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> unless you actually think anybody wants the kind of job which is so tiresome it can be done with a machine instead If the alternative is destitution, lots of
by cabalamat 9y ago
> unless you actually think anybody wants the kind of job which is so tiresome it can be done with a machine instead
If the alternative is destitution, lots of people want those jobs
- Spivak 9y agoWell duh, if the alternative is destitution I would be willing to do all kinds of degrading things. Nobody wants those jobs, they're a means to an end. We are overflowing with useful work that needs to be done and can only be done by humans. There's really no reason to have professional ditch diggers and fillers.
- andrepd 9y agoThere is, because the current system works in such a way that if a ditch digging machine does all that work automatically the result is not freedom from that burden for humans but that the ditch diggers starve to death.
- amarkov 9y agoDoes it, though? I don't think all the sledgehammer swingers starved to death when the jackhammer was invented.
- cgmg 9y ago> if a ditch digging machine does all that work automatically the result is... that the ditch diggers starve to death What evidence do you have to support such an implausible claim?
- cesnja 9y agoNo, they just become unhappy retail workers, for example.
- anthuswilliams 9y agoI'm sorry, this is nonsense. There have been lots of periods of industrialization and they didn't all result in mass starvation and penury. In fact, many of them _reduced_ poverty by freeing people to focus on new fields in which they had a better comparative advantage than they had at ditch-digging and partially reducing the economic incentive for enslaving others.