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You cannot pursue "pure capitalism" to its logical end. Like "pure communism", it just ends in misery and suffering for everyone. "Productivity" cannot be re-
by TimJYoung 8y ago
You cannot pursue "pure capitalism" to its logical end. Like "pure communism", it just ends in misery and suffering for everyone.
"Productivity" cannot be re-defined so that those that do the actual labor are removed from the equation. If a company or firm produces more revenue, than it's a simple value judgement as to how that revenue is distributed, and, right now, those at the top of company management and investors are the only people making that decision. Organizations like unions simply change how that decision is made by re-balancing the power involved with the decision. You may want to keep all of the revenue gains from your automation to yourself and your investors, but you may not be able to if it means that most of your workforce walks off the job. Likewise, you can automate your entire operations with robots and computers, but good luck trying to sell whatever it is you're producing when everyone is (effectively) unemployed.
- weberc2 8y agoYour comment seems to agree with mine. I’m not advocating for “pure capitalism”, and your “simple value judgment” (as described) is pure economic reasoning: > You may want to keep all of the revenue gains from your automation to yourself and your investors, but you may not be able to if it means that most of your workforce walks off the job. Which isn’t to say that it’s not a value judgment, but rather that an economy is made up of a sea of value judgments interoperating, though not all value judgments are sustainable or well-calculated.