How is this nearly 100-upvotes question not an opinion fest?

Question

What is the capitalist answer to automation?

Just look at the answers... anything from crystal balling various futures to saying capitalism doesn't have an answer.

What makes this a good question? (Don't tell me HNQ.)

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Frankly there are better questions & answers on Quora (relating to that); they have one on whether Capitalism is an ideology or something else.

Also, it looks to me that despite not even being out of beta, politics SE might already need to start using the historical lock. And I'm saying that because there are presently two more questions on the main page about automation and the future; the asker was inspired by that old question (links to it one of his):

• Could demographic decline in Western countries outweigh job loss due to unemployment? (It starts with "Automation causing job loss is sure a problem.")
• The state's answer to the automation of job (amusingly closed as a duplicate, even though it's not; I voted to close that too, but for it being primarily opinion-based.)

Answer 1

Historical locks are a bad call here. Those are basically saying the post was made under old rules that have changed, but we keep the question around because it's interesting/useful. SO uses them the most, because it's the oldest and had much looser rules back in the day. This question is barely a year old and we've had no major rule changes. So normal closure would apply.

The political angle here is that many Socialists are saying we need things like Universal Basic Income to counterbalance the believed coming job shortage that automation is supposed to produce.

The question is asking

Can capitalism avoid collapsing in a highly automated world?

It's implicitly pitting Capitalism against other socioeconomic systems. The answers (some poorly cited) tend to draw on historical references (automation was supposed to have destroyed Capitalism by now, according to some).

Your examples aren't exactly the same thing

• Could demographic decline in Western countries outweigh job loss due to unemployment? - This is asking for an economic prediction based on current trends.
• The state's answer to the automation of job - Unfortunately, this is also POB the way it's phrased. It makes numerous assumptions we're asked to extrapolate and then proffer an answer.

The difference is education. This is an ongoing problem (I've voted to close over 30k SE questions) and sometimes you have to explain

Your question is not the same as that one

Answer 2

In my reading, the question should have been re-tagged as political-theory. It essentially asks how a particular theory (capitalism) would address a particular social concern (automation). Reasonable non-opinion answers could be written if they are based on capitalist theory.

While at least one user did that, nearly every other answer is opinion. Even the most upvoted answers from high-rep users are basically opinions without any form of being backed-up.

Re-tagging the question won't solve the problem. We can (and should) close the question to prevent future harm, but unfortunately the only available strategy at this point is to contain the harm as much as we can and educate users (both askers and answers) in the future.