Techno Dystopia

Automation is increasing in all aspects of daily life, manufacturing and providing services. This is just a fact of human evolution and it's a good thing that we have to do less work. Right?

Let me first address the debate about whether automation will cause unemployment, because that matter isn't settled. While futurists and Silicon Valley types generally agree that automation will eventually lead to a "jobless future," economists have a different view. The main reason for this is that this prediction has never come true in the past; every few decades predictions about "the end of work" crept into public discourse, but have always been wrong. In the 1920s and 1930s machines were starting to take over jobs from factory and farm workers for example, but overall employment hasn't decreased; in America overall employment has persisted at around 80% throughout the different automation-waves. Sure, in the short term there's so called technological unemployment as certain types of highly automatable jobs disappear, but other jobs appear in different ways.

First there's the work to be done with regards to the creation and maintenance of the new machinery. But that's not all; economists argue that through automation products become cheaper, leading to a higher demand for these much more affordable products, which in turn leads to the ability of companies to expand and create new products, creating new jobs. Also the money saved by consumers provides them with the opportunity to spend more money on recreation, sports and hobbies, leading to even more jobs. By now you may be asking what the problem is then? What's this irrational fear of a dystopian techno-future?

Well, a couple of things. Although overall employment has stayed the same, that says nothing about the overall quality of those jobs or their attached wages; both have gone down, especially since the birth of the gig-economy in which employees, with worker protections, pensions and healthcare benefits, have been replaced with contractors. Also the described cycle of companies expanding into new products and jobs is only partially true; most of the increased profitability is hoarded by a few extremely rich and powerful billionaires. And that's not even taking into account that increased productivity isn't a singular blessing; we've increased the number of products but not their quality due to planned obsolescence, and have therefore exponentially increased the amount of waste we produce. Climate change, anyone? And then there's this phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. In his 2018 book anthropologist David Graeber contends that over half of societal work is pointless, and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth.

If you're a regular visitor here you'll know where I stand in this debate: economists are almost always wrong because they assess not the economy, but the capitalist economy. They're the ultimate capitalist realists who can not even imagine a world without capitalism and capitalists, and therein lies the problem. They'll never address the ultimate useless job, which is the job of the capitalist whose only function is to own the factory. The entire debate outlined above becomes pointless when the machines are owned by the workers instead of a small group of executives who contribute zero to the actual production of material wealth but somehow are entitled to almost all of it. And these billionaires agree with the futurists, which is why they increasingly are in favor of introducing some form of Universal Basic Income. To name but a few: Jack Dorsey, Tim Draper, Chris Hughes and Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Bill Gates and Ray Kurzweil are all in favor of giving everyone a basic income for free, without having to work for that money.

Well, aren't they the Good Samaritans... But not really. A UBI to them is nothing more than a way to protect the current capitalist economical hierarchy. If most people are without a job, no one will buy their products if people don't have another source of income. They control the government so they can set the conditions for and amount of monthly payments, allowing them to fine-tune the system to their liking and benefit. A UBI changes nothing in the current power-hierarchy in which they sit at the top; it only increases their power of the capitalist class over the working class. Or the not working class. There's only one solution, and it's the solution that will solve numerous other problems, like climate change, worker displacement and alienation, as well. You know what it is, or you should know. If not, watch the below linked video.

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