1: Its easy to make fun of the luddites which fought the mills and against progress, but for many of them it was a real fight for their life, and many got thrown out in deep poverty. Society as a whole progressed yes, but many got it significantly worse for the rest of their lives. Maybe their kids, or eventually their kids kids got a better life for it. We must not be so naive that we dont think the same will happen (/ is happening now).

2: Not everyone is cut out to be developers/nurses/teachers/whatever-the-future-job-is. Many are, but not all. How do we take care of these boys(and some girls) which before would go to sea, or work at a farm, or do whatever simple job they could get? Maybe in the end it will all "settle down" in a good way, but we live now, not then.

3: It affects the "power struggle" between labour and capital. Its easier to move machines than people. Robots dont strike. Yes, you need a few expensive engineers, but in a world where soon "everyone" has a MSc they are not *that* hard to replace if they get too demanding.

4: And related to the last, as a society we collectively produce a bunch of stuff, and we have decided that selling our labour is the way to distribute this wealth. Automation produces more stuff, but reduces the value of labour. Will we find a way to handle this?

2. It will all settle down eventually, it always does. The poorest today have access to more food, education, and (usually) healthcare than even the rich just a few centuries ago. Being knocked to steerage of a quickly rising ship isn't a death sentence.

3 (and 4). Isn't this just more of the same compared to the industrial revolution? The cotton gin certainly shifted the power struggle more toward capital but I don't think anyone today would argue we should be processing all our textiles by hand.

Yes, farming got efficient with tractors, allowing farmers to move to the cities to fill jobs in factories that was starting up at the dawn of the mass production and industrial revolution. But that does not mean that all future resources (i.e. humans) being freed due to automation, tech development will have new jobs to move to. That there are jobs suitable for humans created. That humans are needed as part of production of goods, services, content etc.

Also I would love to see a reference to why progress rely on creative destruction. Please provide pointers.

So much for humanity benefitting from technology. Instead of our workdays becoming fewer and shorter, a tiny number of people who don’t work at all will become richer while our lives become more alienated from our labor. This is the opposite of what we tell each other technology is supposed to accomplish. If it’s not a problem, why do we keep lying about?

If that happened any increase in productivity would be offset by the reduced time worked, so no one would get richer (very simplistically).

At the end of the day, humans are competitive, so of course hours worked will never really reduce, but it's that competition which drives innovation

And we're all getting richer. Sure there's more billionaires then ever, but if we're all getting richer so what? (and yes we are getting richer: the economic progress in Asia and Africa over the last two decades has been incredible. And the west continues to develop also. The world is richer than it has ever been)

> If that happened any increase in productivity would be offset by the reduced time worked, so no one would get richer (very simplistically).

This is a useless point for the common man. "Productivity," in statistical economics jargon, means "how much profit is squeezed out of an employee." It's a substitute for the much more charged "surplus value of labor." When productivity goes up and wages stagnate, as we've seen happen, it means the common employee is not getting richer, but instead being fleeced -- usually do to a moral depression that does not leave him able to negotiate (struggle/fight/etc.) for higher wealth (both material and non-material).

This false equilibrium falls apart when you can simply deduct hours worked, and lower wages just enough to have a better productivity-to-hours ratio. Cannily, this is what has happened to most large low-skilled labor markets, where MBA "consultants" come in to grift and sell management/the executive team on how to make more money -- at the cost of everything else. See: McDonalds and Walmart as a prime example.

This also has the added bonus that you can now decide not to offer full-time benefits (human rights), because your workers are no longer "full time."

I.e. economic propaganda does not reflect real life.

> Humans are competitive

Humans with way less, are also hungry. Humans with way more, are also desensitized-degenerates that need hyper-stimulating avenues of pleasure like extreme avarice to sate their desires.

Most people do not work because they want to, but because they need to. The only "competitive" people you'll see in the work-force are the greedy. Who've passed the point where money no longer really means anything, but still have decided to dedicate their life watching that number go up. They are degenerates. Using them to paint all of humanity with a broad stroke is ill thought-out.

> And we're all getting richer. Sure there's more billionaires then ever, but if we're all getting richer so what? (and yes we are getting richer: the economic progress in Asia and Africa over the last two decades has been incredible. And the west continues to develop also. The world is richer than it has ever been)

Materially, yes. Spiritually, morally, intellectually, emotionally, socially: no.

Colonialization of foreign lands, effectively enslaving these people to be a part of the dominating civilization's "economic machine" is not a good thing. These people had a way of life before Western Civilization (TM) came in and obliterated their culture. They were presumably content, otherwise they would've sought out "innovation," "competition," and "productivity" on their own -- without the help of colonizers.

If the pieces of what I've quoted are authentic, and genuinely from the heart, then it is an example of moral bankruptcy (most likely due to environmental causes -- rather than individual).

There are other things in the world besides money. The only civilization that keeps on beating the war-drum of money money money is the Western Civilization. Everyone else has other things that are important to them (notably: family, social connections, spirituality, living a good life, being a decent human being, and so on). But in fairness, these are all slowly disappearing, as the U.S. keeps on pumping inflation out to the world, and forcing everyone else to "join" or "suffer" economically (materially).

I don't think anyone is saying progress is wrong. Unfettered capitalism which robs people of their rights and alienates people from society is disastrous.

Putting an algorithm to treat people like machines is not innovation. Uber Eats is not our generations "spinning jenny". They should be forced to provide basic working benefits.