2016-11-25 2:38 GMT+01:00 Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com>: > In the future, computers and robots can do nearly all work such as driving > cars, building houses, diagnosing x-rays and performing surgery. Human > labor will gradually become worthless.
This is a point where I disagree. in fact robots make the value of the worker increase, as it always have. It is continuous substitution of work by capital. washing machine makes the value of the laundry worker be higher, as he exploits capital invested in a machine. What you describe is the tragedy of a worker who is prevented, by regulation or social barriers, to exploit some capital. The future of the laundry worker is not to work for a laundry boss with a thousands of machine. It is to own a thousand of machine, like a Roman citizen was owning slaves. The big error of Marxist vision, and in fact old-style 19/20th century vision in the West is to separate capital and work. It was in fact exact when stated, because at that time workers and capitalist were sociologically separated, and capital was huge because of the size of steam engines and following, and need of taylorization of workforce. In fact the capitalism of that period, still dominant, was based on an evolution of landlord medieval system, just moved to industrial business. Social security just organized the paternalism of concentrated capitalism, and crony business associated. It is dying slowly. Today what taylorization, steam engine and factory machine, schools and big companies, have solved can be solved by IT, mobile apps, social network, MOOC. What the very imperfect and uninnovative company Uber have started is allowing anyone with goodwill to be a capitalist, be a shareholder, and investor, an independent worker. When they will be "replaced" by botcars, what the society should organized is to transform them in bot company shareholders, and not in unemployed victims. never forget that if a bot can create value for nothing, the value is there. at last people will pay the small manual works much higher , because what a human can do manually will be valued much more than what a thousands of bots can do for no cost. just helping the mummy that manage a bot company to cross the street may make her pay you by the value 1 year of taxi (costing nothing for her) that could also feed you for 6 month of hydroponic food, 1 visit of le Louvre with a Mooc, or... getting some help by your neighbour. we should realize that today the hour of work of most people allows to pay much more food, much more kilometer of travel, than before. I don't feel than robots will change anything more than before. at best it may just push local capitalism. current troubled situation for me is just the old way to think the world opposing to the revolution, refusing African style home capitalism, defending smoking 19th century big capitalism, defending economic rents of some elite (not the 1% by income, much wider elite defined by networking and lobbying capacity).
