This is the problem anti-work was meant to address: forcing companies to replace human labor with machines and convert long hours of work into free time for all of us. But we have fallen down on the job.
Now the capitalists are trying to turn their so-called labor shortage into a new reason to add to already abysmally high permanent unemployment created by the pandemic, using the excuse that they cannot find workers to fill jobs.
I completely agree that there is no problem with automation, and the problem is squarely with capitalism. In fact, the fact that automation is feared shows just how perverse this system is. In a sane society, we would celebrate the fact that we can reduce necessary work, and give people free time to spend the way that they want.
It’s also worth noting that this problem regularly occurs already without any need for automation. Companies want to reduce their operating costs leading to wages being constantly eroded. People spending increasingly larger portions of their income on necessities leads to drop in consumption resulting in a crisis of overproduction. Such crashes happen pretty regularly, with the latest one still unfolding.
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Of course, there tend to be many factors involved in practice. Another interesting aspect is that top capitalists tend to be the winner during each crash. Any people and companies that need recurring income to operate end up becoming insolvent, and this allows those with real capital to buy them up on the cheap. Every economic crash is basically a Black Friday for billionaires. And sure enough we’ve seen huge wealth transfers to the top occur during past three crashes. Wealth is increasingly being concentrated at the top and it’s leading to the whole system becoming increasingly unstable.