TFYS

The poor have those things because they still have some amount of power. They're still needed for work, and if you make too many of them too desperate, they can threaten the people at the top. But if you let the wealth (and power) gap get too large this will no longer be the case, and the poor might lose access to those things. If the wealth gap becomes such that the rich can afford automated production and protection but the poor can not, the current economic and political systems will no longer have a reason to give access to any of those things to the poor.

Maybe it depends on the country, but here the public automatically assumes everything like this done by Russia and these increase support for open war. I don't think Russia wants deeper European involvement in the war, so I'm having trouble understanding why Russia would be doing this. They're already having difficulties in Ukraine, how would angering the European public and increasing the support for further involvement help Russia achieve its goals?

They are a little bit, because collective action is very hard. If everyone chooses to participate and pay the cost of organizing it is worth the cost and a union will happen. But if a number of people choose not to then everything falls apart, as it is no longer worth it for anyone to pay the cost and the union can't function. Often the benefits of a union are also a public good, meaning everyone gets the benefits of a union fighting for better working conditions whether they pay the cost or not. If so, then there's little incentive to pay and the union will have trouble keeping itself alive.

Unions need some external extra incentive, like the state forcing them to exist or subsidizing the cost of organizing, to exist long term.

How does one become hardworking? I doubt it's completely up to genetics. People who grow up around hardworking people are more likely to see hard work and its rewards, and are therefore more likely to become hardworking themselves.

It's the promise of a reward that makes people work better. I don't think it necessarily needs to be a share of the proceeds. Athletes push themselves hard for recognition and some monetary reward. A planned economy could have something like that to motivate people.

A transition away from competition could also be implemented by capping the standard of living to what it currently is in the richest countries and then waiting for others to catch up. After that production would slow down yes, and that's the point. People could spend more of their time on things that really matter to them instead of things they're forced to do by competition.

This is how it will be until we figure out how to organize human life without competition. Too many of our systems are based on us competing against each other (markets, nation states), so we always have to maximize production or risk falling behind our competitors and getting devoured. We need to co-operate more instead of competing if we want to get out of this loop.

For capitalism to exist we must have a system in place to protect private property, e.g. a government. That government must be the most powerful entity to be able to protect property. The capitalist system is competitive, and controlling the decision-making of the most powerful entity is an enormous competitive advantage. Once you control that entity you'll naturally want to expand its powers. Hence capitalism will always lead to a growing government that capitalists will use to get a competitive advantage in their market. This is what capitalism will always lead to.

> Being wealthy and having to live among really wealthy people sounds better than being poor and living among equals.

Why? Once you pass a level of wealth where basic needs like, food, housing and healthcare are met your happiness probably depends more on how you perceive your position to be compared to people around you. Even your post suggests that, as you're comparing your position to people wealthier than you, even though you likely have your basic needs met. Once you get the US median salary, you'll just switch to comparing yourself against the really wealthy people. It's easier to be happy with what you have in a more equal society.

The issue is concentration of power. Wealth inequality is just one way destructive levels of power concentration can happen. We need low wealth inequality along with truly democratic government.

But the preferences might be changing not because people like the new way more, but because the economic system forces people to choose the most efficient way of doing things. Someone who plays games at home can do it cheaper or in less time than someone going to a cafe, and because we are constantly competing against each other in this system, the less efficient choices become unaffordable over time. Efficient people hold most of the economic power and therefore the economy will mostly serve them.

Also people, especially kids, are not always good at understanding the consequences of their choices. The convenience of playing games at home is easy to see, but few kids understand how that choice will affect their social skills over the long term. Allowing individual preferences to dominate society might not give us the best result.

Maybe they aren't and never will be capable enough to do this, but if there's even a 1% chance that they are, then it's very important to consider the consequences and take the necessary precautions before it's too late.

> In other words, the economic surplus did not go exclusively or primarily to the richest.

That was in large part due of strong leftist movements and states that forced the capitalists to share the increasing wealth. WW2 and the resulting labor shortage and other special circumstances contributed as well. Currently no such movements and circumstances exist. Globalization and the resulting free movent of capital has put capitalists in a better position to direct the extra wealth for themselves than ever before. A global movement is required to get a meaningful share of the increased surplus to the workers now, and that is very hard to do. The market will not do it on its own, as the demand for human labor eventually decreases due to automation.

The new people voted in are likely to be corporate stooges as well, as they have good and well funded infrastructure behind them for getting elected.