Ledur
15th October 2013, 22:54
I'm arguing with some free market defenders in another forum about technological unemployment in a future scenario. They are calling me a neoluditte.
I started talking about the effects of extreme automation, specially on services. In the past, agriculture and industry automation caused mass migration to service sector, but nowadays, there's not a "4th sector" yet. Furthermore, skilled professions remain accessible to very few, etc.
You don't need a new sector, because the amount of workers will not, never, grow as much as it has grown in the last 100 years. Population will be stable soon enough. Therefore, equating the reduction of the worker's working day with capitalist's productivity gains due to automation, will make unemployment more or less stable.
My answer (I used their language in order to help them understand it better):
But at that time, employees were scarce, therefore wages went up, while the working day decreased. The liberation of workers to other fields, with the advent of machines, actually increased job demand, and workers began to be disputed by the firms.
Currently, do you GUARANTEE that it'll happen the same fashion? Will computing and automation (aggresive in the manufacturing sector and moderate in the service sector) indeed create more job opportunities? If I'm right, workers will be abundant, not scarce, and the trend is that wages stagnate.
I also said something about long-term automation:
On the downward spiral, I meant the following:
1) Automation increases, cheaper products made (competition), decreased profits, hence capital shrinkage;
2) Unemployment rises, overall purchasing power decreases;
3) Go back to step 1)
This paradox that can happen, contrary to the capitalist postulate of "expanding forever". Forecasting the extreme case (of course impossible), there would be 99% unemployment, with the economy's size close to zero. All products and services would be cheap... but the means of production (robots) will still be PRIVATE. Only the capital owners(1%) would trade their products among themselves, while 99% would be cannibalizing themselves.
On the other hand, if the means of production were COMMON owned, the fruit of automation would serve everyone.
Is there any major flaw in my line of thinking?
I started talking about the effects of extreme automation, specially on services. In the past, agriculture and industry automation caused mass migration to service sector, but nowadays, there's not a "4th sector" yet. Furthermore, skilled professions remain accessible to very few, etc.
You don't need a new sector, because the amount of workers will not, never, grow as much as it has grown in the last 100 years. Population will be stable soon enough. Therefore, equating the reduction of the worker's working day with capitalist's productivity gains due to automation, will make unemployment more or less stable.
My answer (I used their language in order to help them understand it better):
But at that time, employees were scarce, therefore wages went up, while the working day decreased. The liberation of workers to other fields, with the advent of machines, actually increased job demand, and workers began to be disputed by the firms.
Currently, do you GUARANTEE that it'll happen the same fashion? Will computing and automation (aggresive in the manufacturing sector and moderate in the service sector) indeed create more job opportunities? If I'm right, workers will be abundant, not scarce, and the trend is that wages stagnate.
I also said something about long-term automation:
On the downward spiral, I meant the following:
1) Automation increases, cheaper products made (competition), decreased profits, hence capital shrinkage;
2) Unemployment rises, overall purchasing power decreases;
3) Go back to step 1)
This paradox that can happen, contrary to the capitalist postulate of "expanding forever". Forecasting the extreme case (of course impossible), there would be 99% unemployment, with the economy's size close to zero. All products and services would be cheap... but the means of production (robots) will still be PRIVATE. Only the capital owners(1%) would trade their products among themselves, while 99% would be cannibalizing themselves.
On the other hand, if the means of production were COMMON owned, the fruit of automation would serve everyone.
Is there any major flaw in my line of thinking?