• @unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We are discussing the reasons certain workers may be prevented from having better experiences through automation, even if development, manufacturing, and utilization of relevant automated systems are possible in principle, through the collective capacities of workers as a class.

      You asserted the premise that the nonexistence of certain systems of automation is sufficient evidence for us to conclude the impossibility of their being caused to exist.

      The premise is obviously false.

        • @unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I have observed that workers as a class (inclusive of engineers, factory workers, and all others) may have the capacities to provide automated systems either that improve the experience of those working to clean sewers, or that may obviate the social need of anyone to be working as such.

          I also have observed that utilization of enterprise, and direction of worker capacities, is currently controlled by business owners, bound by the profit motive.

          Your premise is false, that all automation always is supported by the profit motive, and my alleged premise is a straw man, that no automation ever is supported by the profit motive.

          Your suggestion, that “if we could, we would have already” “automate[d] the jobs”, is false.

          Its flaw is that it erases the conflict of interest between workers and owners. subsuming both beneath an imaginary monolithic “we”, who would all share the same interests.

          In fact, workers and owners have mutually antagonistic interests.

          Owners seek to extract the maximal possible value from workers at the minimal possible cost.

          Workers seek better conditions, higher wages, and greater freedom and enjoyment in their lives.