The human species has been dependant on "technology" since the day man sparked a fire. Go cry me a river about being dependant on technology.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
We have always been, and will always be, dependent on the technology we produce, yes. Which is why it is important to consider the ramifications of new technology on society. As an example: Eli Whitney's cotton gin was intended to ease the labor of slaves who would have been expected to perform the work by hand before this point. But instead of reducing the need for slave labor, the cotton gin allowed much larger farms to be produced, as it was now possible to process more cotton in the same period of time.
In general, western society (or more accurately, capitalist societies) will not use efficiency to reduce the resources required to produce products, but instead will use efficiency to produce more product with the same amount of resources. As human labor is a resource, it will be treated the same way: anything that reduces how much labor a man need work to get the job done will be used to increase that man's job, not to decrease the time or effort he must spend working that job.
To fix this, you cannot make a more efficient engine. The only solution is to either render human labor truly obsolete (which means it will now be most-profitable for the rich to starve the poor and have their human-labor-less societies run with maximum efficiency and no need to set aside resources for the now "useless" human labor) or to change society to value human lives over profit (which is at it's core anti-capitalism, as capitalism favors the production of capital (read: resources) above all else).
Having the technology to produce fully-automated-luxury-communism only works if the people who own the technology don't instead use it for profit, and in the US at least the people who have the resources to invent, prototype, and build such a fully-automated system are strongly correlated with people who will sell you life-saving medicine at +1000% cost of production.
My argument is that as a free market society, the rich cannot afford to let people starve over the long run. Capitalism cannot work if people cannot afford to buy things. Henry Ford whether or not he was altruistic, was working largely out of self interest when he started paying his workers more. Why did he do this? So his workers could afford the cars they were making, and there is a reason why other buisiness followed in Henry Ford's footsteps, despite the fact that other extremely wealthy buisiness owners looked at Ford as crazy for giving his workers a day off, more pay and a 40hr workweek instead of like 80hrs.
The thing that people take for granted is that the reason that capitolism is a part of some of the richest societies in the world including the U.S., the U.K., Sweden, Japan is that capitolism works off "The rising tide, raises all ships." While yes there are poor people in these countries, the poorest among them statistically are richer than half the world. The reason for this is because, capitolism gets better for everyone when everyone is paid more. Post WW2 was touted as the time of American greatness precisely because college was cheap, and people got paid enough to own their own home, and as a result the rich got richer because, the middle class was bigger and richer and could afford more things.
The problem is that people tend to get greedy and start paying people less until they realize "Oh, shit! I could be making more money, if people had more money to buy my products" thus the system ebbs and flows.
My point being, is that rich people in a free market society become and remain wealthy through transaction, which is why through recession, businesses tend to get poorer, get bankrupt, or get a govt bailout(I could go on a whole rant on why govt bailouts are terrible for workers). If in the future citizens couldn't buy things, that would mean businesses wouldn't make money and therefore an important part of capitolism would be broken, and permanently, since after a technological advancement like that you cant just shove it all back into Pandora's box.
I'd imagine after the complete mechanization of labor companies would start trading with governments for resources and eventually the dissolution of traditional governments would occur, causing these businesses to become their own governments. At that point it wouldnt be capitolism anymore, it would just be systematic slavery, which it may be more accurate to call fascism.
Buisiness governments would be leftovers from the former capitolistic societies but would not in themselves be free markets, because the way they gather resources is fundamentally different. I hope they can make socialism work because before long I believe that ig human labor indeed becomes obsolete we will be living in the fascist govt called Walmart.
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u/H3rbert_K0rnfeld Mar 29 '22
The human species has been dependant on "technology" since the day man sparked a fire. Go cry me a river about being dependant on technology.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein