the digital disruption: technology and economics for the 99%

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http://www.nationofchange.org/digital-disruption-technology-and-economics-99-1357915349

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1. Capitalism is based on buying and selling in the marketplace. Everything is for sale, including your ability to work. If a robot does the work more cheaply, you have to sell for less or not at all.

2. The value of a commodity for exchange in the marketplace is based on how much human labor is required to produce and bring it to market. Exchange value of all commodities, including the value of human labor itself, is undercut as labor is drastically reduced by automation.

3. Capitalists must constantly reduce the cost of human labor in two basic ways: lower wages or reduce human labor. There are fewer jobs now, and jobs pay less. If workers can't buy, owners can't sell. We’ve crossed a line where there are no longer enough people working or earning enough to consume the goods and services produced. Selling subprime mortgages was a strategy to prop up a housing and construction market that would have collapsed several years earlier.

4. Capitalist companies must seek maximum profit at all times. Since profits come out of the value of a commodity, the rate of profit tends to fall as human labor is reduced. Marketing, monopoly and political influence also affect profits, but labor is the key. Rates of profit in production have dropped 70% since 1965 (Deloitte Shift Index).