Episode Details

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins tackle one of the most provocative questions in the age of AI: Does artificial intelligence finally make communism feasible?

They explore the structural failures of historical communism (incentives, power consolidation, information problems, and catastrophic mismanagement), why small-scale communism works (families, kibbutzim) but large-scale versions collapse, and whether AI-driven post-scarcity could solve these issues or simply replicate the same human problems of bad actors, bureaucracy, and distorted incentives.

Topics include:

* The Sam Altman UBI study and why unconditional cash transfers often fail

* Why Soviet science succeeded in some areas but governance always failed

* Power vacuums in anarcho-communism vs. centralized systems

* The future of “techno-fiefdoms,” AI-managed communities, and human reserves for those left behind by AI disruption

* Demographic collapse and the likely rise of religious/techno-puritan movements

A raw, nuanced debate that challenges both right-wing and left-wing assumptions about economics, human nature, and the coming AI era.

Show Notes

Why Implementations Fail

* Economic calculation problem (Ludwig von Mises, 1920):

* Without private property and market prices, planners lack information on relative scarcity/costs.

* You can’t rationally allocate steel, labor, or grain.

* Attempts at “material balances” or cybernetic planning (e.g., Soviet OGAS—an attempted nationwide information network) failed repeatedly.

* HOW AI CAN FIX THIS

* Adequately and dynamically track supply and demand

* Incentive and knowledge problems (Hayek):

* People respond to incentives.

* Common ownership dilutes responsibility (”tragedy of the commons”).

* Local knowledge is dispersed; central decrees can’t match it.

* AI can just more adequately monitor dispersed local knowledge

* Innovation and maintenance collapse without profit/loss signals.

* If AI becomes like a mother and just “handles” everything, then it’s not an issue

* Power dynamics:

* Enforcing abolition of private property and markets requires massive coercion.

* With AI, we’re approaching a place where the majority of the population won’t have anything (or anything to lose), property-wise.

* This concentrates power in a vanguard/party, which becomes a new ruling class (see Milovan Djilas’ The New Class).

* We might see a bifurcated society: One ruling elite doing their own thing, then AI-led/governed communist societies for everyone else

* The state doesn’t wither; it entrenches (Orwell, Animal Farm).

* This is more of an issue when the state is fighting over something desirable, but what we’re looking at is a society largely abandoned by the elite.

* Human nature (loaded with self-interest, status-seeking, family preferences as it is) doesn’t vanish.

* Not a problem if a non-biological mind is governing.

* Repeated patterns:

* Initial revolutionary fervor lead to…

* purges of “wreckers”/kulaks, which lead to

* Shortages, which lead to…

* blame external enemies/capitalism, which lead to…

* more controls, which lead to…

* corruption/black markets, which lead to…

* reform or collapse

* This is