3 ms·

...Good? Work is horrible? If a drop in the amount of work that needs to be done is actually a problem then that's a policy failure.

by MBlume 8y ago

zozbot123 8y ago
Exactly. And you see it with more than just automation. It's the "they took er jerbs!!! we need a wall to protect our way of life!" knee-jerk reaction.
tjr225 8y ago
Fine, but as of right now I need work to pay for the education I got 4 years ago(50k), the doctor visits/ct scan I got this month(2k), and the food I need on my table every night.
mathattack 8y ago
Indeed. The same newspaper that decry automation also complain about the future lack of workers available to take care of elderly.
- deboboy 8y ago
  There's no immediate [5yr horizon] automation coming to solve this. Human home care workers will be needed [and more of them]; it's in a category of jobs that not even machines want.
  - jstanley 8y ago
    But there will be plenty of people free to care for the elderly after the machines take their jobs.
    - Oletros 8y ago
      It is good that we give the elderly care to people that has lost their work?
empath75 8y ago
It’ll be a problem because ultimately the people who own all the capital won’t need anyone else to survive. They’ll build walls and robot guards and live in their utopias of plenty while everyone else starves.
- ddingus 8y ago
  Maybe. I'm not sure any of us are going to live to see that dystopian time, but o boy if I were one of the ones...
- redahs 8y ago
  The ownership of land by value is more unequally distributed than the ownership of capital. Capital depreciates and needs to be regularly replaced each generation. The wealthy have never needed robots to live a life of plenty; they can extract as much labor power as they need through rent.
  - throwaway218649 8y ago
    The "rich will just live on their land without workers" seems like a hypothetical scenario, but it actually happened a few times during the colonization of the Western United States and Australia (post-Native American/Australian genocide). Marx has an interesting note on this in chapter 33 of volume I of Capital: > It is the great merit of E. G. Wakefield to have discovered, not anything new about the Colonies, but to have discovered in the Colonies the truth as to the conditions of capitalist production in the mother-country… First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative - the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 3,000 persons of the working class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, "Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river." (E. G. Wakefield. "England And America," vol.ii, p. 33) In the United States, the slave labor system kept the workers from subjecting their masters to this "violation" of property rights. There are many historical records of European colonists running away from indentured labor to join Native Americans (the reverse does not seem to have ever happened). The wealthy need poor laborers a lot more than vice-versa. What is really happening with automation is that it is being used to build militarized police states around the world that keep the poor from squatting the land held by the rich, to force the poor to work for the benefit of the rich (for example, someone is going to have to keep working on oil extraction for a long time to come, even if all the farming will be done by robotic tractors). A police state forcing people into wage slavery is the necessary precondition for the "rich live in automated luxury" scenario to occur.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

...Good? Work is horrible? If a drop in the amount of work that needs to be done is actually a problem then that's a policy failure.

by MBlume 8y ago

...Good? Work is horrible? If a drop in the amount of work that needs to be done is actually a problem then that's a policy failure.

zozbot123 8y ago

Exactly. And you see it with more than just automation. It's the "they took er jerbs!!! we need a wall to protect our way of life!" knee-jerk reaction.

tjr225 8y ago

Fine, but as of right now I need work to pay for the education I got 4 years ago(50k), the doctor visits/ct scan I got this month(2k), and the food I need on my table every night.

mathattack 8y ago

Indeed. The same newspaper that decry automation also complain about the future lack of workers available to take care of elderly.

deboboy 8y ago
There's no immediate [5yr horizon] automation coming to solve this. Human home care workers will be needed [and more of them]; it's in a category of jobs that not even machines want.
- jstanley 8y ago
  But there will be plenty of people free to care for the elderly after the machines take their jobs.
  - Oletros 8y ago
    It is good that we give the elderly care to people that has lost their work?

empath75 8y ago

It’ll be a problem because ultimately the people who own all the capital won’t need anyone else to survive. They’ll build walls and robot guards and live in their utopias of plenty while everyone else starves.

ddingus 8y ago
Maybe. I'm not sure any of us are going to live to see that dystopian time, but o boy if I were one of the ones...
redahs 8y ago
The ownership of land by value is more unequally distributed than the ownership of capital. Capital depreciates and needs to be regularly replaced each generation. The wealthy have never needed robots to live a life of plenty; they can extract as much labor power as they need through rent.
- throwaway218649 8y ago
  The "rich will just live on their land without workers" seems like a hypothetical scenario, but it actually happened a few times during the colonization of the Western United States and Australia (post-Native American/Australian genocide). Marx has an interesting note on this in chapter 33 of volume I of Capital: > It is the great merit of E. G. Wakefield to have discovered, not anything new about the Colonies, but to have discovered in the Colonies the truth as to the conditions of capitalist production in the mother-country… First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative - the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 3,000 persons of the working class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, "Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river." (E. G. Wakefield. "England And America," vol.ii, p. 33) In the United States, the slave labor system kept the workers from subjecting their masters to this "violation" of property rights. There are many historical records of European colonists running away from indentured labor to join Native Americans (the reverse does not seem to have ever happened). The wealthy need poor laborers a lot more than vice-versa. What is really happening with automation is that it is being used to build militarized police states around the world that keep the poor from squatting the land held by the rich, to force the poor to work for the benefit of the rich (for example, someone is going to have to keep working on oil extraction for a long time to come, even if all the farming will be done by robotic tractors). A police state forcing people into wage slavery is the necessary precondition for the "rich live in automated luxury" scenario to occur.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]