So Kyle had a video yesterday in which he was talking about how it's bad that these tech oligarchs want to take away all of the jobs and they dont want to pay employees anything, and uh, I just wanna go into this a bit.
Dude. I've been doing my own studies into the history of capitalism, how it works, and the whole reason we linked property to work and forced them to take on jobs from the glorious "job creators" in the first place is basically to enslave them. This worldview came from christianity, where it was screwed up enough, but then it was adopted by the oligarchs to functionally create a slave class in which we forcefully try to make everyone take on jobs that serve them and make them money.
They NEVER wanted to pay us. The whole reason capitalism sucks is because they will literally make us do the most work and use us like dispensible cogs in a machine for the least amount of money possible. That's literally what our system is set up to do. And now we fear transitioning to a world where they dont need us any more and we can use robots to do the work instead because then they won't pay us? Dude. That's when we develop a new system of property rights and distribution to ensure that everyone can be fed, and we do it WITHOUT work.
Either way, I dont think work is disappearing any time soon. We act like omg the robots are taking our jobs, we need a basic income. But if robots took all of the jobs and there was NO work and we ONLY gave people like a $16000 a year UBI or something, that would be a pathetically low amount. No, by then, we should be redistributing resources even more widely to ensure that every individual can live a dignified middle class life without working. Where every family ends up with some variation of the highest sustainable median income possible under capitalism. The UBI should probably be DOUBLE what I propose in that situation. It would literally NEED to be double to hit around $70k for your typical 2 adult 1 child household (my 2025 plan doubled would give such a household $75k). But yeah, if we literally find ourselves in a world without work, that's what we would have to do to keep America going. Everyone would make the same amount, minus the ones who own the means of production, who would get profits, and even then, without any labor to justify ownership at all, we could probably start talking some form of socialism or something by then.
I don't think we're gonna reach anything close to such a reality any time soon. And if anything one of the reasons we keep the farce that is work going is to prevent having these kinds of discussion. We insist on work forever, so we can have capitalism forever, so that we dont have these discussions. And even if we did wanna do away with work, like I do, we're likely gonna be in something resembling some form of transition phase for the next one hundred years, in which my ideas are perfectly suitable. After that, we can likely decide. Do we wanna do away with work altogether and transition to socialism? Do we wanna keep working and growing? How much do we wanna work? Etc. Those questions aren't in the purview of my ideology. I'm just interested in getting the transition going, and recognize that in the mean time, we will never likely actually run out of work. Most people want to work, they wanna consume, they wont be satisfied sitting around with the bare minimum, so it's up to them.
Either way, we shouldnt fear automation. What I fear is actually the opposite. Jobs forever and eschewing all further progress on the issue because we fear we might change our institutions if we do. We are functionally slaves in this society we have, where everything revolves around work and work ethic. Our entire lives revolve around work, and it often isn't a choice for most. It's do it or you starve. We shouldnt want more of THAT. So yeah, let them automate the jobs and implement UBI. Revisit the issue in like 100 years and see if society needs further progress (which it probanly will, in one way or another).
100 years ago, the issues of the time were just making work tolerable. 40 hour work weeks, labor rights, etc. Now, it's reducing that work week, and giving people their freedom through a UBI as far as Im concerned. That is the issue that should define our times, not whatever the heck we're doing. So yeah. Hard disagree with kyle on this issue. I just have to say it.
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