this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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I really wanna hear what the proposal is for removing "unqualified" jobs en masse without implementing universal basic income.
The low pay and bad conditions of "unqualified" jobs often gets excused because they, allegedly, are "stepping stones", a means of sustaining oneself while working towards more specialized careers.
If you destroy a significant amount of those positions, where does that leave those people? Are we so drunk on cyberpunk-esque lust of AI evolution that we are fine eliminating the means of entry to society for so many?
You're making a fundamentally bad assumption: that this is in any way "good faith".
The billionaires and giant corporations can make more money by employing less people. That's it.
It's limitless greed. They don't care about living wages or "stepping stones" or funding the country or how many people get thrown out onto the street. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but it's the truth and we're all witnessing it. This is capitalism run amok: They can become even richer and nothing matters more than that.
We don't have to let corporations rule us. If voters weren't so fucking brainwashed we could make a system that works for everyone. I'm hoping at some point it will be too obvious for anytime not to notice that a system where give swathes of the population are just left to starve isn't something we can tolerate.
The solution is - instead of rejecting technology, which isn't going anywhere and will only progress and can't be stopped, because under capitalism it will lead to workers starving - we reject capitalism.
It's literally the only way that would actually prevent people from suffering (and significantly help the planet, too).
https://www.globallearning-cuba.com/blog-umlthe-view-from-the-southuml/marx-on-automated-industry
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment
The problem is that humans are really bad at caring for unproductive people. If you use wealth generated by natural resources as a proxy for wealth generated by robot labor, humans have a bad record of distributing the material wealth.
If it's anything like Maggie's legacy in the UK. It just leads to generations of poverty and society degradation that even now don't look like they will be reversed. Like it's mad that life was better when people crawled in a hole to mine coal by hand.
But hey it least it was an excuse for a party when she died.