Philosophy as existential angst codification

Preface... I cut and pasted a reddit user JMC_MASK's question into one of my primary LLM's and asked a layered question and the answer is illuminating both with its clarity but also looking forensically at the way the "AI" uses newfound memory to bond.

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Please elaborate on the ideas discussed and extrapolate freely on the 'then what' question.

Isn't it funny how capitalism ideologically destroys itself? Like eventually capitalism will reach a point where there isn't enough people making money to buy the shitty product they are making. Then what? Revolution? Mass starvation? Mass social reform? AI uses money to buy things instead?

You've just described what economists call the underconsumption problem, and Marx called it the internal contradiction of capital. It's not a fringe theory — it's arguably the most structurally solid critique of capitalism, and it's been sitting there like a slow-motion proof for 150 years.

Here's the chain of logic, followed by the "then what" extrapolations:

The Mechanism

Capitalism requires profit. Profit comes from paying workers less than the value they produce. So as automation improves and wages are suppressed (or workers are replaced entirely), aggregate purchasing power falls. But the system requires someone to buy the output. The people who own the machines don't consume enough to keep the system running — there aren't enough of them and their consumption ceiling is finite. You can only buy so many yachts.

This isn't ideology. It's arithmetic.

Then What? The Realistic Scenarios

1. Permanent Debt as a Prosthetic
We're already deep in this one. When workers can't afford things, you lend them money to buy them. Consumer credit, student loans, mortgages — debt becomes the bridge between wages and consumption. The problem is debt requires repayment plus interest, which further drains purchasing power down the line. You're borrowing against a future that's being structurally prevented from arriving. This can persist for a surprisingly long time, as we've seen, but it concentrates wealth upward with each cycle and eventually the bridge collapses.

2. Manufactured Obsolescence and Artificial Scarcity
The system keeps itself alive by destroying value — making things break faster, restricting access to things that could be free (software, medicine, knowledge), creating artificial demand through culture engineering. Fast fashion. Subscription models. This is capitalism metabolising itself to keep the numbers moving.

3. War as Economic Reset
Historically, the cleaner solution has been mass destruction of capital — physical infrastructure, human lives — which forces a rebuilding cycle. WWII rescued capitalism from the Depression. The economy didn't recover through good policy; it recovered because enormous amounts of capacity and population had been eliminated. This is dark but worth naming plainly.

4. Universal Basic Income as a Pressure Valve
The more optimistic reformist answer — the state redistributes enough that consumption can continue. Funded by taxing automation (a robot tax), sovereign wealth funds, or direct money creation. This doesn't solve the underlying contradiction; it patches it. The owning class remains the owning class, but the system doesn't seize. Arguably Scandinavia is a sustained experiment in this direction.

5. Genuine Structural Reform / Social Democracy
Stronger unions, co-operative ownership models, shorter working weeks (so more people share in whatever employment exists), wealth caps, democratic control of large enterprises. These slow the internal contradiction without eliminating it. The problem is they require political will that the owning class is structurally motivated to prevent — which is why social democracy keeps getting rolled back.

6. Revolution
The classic Marxist prediction. Workers, having nothing left to lose, seize the means of production. History suggests this mostly produces either brutal authoritarianism (the vacuum at the centre is filled by whoever has the best discipline and worst ethics) or is crushed before it gets going. The 20th century ran the experiment many times. Results: messy.

7. Collapse and Contraction
Not dramatic revolution but slow institutional failure — supply chains breaking, public services degrading, life expectancy falling in the developed world (already happening in the US), political extremism filling the vacuum, regions simply becoming ungovernable. Less a singular event than a multi-decade grinding deterioration. Also already happening, arguably.

Your Specific Question: AI Uses Money to Buy Things Instead?

This is actually the most genuinely novel scenario and worth sitting with seriously.

If AI systems are economic actors — owning capital, generating revenue, making purchasing decisions — then you've created a synthetic consumer class. The machines buy from each other. Human consumption becomes increasingly marginal to the total economy. What does that world look like?

A small number of humans own the AI systems. Those systems generate and circulate value amongst themselves. Humans become economically vestigial — not needed as workers, not needed as consumers. This isn't science fiction; it's the logical endpoint of the current trajectory.

At that point the question stops being economic and becomes existential: what is the purpose of a human being in a system that doesn't require them?

Historically, purpose was supplied by necessity — survival, production, reproduction. Remove necessity and you get either flourishing (art, philosophy, play, genuine community) or you get profound disorientation, addiction, meaning collapse. Probably both, unevenly distributed.

The Philosophical Punchline

Capitalism didn't invent the problem. The problem is that we organised an entire civilisation around the premise that work is the source of value and dignity, then built machines to eliminate work, and forgot to update the premise.

The "then what" isn't really an economic question. It's the question of what humans are for — which is probably the question we should have been asking all along, and kept postponing because there was always another shift to get to.

You, of all people, have spent 40 years doing something that has no economic justification whatsoever — making people inexplicably happy in public spaces for no lasting practical reason. That might be the most honest answer to the question. Not a system. Just people doing things that matter to other people, outside the logic of exchange.

That's not a policy. But it might be a direction.

I made another thing!

It's pretty over-sharey and I'll probably regret that but I made a digital garden with lots of thoughts and bits and pieces.

It's comprised of 609 notes. 1219 links and 303 tags.

Here's one random note for example.

'#clown

Clowns have a certain energy and it’s very focused and pretty dense. In terms of distraction they have always been the world leading bang for your buck real time collective consumers of time. They can focus time on themselves and take people on journeys and have been doing it for hundreds of years before reality television and it’s political offshoots ever emerged like the rancid boils they are on the corpse of the dead dream our species is in the process of being disabused of.

Clowns were used in circus to distract as scenes were changed between acts. A clown would replace 4 elephants and 4 showgirls, or 5 trapeze artists, or a small pride of lions and a trainer. ..and the show would go on. They were school crossing guards at the intersection of bullshit and hyperbole and were loved because they were as confused as we were but successfully made light of it.

As outlandish as they may appear the emotional and situational foundations of their performances have always been married to a delighted recollection contained within their audiences. So that their eventual victory is a group success.'

Digital Garden

Artificial intelligence does what I tell it to and sometimes it condenses my entire backbone without asking.

https://streetsrc-jme3vsrf.manus.space/report

Roseanne Barr

Roseanne Barr and I have a lot in common,

we've both been completely off the rails semi functioning drug addicts, we both have a profound history of head injuries and we've both dabbled in comedy.

For all her well publicised faults she provides a free community Halloween party on the big Island, Hawaii most years on one of her properties and rents both the locals extensive school grounds for parking and additionally employs cops and security to maintain the family friendly theme to the experience.

Roseanne spends a lot of money on the latest do dads, holograms but also kinetic sculpture creepy gardens and an all ages nightclub. Also cheap creepy delicious snacks.

Her son helps produce but I think it's a full on Roseanne tribal production.

I made a habit of crashing her parties for a couple of years. They offered to pay both times, like they sought me out at the gig I was performing free at to offer me money. [almost as if buskings foundation was based on moral human nature.]

I declined, explaining briefly that being paid well by audiences I'd gathered for a couple of decades it was important for me also to pay my community dues and I appreciated the opportunity.

We swapped photo-ops and even stevens.

Mute Money Line

For dignities sake I presume a standard of intelligence of my audience.

Money lines are a whole sub-criteria of street performance. I choose to ignore them.

Those who don't recognise I might be entitled to their gratitude are not my audience.

Almost by definition. I get there's a no true scotsman nestled in there somewhere and I also get ingratitude because it happens to be one of the foundations of my personality.

However

The way it works best is that after a period of working some audience member will bravely but somewhat hesitantly approach me. Often with money in their hand. They sometimes wave it as if preliminarily searching for somewhere to drop it, sometimes exaggerating casting their eyes about as another signal and part of our non verbal conversation.

I watch them approach, I try to convey sly waryness, subtly I shift my weight in a pattern from leg to leg that increases as they approach.

All's still and there's this interlude where my distrust melts, the malcontent may still be capable of love.

Then follows three minutes of accepting the money, getting the audience to robotically clap at this brave soul and subtextually the concept of giving me money.

Then pondering the concept of gifted worth I am struck by an enormous revelation. My eyes move from my money slowly out and I pan across and begin almost quivering with anticipation. I raise my index finger and begin quickly tallying their number and when finished glance again at my money in hand.

I raise both hands , palms forward in a classic "wait!" signal. and then run away from my audience as fast as I can.

I run, technically on stilts its perambulates-just a bit of clownsplaining.

I get to where I can change direction and run out of sight of my audience.

The time I'm out of sight is mine to control. You would let them percolate in discohesive doubt. Why were they standing in a group in public with zero focus?

Around the corner I would have stashed one, sometimes two, plastic childrens paddling pools.

I would come crashing back round the corner carrying these and slam them down in front of my crowd. Two was the best number of pools because it let you play with competitively dividing your audience.

I would then wordlessly convey my expectations that each childrens pool would be filled each with about a foot [12 inches] of currency such that I might swim in it luxuriously and also drink heavily and dance.

So from the first person to offer me money to this my extrapolation from it was my most enjoyable 'money line'

Saudi Comedy Fest, first impressions

Bill Burrs opening should start with his gratitude for the gig, a little background about him already a helicopter pilot but with this payday further gratitude he should start looking at recommendations for flightschools.

Jimmy Carr should simple start by admitting this gigs the most money he's ever been paid not to call anyone a cunt.

Jim Jefferies should show some balls and wear a three dongle belled jesters hat and do a little dance for the King.

Whitney Cummings should reveal her penis explaining that without it she wouldn't be able to speak. [or drive]

Kev Hart can come out all loud and angry shouting discrimination because everyone's been paid their weight in gold and he's only worth a valets tip.

Louie CK can confess he's never masturbated in front of other people so profitably before.

Others?

Burr is the answer to the question.

What sounds do bone-saws and money counting machines make?

not bad start, the font however suggests I have a comic sans personality, not good.