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Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.
By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.
Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.
Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.
Which vision will prove correct?
30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @12:18AM (61 children)
Capital Intensification. As capitalism develops, competition forces capitalists to cut labor costs. Early adopters gain some comparative advantage, but eventually a fair market in plant and machinery nullifies that, and eventually profit margins will be reduced to nothing. And worse, Capitalism's one bug that is a feature is that it tends to overproduce, leading to an economic downturn, and depressions. Once the entire demand side of what was the working class is eliminated, either capitalism will fail and be replaced, or capitalists will have to find some way to supply the masses with the means to create an effective demand. But that is just my reading.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by black6host on Friday December 15 2017, @01:42AM
I'm afraid that the curse, "May you live in interesting times", will be lived by my 9 year old.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @01:44AM (35 children)
Smart parasites never kill their hosts. It's not an argument for Marxism but an argument against globalism.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @02:09AM (34 children)
Capitalists are among the stupidest of parasites. Look at the Kock Bros, the Republican Party, Pharma Bro and Papa John's! You never heard of economic depressions in feudalism.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday December 15 2017, @02:26AM (5 children)
Interesting, but... slightly inaccurate [wikipedia.org].
Keep in mind they also had big plagues [wikipedia.org] to... mmm... trim down their 99-percenters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @05:52AM (4 children)
Oh, yeah, plagues, barbarian hordes, famines, years with no summer, and worse. All external causes, not endemic to the mode of production itself. In fact, that what was probably the greatest weakness of the mode of production. Under-production. That, and under-investment. And a lack of innovation. Those, and having to pay 10% to a Lord for protection, and another 10% to a Church, for the same thing. So what did bring about an end to the Feudal mode of production, and why do the Dark Enlightenment alt-night types want to go back there?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday December 15 2017, @06:29AM (2 children)
Steam
Nothing rational, they just like coal.
De gustibus, magister, de gustibus... can't dispute them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Friday December 15 2017, @06:33AM (1 child)
Started collapsing well before steam did anything useful.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday December 15 2017, @06:38AM
Of course, the collapse of Feudalism started much early.
I'd say it started about the moment it was born, they just didn't know it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @05:57PM
The black plague and the sudden collapse of the supply of labor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 15 2017, @02:41AM (13 children)
Now it comes out - Aristarchus is a feudalist. He doesn't want to keep the darkies on the plantation - he wants to keep EVERYONE on the plantation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 15 2017, @03:13AM (2 children)
Pretty sure that was tongue-in-cheek, Runaway. You should try it sometime; it would be less painful, I imagine, than your constant head-up-ass posture. And here I thought the Klein Bottle was an impossible shape...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 15 2017, @07:11AM (1 child)
WHy think, when you can know? http://www.kleinbottle.com/ [kleinbottle.com] Order your own klein bottle today, to remind you to always check your sources.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 15 2017, @09:42PM
Right, but...how do you breathe like that, is what I mean. You DO seem to love the smell of your own farts, but that's not exactly breatheable atmosphere. Certainly not at your level of toxicity.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @06:00AM (9 children)
Do try not to comment when you do not understand what is being discussed, OK, Runaway? Oh, wait, yeah, that would silence you; alright, carry on. But you see, a plantation is capitalist agriculture, with capitalist ownership of the means of production, and slaves or wage-slaves doing the actual work, but with a profit motive in mind. Feudalists want to keep everyone on the land, land they held by right of tenure. Strange that only exists in Academia today. Lords did not own land, neither did peasants since they could not sell it. Nice thing about Feudalism, no damn Real Estate agents, with or without their Gold Blazers and other marketing crap.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 15 2017, @07:13AM (2 children)
And, what difference does it make to the guy chopping sugar cane, whether the asshole in the plantation house calls himself a duke, or a landowner, a lord, or a master? You with your airs are in no position to comment on the serfs, or the slaves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:36AM (1 child)
I am groping you, right now, Runaway1956, exactly the way Hilary did, in 1982. You feel the tactile lubrication, the governorship of Arkansas, the difference between the explicit extraction of a tithe, and the subfurtuge of a profit makes no difference to you? I am telling you, you idiot, that as a resident of a "right to be fired for no reason state" that you could be fired for no reason. Peasants had tenure. They held the land. Not own, since they could not alienate. But hold. In other words, they could not be fired. They had rights. Workers have no rights. We should shoot them all, when they strike, or when they demand health care, or when they want to elect the wrong person. Kill them, I say. Slaves, Wage slaves, worse off than peasants, even than Polish peasants.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 15 2017, @10:15AM
Serfs couldn't be sold? At all? Really?
http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-life/medieval-serfs.htm [medieval-life-and-times.info]
I see damned little difference between slaves and serfs, really. Do you understand what "freedom" means? I need no man's permission to buy or sell property. I can change my residence to almost any place in the world. I can travel as much as I please (and can afford) and see almost all of the world. I can work at any craft or trade, as a freelancer, or as a hired man. (a few exceptions which require licensing, and/or advanced education)
I suspect that you have forgotten that serfdom evolved over many years. Early on, there was almost nothing to distinguish a slave from a serf. As time passed, serfs won some meager "rights", then more - but always they answered to a master.
Also - that on-again off-again droit du seigneur business. Throughout time, "royal" sons of bitches have assumed the "right" to use any woman who might catch his eye, and interest. Wikipedia claims that it was seldom if ever exercised in medieval Europe, but the royal class kept resurrecting it. So, again, no real difference between slaves and serfs. The master may use you as he sees fit, and no court will ever punish him.
A serf's life was in no way better than the working class in capitalism.
BTW - when did serfs win the right to vote? They didn't, did they? As long as the class existed, they were born into a life in which the master ruled their every day, and every action. The master decided who they would marry, how much food they could keep, how nice a home they could have, what work they did - everything. No vote, precious little free will, nothing.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday December 15 2017, @06:35PM (5 children)
At a loss. You do realize that with Marxism we have to kill all of the lumpenprolitariate or the system wont work, right? At least in capitalism those who refuse to work are still allowed to live.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:06PM (2 children)
Why won't it work? We have the same technology. It is just that wage labor will no longer be the determinate of income?
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday December 15 2017, @07:57PM (1 child)
From each according to their ability and to each according to their need does not properly account for those who will and those who will not work. When everyone gets what they need if some people are allowed to refuse to work then they are the new masters. There would be no incentive to continue to work if you can just drop out and get what you need, in addition there is no advantage to working harder as it is not rewarded with additional resources.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @08:13PM
Incentive, inscmentives! Are you a Republican, or a Microsoftie? Pro tip for post capitalist society: all "incentives" are perverse incentives. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Besides, the issue is the demand side, not the desert side. With automatization, no one will be able to "work", even if they want to!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday December 15 2017, @08:35PM (1 child)
Wrong. The reason they can survive in our world is precisely that our world is not completely capitalist (not even in the USA), but has some socialist elements in them. In a pure capitalist world, they would have no income, and thus no way to get food.
Well, unless they happen to own capital. Then they can be lazy as hell, as their money "works for them".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday December 15 2017, @11:55PM
The biggest difference between marxism and capitalism for the person who refuses to work is that while capitalism gives him nothing, marxism would give him a bullet.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @05:47AM (8 children)
The alternative to capitalism killed over 100 million people in the 20th century.
Now you can say that that wasn't "true communism" or "true socialism", but so what? If it is what we actually get when somebody claims to be implementing communism or socialism, why should we try again? Every attempt has caused lots of death.
Communism nearly doomed the Mayflower Pilgrims. They rejected capitalism for the first couple years. They instead shared the farming, the harvest, and even stuff like laundry duty. Some people showed up late to work and were lazy. That encouraged the others to do likewise, because why work hard to support the lazy? There was little harvest. Each winter, a large portion of the population died. They were soon facing what looked like the final year, given the amount of death occurring. Despite the previous religious objections to capitalism, the governor decided to try it. That year, people worked. Mothers brought their kids out to work; previously getting a woman to farm was near impossible. The resulting harvest was plentiful. Thanksgiving is really about celebrating the triumph of capitalism over communism many centuries ago.
Today, all around the world, people are still dying from communism and socialism. They die of poverty. They die when the government steps in to enforce communism. Desiring more of this is really stupid... unless you are just evil.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @06:02AM
Fuck you, you libertariantard! I got mine, and you can't have it! So go away! There is nothing for you here, you scavenger!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday December 15 2017, @06:37AM (5 children)
How many millions has capitalism killed? Remember to include the results of the military industrial complex and it's perpetual wars.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:47AM (4 children)
At least an order of magnitude less, and that's including the Congo Free State. Wars aren't particularly perpetual. There's been no wars between developed world countries since the Second World War, for example.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:14PM (3 children)
Never mind, between them Putin and Trump will change all that. You'll have your war sooner rather than later.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday December 16 2017, @02:09PM (2 children)
If there has ever been a US President who would pull a "Wag the Dog" move, it's Trump. It's crucial that he have little to no authority to just start a war on a whim. Other parts of our government have been made aware of this problem and it seems are actually doing something about it.
Putin strikes me as steadier and smarter than Trump. He's been in power for near 20 years now and has not turned to the nukes. As to the fighting in the Ukraine, the mainstream media takes a simplistic view that Putin's Russia is the evil aggressor, but other information paints a much murkier picture.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @04:31PM
That's not their job to control a sitting president. It's your job. Autonomy of the shadowy bits of government are far more likely to work against you than for you. Becoming ruled by the parts of government that are not accountable to you is not an improvement. They can start wars as well (and probably have started a number of them since the end of the Second World War).
Funny how you just had to say that about the Ukraine. The picture isn't "murkier". Russia wanted its sea port at Sevastopol so it took the Crimea. Evil aggressor status confirmed. As usual with this crap, people give actual warmongers a free pass. Unfortunately, that doesn't make Trump want to start a distracting war any less, does it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @02:20AM
You're reading something into Trump that just isn't there. He is mildly anti-war. I get it, you hate him for his values and his mannerisms, but he isn't a warmonger.
Our previous president bombed at least 8 countries, and his secretary of state was ordering drone strikes from her insecure Blackberry. She then started a tiff with Russia, the country with more nukes than any other. Now THAT is playing with fire. We were headed to World War III with Hillary.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday December 15 2017, @08:37PM
The? Why do you think there can only be one?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday December 15 2017, @06:28AM (4 children)
Why would you? No one was keeping track of them and hence, they are invisible. You'd just read about the causes and consequences. Things like wars, famines, disease, breakdown in social order, etc. Those get into the history books.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:02AM (3 children)
There was very little trade, and hence no economy?
Robots, khallow! It's all about the robots!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 15 2017, @04:26PM (2 children)
If trade exists, so does economy. Little economy is not the same as no economy. Plus, a big portion of the economy was through non-voluntary things like taxes and tithes rather than through voluntary things like trade.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:07PM (1 child)
Luxury goods, perfumes, jewelry, weapons, sort of like the economy in yachts today.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 15 2017, @08:25PM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday December 15 2017, @02:19AM (1 child)
If that would be the only reason.
1970 - high oil prices causes recession
2017 - low oil prices causes stockmarket drops
Why?
- 1970 - the majority of profits are production driven
- 2017 - the majority of profits are driven by market speculations (supported by big finance?) - lower prices, lower profit margin; it doesn't matter if it's production or hairdressing or capital cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday December 15 2017, @08:45PM
A lot of the problems triggered by the low oil prices revolved around the expense of oil extraction. When it costs close to a hundred dollars to extract a barrel of oil from the tar sands/shale and suddenly oil is trading for less then $50 a barrel, profit margins drop into the negatives.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 15 2017, @03:11AM (7 children)
Marx was a natural-born critic. That means that he's right when he's dumping on something but for the love of Cthulhu DON'T take his advice about what would be better.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @06:10AM (6 children)
Marx never suggested an alternative, he only pointed out the natural tendencies of a Capitalist system. One thing most people seem not to grok is that tech is capital, knowledge and collective expertise is capital. The more workers learn to cooperate, because of the necessary complexity of modern production, the less they need management, and so worker self-government is a natural, cost-effective way for industrial production to go. Parallels the bourgeouis democratic political developments that replaced feudalism. So, not to worry.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @09:40AM (4 children)
?!?!?!?
It may be several decades since I read the Marx/Engels letters, but my memory is that he was *full* of suggestions, most of which were ill-founded, as they were purely speculative and based on nothing but high ideals that assumed humans were non-competitive altruists. Maybe it was Engels who was doing all the suggestions, but in that case, Marx was egging him on and patting him on the back (burping him?) constantly.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @10:02AM (3 children)
So, never actually read any of Marx, or Engels? Trade Unionism, and a central bank, that was the spectre haunting Europe, during the time of the Communist Manifesto. American, I take it? Even if an ex-pat?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @11:44AM
Oh my goodness, it seems like both of you could use a refresher. The central driver of Marx's philosophy was his materialism. The means of production drove everything. That's why production had to be collectivized, to produce a culture that was just, where everyone was equal, and nobody owned or controlled everyone else. That liberated end state was communism, the half-way house from capitalism was socialism where the state undertook responsibility for deconstructing the control structures of capitalism, where the means of production where controlled by the few. For Marx, under communism there would be practically no more need for a polity because Man himself would have been improved by freeing the means of production from the control of the few.
In other words, he did very much have a recipe for something better and wrote about it at length. It's not for no reason that his philosophy influenced so many intellectuals and moved millions for a long time.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @04:12PM (1 child)
Given that you're the one claiming that stuff that's clearly written about at length in those letters isn't in any of Marx's works, it's you who looks like the one who's not read them.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:22PM
Perhaps a bit harsh. What I meant to say was, "possibly read, but definitely did not comprehend". How could you possibly have come to this conclusion?
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:23PM
And that might explain one of the many reasons that PHB-types don't like self-organising teams, and they prefer to manage in a command and control way. They feel threatened.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Friday December 15 2017, @06:43PM (2 children)
My expectation (and fear) is that they'll try to keep it alive through charity.
"We own the robots, so we get anything you want, and you get whatever scraps we so generously decide to give you!"
Likely tied to religious institutions or some other ideology factory, so they can make people jump through hoops and compete to be the most "deserving", thereby maintaining their divide and conquer strategy. That way they get to go around talking about how noble they are for helping the less fortunate, while simultaneously enslaving all of humanity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @08:59PM (1 child)
People do work for more than money, and that is a part that Marx did get right when he talked about "alienation," ie. that workers in a capitalist system become divorced from the meaning in the objects they are producing, whereas making those things as artisans were previously meaningful works, expressions of their spirit and genius. As such the objects they make become meaningless and so too they become meaningless.
Take that in a case where robots are making everything and everybody lives and dies on the charity of the masters. The deep spiritual hunger for meaning Man has will still be unfed and lead to them overthrowing that system (per Marx).
"Man does not live by bread alone" sort of thing.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday December 18 2017, @02:25PM
That's part of what makes private charity as a stopgap measure so dangerous though. Firstly because it can demand work of some form as a kind of payment -- there's a pretty strong religious idea in the US at least that work is "good for the soul", so you might get something where the church gives you work in exchange for food -- sure the work could be done by robots, but inefficiency doesn't matter much when you're trading work for someone else's donations. It could even be intentionally inefficient -- some homeless advocacy group decides they won't use robot labor because robots are what's putting people out of a job, so they end up creating jobs looking after people who don't have jobs. Doesn't even have to be so well organized -- there's a lot of groups lately pushing for food gardens instead of lawns, so you could end up with wealthy robot owners setting up community gardens where the poor can work to feed each other.
Then the people who do work end up both distracted and feeling morally superior to anyone who can't or doesn't, and they'll get some small salary from some wealthy donor supported non-profit which means you could end up with people fighting over those few jobs rather than joining to topple the ownership class...along with support jobs building/repairing the robots, and maybe some jobs in entertainment and such...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 15 2017, @09:07PM (10 children)
For that I had the almost year old observation:
Moving on to something you wrote later in this thread
compared to when you wrote [soylentnews.org]
My response applies just as well now as it did then:
And I then quote directly twice from Das Kapital where Marx does this very thing:
and
Perhaps you should learn from these discussions, aristarchus, rather than continue to make the same mistakes again?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 16 2017, @12:32AM (9 children)
The obvious rebuttal, my dear and fluffy khallow, is that I, unlike some others here with their "multivalent" dictionaries, do not change my position to appear to be "winning" a discussion.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @03:11AM (8 children)
Who would those be? I've occasionally run afoul of the English language, but I've improved since I more routinely consult dictionaries. But I have noticed that Marxists have unusual problems adhering to standard definitions. Further, the errors I brought up go well beyond mere semantics. Capital intensification is simply a matter of technology development. It's not at all particular to Capitalism. Nor is it a matter of semantics what Marx's opinion is on Capitalism versus Communism. He quite clearly shows one-sided support for the latter.
Then why are you posting now? It's certainly not to discuss anything, else you would have gone beyond half-hearted innuendo.
As for me, I have no problem with competition in debate. It sharpens the wits and gets people thinking harder. Further, that's a huge part of the Greek tradition of philosophy, with which you should be familiar. If you aren't willing to own your beliefs, then why should we care? I own my opinions even when I'm trying out a devil's advocate argument. You don't have to be that way - a lot of people aren't and that's fine.
But when people make a strong claim and then post passive aggressive nonsense when challenged? You're a grown up, you should act like it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 16 2017, @04:58AM (7 children)
And I, in turn, cannot help by notice that you have said nothing other than what you said before: that you disagree. Your objections are noted, but since you drag in quotes that were meant to establish quite another point (Marx as moralizer, I believe it was? Those repugnant, deplorable capitalists!!), I see no reason to address them here. Robots, khallow, it's all about the robots! And in Slavic Languages, the word for "slave" is
"otrok" or "раб" or "рабыня". See?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @05:07AM (6 children)
Even if that were true, and it's not, you don't even go that far.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:18AM (5 children)
khallow! You slippery eel in debate! (There is a Sanskrit word for this.) Do you, or do you not, agree that the increasing automation of industrial production under a capitalist system will provoke a crisis of demand for the products of such automation? Simple question, answer yes, or no. We will wait.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:26AM (4 children)
I don't agree. Some nuance needs to be made here. A temporary issue, which we could choose to call a crisis, does indeed happen in that more of such products are produced resulting in a drop in price and a modest amount of turmoil in the industry sector in question. Then demand increases as people figure how what to do with the greater supply of the products and life goes on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:57AM (3 children)
You are a fool, khallow. What are the basic principles of economics, as a social science? Yes, the study of production. But then you say something as ignorant as this!
Can you not read, khallow? Are your ideological blinders on so tight that you are unable to understand those who constern you? This is not a temporary issue, according to Marx, it is a systemic and endemic feature of capitalist economics, one beloved by bone-headed conservative economists, because they only see that competition (theoretical, ceterus paribus) will lower costs of production, and thus prices, and thus social value. But we are considering only one part of that, the distribution of effective demand (money, wages) that supports the entire system. So when you say:
Are you deaf, khallow? Do you even know what discussion thread on SoylentNews you are in? Is your location app from the mothership working? People figure out what to do with the greater supply by not buying it. Capitalists then cut back on production, to avoid losses. And then even fewer workers have ready cash to take advantage of the surplus, and so more are laid off, until some enlightened Keynsian says: Prime the ferking Pump!. That is a short-term problem, and a short-term solution. Marx is talking about something else with Capital Intensification. The greater the percentage of production that is done by capital, the less margin there is to make profit by paying the working class less than their actual contribution to the productive process. No a problem, because of the savings on labor in production. But systematically, this will in fact undermine the entire system of production and consumption, by removing wage-labor from the system. Do you understand, khallow? Of do we need to write a bot that can do your job on SoylentNews better than you do, at 1/35 of the cost?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @08:01AM (2 children)
As a science, our answers should be driven by empirical observation not 19th Century feelz.
Doesn't matter. What matters is what sort of issue it is, according to reality. And according to reality, oversupply is indeed a temporary thing. We have numerous examples throughout the industrial age where something was temporarily in excessive production and then people figured out what to do with the excess.
Such as agricultural products, steel, electricity, art, etc? Didn't happen that way. It's a cool story, bro, but reality isn't following the script. Among other things, rather than having massive levels of unemployment, we're presently about 5% [stlouisfed.org] of the population shy of the highest employment rate in the US ever. Wouldn't have happened that way, if your story was true.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday December 16 2017, @03:54PM (1 child)
Finally someone mentions the industrial age. Fun though that discussion about medieval serfdom was, I was thinking the Industrial Revolution is a better parallel to circumstances today. Medieval times was very much "it's good to be the king", a member of the nobility, while terrible for everyone else, the 99%.
In the early 19th century, people could be independent farmers, scratching a living from the land. They were very self sufficient. Grew their own food, even made their own clothes, aka homespun. But wow, was homespun a massive labor sink. Grow your own flax or cotton crop, then women spent hours and hours at the spinning wheels to turn the plant fibers into individual threads, which were then woven into usable bolts of cloth with more hours of labor at a hand loom. The Industrial Revolution ended all that. Mechanized clothing manufacturing and a whole lot of other things. Took a while longer to replace the horse, but that eventually happened too.
Formerly independent farmers were forced into taking factory jobs and worked mercilessly. Had stuff like 12 hour work days 6 or even all 7 days of the week. Manufacturing upended the economy, driving prices down on things the farmers could produce. The ones who tried to stay on the farm were then unable to produce enough to afford the services and goods they still needed, and to pay taxes and raise a family.
More wealth was being produced than ever before, but the lion's share was going straight into the pockets of a few wealthy industrialists. Our capitalist system doesn't have really any policies at all to rein in the irresponsible and destructive greed, arrogance, and contempt of the super rich. Workers were driven to organize themselves into unions and go on strikes. It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get these foolish owners to see that it wasn't good for anyone, even them, to have such wealth inequality, and to acknowledge that 40 hours was about the maximum a work week should be. The 40 hour work week is backed by scientific studies that show that workers pushed to work longer hours than that are so much less productive that they accomplish less than if they'd worked only 40 hours. But now we seem to have a new generation of super rich who don't know that and if they do hear about it, don't believe it.
The robot apocalypse could easily go the same way as the Industrial Revolution. Just when we need policies to keep society and civil norms from being shredded, the greedy super rich are hell bent on tearing apart everything they see as an "unfair" restriction on their ability to ruthlessly exploit the masses, if not outright liquidate them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @05:27PM
In other words, as labor became more valuable, workers had more power to get the things they wanted from employers. Perhaps we should think about ways to make labor more valuable rather than less? It's working for the rest of the world.
Currently, it is. The majority of people throughout the world are becoming more prosperous, knowledgeable, and healthier, just like in the industrial revolution. But that isn't the narrative you wish to spin, eh?