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Read this interesting essay written by DEREK THOMPSON
For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing ?
The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977.
For much of the 20th century, Youngstown's steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a home ownership rate that were among the nation's highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the shuttering of its Campbell Works mill. Within five years, the city lost 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages. The effect was so severe that a term was coined to describe the fallout: regional depression.
Youngstown was transformed not only by an economic disruption but also by a psychological and cultural breakdown. Depression, spousal abuse, and suicide all became much more prevalent; the caseload of the area's mental-health center tripled within a decade. The city built four prisons in the mid-1990s—a rare growth industry. One of the few downtown construction projects of that period was a museum dedicated to the defunct steel industry.
The future will tell us whether or not this pans out as he envisions. What does SN think will happen ?
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @10:26AM
Heart of Steel (1983) [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [imdb.com]
A memorable TV movie 4 years before Oliver Stone's "Wall Street".
Strong cast.
The story resembles Youngstown right down to the point that what they make is pipe.
One of my favorite weekly broadcasts|webcasts is done by Professor of Economics Richard Wolff. [google.com]
He is from Youngstown.
His experience of seeing his hometown crumble because of the serious deficiencies of Capitalism has him constantly seeking a better model of production.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Interesting) by curunir_wolf on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:19PM
His experience of seeing his hometown crumble because of the serious deficiencies of Capitalism has him constantly seeking a better model of production.
You think he'll figure out it's the best system available, despite its "deficiencies", before he dies?
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday June 25 2015, @05:03PM
His experience of seeing his hometown crumble because of the serious deficiencies of Capitalism has him constantly seeking a better model of production.
You think he'll figure out it's the best system available, despite its "deficiencies", before he dies?
No. Because it's not? Romans after the Punic Wars really thought slave labor was the best mode of production available. They were wrong.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 25 2015, @08:02PM
> No. Because it's not? Romans after the Punic Wars really thought slave labor was the best mode of production available. They were wrong.
How were they wrong? For brainless jobs, you can't beat free labor, as long as you have enough whips.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday June 25 2015, @08:22PM
I was Spartacus!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @09:20PM
Because one good scientist is worth a billion slave workers. No amount of slaves will replace modern farming and transportation techniques. Slaves are more useful in universities than pushing boulders.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday June 26 2015, @01:33AM
Unless you have a throwaway attitude about the slaves (like when you capture them in war), they're more expensive then just paying someone slightly less then it takes to survive. You have to house them, feed them, train them, look after them when sick. Compare to just paying someone, especially if you can loan them money (they're falling behind on the wages they're paid) so it's harder to quit, or better pay them with something that is generally worthless such as script unless they use it to purchase stuff from the employer.
With the right type of propaganda, you also get workers lining up to be abused instead of having slaves trying to escape.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @08:56PM
Clearly, you didn't click my link.
If you had, you would have seen Democracy at Work, one of the professor's sites.
With Capitalism, when you get to work, you leave Democracy outside the door.
Someone else determines what will be produced, where it will be produced, how it will be produced, and what will be done with the profits.
The professor has already found an excellent alternative production model.
It's commonly called a worker cooperative.
He has another term that he thinks is more descriptive: a Worker Self-Directed Enterprise (WSDE).
He holds out Mondragon in the Basque country of Spain as an example that has been working well since 1956. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [rdwolff.com]
It's very democratic. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
As section D of this page notes, [wedreambusiness.org] in 2013, 80 percent of the workers at Mondragon were owners, with full vesting being the goal.
.
Worker ownership is more common than most folks think.
The Emilia-Romagna region in the north of Italy is a hotbed of co-ops.
There is a bunch in the USA too. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [billmoyers.com]
Need a push start to get yours going? [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [commondreams.org]
.
The Slave model was a failure (brutality followed by rebellions and mass murder of the oppressor class), the Feudal model failed with the rise of towns, and the Capitalist model of production has completely fallen on its face again and again over the last 200 years.
When are we finally going to acknowledge that Capitalism too is a failure and STOP SUBSIDIZING IT AND USING TAXPAYER MONEY TO BAIL OUT CAPITALISTS WHEN THEY FAIL?
With 20-something percent of people without fulltime work in a whole scad of countries (including USA), just how BAD do things have to get before we try something else?
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 25 2015, @11:30PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @05:28AM
Its failing right now [commondreams.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 26 2015, @12:46PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:18PM
Yup.
About every 80 years, when the last survivors of the previous complete failure of Capitalism have all died, there is another complete failure of Capitalism.
Most recently, there has been massive gov't intervention (Read: give-away of taxpayer money to failed Capitalists--with NO STRINGS; the scummy failures gone right back to doing the same things that caused the giant implosion).
After the previous total failure of Capitalism (the Harding/Coolidge/Hoover Republican fiasco), there was also massive gov't intervention by Keynesian Democrats--but that was the gov't directly hiring The Working Class and putting them to work on the nation's infrastructure.
Every bit as important was the creation of regulations that prevented the dishonest, irresponsible behavior of bankers and other Capitalist businessmen.
That action pulled the economy out of the crapper and produced a historically strong country with a broad, prosperous Working Class which lasted for 5 decades.
...then came Reaganomics.
Those regulations which were so effective at maintaining a stable, prosperous nation have been dismantled by Neoliberals|Libertarians and we have 23 percent unemployment and increasingly a country of Haves and Have-Nots with the middle hollowed out more with each passing day.
The troll and I have been over this before [soylentnews.org] but, because his "debating" style is to NEVER concede a single point--even when he has been pounded into dust--it's useless to engage with him.
As an example, he insists the the longest, deepest financial disaster the USA has ever experienced (1873 -1896) was simply a couple of recessions.
He's also has no clue what a nova is. [soylentnews.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:22PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @11:56PM
Nope. My sources are much wider than the Lamestream Media propaganda and public school indoctrination you clearly have embraced.
I refuse to swallow all the Cold War bullshit you have.
Soviet Russia
I'll give you 1 point for not explicitly saying "Communist", but your subtext is still very clear.
If you go back to the 19teens, Lenin still held Marxist principles.
Very quickly, he shed those egalitarian principles and started imprisoning|murdering his opponents.
A Marxist economic system requires Democracy everywhere; USSR didn't have that anywhere--just the thinnest of veneers and a bunch of **false rhetoric** to try to hornswaggle the proletariat and gullible foreigners (like you).
Despite their called themselves "Communist", the Soviet Union was a Totalitarian government with a State Capitalist economy--very much a top-down, elites-controlled system of cronyism.
Marx's paradigm specified a bottom-up system where the workers decided EVERYTHING by majority vote.
USSR could only be called "socialist" by applying the most distorted definition of "socialism".
(The so-called "democratic socialism" of countries of northern Europe is another such distortion.)
USSR had a board of directors [google.com] just like other Capitalist operations.
That group of overlords was **NOT** selected by the workers.
Anyone who calls that "Communism" has absolutely no idea what Communism is (but, again, has swallowed a whole bunch of Cold War bullshit).
[in the end, the assets of the USSR were grabbed up] by the conservatives
Their Capitalist system changed hands from the cronies that were on the gov't payroll (where the profits bypassed the workers and went to the elites in gov't) to (private-profit-driven) cronies of the "new" regime--but elites were still in charge and the desires of the workers still didn't count at all.
...and when there is redistribution of assets in a shift to a -Socialist- meme, Wrong Wingers howl how unfair that is that the legacy of massive concentrations of aristocratic wealth is not being honored.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:34AM
At latest when all resources are used up. Because capitalism depends on continuous growth, and growth depends on the availability of resources.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 26 2015, @12:50PM
At latest when all resources are used up. Because capitalism depends on continuous growth, and growth depends on the availability of resources.
So right there. we're good for at least half a billion years until the Sun goes nova. Because the only resource for which availability really matters is energy. For everything, you just need more energy, assuming you're not recycling efficiently. And as long as the Sun shines, we have energy.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:27PM
At latest when all resources are used up. Because capitalism depends on continuous growth, and growth depends on the availability of resources.
That is incorrect. The current US system (referred to as "capitalism"), which relies on fiat currency, Central Banking and Keynesian economics with a large amount of entitlements paid by borrowing from a central bank, DOES require continuous growth. Capitalism itself is fine with deflation and recessions, it helps to shift the way capital is invested. Deflationary periods also serve to help the poorest in the economy, while inflation continuously serves to accrue benefits only to the banks and owners of large amounts of capital.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:17PM
I am a crackpot