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It's going to be really weird if China's ruling 'socialist' party ends up being forced to become an actual neo-socialism with things like a guaranteed stipend b

It's going to be really weird if China's ruling 'socialist' party ends up being forced to become an actual neo-socialism with things like a guaranteed stipend because there are not enough actual jobs to do... This whole automation revolution has really just begun to highlight the old problem that many people don't own any of the things that generate the fabulous, effort-free wealth. But now instead of people missing out on the dream of 3-day-work-weeks they were promised fifty years ago and having to work just as hard as before, they have no work at all. The body/mind they expected to be able to rent out has literally no value as an asset.

harigov 11y ago
The body/mind they expected to be able to rent out has literally no value as an asset. Agreed. I wonder if the concept of job makes sense anymore.
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  Job will still make sense for a while, but as society we need to prepare better for the future. The world is changing and we're still debating if our youth should get less education and benefits or if we should let in more immigrant so we can compete on labor prices on the global market. That's so short sighted! That train left long ago, and it was pointless to try to board anyway. If the ruling elite would stop for a second being such assholes toward anyone, treating everybody not up the chain as 'resources', maybe they could focus to be competitive in the world of tomorrow. Most unskilled/unqualified job will just vanish overnight at some point in the near future, and then what? we're still under-educating our youths. industrial automation, robotics and artificial-x will be the field that will drive innovation in the next 20 years. if your country is still not pushing for them to be in the curriculum of everyone, prepare to be facing loads unemployment problems down the road. avoidable problems, dare I say.
tormeh 11y ago
The body/mind is still valuable because it belongs to a human and humans like seeing other humans do shit for them. Makes them feel important. The future jobs lie in artisanal goods and various kinds of prostitution. Automation won't decrease the total amount of jobs, but I'm worried about inequality.
- viola11 11y ago
  That's a great comment! I am in awe of the cynicism and misanthropy it contains. Machiavelli himself would go "Dang, that's dark dude". - Man, Uber just perfected self driving cars and closed my account with them, what am I gonna do now? - I hear prostition is still around. - Shit, some kid in Senegal just released a database server that can create a sensible schema from an excel sheet, even creating translation layers between the insanity the end user put in and the sensible internal representation! There are no DBA jobs left in the world, what am I gonna do? - I heard those rich actors in Hollywood have acquired a taste for their own "best boys" with strong "grip"...
  - tormeh 11y ago
    I was using a slightly more encompassing definition of prostitution, though. Basically people whose primary job is to kiss ass for money, whether metaphorically, literally or both. Greeters, for example, can't be replaced by machines. The economy has been shifting in this direction for decades.
NoGravitas 11y ago
Inserting obligatory reference to Fully Automated Luxury Communism[0]. [0]http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/...
vidarh 11y ago
Capitalism "eating itself" by getting too efficient to continue to provide work for everyone was Marx central thesis for why a socialist revolution would be inevitable, so nothing "neo" about it.
- mason240 11y ago
  Where did he predict that?
  - tim333 11y ago
    In some vast waffly book no doubt but there is a summary of the argument here: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/21/creditcrunch-globaleconomy http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/21/creditcrunch...
  - vidarh 11y ago
    Various aspects of it is addressed throughout most of his works. The Communist Manifesto, chapter 1[1] is probably the easiest accessible, though maybe not the clearest exposition: "A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. " [1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...

harigov 11y ago

The body/mind they expected to be able to rent out has literally no value as an asset. Agreed. I wonder if the concept of job makes sense anymore.

LoSboccacc 11y ago
Job will still make sense for a while, but as society we need to prepare better for the future. The world is changing and we're still debating if our youth should get less education and benefits or if we should let in more immigrant so we can compete on labor prices on the global market. That's so short sighted! That train left long ago, and it was pointless to try to board anyway. If the ruling elite would stop for a second being such assholes toward anyone, treating everybody not up the chain as 'resources', maybe they could focus to be competitive in the world of tomorrow. Most unskilled/unqualified job will just vanish overnight at some point in the near future, and then what? we're still under-educating our youths. industrial automation, robotics and artificial-x will be the field that will drive innovation in the next 20 years. if your country is still not pushing for them to be in the curriculum of everyone, prepare to be facing loads unemployment problems down the road. avoidable problems, dare I say.

tormeh 11y ago

The body/mind is still valuable because it belongs to a human and humans like seeing other humans do shit for them. Makes them feel important. The future jobs lie in artisanal goods and various kinds of prostitution. Automation won't decrease the total amount of jobs, but I'm worried about inequality.

viola11 11y ago
That's a great comment! I am in awe of the cynicism and misanthropy it contains. Machiavelli himself would go "Dang, that's dark dude". - Man, Uber just perfected self driving cars and closed my account with them, what am I gonna do now? - I hear prostition is still around. - Shit, some kid in Senegal just released a database server that can create a sensible schema from an excel sheet, even creating translation layers between the insanity the end user put in and the sensible internal representation! There are no DBA jobs left in the world, what am I gonna do? - I heard those rich actors in Hollywood have acquired a taste for their own "best boys" with strong "grip"...
- tormeh 11y ago
  I was using a slightly more encompassing definition of prostitution, though. Basically people whose primary job is to kiss ass for money, whether metaphorically, literally or both. Greeters, for example, can't be replaced by machines. The economy has been shifting in this direction for decades.

NoGravitas 11y ago

Inserting obligatory reference to Fully Automated Luxury Communism[0]. [0]http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/...

vidarh 11y ago

Capitalism "eating itself" by getting too efficient to continue to provide work for everyone was Marx central thesis for why a socialist revolution would be inevitable, so nothing "neo" about it.

mason240 11y ago
Where did he predict that?
- tim333 11y ago
  In some vast waffly book no doubt but there is a summary of the argument here: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/21/creditcrunch-globaleconomy http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/oct/21/creditcrunch...
- vidarh 11y ago
  Various aspects of it is addressed throughout most of his works. The Communist Manifesto, chapter 1[1] is probably the easiest accessible, though maybe not the clearest exposition: "A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. " [1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...