Guns have limited range, and are easily rendered largely ineffective (e.g. armored vehicles). Robots and other advanced weapons make direct combat entirely one sided. Surveillance apparatus allows identifying combatants attempting a guerilla warfare approach. AI could allow identifying an assassin attempting to draw a weapon and killing them before they could get a shot off. Etc.

Against the current US military I dare say that overwhelming numbers would win, against a theoretical future military that is less clear. Moreover the current US military would probably revolt if used to overtly oppress the population, but a more robotized one with humans only required at high levels might not.

Guns don't do anything without bullets. Bullets don't do anything if they don't hit a target. Disable power and communications and most people become immediately useless at living, let alone mounting an assault.

The days of sheer numbers being useful are long past in the era of modern warfare.

I’d say the recent experience in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan runs counter to your claims.

Not really. The US followed certain rules of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan that a truly ruthless military would not.

For example the Battle of Fallujah was fought with Vietnam level tactics. There were about 100 KIA for the US side. The battle could have been fought differently with zero US losses.

So you imagine a scenario where the US military would annihilate it’s own citizens ruthlessly to preserve insane wealth disparity. Ok.

You are talking about a scenario in which every man woman and child grabs their 1+ gun to deal with inequality...

The gun owners are typically on the other side of the aisle from those who support redistribution of wealth. Not saying that couldn't change or that desperation can't trump principle, of course.

This isn't true, most democrats do not support redistribution of wealth, where leftists who do support the redistribution of wealth are generally in favor of gun rights.

There's no chance that's close to true. The further left you go, the more ardently people are anti guns in the US. With few exceptions it's a dramatic difference between the center left and far left on gun rights. The far left is entirely anti gun, the center left occasionally panders to win votes out of necessity.

The two most famous Socialists in the US right now are probably Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. Both are very aggressively anti guns.

From my understanding classic Marxists are very pro-gun, as a necessity to protect the rights of workers from the ruling class.

"The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. [...] Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary." ~Karl Marx - Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-l...

> The two most famous Socialists in the US right now are probably Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. Both are very aggressively anti guns.

That is not true of Bernie Sanders [0]. He has moved to some degree towards favoring more gun control laws than he used to, but he is by no means more anti-gun than most mainstream Democrats.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/24/41718...

You're wrong, and the reason is that your definition of "far left" is nowhere near far enough. Neither Sanders nor Ocasio-Cortez are far left, and Sanders isn't even a socialist (despite using that label).

Actual hard left - the kind that actually believes in Marx and revolutions - is not a hive mind, but it is true that it tends to be a lot more acceptive of grassroots violence, and things that enable it (like guns). Which is not all that surprising, given the history of the movement.

Look up Redneck Revolt or Socialist Rifle Association to see what I'm talking about.

Which Democrats don't support redistribution of wealth? I didn't know any such Democrats existed.

This was intended as a serious question in good faith so the downvotes and lack of responses are unfortunate.

To elaborate: Hillary Clinton's 2016 platform included increasing the inheritance tax, and she's about as centrist as Democrats get these days. The inheritance tax is redistributive. Did any Democrats come out against her position? https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/09/23/hillary-c...

Redistribution of wealth usually refers to seizing private assets directly, rather than simply creating more taxes. Democrats almost universally support private ownership of the means of production, where the opposite would be either workers ownership of companies held in trust or the nationalization of companies and industries.

> Redistribution of wealth usually refers to seizing private assets directly, rather than simply creating more taxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistribution_of_income_and_w... says: "Redistribution of income and redistribution of wealth are respectively the transfer of income and of wealth (including physical property) from some individuals to others by means of a social mechanism such as taxation, charity, welfare, public services, land reform, monetary policies, confiscation, divorce or tort law."

I don’t know if thats true: I think everyone wants a “fair” distribution of wealth. The question is in the definition of fair, and means to achieve it. Conservatives believe that distribution achieved by tax and regulation will hurt the total economic production of the US, and lead to everyone being worse off, though more equal (in the extreme: everyone is equally poor), and they also consider it fair that the distribution is unequal (as do liberals). Its just a matter of how unequal.

But at least part of their definition of includes that they have the chance to increase their position, which is incompatible with tax/regulation at the extreme: if everyone has their incomes set in stone by the government, there is no chance to change in status.

But losing all low-level jobs to robots, notably, removes that chance. For different reasons than the liberal (who dislikes it for the centralization of wealth/power, and the extreme polarization of wealth distribution), conservatives would intuitively be against it for the denial of opportunity across the board

Tldr: everyone hates being poor/homeless, and too many people being homeless will cause a revolt regardless of their individual political leanings.

One aspect of UBI (when/if we can afford to implement it) is that it presents some solution the problem you describe if it's unconditional. If everyone has an set-in-stone income provided by the society because the robots are doing all the low-level jobs and the society doesn't need their labor, then they still have sufficient free time and ability to do something extra to increase their position.

There are many useful things that aren't (or won't be) viable as jobs because they pay too little or too sporadically to sustain yourself, however, they do provide enough to increase your revenue and status, and give a feeling of opportunity - if you'd have the basics provided in some other way.

One function of UBI has never been clear to me: if everyone has X, then no one does.

Applied to UBI’s case, the baseline of $0 has been “lifted” to say $1500; wouldn’t that just cause the market to increase prices proportionally, until $1500 is effectively the same as $0? Specifically, those baseline goods/services where that $1500 targets?

I would imagine luxury goods wouldn’t change much, as those spending in the area won’t change their spending behavior significantly with a fresh $1500; but a poorer community certainly would, and I would expect the market to match

In a modern first world economy (i.e. the only economy where UBI starts making some sense, and we're probably talking decades in the future so even more automation/productivity than now), the basket of goods that would be considered "basic" constitute something like <10% of total consumption and production. There would be some inflation caused by extra buying power, but it's not expected to be prohibitive in all the commoditized products such as food; I mean, the amount of consumed food would not change meaningfully as we feed pretty much everybody anyway, the only question is how the compensation is arranged - it doesn't matter that much for the economy if the poor unemployed person gets fed by food stamps, conditional social security, universal basic income, government supplied food packages, charity cash donations or charity soup kitchens.

One aspect that would change is the rental market. We would expect the landlords to try and capture much of that money. However, the big impact of UBI on rent is that it decouples the residental areas from the industrial areas; if you don't need to live where the jobs are and can credibly leave for a place where rents are cheaper, then some people will do so and that puts a limit on the rents.

As you state, small poor communities would feel a significant impact; however, in their case the main effect would be that they would become subsidized by the other parts of the society - much of the UBI they get would be spent on goods coming in from outside; their local market won't impact the price of a bottle of Coca Cola or a bag of potatoes, it's coming "from outside" anyway.

The cost of local services, on the other hand, would become much more spread out - if currently the cost for many services clusters around a single point (often close to minimum wage) because everybody needs a job so they do that service even if they don't want to; and everybody needs to eat, so they have to charge a reasonable amount even if they would be doing it as a hobby; In an UBI world you'd expect the cost of services to spread out widely so that services that are pleasant and interesting (for the provider) are cheaper than now, and services that suck for the workers become more expensive, as the workers now have a choice.

Even without guns, it's much easier to break a robot than it is to operate one. I think the economics of the physical economy favor the physical masses over the paper wealthy.

Is it easier to break a tank than operate one? Then why a robot?

I think I misplaced my post, the intent was to respond to someone arguing that automation would help the wealthy quell the poor. Any comments I make about robots apply to machinery in general.

To your question, it is easier to break a tank than to operate one. Anti-tank weapons are cheaper than tanks, and range down to well-timed Molotov cocktails [0].

[0] https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-Molotov-cocktail-destroy-a-t...