Comment by tossandthrow
3 days ago
It will only do so if the benefits of the technology is made available to all and we will see alternatives to make an income.
Based on the past 40 years track record it seems unlikely that we will see any form of redistribution before it is existential.
That is definitely grounds for being pessimistic.
It's the economic model we live under, not technology by itself, that's the problem IMHO.
Every tech gets exploited to make some richer folks more rich. Nothing new. Since the rich-ladder *is* the power-ladder under cap'ism.
In the west "we" forgot how unions and strong labor parties gave us weekends, sick leave, holidays, etc. Now we pay the price.
> In the west "we" forgot how unions and strong labor parties gave us weekends, sick leave, holidays, etc. Now we pay the price.
Unions have power for one reason alone: the powerful need to keep the labour force on-board.
When the powerful do not need to care about labour, this happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
Norway seems like an obvious counter example? If the unions and state grow enough power before resources start to get extracted it seems like they can keep the curse in check.
It has also been protecting politics from capital in various ways; public funding of political parties, strict bans on various forms of political adverts, forced disclosure laws, essentially forcing capital into a single visible chair (NHO), etc.
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We are likely seeing the end of labor as a power class.
I think of it in roughly 3 eras:
pre industrialization, individual labor contribution had quite a lot of power.
Industrialization, labor sees commoditization and unions make sure that power is kept across individual workers.
Post industrialization (ground zero was like GFC, being accelerated by AI). We need to figure out new structures than labor to distribute resources and power - and that is going to hurt.
Disagree on the timeline of the past, agree that we need to figure out new structures and that this will hurt.
Pre-industrialisation, most labour was the peasantry, whose main contribution was growing enough crops to keep themselves healthy enough to be a useful bunch of conscripts.
Industrialisation created the conditions where labour became important, because the workers were no longer bound to an employer so if they all walked out and told their friends you were a bad boss, your expensive capital (machinery) went idle.
The third industrial revolution, AKA the Information Age, was when it (gradually, piece-by-piece) started to become possible to do "lights-out manufacturing" or "dark factories", so-named because you (sometimes) don't need lights if you have no human workers. This period also came with globalisation and offshoring, which muddied the waters somewhat.
When some task can be fully automated, the labour working on that task loses its power with the management, e.g. UK print workers lost their relevance to the creation of newspapers in the UK with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping_dispute
Lights-out manufacturing is the ultimate form of this, where all the humans are redundant.
GFC? I'd say the dot com bust. It was the first time markets rewarded pushing buttons at that scale.
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Unions only work because their members have leverage because the wealthy still need their labour. Unions will do absolutely nothing against full replacement by AI.
> Based on the past 40 years track record it seems unlikely that we will see any form of redistribution before it is existential.
Literally every income decile is getting richer. Don't tell me you got fooled by that fake graph showing productivity/income disconnect?
Not rich enough compared to the individual productivity gains.
Don't tell me you have been fooled by the Chicago school of economics that has told you that relative wealth is indifferent as long as you can get a cheaper television.
Yes, out of two alternatives - large growth but largest in top decile vs no growth, the first one is absolutely 1000x times better. And we know that every alternative to capitalism leads to much smaller growth. Also it's not just television - it's smaller infant mortality, it's developing better therapies that save lives, it's basically every positive facet of existence (apart from housing, but for that neoliberals also have solution - LVT, unfortunately it will never be implemented).
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