3 ms·

No money is going away. Say I have a factory today, and I have to pay x workers $7/hr. If my factory is big, that's a lot of money. Now if I replace them all w

No money is going away. Say I have a factory today, and I have to pay x workers $7/hr. If my factory is big, that's a lot of money. Now if I replace them all with robots, aside from the upfront and maintenance costs, I don't pay anybody anything. Now, a lot of people are going to say that the owner deserves to pocket the difference because he was innovative or reduced costs or whatever. But either way, notice the factory still makes the same amount of money. It just doesn't have to pay workers anymore. So now we have a political debate, and you get all these people saying that those workers should just find a new job, and if they don't have the skills they're just lazy, don't deserve handouts, etc. I think it's sad that people think this way, but I'm not going to try to argue it because it's pointless. But if this side wins out, you'll find in the future that our country looks very 3rd world. A large wealth divide, lots of crime, little opportunity for advancement if you're not already wealthy. So how do you stop that from happening? Well, the factory owner probably deserves something for being innovative, sure. But the people that lost their jobs do too. If we get to the point where the population is a lot larger than the job pool, you basically get to pick basic income or 3rd world. There's really no other option. You can deny this all you want now - go ahead. If you want to do this, I'm not going to pretend I can convince you otherwise. One more thing though - people have jobs today not because they inherently need them, it's because some entrepreneur needs to hire people to get things done. No business person wants to spend money to hire someone they don't have to, so if we get to the point where most jobs can be automated, then we have a mostly unemployed society. We can decide how we want to handle that, but we can't really stop it from happening.

victoro 12y ago
>> No business person wants to spend money to hire someone they don't have to This. Every time I hear an organization brag about how many jobs they "create" I can't help but think about how much of an oxymoron that is. Any half-decent business owner wants to get a specific job done at the lowest cost possible -- if it can be done equally well themselves without paying anybody for anything, thats the best possible scenario. Bragging about creating jobs is basically bragging that your costs of production have gotten higher.
misterbishop 12y ago
It wasn't the factory owner who was innovative. - Did the factory owner build these labor saving machines? - Did the factory owner design the circuit boards or software powering these machines? Wage Workers designed and built these machines. The factory owner has a certain skill set. These include administration, accounting, marketing, perhaps economics. But these skills are certainly no more difficult to acquire than those of an engineer or doctor. The only reason an owner is able to extract so much wealth from his workers is the exploitation of private, productive property. He owns the factory, therefore he owns everything produced in that factory. This is the logic, and I believe we should oppose it.

victoro 12y ago

>> No business person wants to spend money to hire someone they don't have to This. Every time I hear an organization brag about how many jobs they "create" I can't help but think about how much of an oxymoron that is. Any half-decent business owner wants to get a specific job done at the lowest cost possible -- if it can be done equally well themselves without paying anybody for anything, thats the best possible scenario. Bragging about creating jobs is basically bragging that your costs of production have gotten higher.

misterbishop 12y ago

It wasn't the factory owner who was innovative. - Did the factory owner build these labor saving machines? - Did the factory owner design the circuit boards or software powering these machines? Wage Workers designed and built these machines. The factory owner has a certain skill set. These include administration, accounting, marketing, perhaps economics. But these skills are certainly no more difficult to acquire than those of an engineer or doctor. The only reason an owner is able to extract so much wealth from his workers is the exploitation of private, productive property. He owns the factory, therefore he owns everything produced in that factory. This is the logic, and I believe we should oppose it.