“Whether you’re ready or not, there’s a robot in your future, and clearly I don’t mean one of those cute little labor-saving automatons—like a “Roomba” vacuum cleaner that scoots around tidying up your floors while you lay back in your La-Z-Boy doing 12-oz elbow bends.”
Jim Hightower
THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST, 12/1/22
At long last, America’s highly productive economy is starting to work for working people. Since the shutdown ended, unemployment is going down, wages are going up, and workers are taking advantage: switching jobs, joining unions, and striking in numbers unseen for many years. New government programs to fund infrastructure improvements will create more good jobs. The outlook for people who need to sell their labor to survive is brighter than it has been in a half-century. So it comes as no surprise that the plutocracy is bent on destroying all that optimism by growing investments in automation. After all, greed never sleeps.
San Francisco’s city councillors proposed putting killer robots on the police force—actual robots, not just military police equipment. Public outcry “killed” the plan, but since every other human endeavor is being automated, why not law enforcement? As we all know, robots never get tired, never need paychecks to afford the necessities humans cannot afford without being paid for their work. They are also impervious to prisoners’ inability to breathe, or whether people are filming their activities. A fully automated police force could scare everybody into obeying every letter of the law. It seems ironic that such a proposal would take place in a liberal bastion of the left coast, but we cannot forget that San Francisco is a city of ultra wealth, and if there is one thing wealthy people everywhere agree on, it is the seamless perpetuation of “law and order.”
Science and technology are ready to accomplish the long-predicted elimination of most human work. The results will be catastrophic for most people, unless people get together to significantly change the system. In the modern, capitalist world, physical survival (the procurement of food, clothing, and shelter) is provided by work, defined as performance of tasks which the owners of business and industry can use to make profits. If machines eliminate the capitalists’ need for people to work, peoples’ jobs vanish. What will happen to the 99% who are not in the proprietary class? If our economy of unfettered capitalism remains unchanged, the plutocracy will need large numbers of robot cops, as well as robot soldiers, military drones, and killing machines of all types, to protect the “rights” of plutocrats to enjoy their possession of every good thing our plentiful earth produces. This scenario, gradually progressing for two centuries, has gone beyond science fiction; it is on the cusp of fulfilling its long-predicted logical conclusion of eliminating the need for human labor.
Employers pay workers for the same reason workers go to work: they have no other choice. This devil’s bargain serves everyone well in good times when many workers are able to buy the goods and services they produce. Capitalists pay living wages to workers who buy more things, increasing the amount of money in circulation; times get better for everyone. But when (not if) production outruns the resources of workers to buy things they are producing, the cycle comes to a halt. When few people are buying things, the owners of the machine see no reason to keep the machine running, at which time those who sell their labor have nothing to sell, therefore no means to buy what they need. The plutocrats have never felt a sense of responsibility for the plight of the billions who depend on them for a living. They might, out of charity, throw a few bones to the poor, hoping to keep them quiet, but the idea of sharing sufficient resources with the needy never occurs to them. Plutocrats sincerely believe that what they “own” is theirs to keep, and that those who own nothing are welcome to keep that, too.
The ruling classes always have one solution for over-production: war, which is a superb public works project to preserve class privilege. War provides unemployed workers with jobs in the factories and on the battlefield. It instantly wastes surplus, causing renewed needs, for patriotically acceptable causes. And it gets people killed—mostly young men, who if given nothing to do, could make trouble for the rulers. In short, war is a win-win for everybody except workers, the poor, and others who are not in charge. For over a century now people have grown more aware that war solves no issues, and that no one truly wins. It still entertains some people, but fewer all the time. But diversion from war to peace production would generally equalize everyone, at least to the point of eliminating the obscenely rich and abysmally poor, putting an end to the plutocrats’ reign. And power is something nobody in power will ever willingly give up.
Meanwhile, the drive to eliminate the need for human labor goes on. As things now stand, people who have little if anything to do for their daily bread are not supposed to survive. Billions will be expected to simply slink off and die, though a safe guess is they will not follow the script. More war will be needed for the elites to stay on top, and who is to say the people who still have work to do, such as operating the war machines, will not turn on the masters and take over society for themselves? So war will continue, as a solution to that “unsolvable problem” of overproduction. To avoid this fate will require all people of all cultures to recognize our common needs and desires, and to choose cooperation over competition. That this idea sounds corny only demonstrates the effectiveness of the plutocrats’ propaganda machine. By the way, writers of all kinds are also on the list for elimination by artificial intelligence.
Automation, already here, is accelerating. If the people share the means of production and distribution, we will all be set free from wage slavery—free to socialize, create, contemplate, explore, and do other things that sentient beings are meant to do—including relax—activities we still can, and should, withhold from artificial intelligence. There is no way to predict the results of such a setting, because we have never tried it before. But the machine is set to give us all a lot of leisure, and whether this leisure leads to privation of infernal proportions or to plenty for all depends on our actions now. The plutocrats are not about to share, and the billions who are not plutocrats will not quietly disappear.
The “magicians” who control the fabled “magic of the marketplace” are neither willing nor able to solve this problem in ways that will promote everyone’s general welfare. Life is good for the elites no matter what, but if we commoners want to look into a future with promise, we must get together and get busy. The time is not yet right for retiring to our easy chairs to drink beer. A revolution is inevitable, but it will be effective only if it can be peaceful. Therefore, the times call for more Gandhis, not Lenins. The one fact facing us all is that rugged individualism is hopelessly ineffective for solving problems caused by human inventions replacing human beings. I do not believe it is exaggeration to declare that if we fail to unite, our chains will bury us.