Yeah I think about this a lot and it really depresses me
Especially since someone owns the machines and the materials and the end product. We own nothing, so in frame 2 we're missing the capitalist off frame somewhere (probably lounging on a private island) saying "lol, fuck you. You get nothing, it's all mine."
Their idea is "if there isn't enough work for everyone any more than that means there are too many people for what society can support so... Die."
Capitalism at its peak
The second frame shows the ideal of post-scarcity communism, the end goal of Marxist communism.
There's still promise as weve seen with the Great Resignation after the 2020 epidemic lockdown and furlough. We learned that:
- People are not typically lazy and rather turn to hobbies and projects rather than TV. (Those who can watch TV for weeks are showing avolition a symptom of mental illness.)
- Some of them were even able to turn their home gig lucrative and some of those were able to quit their day job.
- People don't like their job not because they're layabouts (goldbrickers! slugabeds!) but rather because the job sucks. It may be tedious, or arduous, or frustrating or overwhelming. The work environment might be toxic (literally, if safety precautions are insufficient). It may include inappropriate politics, or deception or harassment by management with no oversight. All these things can be fixed.
- The job may not pay sufficiently. Also bosses may push workers to do more than is impossible to do well. These should be dealbreakers, but we're expected not just to do our jobs, but to negotiate at a disadvantage. Bosses who don't fuck with you and pay you what you're worth are doing you no favors. That is the bare minimum.
- Capitalists would rather seek out exploitable work forces than treat their workers fairly, like human beings, hence efforts to cut benefits early to force people back to shit jobs, and later, seeing to relax child labor protections.
That is in fact how I was radicalized on the economic front in a debate with a socialist in college
Radicalization. So hot right now ;)
I was radicalized before it was cool
Maybe as a middle ground, you can train an A.I. with your individual skills and institutional knowledge, when it had a gap in response, it pings you. You casually main new things and track it to the A.I. in your style. If/when you leave, company needs to give you all of your data and start again training a new A.I. with new hire.
They won't, but this could be a way to allow A.I. that can work longer, have human oversight, maintain salaries for humans and not repurpose their data if you no longer employ them - as would be the case in real life.
