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A comment on AI is killing the cheap smartphone. Parent comment

Re:AI is killing the cheap smartphone by ivewonyoung on Friday May 22, 2026 @03:15PM (#48240193)
That makes no sense because labor needs capital to take risks so they get salaries. For example new drug discoveries cost a lot of money and a huge percentage fail with big losses that go to paying labor but not eventually benefiting from it. Banning that model where capital is risked by passive investors would've meant far fewer life saving drugs being invented, literally making mankind worse off.

If someone wants to passively invest $3M into a new coffee shop and pay labor to work in it, banning it like you want to do will kill the economy and disadvantage the little guy.

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Re:AI is killing the cheap smartphone by hackyhacky on Friday May 22, 2026 @04:32PM (#48241249)
> That makes no sense because labor needs capital to take risks so they get salaries.

Total non sequitur. Labor (and salaries) predate the existence of money, as well as capital investment.

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Re:AI is killing the cheap smartphone by ivewonyoung on Monday May 25, 2026 @03:54PM (#48270919)
Before capital investment it was coercion, slavery or community building that made big projects possible. The first two were outlawed as they weren't needed under capitalism but were common in non capitalism like the gulags and Uyghur labor .

Even under capitalism you can still volunteer, donate and create community orgs to build things, there's nothing stopping anyone.

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Re:AI is killing the cheap smartphone by hackyhacky on Tuesday May 26, 2026 @10:02AM (#48280049)
> Before capital investment it was coercion,

Huh? You think that before investment, people didn't trade good and services of their own free will? You need to re-examine history. Commerce predates civilization.

If you think that slavery isn't needed under capitalism, how do you explain the extensive use of slavery under capitalism?

> Even under capitalism you can still volunteer, donate and create community orgs to build things

That's true, and is completely irrelevant to our conversation, because we're not discussing volunteering, we're talking about the distribution of profit. If there is no profit, there is nothing to distribute.

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