How many years remain where the population actually still has any way to kick them out? Once military robots are sufficiently advanced, we've lost. We'll be fully at their mercy. Optimistically speaking, that's maybe 5-10 years out?
But that assumes the population can't vote for someone else who will kick them out. As far as I know, there are no plans to stop third parties from being created, independents from running for political roles, or people voting for whoever they want to vote for.
If a large percentage of the population is going hungry or can't find jobs, then they'll vote for people that (at least say) they'll change that. If any of those people actually do that, then billionaires are toast, their assets could be seized and the laws could be rewritten so things like a universal basic income are implemented.
It doesn't matter how many resources someone has, they're not overthrowing the government, replacing democracy with a dictatorship or doing anything of the sort, especially not worldwide.
Today, the working class already have a miniscule influence compared to the rich and powerful. What makes you think the people could vote them out once they have an automatic army...? Why would they care about any kind of vote?
Seriously, imagine SV had produced 1 million autonomous robots, and a US government like today's was in power. How long do you think a strike would last? Many of these people are already openly talking about how we should adopt the 996 system, and how most people shouldn't be allowed to vote. I don't see any reason why we should expect anything but the worst.
First, the assumption seems to be that the US is the only country on Earth, or that every other country will follow their lead. There are plenty of places (especially in Europe) which are a lot more... left leaning in their political philosophies. As crazy as the US government may be, I doubt they'll literally attack Europe or Canada or wherever else even if under the thrall of Musk or Thiel.
2. Even in the US, the vote still has a pretty big effect on the government and how it's run. The person in the White House right now only got in because a percentage of people in certain swing states voted for him/the Republican Party, and it could have easily gone the other way. The whole 'billionaires get to do anything, law and order is a farce, ignore the constitution for the sake of it' system in play right now was only possible because Trump won the election.
> First, the assumption seems to be that the US is the only country on Earth, or that every other country will follow their lead.
How so? The elite class acts & collaborates on a global scale, as we've seen demonstrated time and time again, especially over the last decade. But even if there is no collaboration, all that's needed is for the US to develop an advantage in this field. Once heads of other countries get the choice between either possibly being targeted militarily or taking a leadership role managing a vassal state, how many of them would stick up for their country instead of selling their people out? They're already doing so without any real personal risk, purely for profit.
> 2. Even in the US, the vote still has a pretty big effect on the government and how it's run.
Maybe I'm thinking about this from a completely different perspective, but how would this scenario play out in your mind? Say it's 2030, the US government is centrist instead of far-right, and autonomous production of military robots is rapidly scaling, slowly rivaling even the military.
Then the SV elite decides to take over, with backing from at least half the government. Any governmental resistance can decide between playing along or likely being hunted down by said autonomous robots, and the military can't take over control since this takeover was prepared on the hardware side.
What does your vote do?
You may think this scenario is unlikely, but IMO given the current direction of the world it sounds far more realistic than stuff like Project 2025 did, yet here we are.
Unfortunately, even if a unified resistance formed by all gun-owning Americans were to march against them, it would buy the labor class a few months at most. Once enough capacity has been established (either production or troops) our only possible recourse would be to hijack/destroy their control, and that's unlikely to be possible if e.g. communication & compute originate from satellites.
