Unemployment gives one a lot of time to think. Today I find myself thinking about the work I've done and what impact that work has on society.
I received an email from a company I made a part for. I was a machinist with a software background. I'm sure the email came by accident, but it got me thinking none the less.
The part in question was for a combine harvester. I didn't really know it at the time, as a print is just a print. The email contained a video of the harvester working. This thing was huge. Then I began considering its purpose.
On the surface its purpose is obviously to to harvest crops. More generally it is designed to feed people, but this is where I fear we may have gone of course.
Really I can't get into detail about the part I worked on, or the problem I was tasked with solving. Basically I made it cheaper to produce this part, which aided in the manufacturing of this really big combine.
This huge machine harvests a huge area of crops very quickly. On large corporately owned farms many of this devices will be at work. Interestingly the person driving these combines has a different job title than I would have expected.
When working with the part, I would have guessed that person would be called a farmer (if I had actually known what the part was for). However, the harvester calls this person an operator.
Operator?
Then who is the farmer in all this? Is it the CEO of the company? Is it the board of directors? The stockholders?
The answer is the machine itself. The guy inside the cab just drives the machine.
Also that other thing about feeding people is another quagmire. These crops certainly go to making food, but whether or not this food feeds people is irrelevant. Ultimately food is just a commodity. If someone buys it or has the ability to buy it, it will serve the purpose. If it doesn't get purchased, it will sit on the shelf till it gets written off as a loss.
This machine's purpose is to eliminate the labor involved in food production, but whether or not it serves a social function is decided by the market.
I apologize for not getting to the point here quicker, but if you bear with me I will get there.
Now I thought about a friend from college, who is a software engineer for some hedge fund. He was actually a math major, before getting a degree in computer science. He currently writes programs to execute mathematical models for stock trading (and no doubt derivative trading). He is no doubt working today and tomorrow, though he is pretty slow on weekdays.
See when the markets open, the machine gets turned on and does its thing. It buys and sells stocks, commodities and derivatives based on the confines of its programming. Let's ask what the purpose of this machine is?
On the surface it is a quick way to execute financial transactions in high volume. More generally we would say its purpose is to provide capital investment for society. Again that more general purpose is less clear.
The machine is just as likely to destroy a company as it is to capitalize one. On any given day it may create a job or eliminate one. The actual people turning on the machines are called traders, but perhaps they deserve the same demotion in title as the farmer. They are really operators, and the machine is the trader. They just drive the machine.
We are entering a new model of society. There are essentially three classes of people in the economy. There are consumers, operators and automators. I'm not sure our economic system is based on this new reality.
This diary isn't a damnation of automation. Automation is a reality that is unavoidable. Instead it is a question about the failure of our existing capitalist system to function properly.
Unemployment insurance exists to maintain the consumer, when the system no longer demands more operators or automators. I am more or less a automator that is temporarily being reassigned to the role of consumer only. If that insurance runs out, I'm not sure what my new role in society will be. Perhaps this is just the logical limit of the carrying capacity of this new model.
Are the 10% of unemployed people just the extra population the system can no longer manage? I think the traditional debate of capitalism and socialism might just be an obsolete question.
At some point we have to ask if we are driving the machine, or if the machine is driving us?