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There will always be capital willing to exploit labor to the fullest extent that it can. But as the poor of the world continue to rise and the global oversuppl
by rectang 8y ago
There will always be capital willing to exploit labor to the fullest extent that it can. But as the poor of the world continue to rise and the global oversupply of labor diminishes, will labor gain enough leverage to end the abuses?
- ISL 8y agoIn time, yes.
- jrs95 8y agoI’m not so sure. With an ever closer relationship between global capital and governments, and advances in technology that could facilitate incredible levels of surveillance, any form of resistance against the status quo could be shut down far more effectively than it ever could have been in the past.
- rectang 8y agoYes, this is what I'm concerned about as well. We've entered another gilded age, with skyrocketing inequality. Some argue that's fine so long as all boats are rising. But with incredible wealth disparities come political power disparities, and I don't think it makes sense to acquiesce to relative marginalization even if in an absolute sense things are improving.
- extralego 8y agoIt certainly remains to be seen. The consequences of electronic media are unknowable. The scope alone is surely incalculable. Since the mid-20th century, American culture has revealed a notable propensity for sensational hampster-wheel architecture. Possibly not by coincidence, labor has been no match. Media, electronic or not dictate the extents of social functionality through an unknowably complex process. I think it can loosely be illustrated as a culture of preferred data structures in a software design. Redesigning the softare to adapt to a newly preferred data structure will require a radical refactoring. With software, we aim to understand that refactoring in order to implement it, which we do before it goes to production because we are individually punished if we do it after. But when adapting to a new media form, the punishments are expected to be received by society as a whole, and the individuals wasted by the process. Acknowledging the phenomenon depends on a mass of individual comprehensions working together to illustrate the threat. And that's only to acknowledge the the threat exists...
- PeterisP 8y agoWhy do you assume that the global oversupply of labor is going to diminish? It seems quite plausible that the next, say, 50 years might bring an increase in the oversupply of labor, especially as the living standards rise and that labor becomes more expensive while at the same time the cost of automating the same tasks is shrinking.
- candiodari 8y agoIt's an easy argument to make that for 95%+ of history, for thousands of years, there was a global oversupply of labour. The last 50 years has been the massive aberration, but because everybody was born in that very weird situation people think of it as normal.
- mymythisisthis 8y agoAfrica will come back online after China's labor becomes too expensive.
- Consultant32452 8y agoSub-saharan Africa already has some of the fastest growing economies on the planet. Ethiopia, for example, is growing at 8% GDP. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/ethiopia-africa-fastest-growing-economy/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/ethiopia-africa-faste...