Re:Economists are revising their views on robots and jobs
by cmrdporcupine on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @09:43AM
(#30085983)
I'm sympathetic, for sure. I say complicated because it's not a straightforward linear causal relationship or one where we can just say "bad". Automation causes the rate of profit to rise for a period. And for some segment of the working population this can lead to increased prosperity. For others less so, as you point out.
But in the long run, competition between businesses leads to at least a short term equilibrium, where automation and labour exploitation rates are roughly equal, or monopolization has occurred. And then rates of profits can plummet and then it's really bad all around.
The point here is that I don't think it's automation itself that creates the unequal distribution of incomes. It's just the market economy. The market economy creates automation in order to gain competitive advantage.
Curtailing automation isn't going to improve wealth inequality. Might even make it worse.
Equalization of wealth requires the intervention of the working population either through unionization or forcing the state to intervene.
Greater efficiency is good, because it makes society "richer".
If that societal wealth increase doesn't go to the average person, then why should they care about efficiency?
The luddites didn't hate efficiency, or machines, they sabotaged the machines because that was one of the few ways they could hurt the interests of the people who were mistreating them. Specific machines were targetted because of who owned them, and the way they were treating workers.
For wider context this time the royal families of Europe were waging war to prevent democracy spreading. A great deal of this funding came from the UK, yet at the same time their poor people were rioting due to lack of food, and tax increases to fund the war. Folk songs at the time tell tales of people signing up to fight the French because the other option was starvation.
It's convenient that we remember these people as "silly folk who were scared of machines" rather than "downtrodden masses revolting against a cruel dictatorship waging war against democracy".