Comment by PantaloonFlames
2 hours ago
It's too simplistic to imagine the tension is between robot patrol dogs vs automating drudgery. If automating drudgery suddenly puts 30% of people out of work, it has huge broad negative impact on people who are currently alive and working in the current system. Innovate, but do it with awareness.
Than an even better question for the pope is:
If a technology existed that reduced the cost of producing a critical thing (think food, housing, medical care) down to near zero, however, it made the humans currently building the thing redundant, should we build it? Would it be okay to use the hyper-optimization power of Capitalism to build such a technology faster?
Likely the answer would be: yes, we should build it, and take appropriate care of the people being made redundant.
These two are not mutually exclusive, it's just that no one wants to pay for it.