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Notes -
Marshall Brain is, from what I understand, a socialist, and thus given to conspiratorial reasoning where the class of actual, as-recognized-by-Marx capitalists are organically hostile to the rest of the society, more powerful and more connected. I think you raise valid objections against this viewpoint and its implications.
But it's a matter of degree, not kind. For those of us who are neither PMC nor large property owners, it mostly changes the schedule of going into terrafoam. The incentive of efficiency is the same.
Besides. In Manna, he says that this largely dehumanized welfare population is <230.600.000 people (<1500*cube capacity). The main character could work for 10 years after the major breakthrough in automation, and even had a stint as an administrator. So in our timeline that's 2032 at the earliest. Population Pyramid says there'll be 352 million Americans by that point. Census Bureau is more bullish and expects more like 360 million. So very naively, 360-230=130.
36-37% of the population is quite a lot more than Peter Thiel and Brussels class. We don't have that many NYT journalists either.
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