>Once you can have anything you can imagine by walking up to a machine and telling it what you want, what would you be buying with money?
Anything? I can have anything I want? My own personal Tal Mahal? One for all my friends? How about a full-size replica of Jupiter? Oh, and I's really love a Dyson sphere for Christmas.
Our current capabilities are immensely greater than anything dreamed up during neolithic times, but we're still unsatisfied. There is no reason to believe that further technological progress will change that condition.
These are some pretty silly examples. What would you do with another Jupiter? Do you really think that 100 years from now the 1% will be devoting all their resources to buying their own Jupiter?
There are still lots of reasons we need capitalism. As long as humanity has to clean toilets and take out the trash there will be people who will be willing to pay to not have to do that. But at some point we will have illuminated every single one of those tasks. At that point the gain we get from the rat race vs what it costs us will flip and people will be ready to trash the system. We're not there by a long shot even if people from centuries ago would have thought we are. I'm not saying this will happen in my lifetime or the lifetime of my great grand kids. But I'm confident it will happen eventually.
Anything? I can have anything I want? My own personal Tal Mahal? One for all my friends? How about a full-size replica of Jupiter? Oh, and I's really love a Dyson sphere for Christmas.
Our current capabilities are immensely greater than anything dreamed up during neolithic times, but we're still unsatisfied. There is no reason to believe that further technological progress will change that condition.