Yep. The "wouldn't it be great if we had robots do all the labor you are currently doing" argument only works if there is some plan to make sure that my rent gets paid other than me performing labor.
It depends if you're the only one out of a job. If it really is everyone then the answer will likely be some variant of metaphorically or literally killing your landlord in favor of a different resource allocation scheme. I put these kinds of things in a "in that world I would have bigger problems" bucket.
And that's the ultimate fail of capitalist ethics - the notion that we must all work just so we can survive. Look at how many shitty and utterly useless jobs exist just so people can be employed on them to survive.
This has to change somehow.
"Machines will do everything and we'll just reap the profits" is a vision that techno-millenialists are repeating since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, but we haven't seen that happening anywhere.
For some strange reason, technological progress seem to be always accompanied with an increase on human labor. We're already past the 8-hours 5-days norm and things are only getting worse.
> And that's the ultimate fail of capitalist ethics - the notion that we must all work just so we can survive. Look at how many shitty and utterly useless jobs exist just so people can be employed on them to survive.
This isn't a consequence of capitalism. The notion of having to work to survive - assuming you aren't a fan of slavery - is baked into things at a much more fundamental level. And lots of people don't work, and are paid by a welfare state funded by capitalism-generated taxes.
> "Machines will do everything and we'll just reap the profits" is a vision that techno-millenialists are repeating since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, but we haven't seen that happening anywhere.
They were wrong, but the work is still there to do. You haven't come up with the utopian plan you're comparing this to.
> For some strange reason, technological progress seem to be always accompanied with an increase on human labor.
No it doesn't. What happens is not enough people are needed to do a job any more, so they go find another job. No one's opening barista-staffed coffee shops on every corner in the time when 30% of the world was doing agricultural labour.
Yes, it is. The fact we have welfare isn't a refutation of that, it's proof. The welfare is a bandaid over the fundamental flaws of capitalism. A purely capitalist system is so evil, it is unthinkable. Those people currently on welfare should, in a free labor market, die and rot in the street. We, collectively, decided that's not a good idea and went against that.
That's why the labor market, and truly all our markets, are not free. Free markets suck major ass. We all know it. Six year olds have no business being in coal mines, no matter how much the invisible hand demands it.
You have a very different definition of free than I do. Free to me means that people enter into agreements voluntarily. It's hard to claim a market is free when it's participants have no other choice...
