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How's that UBI coming? Oh, totally off the table you say? Well, the people will surely find something better to do than rising up.
by turnsout 1y ago
How's that UBI coming? Oh, totally off the table you say? Well, the people will surely find something better to do than rising up.
- krapp 1y agoOh don't worry. Americans at least will be kept so busy in the mines (for which they yearn) and fighting wars that they won't have the energy to rebel.
- zdragnar 1y agoThe cotton and wool mills may not have been great for the Luddites, but everyone else benefitted. Using terms someone else used in a sibling thread, they were a "net benefit for humanity".
- ben_w 1y ago"Rising tides lift all boats" — one of the problems with the mills, was that the people who got richer from them didn't help keep the impoverished Luddites from drowning. This is why Marx et al invented Communism. Can we, perhaps, avoid doing it all so badly this time?
- monocasa 1y agoI don't think the parent is making the argument that this level of automation can't be a net benefit for humanity, just that if it results in nearly the entire middle class and down being laid off at the same time with no recompense, that's an almost perfect storm for revolution, violent or not.
- david-gpu 1y agoAs long as people working in a warehouse identify with the middle class, inequality will continue. There is very little class conscience in the US, from what I can see. They sooner identify as "poor" than as "working class".
- monocasa 1y agoThe middle class is on the chopping block too. The lower class will honestly probably last longer than the median of the middle class, like paralegals, etc. Standing in the same bread line creates an awful lot of solidarity.
- rwmj 1y agoSocial carers for the elderly might be the last people employed.
- merth 1y ago> net benefit for humanity Some people might argue that wealth concentrated in the top 1% is a net benefit if you look at it as one big pool of resources. But will the remaining 99% actually see any of that benefit? Or will the 1% simply tighten their grip, keeping the rest dependent on their “generosity”?
- Henchman21 1y agoThe people that make that argument are making it in bad faith. They should be flogged.
- pstuart 1y agoNo worries! It's gonna trickle down to us and we'll be happy owning nothing /s
- exe34 1y agoThinking "there will always be something else for everybody to do" because "there's always been something else for everybody to do" is like the dinosaurs thinking "we've always been fine after a meteor strike".
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agothat depends on how important it is to people to be able to continuously overbuy cheap, poorly-made, low-quality disposable textile goods.