Re:Decline in the labor share of income in the U.S.
by laotzu on Friday October 23, 2015 @09:54AM
(#10438522)
Buckminster Fuller also argued we crossed the line in the 70's:
>In technology's "invisible" world, inventors continually increase the quantity and quality of performed work per each volume or pound of material, erg of energy, and unit of worker and "overhead" time invested in each given increment of attained functional performance. This complex process we call progressive ephemeralization. In 1970, the sum total of increases in overall technological know-how and their comprehensive integration took humanity across the epochal but invisible threshold into a state of technically realizable and economically feasible universal success for all humanity
-Grunch of Giants
Simply put, we've got too many cooks in the kitchen trying to work while our kitchenware can do nearly everything for us already. The reason we consider unemployment a problem is because our economy is not based on practicality but hollow morality -- i.e. "the devil finds work for idle hands to do" so we MUST keep everyone working.
UBI or some sort of "ephemeralization price adjustment system" is necessary fundamentally if we want to keep automation going. Otherwise the unemployed workers will not have the purchasing power to buy the goods produced by automation and so the machine owner will have invested in this automation and gain nothing. People must be reimbursed for the work done by the machine on their behalf or else the machine works for nothing.
>In technology's "invisible" world, inventors continually increase the quantity and quality of performed work per each volume or pound of material, erg of energy, and unit of worker and "overhead" time invested in each given increment of attained functional performance. This complex process we call progressive ephemeralization. In 1970, the sum total of increases in overall technological know-how and their comprehensive integration took humanity across the epochal but invisible threshold into a state of technically realizable and economically feasible universal success for all humanity
-Grunch of Giants
Simply put, we've got too many cooks in the kitchen trying to work while our kitchenware can do nearly everything for us already. The reason we consider unemployment a problem is because our economy is not based on practicality but hollow morality -- i.e. "the devil finds work for idle hands to do" so we MUST keep everyone working.
UBI or some sort of "ephemeralization price adjustment system" is necessary fundamentally if we want to keep automation going. Otherwise the unemployed workers will not have the purchasing power to buy the goods produced by automation and so the machine owner will have invested in this automation and gain nothing. People must be reimbursed for the work done by the machine on their behalf or else the machine works for nothing.