Posted: May 09, 2013 12:11 am
FACT-MAN-2 wrote:iamthereforeithink wrote:...as also the fact that productivity gains are being realized in EVERY kind of job at a rate that far outstrips cumulative consumption growth of all kinds of products and services. So the cumulative potential supply of all goods and services is growing much faster than the demand for these products and services. I posted this link earlier in another thread about how UTC continues to lay off a large proportion of it's workforce, even as its profits and stock price are at an all time high. UTC is realizing productivity gains that the world doesn't really need, but are yielding short-term benefits and short-term shareholder value for UTC all the same.
Well, since that's what the game is mostly about (short-term benefits and increased short-term shareholder value), I guess that's just fine and dandy, and to hell with the workers who've been layed off.
And where does all this lead? What's the end game? On the whole, are people's lives made better?
Climate change screws up the planet.
Because robots are a kind of capital, accumulation can reach untold levels. Traditionally the capitalist way of getting rid of surplus labour was to start a war and make the working class kill each other. I don't think that will happen this time because of nuclear weapons.
One way to keep the unemployed masses happy is some kind of tax-and-spend solution, perhaps high unemployment benefits or even a guaranteed citizens income where the state pays an income to each citizen regardless of their work status, funded by taxation on robot-owning capitalists.
Of course another way is violent revolution where the unemployed masses seize the robots, operate them themselves and share the surplus equally. A capitalist economy is not fit for autonomous robot industrialization. A socialist economy however is perfectly suited for the implementation of a fully robotic workforce.
The entire world, all of humanity, can be elevated to live a life of luxury with robots doing all the industrial labor. With menial labor taken care of, education and creative endeavors would become paramount, freeing humanity to develop its greatest faculty: the human mind. This social reform into a utopian state is only possible with the proper implementation of robots. It should be the goal of every able minded individual to curve the world towards this robot revolution. Even before robotic technology reaches economic viability social reform is needed to insure that people know the benefits of robotic industrialization. This is a call for humanity to advance, just as we’ve advanced from caves to homes, as we’ve risen out of feudalism and forged Democracy, as we’ve gone from manpower to horse power to machine power. It is time for a new age, the culmination of everything learned and done before it, and the end of human labor. Oppression, inequity, war, poverty, these can be things of the past with the proper implementation of robotic industrialization. The full realization of humanity is upon us, it is time to advance!
The above is a little too optimistic for me, but still very gives us some tantilising ideas.