Yeah, now you just get a wage ceiling where you're only employable if you're cheaper than the robot.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Yup, it'll probably take a few generations after work robots become commonplace for capitalism to finally shuffle off. Life will just suck a whole lot more in the intervening time as you fight for the few unskilled jobs and spend 25+ years in education to get the few skilled jobs available
And thats totally deserved. A population that is unable or unwilling to unionize against their oppressors is doomed.
The problem with automation is that the unions lose power. Collectivise? We'll just replace you with scab bots.
We're not set up to use automaton as we should - the basis for a transition to a decommodified society where people's needs are met and they have more leisure time. Instead, we'll just further centralise economic resources until capitalism breaks down because noone can afford food or shelter. At that point, if we don't eat the rich, we'll consolidate back into autocracy thanks to their disproportionate economic power.
I agree. I was talking about right now. If people did this today, nobody would be replaced as everything would collapse, which only shows how much power the working people actually have.
Most people (by design) underestimate the power of unions and strikes. Just look up what countries had strikes and what happened after. It’s always the same (if the country is democratic). Employers lose, employees win.
The trick today is to keep this info from us and feed us anti union propaganda. This encourages the sentence you just used (we‘ll just replace you).
No they wont, not until we built their robots. After we did that, we have actually ruined ourselves.
That's why programmers have to integrate unionising subroutines directly into the robot's code.
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No, it means you won't be able to work and will now have to fight over garbage to eat if you want to survive.
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The thing is we already live in that world. Labour saving automation is all around us but we work as hard as ever. My generation witnessed the arrival of the two parent income, women entered the workplace in order to afford better housing and foreign holidays. The result? More expensive housing and latchkey kids.
Are you surprised? The more efficient machines become, the harder humans will need to work to compete.
Edit: People are downvoting this as if it was something I wanted. It just seems like reality to me.
That's the problem with capitalism and competition in capitalism. Everyone competes to maximize cost savings and profit.
I don't know of a solution but this ain't it.
That's the worst part isn't it. You see all these problems but I have no idea what to do about it. Even theoretical solutions don't hold up, let alone practical limitations.
There are solutions. But no fast ones without violence, and no long ones that won't come too late.
The rich guy already lives in that society. How will he feel superior if everyone else does too?
"it means these robots will be stealing your souls (via the art you create) & also all your money (they need it more)."
Bottom left looks uncannily like Jeff B
Or, you know, we could use robots to slowly transform our society into a robotic utopia, where people get universal basic income and can do what the fuck they want, because robots do most of the work to keep our lives running.
But yeah, currently they are only attractive because they save costs. And that is attractive because we live in a capitalistic, profit driven society and not one where the well being of everyone is prioritized. (Although they can also help out in areas where human workforce is not available anyway, e.g., elderly care in several countires. Then again there are insufficient financial incentives to work in that area.) That's why it's highly probable that they will – for a long time – continue to be tools which will ease lower level work, so that humans can focus on higher level tasks. However, this level of capability is increasing over time, requiring even higher qualified humans to do very high level tasks until even those are replaced by thinking machines.
We currently have a pyramid of work. Most jobs require low to mid level education or qualification. The higher the qualification level is, the less jobs are available (but usually very well paid though). What we are going to see is that robots wil replace one by one the lower level parts of this pyramid. And that's bad, because unemployment rates will increase, because of that. A lot of people don't want to or can't improve on their education / qualification. And even if they would, I doubt that there will be a sufficient amount of jobs available. (That would be a good question for a research project though, since I don't really know how many new jobs could be created by requiring less lower level work. I am just pessimistic right now.) ChatGPT caused a lot of concerns in text writing industries. Image generating AIs caused similar distress in the creative industry. Developments like this will continue at a high speed. At some point machines will be able to improve machines completely on themselves. Then we will have an explosion of machine intelligence.
Society is not prepared for this.
That's why I am advocating that politics have to speed up creating laws and rule frameworks in which robots are allowed to be developed and operated and which also take care of those who are in danger of unemployment and financial starvation.
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