At HowTheLightGetsIn London 2025, Aaron Bastani and Zoltan Istvan debated whether capitalism should be dismantled in an age of automation. As artificial intelligence transforms the foundations of work, we face the question of what will it mean to be human in a world of abundance. In this piece, Zoltan argues that we should reimagine the American Dream for the AI era. 

It was a windy autumn Saturday afternoon at London’s fabled Kenwood House when I found myself standing beneath a 300-person tent called The Ring at HowTheLightGetsIn. The crowd had packed in shoulder to shoulder, leaving hardly any space to move. You could feel the hum of anticipation in the air, the kind that happens when people know they’re about to witness a real exchange of ideas—an argument not about the past, but about the shape of the future. I was there to debate Aaron Bastani, the creator of Fully Automated Luxury Communism, and a man whose vision of the future, while sharing many of my premises, reaches different conclusions.

Along with some friends who are part of my California gubernatorial campaign, I’ve spent years developing what I call the Automated Abundance Economy, a framework that accepts that automation and artificial intelligence are rapidly changing the world. Machines and algorithms are becoming capable of doing nearly every kind of labor a human once did—from driving trucks to designing buildings to diagnosing diseases. In my view, this is an irreversible trend. The question isn’t whether automation will take over, but how we’ll adapt once it does. My answer, however, has never been to abandon capitalism right away. I believe capitalism, along with its flaws, is the engine that got us here—the system that incentivized innovation, rewarded risk, and built the infrastructure of technological progress. I want to hold onto capitalism as long as possible, because I believe it provides the creative fuel we still need to finish building the future. But I’m not naïve. I know that as automation spreads and abundance grows, capitalism will likely dissolve into something new—something more collective, more equitable, and yes, more left-leaning.

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Aaron Bastani sees that endpoint too, but he wants to leap straight to it. His philosophy of Fully Automated Luxury Communism imagines a society where automation and renewable energy make scarcity obsolete, and where the fruits of technology are distributed universally. For Aaron, capitalism is no longer a tool—it’s an obstacle. He argues that it’s time to dismantle the system, to build an economy based on access rather than ownership, on shared services rather than private wealth. In his vision, technology liberates humanity not only from labor but from the very structures of profit and competition that have defined modern life. He doesn’t just want progress; he wants justice, and he believes the two are now inseparable.

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You could feel the hum of anticipation in the air, the kind that happens when people know they’re about to witness a real exchange of ideas

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