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Wouldn't this be a natural effect of more automation generating wealth rather than direct human labor?

• panarky 9y ago
  Workers design and build the robots. Why wouldn't those workers capture the benefits of the robots in the same ratio that workers capture the benefits of other things they produce?
  • Sacho 9y ago
    Not necessarily, because the workers need a capital investment to either design(lab, testing equipment) or build(tools, factories) the robots. This means that at least some portion of the wealth they generate will go to the capital investor. In the case of research, there's a significant investment risk, so the potential rewards are seriously skewed towards the investor. In the case of production, depending on the sophistication of the work the investor could still be taking most of the generated wealth. This is what communism talks about with "seizing the means of production" - without capital, the workers cannot exercise their design & production skills, and thus the wealth they generate is split between them and the capital investor. Workers compete with themselves to design breakthrough machines or improve their work productivity in order to generate more wealth; capital investors naturally get exponential gains by continuing to reinvest in a growing economy. In that sense, there should be a steady increase in the capital/worker ratio of GDP ever since the industrial revolution.