March 29th: Luxury Communism?

Brian Merchant's article "Fully Automated Luxury Communism" describes communist ideology in a unique manner by highlighting the inevitable path ahead for technology within our society. Luxury communism is described as sharing the benefits of automated labor force to everyone, and removing private ownership rights for these new technologies that replace the work of humans. Using Uber as an example, luxury communist supporter Aaron Bastani argues that due to the company's projected future goal to use only driverless cars, there is no reason this network of cars should be run by a private company with a goal to generate profit. The motto behind this ideology is "Luxury for All", meaning that as technology progresses there should be "common ownership of that which is automated." They believe in a utopia in which machines do all the heavy lifting for the people instead of a profit. Along with common ownership of basically everything, luxury communists' utopian society also has free health care, housing, education, etc. I understand why this ideology has come into existence; their utopian society sounds pretty appealing. However, the ideas presented in this essay neglect a fundamental aspect of communism; The government has all control. The authors methods of explaining this belief make it seem like luxury communism would result in a happy world where everyone owns an equal amount of everything, but the author doesn't include the fact that every single aspect of this projected "utopia" would actually be controlled by a single, all powerful Government. The main issue the followers have with capitalism is corruption within the corporate world, yet their presumed better option is to live in a society run by a government larger and more powerful than any corporation that has ever existed. The thought process behind this seems to be neglecting some key factors. Another thing that truly bothers me about the presented ideals of luxury communism is how ready these people are to enter this world where technology and robots control the entire workforce, and then proceed to credit everyone equally for the inventions of the brilliant engineers who worked incredibly hard to develop these advanced technologies. Luxury communism is based upon being lazy and having work done for you. Their projected utopia and this article in general reminds me so much of the society in the Disney Pixar film, WALL-E, which if you're aware of the events that occur in this film, isn't a very good state of humanity that anyone should want to strive towards.