Developing tech will create economic problems

[PhoenixAsh]

I'll post this thread in learning. Simply because I want to keep it simple, but also because this issue is future reality and I am wondering how the different tendencies look at it within the context of current economic reality: capitalism.

Here is the issue. My CEO and I were going to a client when we were discussing future developments in the sector and huge technological advances which would make a lot of products obsolete. The specific product we were talking about was a simple glass plate that is currently being developed which would be flat and flexible and serve as a display and has the real potential to simply make television, phones, tablets etc. obsolete.

Somewhere in the discussion he made the remark that we had an economic crisis now...but the next one or the one after that would really be structural and devastating because of product integration and the narrowing of the amount of product needed to maintain employment. He exerted the idea that employment and survival of people depended within the current system on the production capacity and diversity. Integration of products and the advances in technology make human involvement in the production process more and more unnecessary. So innovation and new technology actually create a superfluous labor force...which would probably be left to their own device for survival.

This is a capitalist pure sang btw. But he expressed the notion that that would mean mass starvation or revolution and expressed the idea that the capitalist system simply could not survive because of innovation...it would innovate itself out of existence. He had no idea what it would be replaced with but he said he foresaw a huge economic shift at the end of the current generation.

I thought this idea very interesting...and I am wondering what you think.

* Is capitalism limiting itself through innovation?
* What would be the next logical step of economic evolution?
* Will the prospect of mass starvation (because lets face it...in current society...we would simply write off a couple of million people) create a revolutionary movement?
* Would this have implementations for the time table of "the revolution is inevitable" concept?

[Axiomasher]

I think this crisis, between a) all individual capitalists seeking to radically reduce their own labour-costs and b) capitalism as a process wanting ever greater amounts of cash to be spent on their stuff, is probably reaching a tipping point now. The most immediate effect will be a shrinkage of the consumer base in most sectors and, as you've suggested, a growing population of people unable to find work. Compounding the issue will be that fewer waged workers will mean less taxation which can be converted into welfare. It could play out over the next decade or it could take a century to climax, but the clash between technology and unemployment has been brewing since the Luddites, maybe even before them.

I mean, what happens when 3D printing machines can print 3D printing machines?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Oh those CEOs, always predicting the imminent inevitable collapse of capitalism:lol:

In a very general sense, what he says seems plausible if only that capitalism tends to "fix" things in capitalism in ways that just lead to new or worse problems down the road. What the situation describes seems to me to be a kind of sideways view of the falling rate of profit tendency. I don't think a large surplus labor force would inherently be a problem for capitalism because it would also mean a large supply of cheap labor... Even if it meant we become like serfs to bourgie-lords and can only find jobs massaging their feet. But the minimizing of labor in production because of tech is a problem for capitalists.

So that's how I'd interpret the projection; an observation not too far off from traditional Marxist views of capitalist tech advancement being both promoted by and fettered by the system.

[tuwix]

* Is capitalism limiting itself through innovation?


Capitalism is contradictory system. From one side innovations make new markets, from other hand they eliminate jobs which means a base of consumers that means a demand. Then it's just another contradiction.



* What would be the next logical step of economic evolution?


Capitalists don't think this way. It's the issue for scientist who are ignored by capitalists. Capitalists want either survive (small ones) or expand their business.



* Will the prospect of mass starvation (because lets face it...in current society...we would simply write off a couple of million people) create a revolutionary movement?


It would. But capitalism has learned to enforce a creation of jobs by state. All Keynesian economics is about it. But in such contradictory system, there is opposition to that.




* Would this have implementations for the time table of "the revolution is inevitable" concept?

Unfortunately, no. Despite a role of technology in limiting of employment, the major decreases in employment occur only in crises. But ss Marx has written, there will come such crisis that will erase capitalism.

[ckaihatsu]

But the minimizing of labor in production because of tech is a problem for capitalists.


In my understanding this dynamic *could* be an impetus to the innovation of new technology, but in an economic environment of slimmer profit margins from actual manufacturing (vs. finance), there's not much incentive per-producer to take up the costs and risks of introducing entirely new products.

Normally the government's war industries have the massive funding and technological aims that lend to requisite research and development for *commercial* purposes, but currently much seems to be stagnating and revolving around the cell phone / tablet form, with no consumer technological paradigm shift foreseeable -- it's kind of weird, but is perhaps the terminal culmination of what the microchip can do for the average person's computational needs.

So I would say that its the *lack* of developing tech that creates economic problems, through hyper-efficiency (of labor, etc.). Usually there's a world war or at least a 'next big thing' to get the ball rolling again and the hype machine back in motion, but things have been rather still lately, as I just mentioned.

[Loony Le Fist]

...
So innovation and new technology actually create a superfluous labor force...which would probably be left to their own device for survival.


I agree. It's already happening, and conditions will continue to get worse.



* Is capitalism limiting itself through innovation?


Capitalism has already done quite a bit to limit itself through innovation.



* What would be the next logical step of economic evolution?


I would hope it looks like Spain when it dabbled with left-libertarian and syndicalist ideas. However, given the current situation, a future that looks like Somalia might be in store as well.



* Will the prospect of mass starvation (because lets face it...in current society...we would simply write off a couple of million people) create a revolutionary movement?


It has been shown that food prices coorelate strongly with riots and unrest. Chart follows:

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/files/68282/Riots.png


Once things start affecting people's ability to actually survive they will be forced to find another way to manage. I don't think most individuals will just sit down and starve. If this happens things will get rough.



* Would this have implementations for the time table of "the revolution is inevitable" concept?

I happen to think some revolution is inevitable. The part that gives me pause is whether that revolution will result in people becoming more sympathetic and adopting ideas that are aligned with revolutionary leftist or reactionary ideas. Many have suggested that the revolution has been coming for many years and nothing has happened. However, if the right's garrison comes down, I definitely see a strong possibility.

I happen to be in the camp of people that there will have to be a backlash against reactionary ideas. The right-wing has had a stronghold for such a long time maintained through their monopoly on power. Once this monopoly on power ceases to exist, I think it will encourage leftists to come out of hiding. However, in the US specifically, the right is well armed. I think there must be solidarity and vigilance for such a scenario.

[Skyhilist]

Hmm I think it's possible what you are saying. It certainly is at least somewhat of a paradox: new innovations mean the capitalists need less labor, but in cutting labor to save money they also make people poor and eliminate consumers, which in some cases just might screw them at least monetarily.

Another thin to consider is this: in a world where most kinds of technology are blindly pursued, is it not getting easier and easier to imagine that one day even a very small group of mad technocratic scientists might have the tools at their disposal to nearly destroy the world by themselves? I just read the book "Oryx and Crake" and this seems to be a somewhat troubling question.

[AmilcarCabral]

Another problem, another negative impact of the excess of technology in the daily lives of people is that it sedates people, it kills the will power, turns people into lazy, weak, social-phobic, agora-phobic (fear of open spaces) and it increases individualism, shyness, and introverted behaviour. Which are all impediment for people to be really outgoing, communicative, loving, cooperative, mutualists, friendly and with a mentality of unity which is needed for the creation of a large popular leftist front in America.

On the economic side it also increases unemployment, I think that e-bay, amazon.com and other extreme-capitalist internet stores have destroyed real jobs and labor unions

I think technology, cell phones, computers and internet are great. But the excessive use of all these automated technology leads to a world of weak, shy, scared, lazy people who are physically unable to protest against capitalist governments


.



I'll post this thread in learning. Simply because I want to keep it simple, but also because this issue is future reality and I am wondering how the different tendencies look at it within the context of current economic reality: capitalism.

Here is the issue. My CEO and I were going to a client when we were discussing future developments in the sector and huge technological advances which would make a lot of products obsolete. The specific product we were talking about was a simple glass plate that is currently being developed which would be flat and flexible and serve as a display and has the real potential to simply make television, phones, tablets etc. obsolete.

Somewhere in the discussion he made the remark that we had an economic crisis now...but the next one or the one after that would really be structural and devastating because of product integration and the narrowing of the amount of product needed to maintain employment. He exerted the idea that employment and survival of people depended within the current system on the production capacity and diversity. Integration of products and the advances in technology make human involvement in the production process more and more unnecessary. So innovation and new technology actually create a superfluous labor force...which would probably be left to their own device for survival.

This is a capitalist pure sang btw. But he expressed the notion that that would mean mass starvation or revolution and expressed the idea that the capitalist system simply could not survive because of innovation...it would innovate itself out of existence. He had no idea what it would be replaced with but he said he foresaw a huge economic shift at the end of the current generation.

I thought this idea very interesting...and I am wondering what you think.

* Is capitalism limiting itself through innovation?
* What would be the next logical step of economic evolution?
* Will the prospect of mass starvation (because lets face it...in current society...we would simply write off a couple of million people) create a revolutionary movement?
* Would this have implementations for the time table of "the revolution is inevitable" concept?

[Invader Zim]

The idea that technology eliminates jobs is an appealing hypothesis, but one which is faulty. It rests on the assumption that mechanisation of processes formerly conducted by individuals and the introduction of technology is designed to achieve the same output but at limited labour cost. This is partly, but only partly, true. Far more regularly machines are introduced in order to expand production capacity - and once you expand production then you need various forms of auxiliary labour in order to maintain that rate at output and alleviate emerging bottlenecks. Machines require operation, maintenance, facilities, manufacture, design, upgrade, cost-benefit-analysis, ad infinitum. All of this requires staff, either in terms of design and production of the technology, or in its application. It is exactly what the Luddites believed in the early 19th century, they were wrong then and I see no reason to believe why modern day Luddites are not still wrong now.

To take another historical example, the development of data-processing technology was pioneered by the British and American states - in particular the British Treasury and military. The aim of that was to increase the rate at which data could be processed and to reduce long-term costs. All bureaucracies are, in fact, information production lines. One type of data arrives, it under goes several different processes, and comes out the other end in a different form. Before the introduction of mechanised data-processing technology, that was performed exclusively by people.

Take, for example, Victorian era observatories. These employed hundreds of 'computers', not the electro-mechanical and later electronic equipment we now call computers but people. The task of these people, arrayed in a pyramid-like organisational structure, was, at the bottom end, to daily perform hundreds of basic calculations, and at each level of the pyramid data would feed up and down the structure and all come together at the top to produce astronomical charts and calculations. Thus, as you can see, even data-processing was a highly labour intensive process.

In the 19th century and early 20th century massive improvements were introduced in data-processing and communications technology. For example, you have the famous Difference Engine designed by Charles Babbage, which was one of the earliest mechanical calculators - designed to speed up and eliminate errors in the production of mathematical tables for the British state. A machine designed to eliminate errors and the heavy cost of producing such tables, be it for navigation or whatever. Other key inventions include tabulating machines, which were originally developed to tackle the massive bureaucratic problem of collating census data, but throughout the 20th century became standard machines in both business and government, spawning corporations such as International Business Machines (IBM) etc. Meanwhile, a number of the first electro-mechanical computers were pioneered during the Second World War for a variety of bureaucratic processes, be it the production of gunnery tables or cryptanalysis. We can make the same observation in the development of communications technology, such as the introduction of teleprinters, telephones and more recently email. By speeding up bureaucratic processes, rather than cutting down the number of necessary workers, the result is actually an increase as the technology allows the bureaucracy to perform more work thus expanding the position of the bureaucracy to perform far greater workloads.

Thus, rather than eliminating the need for labour, as originally intended, the mechanisation of bureaucracy, be it government or business, has had the inverse effect. These machines, as noted, required vast numbers of staff for operational and maintenance purposes. They succeeded not in cutting down staffing needs but vastly expanding potential output and rate of output. We see the same phenomenon regarding the mythical 'paperless' office, this kind of machinery and technology was introduced with the aim of eliminating paper costs in addition to human costs, but instead paper use is as high, if not higher, than ever before. Because while some processes formerly conducted on paper were replaced by near instant mechanical or electronic processes the increased capacity of the bureaucracy, because of the alleviation of a major bottleneck, increases paper usage in other areas.



So, what actually happens is that new technology designed to save labour by eliminating bottlnecks, historically, have failed to actually save labour but instead generated it because the massive increase in output these solutions allow justify the hiring of more staff. So, your information factory by introducing new technology gives employers two options: 1. Fire half your staff to maintain the same level of output, or 2. keep your staff, if not hire still more, because the technology allows you to vastly increase your output. So expense may rise but income increases at a higher rate. Historically, it appears that both business and government have sided with the option 2.



So, when people say that 'x' new technology will be the end of employment, I suggest they look back, even to the very beginning of the industrial revolution, and they may note that it has never happened. Historically technology has generated employment, it has not done away with it.

[ckaihatsu]

[I]n a world where most kinds of technology are blindly pursued, is it not getting easier and easier to imagine that one day even a very small group of mad technocratic scientists might have the tools at their disposal to nearly destroy the world by themselves? I just read the book "Oryx and Crake" and this seems to be a somewhat troubling question.


This is the best argument against technocracy that I've ever heard -- no irony intended. I'm reminded of the present-day CIA, in this vein.





Another problem, another negative impact of the excess of technology in the daily lives of people is that it sedates people, it kills the will power, turns people into lazy, weak, social-phobic, agora-phobic (fear of open spaces) and it increases individualism, shyness, and introverted behaviour. Which are all impediment for people to be really outgoing, communicative, loving, cooperative, mutualists, friendly and with a mentality of unity which is needed for the creation of a large popular leftist front in America.

On the economic side it also increases unemployment, I think that e-bay, amazon.com and other extreme-capitalist internet stores have destroyed real jobs and labor unions

I think technology, cell phones, computers and internet are great. But the excessive use of all these automated technology leads to a world of weak, shy, scared, lazy people who are physically unable to protest against capitalist governments


.


So, to summarize, you want our side to have beefier protestors -- ?


= D


(Then there's a judging contest and the political side with the healthiest and largest participants wins the whole enchilada...!)


x D

[ckaihatsu]

Too-weak-to-tell-plutocrats-what-I-think-of-them-because-of-that-damn-iPad....


x D

[ckaihatsu]

---





MRAM has similar performance to SRAM, similar density to DRAM but much lower power consumption than DRAM, and is much faster and suffers no degradation over time in comparison to flash memory. It is this combination of features that some suggest makes it the “universal memory”, able to replace SRAM, DRAM, EEPROM, and flash. This also explains the huge amount of research being carried out into developing it.
However, to date, MRAM has not been as widely adopted in the market as other non-volatile RAMs. It may be that vendors are not prepared to take the risk of allocating a modern fab to MRAM production when such fabs cost upwards of a few billion dollars to build and can instead generate revenue by serving developed markets producing flash and DRAM memories.




As demand for flash continues to outstrip supply, it appears that it will be some time before a company can afford to "give up" one of their latest fabs for MRAM production.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoresistive_random-access_memory

[aristos]

This is the best argument against technocracy that I've ever heard -- no irony intended. I'm reminded of the present-day CIA, in this vein.

Well that's not actually the socio-economical system known as Technocracy, strictly speaking, but instead a science-fiction doomsday scenario (not that something like this can't and won't happen, mind you - the technological gap between the repressive security apparatus subservient to the elites and the rest of the population is getting wider and wider, and has been doing so ever since the beginning of "technology").

[aristos]

---MRAM has similar performance to SRAM, similar density to DRAM but much lower power consumption than DRAM, and is much faster and suffers no degradation over time in comparison to flash memory. It is this combination of features that some suggest makes it the “universal memory”, able to replace SRAM, DRAM, EEPROM, and flash. This also explains the huge amount of research being carried out into developing it.
However, to date, MRAM has not been as widely adopted in the market as other non-volatile RAMs. It may be that vendors are not prepared to take the risk of allocating a modern fab to MRAM production when such fabs cost upwards of a few billion dollars to build and can instead generate revenue by serving developed markets producing flash and DRAM memories.

Yeah, representative of almost every technological innovation - from holographic media, aeroponics, maglev to JTEC and geothermal power plants. Just goes to show how much "capitalism favours inovation".

[AmilcarCabral]

Well, I don't mean really that the excess of technology has a negative impact on muscle size of people, what i meant was, that the excess of technology has a negative impact on the will power of people and on the drive, and physical motivation of people. I mean if people get used to do every thing from their computer. It would be real hard to tell people to get outside to protest.

What i meant really is that the excess of advanced technology has a physiological negative impact on people. Like elevators, remote-control, cars etc. Because all this technology of even buying food from the internet, of doing every thing by pushing buttons while people sitting all day, in a way leads to abulia (low will-power), lazyness and physical weakness. And every thing in this world requires energies, waking up from your bed in the morning requires will an energies, going out, requires energies, going out to a political meeting, to a protest requires energies, even reading a leftist book like the books written by Marx, Engels, Lenin etc. require some will power, deep drive and eye-energies. Chris Hedges wrote a great article about how book-reading habits, thinking skills, critical thinking skills are being destroyed by the information revolution based on audio and video. In other words many people are getting used to getting their information either from audio-books or video documentaries. Book-reading skills are being destroyed, here is a video of Chris Hedges about how modern technology is killing book-reading skills in people. He labeled as cultural illiteracy


TVmYsfB9J2g

And the excess of automatization thru the use of lap tops, blackberries, playstations, cell phones, digital tv, etc. is turning most people into weak abulic scared people who are physically disabled to be rebellious, angry, brave and have the same fithing warrior spirit of top leftist warriors and great revolutionaries like Malcom X, Lenin, Che Guevara, Durruti and many other great warriors. So with this excess of conditioned lazyness it might be impossible to overthrow capitalist governments if people are too social-phobic, abulic, lazy and physically weak as a result of an excess of technology in their every day lives.



This is the best argument against technocracy that I've ever heard -- no irony intended. I'm reminded of the present-day CIA, in this vein.





So, to summarize, you want our side to have beefier protestors -- ?


= D


(Then there's a judging contest and the political side with the healthiest and largest participants wins the whole enchilada...!)


x D

[ckaihatsu]

Well, I don't mean really that the excess of technology has a negative impact on muscle size of people, what i meant was, that the excess of technology has a negative impact on the will power of people and on the drive, and physical motivation of people. I mean if people get used to do every thing from their computer. It would be real hard to tell people to get outside to protest.


Yes, I understand, and with my jibes I meant to make a political point as well....

I don't think politics / struggle is necessarily about physicality -- or willpower, either, for that matter -- but rather is about one's class consciousness and one's long-term commitment *to* that class consciousness.

Even protesting isn't the full or desired manifestation of class consciousness -- I think it's more to do with one's attentions and efforts, out of one's day. To put it simply, if everyone on earth were class conscious and used just 20% of their waking day in the promotion of explicitly working-class interests, we'd probably have the revolution tomorrow.

So I mean to say that the mass struggle is about mass *numbers*, and the technological medium for that really doesn't matter -- a highly leftist-politicized population would know its own strength (think Venezuela here, for example), and all the rest would just be details.





What i meant really is that the excess of advanced technology has a physiological negative impact on people. Like elevators, remote-control, cars etc. Because all this technology of even buying food from the internet, of doing every thing by pushing buttons while people sitting all day, in a way leads to abulia (low will-power), lazyness and physical weakness. And every thing in this world requires energies, waking up from your bed in the morning requires will an energies, going out, requires energies, going out to a political meeting, to a protest requires energies, even reading a leftist book like the books written by Marx, Engels, Lenin etc. require some will power, deep drive and eye-energies. Chris Hedges wrote a great article about how book-reading habits, thinking skills, critical thinking skills are being destroyed by the information revolution based on audio and video. In other words many people are getting used to getting their information either from audio-books or video documentaries. Book-reading skills are being destroyed, here is a video of Chris Hedges about how modern technology is killing book-reading skills in people. He labeled as cultural illiteracy


This is a thoroughly *conservative* viewpoint, itself, since it tends to validate the status-quo Western culture that has hegemony in the world.

For a point of comparison consider someone who is very oral-communications-oriented -- perhaps they eschew the written word and prefer to get their life-learning from the act of *talking* with other people, on a fairly regular basis. Would you say that such a person is 'culturally illiterate' -- ?

I bristle at this sort of techno-anxiety that you're espousing since so much of learning -- from *any* kind of medium -- depends on the person themselves. We all have our moods and ups and downs in life, but, in this world, a person's life-path can be very much their own, and we all have to make conscious decisions over attentions, daily learning, efforts, etc.

I would never deride any media format *itself* -- it's like judging a book by its cover.





And the excess of automatization thru the use of lap tops, blackberries, playstations, cell phones, digital tv, etc. is turning most people into weak abulic scared people who are physically disabled to be rebellious, angry, brave and have the same fithing warrior spirit of top leftist warriors and great revolutionaries like Malcom X, Lenin, Che Guevara, Durruti and many other great warriors. So with this excess of conditioned lazyness it might be impossible to overthrow capitalist governments if people are too social-phobic, abulic, lazy and physically weak as a result of an excess of technology in their every day lives.


Revolutionary romanticism.

[Axiomasher]

The idea that technology eliminates jobs is an appealing hypothesis, but one which is faulty. It rests on the assumption that mechanisation of processes formerly conducted by individuals and the introduction of technology is designed to achieve the same output but at limited labour cost. This is partly, but only partly, true. Far more regularly machines are introduced in order to expand production capacity - and once you expand production then you need various forms of auxiliary labour in order to maintain that rate at output and alleviate emerging bottlenecks...

Surely at the very least we can say that capitalism seeks to use automation to reduce the human-labour required per unit of output (providing it is cost-effective to do so). It follows that even where this allows for increased production with the same human-labour input there has to be an upper threshold of production than can actually be sold. A machine that spits out cars at 1000 units a second will pretty quickly saturate the global market, for example. What happens when technology in all, or at least most, sectors reaches this kind of capacity? And this is besides the fact that as technology advances so self-repair and automated repair become increasingly realistic possibilities - if they maximise profits for the individual capitalist enterprise they will be adopted even if the overall effect might prove self-defeating for capitalism as a process.

[Axiomasher]

Those who defend capitalism always make reference to how new sectors emerge as old ones become automated and light on human-labour needs but I don't really accept that, new sectors tend to start out maximally automated and none of them seem to involve the need for thousands and thousands of labourers like traditional industries have in the past. When computers get really good at generating software themselves a whole generation of nerds might just turn Luddite.

[Loony Le Fist]

...
new sectors tend to start out maximally automated and none of them seem to involve the need for thousands and thousands of labourers like traditional industries have in the past. When computers get really good at generating software themselves a whole generation of nerds might just turn Luddite.

Automation can be used to free us, or it can be used to enslave us. Combine automation with capitalism, and it's a complete road to enslavement. On the other hand, technology can work for us. There is nothing that fatalistically requires automation to work against us.

[Invader Zim]

Surely at the very least we can say that capitalism seeks to use automation to reduce the human-labour required per unit of output (providing it is cost-effective to do so). It follows that even where this allows for increased production with the same human-labour input there has to be an upper threshold of production than can actually be sold. A machine that spits out cars at 1000 units a second will pretty quickly saturate the global market, for example. What happens when technology in all, or at least most, sectors reaches this kind of capacity? And this is besides the fact that as technology advances so self-repair and automated repair become increasingly realistic possibilities - if they maximise profits for the individual capitalist enterprise they will be adopted even if the overall effect might prove self-defeating for capitalism as a process.

It strikes me as unlikely that mechanisation and automation, which has been at an increasing rate for centuries, will result in rapid market saturation. Rather, it is likely that mass production will result in a reduction in cost and increased output resulting in turn in the lowering of value. This will, therefore, increase the size of the market - as indeed occurred in the case of the car industry. Once cars, before the introduction of mass production to that industry, was the preserve of the extremely wealthy. The introduction of mass production caused the price of vehicles to drop and thus the market expanded and cars were, and remain, produced specifically to be marketed to those with limited budgets. Further improvements in mass production, increasing rate of output and lowering the expense of production will merely see the price drop further and the market size increase, presumably further into 'developing' nations.

Moreover, I think that you fail to adequately envision the problem with what you are saying. Let's take your example, and assume that a machine is developed which can produce cars at a hitherto vastly unprecedented rate. The machine will never operate at full load without major overhauling of the entire production and logistical process. For instance, a machine can only produce cars as quickly as parts can be delivered and input into the production process. Similarly, the machine can only operate at the rate in which the cars can be removed from the process at the other end. Meanwhile, the machine will require maintenance, cars, parts and stocks, deliveries, etc., will require logging, managing and registering. All of this, right down to the person who drives lorry of cars to the showroom, requires staff. And the faster you spit the cars out, the more staff you need. And, as I hope your own analogy demonstrates, it is irrelevant how fast a new machine can perform its function if bottlenecks at other areas of the production process preventing it performing to capacity.

What people seem to fail to grasp is that technological innovation when it comes to industrial processes can only serve to expand the rate of production as far as other structural elements within the process will allow.

[AmilcarCabral]

Sorry my friend, but I speak not from my own beliefs, or conservative believes like you said against technology or in favor of technology, but with evidence and proof of how societies without much access to technology like internet, lap top, computers, digital TV, mobile phones, etc. have been able to wage popular revolutions.

COUNTRIES THAT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO OVERTHROW OPPRESSIVE GOVERNMENTS WITHOUT AN EXCESS OF TECHNOLOGY: The Paris Commune, Russia in 1917, Venezuela in 1992 and 1998, Cuba in 1959, USA in 1776, France in The French Revolution.

COUNTRIES WHERE PEOPLE ARE DUMBED DOWN BY AN EXCESS OF CELL PHONES, AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO WAKE UP AND OVERTHROW ABUSIVE GOVERNMENTS: USA, Spain, Germany, Canada, UK, Japan, Italy, Israel, and many many other nations where people are mind-controlled and sedated by an excess of technology

One doesn't have be a psychologist, psychoanalyst, a scientist to see with your own eyes how the excess of cell phones addiction, addiction to video games, to computer games, addiction to social networks (Like Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Twitter) etc. is really turning most people into scared, shy abulic weak, with low levels of anger, rage and bravery that are needed qualities in order to wage a war, to be a warrior. Because revolutions are wars, class-wars and the oppressed won't be able to overthrow the oppressors if the oppressed are weak, scared, social phobic, and dumbed down by the excess of advanced technological gadgets and toys in their personal lives

The writer Marshall Mcluhan already predicted that dumbing down by an excess of technology in his book "The Gutemberg Galaxy" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gutenberg_Galaxy


.


.





Yes, I understand, and with my jibes I meant to make a political point as well....

I don't think politics / struggle is necessarily about physicality -- or willpower, either, for that matter -- but rather is about one's class consciousness and one's long-term commitment *to* that class consciousness.

Even protesting isn't the full or desired manifestation of class consciousness -- I think it's more to do with one's attentions and efforts, out of one's day. To put it simply, if everyone on earth were class conscious and used just 20% of their waking day in the promotion of explicitly working-class interests, we'd probably have the revolution tomorrow.

So I mean to say that the mass struggle is about mass *numbers*, and the technological medium for that really doesn't matter -- a highly leftist-politicized population would know its own strength (think Venezuela here, for example), and all the rest would just be details.





This is a thoroughly *conservative* viewpoint, itself, since it tends to validate the status-quo Western culture that has hegemony in the world.

For a point of comparison consider someone who is very oral-communications-oriented -- perhaps they eschew the written word and prefer to get their life-learning from the act of *talking* with other people, on a fairly regular basis. Would you say that such a person is 'culturally illiterate' -- ?

I bristle at this sort of techno-anxiety that you're espousing since so much of learning -- from *any* kind of medium -- depends on the person themselves. We all have our moods and ups and downs in life, but, in this world, a person's life-path can be very much their own, and we all have to make conscious decisions over attentions, daily learning, efforts, etc.

I would never deride any media format *itself* -- it's like judging a book by its cover.





Revolutionary romanticism.

[ckaihatsu]

Sorry my friend, but I speak not from my own beliefs, or conservative believes like you said against technology or in favor of technology, but with evidence and proof of how societies without much access to technology like internet, lap top, computers, digital TV, mobile phones, etc. have been able to wage popular revolutions.

COUNTRIES THAT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO OVERTHROW OPPRESSIVE GOVERNMENTS WITHOUT AN EXCESS OF TECHNOLOGY: The Paris Commune, Russia in 1917, Venezuela in 1992 and 1998, Cuba in 1959, USA in 1776, France in The French Revolution.

COUNTRIES WHERE PEOPLE ARE DUMBED DOWN BY AN EXCESS OF CELL PHONES, AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO WAKE UP AND OVERTHROW ABUSIVE GOVERNMENTS: USA, Spain, Germany, Canada, UK, Japan, Italy, Israel, and many many other nations where people are mind-controlled and sedated by an excess of technology

One doesn't have be a psychologist, psychoanalyst, a scientist to see with your own eyes how the excess of cell phones addiction, addiction to video games, to computer games, addiction to social networks (Like Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Twitter) etc. is really turning most people into scared, shy abulic weak, with low levels of anger, rage and bravery that are needed qualities in order to wage a war, to be a warrior. Because revolutions are wars, class-wars and the oppressed won't be able to overthrow the oppressors if the oppressed are weak, scared, social phobic, and dumbed down by the excess of advanced technological gadgets and toys in their personal lives

The writer Marshall Mcluhan already predicted that dumbing down by an excess of technology in his book "The Gutemberg Galaxy" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gutenberg_Galaxy


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I get your point but I still see the whole politics thing as a *policy* issue, ultimately....

If an insurrectionary revolutionist movement develops somewhere -- hopefully in *several* areas simultaneously -- and everyone else in the world 'Likes' it on Facebook and Retweets it, etc., guess what happens -- ? Yes, the revolution would be victorious, due to the *agreement* of billions.

[Axiomasher]

It strikes me as unlikely that mechanisation and automation, which has been at an increasing rate for centuries, will result in rapid market saturation. Rather, it is likely that mass production will result in a reduction in cost and increased output resulting in turn in the lowering of value. This will, therefore, increase the size of the market - as indeed occurred in the case of the car industry. Once cars, before the introduction of mass production to that industry, was the preserve of the extremely wealthy. The introduction of mass production caused the price of vehicles to drop and thus the market expanded and cars were, and remain, produced specifically to be marketed to those with limited budgets. Further improvements in mass production, increasing rate of output and lowering the expense of production will merely see the price drop further and the market size increase, presumably further into 'developing' nations.

Moreover, I think that you fail to adequately envision the problem with what you are saying. Let's take your example, and assume that a machine is developed which can produce cars at a hitherto vastly unprecedented rate. The machine will never operate at full load without major overhauling of the entire production and logistical process. For instance, a machine can only produce cars as quickly as parts can be delivered and input into the production process. Similarly, the machine can only operate at the rate in which the cars can be removed from the process at the other end. Meanwhile, the machine will require maintenance, cars, parts and stocks, deliveries, etc., will require logging, managing and registering. All of this, right down to the person who drives lorry of cars to the showroom, requires staff. And the faster you spit the cars out, the more staff you need. And, as I hope your own analogy demonstrates, it is irrelevant how fast a new machine can perform its function if bottlenecks at other areas of the production process preventing it performing to capacity.

What people seem to fail to grasp is that technological innovation when it comes to industrial processes can only serve to expand the rate of production as far as other structural elements within the process will allow.

I take your point that advancing production can often be absorbed, as when 'the family car' becomes a car for every adult in the family or even a couple of cars for every adult in the family, but that kind of absorption can't go on indefinitely, surely. Will it ever be realistic, for example, for car manufacturers to try and sell fifty cars for every person per year, a new car every week perhaps? It's not going to happen.

I also take your point about bottlenecks but again I'd suggest that technological advances which assist the maximisation of production easily assist all the other parts of the process which complete delivery - the car example of massive increases in car purchase/use can be used to illustrate the point.

More generally, why shouldn't we speculate about machines which make, for example, cars and which are self-repairing or repaired by machines which self-repair? Sure there will probably have to be some human-labour involved in any manufacturing sector for some time to come, but I am confident that in overall terms the human-labour 'unit' per unit of production is consistently going down because as time passes it is more and more possible to implement mechanised labour which is cheaper and more reliable than human-labour.

[The Jay]

* Is capitalism limiting itself through innovation?

Yes, it is producing a large pool of surplus labor that will remain idle,angry, and hungry that will, unless there is a war, remain idle driving wages down and tempers up along with strife between workers.

If a point of revolutionary class consciousness arises then that is what will happen, but I can't predict things like that.



* What would be the next logical step of economic evolution?

Logic has little to do with it unfortunately. People will follow their own logic in the sense that Capitalism has instilled a desire to better their own lot in accordance with Neoclassical Economics. If all the dominos are aligned just right - and there could be several right answers - then communal ownership of the Means of Production might happen.

All that I can say is that I would push for that.



* Will the prospect of mass starvation (because lets face it...in current society...we would simply write off a couple of million people) create a revolutionary movement?

I don't have a crystal ball so all I can say is 'maybe', but in fairness to you I think that people will get mighty angry if they can't feed their children while capitalists make more money off of less workers to the point that action would take place. Note that what I just said was put into the context you described.



* Would this have implementations for the time table of "the revolution is inevitable" concept?


It would if this were a binary choice between: what we have now, and what socialism is. For all we know a neofeudalism could pop up or the system could pull another New Deal and cancel all debts to survive.

I feel that I should add that there are correlating statistics that indicate that the price of food is closely related to revolts and the reasons are obvious. There have been quite a few revolutions called "bread revolutions", one of which happened in Egypt decades ago IIRC.