This assumes workers own the means of production.
Under capitalism, boss tells all the workers to get fucked.
That which ought to be is not influenced by what is. It's true that worker control over the means of production is preferable to capitalism, but neither scenario here actually requires it. In fact, if the economy is fully automated, it would imply that the means of production couldn't be owned by the workers, since there wouldn't be any. That's how you get post-scarcity space communism. Socialism would ensure the longevity and existence of an arrangement that results in automation leading to better lives for everyone rather than human extinction. However, I'm beginning to suspect that with the time frame we're working with, aiming for socialism to the detriment of achieving any such arrangement might be a serious misplay on our part. Of course, that opens the possibility for humanity to be subjugated by an oppressive regime of immortal cyborg oligarchs. Even so, this horrifying possibility still preserves the opportunity for rebellion and revolution to set things aright whereas extinction would be ultimate defeat.
You just accidentally described both The Dune Universe, and The Warhammer 40K Universe.
Yay, a robot took over my job! Now I am free to closely monitor it until I stop caring about the mistakes!
Edit: And get fired!
Closely monitor it for less pay!
If I have no job, I have no money.
Who's going to buy the stuff these robots are building?
The search for short term profits doesn't give a fuck
That's next quarter's problem
it's a monster and no one is in control of it. it must be destroyed.
Other rich people. Robots will just stop making $10k cars and start making yachts. Rich people will just keep the game going between themselves.
If people don't have money, people can't buy the goods being produced, demand will plummet and supply will skyrocket leading to the logical conclusion that a UBI is necessary to supplement life in an automated world. If that doesn't happen, I Guess revolution?
revolution was always the answer. you think they're just going to give up their place at the head of the table? they'll figure out a way to wipe us all out before they do that.
Believe it or not, that is a question that people are working on.
Well, if hypothetically all the work people don't intrinsically want to do can be done by robots with no self interest, fatigue, or capacity for sadness, pain, it resentment... Then we need a new system that doesn't require work to make a livelihood. Whether that's a realistic scenario... Probably not in the medium term future at least. But as a hypothetical, that could make for awesome living if we could get there without screwing it up (but we will).
As difficult getting to a reasonable end game under those ideal conditions, tougher question is what about if we still need people to do crap work, but like 5% of what we need today. Who gets stuck with that? To what extent in that scenario could you approach a 2 hour work week to have more people share that burden?
Frankly I'm pessimistic that we would navigate those to a better system, but if we could pull it off and such hypotheticals happen, it could be awesome.
last i checked robots don't need a salary
Then how is my robot boyfriend gonna buy me gifts?
Automate your job but don't tell your boss.
Automate, but maje sure you take ownership of the production and get paid accordingly. Your tip is usually the best way to accomplish it.
unless you can spin it into a business to business service that you can sell after leaving the company to many more and paid more than your job's salary.
Ooh sorry that makes you a capitalist and no better than a landlord selling their housing services to people who want to live there.
Agreed.
Woah, that's dangerous thinking! Why don't we bring back house-servants instead to give all of these filthy poors Gainful Employment(tm)?
Or…we could say “fuck the poors, my house servant will be a robot”.
To be fair though I think that the really rich will find another way to use us for their amusement.
Well, they have robots for the actual tasks, the human employees are just there so they have someone to lord over.
Servants? That's bourgeois-adjacent (/s). The reality is 80 % of people used to be farmers until the industrial revolution, so if we want to undo AuTOmAtiOn, in all likelihood your ass is either going to be wielding a hoe all day long or if you're lucky you'll be hand-spinning loom. Or to be even more pendantic, we'll be starving to death because pre-industrial and pre-fertilizer agriculture cannot possibly provide enough calories for the current world population by a very long shot.
Or maybe the wannabe communists in this thread should remember that Marxism is about the value of labor and (this is where communists disagree very hard on the specifics) distributed capital so that advances in (e.g.) automation benefit the many instead of the few. The idea that "communism = no need to work anymore" is some new-age bullshit perpetuated by an illiterate disillusionment with capitalism coupled to a very incorrect perception that we live in (or close to) a post-scarcity world and the related tech-bro propaganda that "AI is going to replace us all" (it's not, not in its current form nor the one after that, but it makes for a nice narrative to pitch to venture capital investors).
Capitalism be like "NOPE! NOT TODAY! NOT EVER! YOU WILL WORK UNTIL YOU DIE OR YOU WILL DIE WHILE SOMEONE ELSE DOES YOUR WORK!"
Hard to blame this specifically on Capitalism because it doesn't force working forever, it just doesn't have a mechanism to prevent it. You CAN save all your money and retire at 40.
Democratic-Capitalism brings us the social safety net which usually DOES have a specific mechanism to allow for retirement at a certain age. So that proves those things are not incompatible, Capitalism isn't working against retirement, it's just not focused on retirement at all.
everyone here should look at the Venus Project. We keep struggling to understand how automation makes sense in a capitalist society. SPOILER: it doesn't. The entire system has to be re-imagined or we perish and the owners flourish (without us).
Yeah the owners are always going to get the labor as cheap as possible. There is no way you'll get profits from a. Company that literally doesn't employ you.
In the right hand pic the person doesn't work for the company. Why does the pic imply they do?
If a company is fully automated and has no workers do they pay everyone? Lol
"If a company is fully automated and has no workers do they pay everyone? Lol"
you lol but entertain this thought experiment - it's a little stretch of the imagination but totally feasible in the right conditions:
a benevolent philanthropist buys an autonomous car and gives the car ownership of itself. the car's directive is to operate at cost and provide transportation to humans. the car operates on a model not unlike uber but without profit concerns. it arranges its own maintenance and budgets for replacments parts, etc. how much cheaper would that be than paying for a cab or uber?
of course none of that is feasible because the law doesn't allow for a car to own itself and there's still some R&D before it could operate on the level i'm talking about but still... if profit was removed and everything operated on cost alone, how much cheaper and accessible would things become?
If corporations cared more about people and less about money this may just work.
Until there is no longer a massive bill to start a company this is a pipe dream. Who's name is the mortgage under is all you have to ask before the model breaks down...
I believe AI will lead to more competition which will drive prices down for industries that require far fewer actual people. When an opportunity to make money presents itself, competition will thrive.
We should tax every company the equivalent of all the workers' salaries (adjusted for modern cost of living) they automate out of a job and use the money to fund a UBI.
I can only imagine what the cost of food would be under your proposed plan if implemented for all technological advancements over the past 500 years.
One of the biggest benefits of automation for the masses is that things get cheaper and more widely available. By maintaining the status quo and keeping prices high QOL would stagnate or decline.
Seeing how the US handles healthcare and social security is all you need to know about the future of any said plans for UBI. It's a nice idea but the republicans are going to drain it dry the second they get majority.
Do you not understand employment taxes that businesses pay for each employee? Lol wow ur fucking dumb.
Don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit!
Many inventions created to "free people" ended up landing them with expectations to work even harder with their newfound "free time"—and they ended up being pigeon-holed into more limited jobs. This is especially true for women as appliances were created to help free them from domestic duties, but they have been landed into still doing those and working full-time or more.
this could be reality right now if we overthrew the owners. who keeps the owners in power? the conservative right. property is an unalienable right to them. what can we do? destroy the conservative right by any means necessary.
Agreed. Damn far right lunatics destroying democracy.
If you look throughout history, the amount of things done because they had to be is infinitessimal compared to things done for desire
yes, and no, desire drives a king to attack it's neighbour, but is it also desire that enlists the soldier? Maybe the soldier has desire for things het could not morally do at home, maybe they had to go to war to got war because he had bills to pay, is it more moral to kill if you think you have no choice? Is it moral to kill if the outcome of not kill would result i that guy still dying but also yourself, 2 ded?
like bro, i agree 100 with your sentiment. But i think that actually people are animals, they will always, on average, do wathever the fuck they feel like doing, good people exist but majority be majoritying. And people who look to please not god(society, thy neighbour, your fellow human, etc) but only seek to please oneselve will always have an advantage in any system.
so basicaly, exactly what you already said. But i hate that it is no fucling nihilstic, so everyone is just shit then? And if i find my supposed counter-jewel in the rough, then run of together and forget about my brother, society, my human kin, then i am literally just as bad.
like i like to believe everyone should have the duty to do all that he can do for anyone. But southpark, society, reality showed me, i could also just get shot and that would be the end of it. Even worse, my death could cascade and cause my child to follow the same path, and he could also just get shot, go crazy, lose all joy in life, and for what? For a fucking cause that is so fucking simple that one would almost get the feeling there is some global bamboozle going on. "No one should go hungry, no one should go cold, if you see someone who cannot fullfil this duty to the world, do your duty to the world "
i left out no shooting each other, no stealing, no rape etcetcetc because i think it could be obvious with a little bit of do treat em like you should yourself. But hey, im just a schizo these days, because my capitalist gains go op i hate myself 24/7 for not immediately fixing all the problems, when a nice girl ask me how i am doing i tell em about how our goverment be shooting child as we speak, about how i will never be able to have children because it will be impossible to sustain them emotionally with my 60 hour job, how fucked up it is public transit drivers gotta protest a whole year for a fucking pee brake and some fucking respect.
so yeah, fighting nhilism every day. Wish i could love myself a little and by result become an animal. Animals do get more sex tho, so who knows
Gotta look into robot maintenance now.
To be the devils advocate here, how would that system be fair to workers not replaced by robots? Like if im a plumber i still gotta put in my 40+ hrs/week but a factory worker just gets UBI now?
The thing about a UBI is that it's universal. You'd get a UBI despite still working as a plumber. For you, it would be extra cash - for the factory worker laid off, it would be a lifeline.
I want UBI. You think it will ever be a reality?
Everyone would get UBI. Nobody would be forcing you to keep your plumbing job. And even if you stuck around, you wouldn't have to work 40+ hours plumbing weeks because UBI would give you the ability to chose what dmjobs youd want to take on. And maybe now that those factory workers aren't stuck in factories, some of them might actually want to learn how to be plumbers, meaning more plumbers to take on jobs.
Or you put in 16 hours a week, and some other people do the rest of the hours.
On the other hand, we could also train the factory workers to become assistant consultants, or give them some other bullshit job...
Please, no more bullshit jobs, we have enough of those to untangle
40+ hrs/week
Isn't that the thing? We automatize so much and instead of getting the 20hrs/week, we struggel so much to improve efficiency. But for what? There are sectors I agree with that approach (like medicine, climate impact and so on). But if I have to use the same smartphone technology for 10 years or don't upgrade to an 8k TV in the next 20 years, that is utterly fine by me, if that means that I'll have to wrk 20hours less per week.
can != got to
I want fewer don't wish to be there workers, not more.the devil's* advocate
Permanently Deleted
Tax companies a % of what they save by reducing head count. Salary, benefits, insurance, everything. They still save $, but not as much - they pay into a fund for UBI. And eliminate loan interest tax deductions for loans (totalling) over $X (some reasonable threshold that doesn't penalize middle class mortgage holders).
And to the poster above, UBI is for everyone, so those still working get UBI plus a paycheck - that's how it's fair.
We are NOT economically prepared for the renaissance coming. And our octogenarian leaders don't even understand how to set up a printer. Something's gotta give or the economy will collapse. Some estimates are up to 25% of jobs in the next 10 years.
The basics of Supply and Demand. If automation means more consistent and bigger Supply, then prices will* come down and more of the Demand will be able to afford the goods and services in the Supply. Larger supply means cheaper prices, possibly to the point where value becomes basically meaningless.
*assuming that Supply isn't artificially limited by the owners of industry to protect their own profits. If only someone wrote a series of books and pamphlets about how the owners would do everything they can to protect their profits.
The folks that don't want them building guillotines in their spare time. Remember kids, guillotines cure economic anxiety.
The highly automated factories?
If you make the person on the right to be the next generation over, this picture is pretty accurate. Take a simple example: watch repair shops have gone out of business due to electronics - that sucked for them, but we're actually in a better place because of them.
Artisans being put out of work isn't better for society. Watch makers were a type of artisan.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Would you think you'd be better off without electronics? Are you saying you'd rather live in a world where clocks were mechanical and you had to take them to a repair shop every now and then? Is your life worse because watchmaker is not a common trade anymore?
What a weird example
