Damn, it’s almost like in a healthy society automation amd technology reduce tedium and allow workers to work more safely, productively, creatively, humanely, willingly, intentionally, and comfortably.
It’s the old meme: under capitalism, automation means layoffs. Under communism, it means more paid vacations.
ohhhh, that makes sense. I was thinking that if automation doesn’t mean fewer hours of work then it still sounds like infinite growth on a finite planet.
Why shouldn’t automation fundamentally displace workers? There’s less work that needs to be done! That should be a wondrous, beautiful thing. All that remains is to distribute the goods appropriately. Am I wrong?
I would think you’re exactly right
What understanding the Labour Theory of Value will do to a motherfucker
mfers never learn that all value derives from labor. Can’t steal surplus value if you have no workers. At least capitalism properly
the whole edifice of liberalism is built on pretending that the labor theory of value isn’t true
The irony is that in early liberal economic philosophy, LTV was considered common sense. A hunk of metal does not obtain the value associated with a fork until someone manipulates the metal into a fork. It wasn’t until Marx took LTV to its logical conclusion that they invented marginal theory to create the narrative that ownership is injecting value somewhere along the way.
At least capitalism properly
They’d need to study Marx for that one
I think there’s another important dimension to the billionaire push for AI and automation. There was a thread on r/collapse sub about an good indication of a nuclear or other catastrophic event. Using flight tracker, you will be able to see an immediate jump in billionaire private jets taking off and flying to their bunkers. Someone suggested that when shit hits the fans, the human pilot will probably use these jets to fly their own family to safety instead. Not a problem for the Epstein class if everything was AI automated, no need for human pilots to fly them to their bunkers and no need for human guards and servents while they hide out in their bunkers. When will we see Neo-Luddite movement start burning down data centers?
a human-first approach to automation
Couldn’t think of a bigger endorsement, what’s scary is that given it’s from The “Economist” it was probably supposed to sound like a bad thing.
a human-first approach to automation
But at what cost? /s
This is fundamentally linked to misunderstanding of what automation is and does, within the U.S.
Automation, if you are doing it correctly, does not eliminate workers, it simply changes what they are doing and how they are doing it. What automation does is two things, the first is that it mitigates exposure to the four D’s (Dull, Dirty, Dangerous, Dear).
The second, and much more important thing is that automation allows you to increase your quality (the consistency of your process, how close does each product resemble each other), which then, over time (usually much faster than training someone to do it) can be used to improve your functionality (how well the part actually does its job).
What this means is you can use workers that would be one a line doing whatever, and move them into quality control, with improves your ability to improve functionality, etc. etc.
Under neo feudalism it’s not now much money the oligarchy gets to keep, it’s about how much they get to keep out of the hands of the rest of society.
Power imbalance is the point.
neofeudalism
Its called capitalism. Capitalism has always been and always will be like this. Capitalism has always had a power imbalance and an underclass with no political power or hopes of advancement. There has been no qualitative changes in the fundamental mode of production since the 19th century, just accelerations and increases in scale. The who idea of “neofeudalism” exists merely to whitewash capitalism by saying everything happening today isnt “real” capitalism
