmy Carter was as different from Ronald Reagan and the people who supported him as day is from night, yet you call both of them neoliberals (as well as Obama). I bet you're not even old enough to have been alive when Carter and Reagan were Presidents, and too young to even remember Obama's first term. Did you pull this out of one of your textbooks or from some blog you read online?

"Neoliberalism" is the new darling phrase making the rounds on social media sites claiming to be for legitimate social and political commentary (though likely administered by foreign bots) simply because it is double speak and therefore, propaganda of all persuasions can be loaded onto it.

Lose the social media word of the day and come back to us later with some real thought-through commentary of your own.

Excellent read, Charles! This is your A material.

Aside: Reagan DID successfully subvert congress by creating a "shadow government" that was not constrained by congressional oversight. The only guy we remember from that is Ollie North and the right is busy painting him as a war hero.

@12:

That's probable, but such an authoritarian system would be limited by geography, although it's likely there would be a number of such systems established. But, they'd be fragmented and uncoordinated, and there would be pockets or enclaves where alternative systems would also spring up. Without the ability to communicate over long distances to strategize and coordinate actions, martial law would be effectual only in areas where a significant military presence already existed, and the exigencies of the moment, combined with a drastic reduction in availability of resources would significantly restrict the ability to impose it over a wide area.