Maybe robots don’t cause less or lower paying jobs as
thinks or hoped, but it’s still important to combine technologocal development with the state funding a push for full employment. Historically, where there has been a lack of workers, technology has boomed. The ancient Romans and Greek had technology for steam engines and railroads but used this only as cheap toys or for doors opening automatically to make the emperor seem divine. The reason argued in antiquity was that the slaves back then were so cheap and should have something to work with.Around 1990 in Sweden unemployment was low and new technology and new organizations as for example at Volvo made working life more equal, free and healthy for the factory workers. The capitalist power was terrified and the state was big part of causing the 1990’s financial crisis in Sweden to cause permanent high unemployment so factory workers have to obey without grunting. The US also has a check on workers’ rights. So the Amazon company’s automation make its workers unthinking robot hands and feet. If the US and other governments would give public, good work positions to everyone, the private sector would have to invent more productive and ergonomical technology that liberated and made life easier and more equal for the workers to attract job seekers.
One scary fact about automation, is the development of robot soldiers. These could give a despot total power over its people’s right to live or die. Combine this with fully automated robot workers, and most poor and middle class people could be disposable. The power elite could use the robots to kill most of humanity to save the environment and nature for the remaining rich.
And if we develop a singularity more intelligent than humankind, how can we know it won’t kill us either because it’s evil or because it finds us evil.
Technological development must be regulated for the public good. An easy way of regulation technology is for the state to minimize unemployment.
The Deficit myth by
shows this does not have to lead to high inflation as long as effort is put into making most of productivity. Inflation does more have to do with production being too low or not benefiting human needs, than workers pay being to high.And labour unions could probably be made to cooperate if a fight against inflation would be necessary.
The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato also proves that a big public sector can help with and often is beneficial to technological and medical breakthroughs. Mrs Mazzucato proves with much empirical facts that it is most often the state or state funding that historically cause the major technological and medical breakthroughs. Even in modern USA.
Productivity is not only about working but also about consumption. If the workers have more free time and more money, they can consume more or use its time to its hobbies or ideological interests.
But productivity must also calculate to save nature, the environment, the biological diversity and the climate. Nature is the prime factor of prodictivity.
But poor and middleclass people consume much less than the wealthiest.
And if we created a society where people were more equal, had better psychological and physical health and created products with higher longevity, the common people’s comsumption would not have to destroy nature because people wouldn’t have to consume to achieve high status or to dampen their unhappiness.
It is dangerous with a goal for productivity that mostly only benefits the richest elite.
Inspiration:
Frågor är om sann upplysning demokrati och bla systemtåg.
Svenska järnväg har avfolkat personal som orsakat brist och trafikstörningar genom omfattande digitalisering och kostnadsbesparingar