The article is a chain of economic fallacies.

> Modern economies are increasingly based around information. Information "wants to be free"—as the saying goes—but free things are bad for capitalism, because capitalism is about competition and making profits.

Tons of companies are based on providing information. Even if the information is public, sorting it and providing it efficiently has real value (such as google). Others do their own private research and re-sell it. Capitalists use and contribute to open source software. This statement is absurd.

> In time, technology is likely to drive many things to "zero marginal cost." Energy, for example, won't be subject to market forces. We'll just have a solar panel on the roof and each kilowatt hour will essentially be free.

In this "energy is free" economy, who will be building and providing me with my free solar panels, and then installing and maintaining the electrical system in my home or business? What happens when it's cloudy?

This whole article is like a undergraduate philosophy student who thinks he or she has the silver bullet for humanity, if only people would listen!

This article is terrible. Not only is it full of false comparisons, but every example cited as a supposed failure of capitalism or free markets is actually the direct result of government intervention. A friend challenged me when I mentioned this, so I wrote a full take-down: https://gist.github.com/nateabele/cffa0c54ab0385bbba37

If all human jobs are eliminated, that means you never have to hire a human to get something accomplished.

"But what about those who can't afford the super expensive robots?" you say?

If they are too expensive, you'll just have to trade with your fellow humans who also can't afford them, just like you do now. Millions of people all over the world do jobs that are already automated. The Amish even do it right here in the US, if you need a blatant example.

Of course, robots will become cheap just like every technology eventually gets cheap. They are only expensive in fantasies where only one variable is allowed to change and all logical consequences are ignored.

The reality is that building houses and growing food and transportation and medical care and many other things are all going to get much cheaper.

And so will writing code, prototyping new inventions, market assessment, manufacturing and distribution. Anybody that wants to dream up new apps or physical inventions all day will be able to sell to a global market. A global market of bots who filter the millions of new things for the exact needs and desires of their human masters.

In terms of GDP per capita, I live in one of the lowest income counties in a state that is well below the national average. I'm not sure if many of the points made in this article would be felt so viscerally by someone living in SF making $100k+/yr, but I found it very interesting.

It's worth noting that I have received exactly $0.00 in government subsidization (student loans, disability, unemployment, etc) - I've never applied for or received a penny of it. Perhaps the most interesting thing about rural communities like mine is that the people here who actually make money - farmers - are among the largest recipients of government subsidization in human history due to a subsidy program which was conceived when industrialized agriculture was still a nascent technology.

I feel there is a sort of cognitive dissonance when it comes to things like this in that many successful people are where they are in large part due to the governmental aid they've received,but these same people tend to be the most intense detractors of any legislation that would help everyone else.

I don't have any good answers and I sensed a bit of naivety in the article, but I feel it made some good points and asked a lot of very important questions.

Well I'm 30 and have been unemployed all my life. I'm safe at home, trying to make a game. Jobs aren't necessary anymore. That's what the industry and automation are for. In a way, you can say capitalism allows the development of industries, which in the end seems to reduce the necessity of having capitalism in the first place.

I didn't read the article, but I always sense there is this weird belief that "people must work and belong to something so that society can function". I can't really express it. What bothers me is that somehow, even after the new deal and social programs, not having a salary or income is seen as some sort of a bad thing, and often, it will be a bad thing for your mental health (isolation, lack of personal goals).

I guess that is what people don't like about capitalism, is that it builds an inability for anyone to share and live in communities normally, because the political argument of altruism seems to lead to communism and soviet evils. It's really hard to make a link between capitalism and the lack of fulfillment, despite the increase in wealth, but at some point I'm sure people would prefer an economy which isn't so focused on growth, but rather on long term development.

The UK used to have an unofficial version of UBI in the 70's and 80's when it was feasible, if somewhat difficult, to mooch off the benefits system, including getting reasonable low end accommodation. This had a kind of freakonomics effect on the wider economy that we can see today.

It's how nearly all musicians, artists, designers, actors etc were surviving during those decades and why they didn't end up abandoning their dreams to office jobs.

That 'Withnail & I' existence certainly wasn't one that many others would choose due to the low income and otherwise tawdry lifestyle, but it was actually the engine for the big success story behind UK culture - which has turned out to be one of its biggest exports and biggest draws.

The reason London is now seen at the world's coolest city where everybody wants to come to study, live, invest, and set up shop is its cultural capital and that can be traced back to the fact that all of the people running clubs, fashion designers, and musicians etc were enabled off that benefits system.

I like the idea of basic income but I don't like the idea of raising income tax. I think capital gains tax should be raised and there should be a special tax on passive income.

All Passive income sources are essentially small monopolies - If you own an asset from which you derive passive income without having to work at all; the dynamics of this are not so different from a corporation having a monopoly over an industry. At the root, why should some people get paid for doing nothing at all while others get nothing. Doing nothing should have the same market value no matter who you are.

Paul Mason is a very good television journalist although he has moved away from the BBC to Channel 4. Good that he may be, I don't feel the urge to read any of his books on how the post-Capitalist world is supposed to work out.

Recently in an old book shop I found a shelf full of ideas from around the dot com era of how our post-whatever society was going to be. I feel that Paul Mason's books are doomed to go to this same shelf of 'forgotten dreams'.

Sounds like it really wants to differentiate itself from the "old kind of socialism", which has a heritage of thought which already contains a lot of the things mentioned here.

And, as with most socialist thought, tends to kick up a lot of cries and moans from the self-professed economists in the room.