How automation could endanger capitalism

[applegrove]

https://www.axios.com/pew-survey-capitalism-could-be-endangered-by-automation-2391017237.html

Christopher Matthews at Axios

SNIP................


Why they're pessimistic: The experts argued that the coming wave of technological progress will revolutionize the economy in ways previous productivity booms haven't. They worry that even as society gets richer as a result, the social dislocations caused by too much leisure time and rising wealth inequality could be devastating.

Cory Doctorow, activist-in-residence at MIT Media Lab and co-owner of Boing Boing: "It's an article of faith that automation begets more jobs [than it] displaces (in the long run); but this is a 'theory-free' observation based on previous automation booms. The current automation is based on 'general purpose' technologies . . . and there's good reason to believe that this will be more disruptive, and create fewer new jobs, than those that came before."

Nathaniel Borenstein, chief scientist at Mimecast: "The 'jobs of the future' are likely to be performed by robots. The question isn't how to train people for nonexistent jobs, it's how to share the wealth in a world where we don't need most people to work."

Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation: "There won't be jobs for most people a few decades from now, and that's what really matters. As for the skills for the employed fraction of advanced countries, I think they will be difficult to teach. You could get better at them by practice, but you couldn't study them much."


...............SNIP

[PsychoBabble]

1. I have been watching this, too ....

So many come back with the argument, "well, you still need mechanics to fix those self-driving trucks," ... or ... "Plumbing repair will never be done by robots," or some such.

SURE -- but the net job loss will be horrific. We've never lived in a world where there were literally too few jobs upon which to base a consumer economy.

These arguments are like using proof texts from the Bible to make a point -- they MISS the point, the Meta-impact of a landscape changed so drastically that the old rules no longer apply.

As an educator, I feel for my highly-educated students ... because they are leaping off a cliff into an abyss like no one has ever seen before, economically, and by extension, culturally.

All I can do is prepare them to think, analyze, be flexible, self-reliant, and wish them a better journey than I believe they will actually have ....

[applegrove]

2. Maybe why big business doesn't seem to mind Trump on immigration.

Countries will not need immigrants like they do today. Growth will tank for most people.