The thing though, is that ego is still driving anyone that is making more money than they need to survive. They just do not care about anything that isn't purely transactional, nothing is sacred, nothing is to be done for its own sake. It is capitalism demonstrating a kind of mechanical self-accelerating quality that is increasingly untethered from the human substrate it subsists on.

As Marx wrote: "Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

And of course, that relationship is class war between the vast majority of the population and the owners of the productive forces.

>the owners of the productive forces

Without the owners of the productive forces the productive forces wouldn't exist. Go to North Korea if you want to see what it looks like when nobody's allowed build their own business.

North Korea was doing better than South Korea until America panicked and invested huge amounts into South Korea, creating the Chaebol system of enormous companies owned by a few families under a political dictatorship that over time has liberalized somewhat.

False dichotomy.

I don't care about this "class war" or even ownership of the worthless "productive forces".

If you divide a product' cost into its "cost of availability" and the variable costs, none of this would even matter.

You could just ignore your noisy neighbors fighting over who gets to be the happy one, while you in your newfound freedom are simply happy.

If it wasn't clear, if you do not divide the two costs, then their fates are intertwined and so are the outcomes.

You can say this kind of thing all you want, but the fact of the matter is we've never had so much discussion about "human pursuits" in the history of humanity.

This topic has historically been reserved for those fortunate enough to be so leisurely with their time. Haven't you ever considered that you're seeing the beginning instead of the end? Why else would there be so much debate? It's a big change to the status quo.

> had so much discussion about "human pursuits" in the history of humanity.

I personally hardly have that impression, as in the days of the Romantics and of Werther's sufferings are now way past us.

Someone's a piece of garbage if they expect the rest of humanity to subsidize their hobby but never shed a tear for the millions of factory workers dispossessed by automation.