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As an anti-capitalist, I would love a society where everyone benefited from unpleasant jobs being automated away. However, under capitalism, only the owners wil

As an anti-capitalist, I would love a society where everyone benefited from unpleasant jobs being automated away. However, under capitalism, only the owners will benefit. That's because automation turns labor into property. That means the owners of property, capitalists, benefit. If the value of automation were distributed differently it'd be great. If workers owned a company such as in a worker-cooperative structure, then the workers would be happy to focus less on stuff they don't like and focus on different things. Or a strong state could impose taxes on highly automated industries to fund a kind of universal basic income. But under our status quo, automation benefits the capitalists much more than the general population.

prepend 4y ago
> That's because automation turns labor into property. That means the owners of property, capitalists, benefit. I think customers also benefit. If a janitor costs $100/day and that’s automated away to a robot with $20/day costs that $80 will be passed on to the customer (just like every other technology innovation).
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  Potentially; another possible outcome is that $60 is passed to ownership and $20 passed to consumers. Companies these days are pretty aware of how price conscious their customers are - they aren't going to lower pricing based on cost unless there is strong reason to (competition is the only one I can think of... but it looks to me like companies compete less these days due to a variety of factors, including brand loyalty and monopolistic behaviors).
  - prepend 4y ago
    That’s possible but due to the great invisible hands that created an opportunity for competition to come in with a lower price. There are many factors so it really depends. But automation has really benefitted customers through lower prices and higher quality so it’s hard to expect that these robots would result in owners pocketing the savings over previous robots.
    - edmundsauto 4y ago
      Automation has made cars higher quality, but I'm not sure it has made clothing better, or food. What it does do is create the cheapest options possible, edging away on quality to have a cost reduction. Whether consumers benefit from favoring quantity over quality is not clear, but "consumers" are also "workers" and are harmed in that way by automation too. It's complicated.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
We have a 5000+ year history of automation creating jobs, not destroying them. Any jobs displaced will result in a multiple of new jobs created with the new opportunities it unlocks.
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  Surely this doesn’t last forever, no? Even if it does, if the rate of job automation is so quick that there’s no way for new workers to be trained before the job becomes obsolete, then it’s effectively unscalable? I’m not saying we’re in a post-scarcity situation yet, by any means, but it seems inevitable that if humanity continues in the same general direction, it’s only a matter of time before it happens. At which point, such a discussion is unavoidable.

prepend 4y ago

> That's because automation turns labor into property. That means the owners of property, capitalists, benefit. I think customers also benefit. If a janitor costs $100/day and that’s automated away to a robot with $20/day costs that $80 will be passed on to the customer (just like every other technology innovation).

edmundsauto 4y ago
Potentially; another possible outcome is that $60 is passed to ownership and $20 passed to consumers. Companies these days are pretty aware of how price conscious their customers are - they aren't going to lower pricing based on cost unless there is strong reason to (competition is the only one I can think of... but it looks to me like companies compete less these days due to a variety of factors, including brand loyalty and monopolistic behaviors).
- prepend 4y ago
  That’s possible but due to the great invisible hands that created an opportunity for competition to come in with a lower price. There are many factors so it really depends. But automation has really benefitted customers through lower prices and higher quality so it’s hard to expect that these robots would result in owners pocketing the savings over previous robots.
  - edmundsauto 4y ago
    Automation has made cars higher quality, but I'm not sure it has made clothing better, or food. What it does do is create the cheapest options possible, edging away on quality to have a cost reduction. Whether consumers benefit from favoring quantity over quality is not clear, but "consumers" are also "workers" and are harmed in that way by automation too. It's complicated.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

We have a 5000+ year history of automation creating jobs, not destroying them. Any jobs displaced will result in a multiple of new jobs created with the new opportunities it unlocks.

LadyCailin 4y ago
Surely this doesn’t last forever, no? Even if it does, if the rate of job automation is so quick that there’s no way for new workers to be trained before the job becomes obsolete, then it’s effectively unscalable? I’m not saying we’re in a post-scarcity situation yet, by any means, but it seems inevitable that if humanity continues in the same general direction, it’s only a matter of time before it happens. At which point, such a discussion is unavoidable.