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From The (In)Effective Altruism Diaries: The Case Of Centi-Millionaire Marxist
You possibly already heard about James Cox Chambers Jr.
He is character that would be laughed at and rejected outright in any creative writing class as crude, primitive and unfunny caricature of leftist written by hate filled right wing bigot.
And he is real.
Descendant of long line of distinguished WASP's. As close to hereditary aristocracy as you can get in today's world. Wikipedia article of your own is now what noble title used to be.
(Yes, pure Anglo Saxon ancestry, no documented Jewish ancestors, if you are looking for this thing, you can be disappointed)
Who is, since early age, dedicated Marxist devoted to fighting for revolutionary cause.
Now, his means are not negligible. 250M hard bourgeois bucks is nothing to sneer at.
Distinguished revolutionaries in the past used cash with great efficiency as weapon to hasten the demise of capitalist world.
Comrade Cox-Chambers is not one of them. In 30 years of struggle, he really achieved nothing much worth showing. The Berkshire Communists, The Berkshire People's Gym, The Butterfly Collective etc. are not up there with The Sealed Train.
Neither are Dakota pipeline protests or Cop City protests.
At least the Georgia commune members had some fun, while it lasted.
This shows once again weakness of premise of effective altruism and 80,000 hours movement that money alone is sufficient to change the world. It is not specific to communism/leftism, many cases of right wing money wasted in even more pointless way.
Now, if you are inclined to laugh at the outgroup, show how would you do better. Your homework, your hypothetical scenario for today is:
You are given 250M in USD.
Your mission is to promote COMMUNISM. Not some petty bourgeois hippy nonsense, but real, scientific and authentic Marx-Lenin-Stalin thought.
How would you get the greatest bang for the buck, how would you most efficiently use capitalist cash to bring forward glorious communist future?
Show your work. Best entries will be rewarded with eternal revolutionary glory and virtual Stalin Golden Prize.
I'd invest all the money in tech, focusing on AI companies. Look, AGI is our best for fully-automated luxury space communism (with optional homosexuality), if we don't have that, then communism ain't for me.
Yeah, I think that if some companies invent AGI and are able to produce nearly unlimited goods or services at very little cost, then there's actually a pretty good argument to be made that the people -- acting through the government -- should seize the means of production and distribute the benefits evenly.
I mean, one of the fundamental flaws in communism is that when the government controls the means of production (1) it does a lousy job maintaining them; and (2) it disincentivizes the development of better means of production. But if the means of production can maintain and improve themselves, this is (arguably) much less of a concern.
Depends on how much "alignment" programs work out. If it's possible for the government to align AI and control it, you still end up running into public choice and Hayekian flavored failures of communism.
Can you be a little more specific about the scenarios you are envisioning here? I'm not saying you are wrong, I just would like to understand the issues you are raising.
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