10/04/2024
Below was written back in 2010. I was not familiar with AI at that time. So if I was to update below article with the now AI boom, it would take an even more interesting twist!
The Contradiction of Capitalism part 3 of 3 (Written January 2010)
Advancing technology is now phasing out the role of humans in the economic labor force. This paradigm shift is going to alter society one way or another. It will either lead us unto a new social system which does not require human servitude for income; where society is designed as a whole to benefit itself with the use of advanced technology being purposefully accelerated for social betterment… or we will likely be led down the path of chaos and disorder, where unemployment is rampant, crime is epidemic, draconian police state measures are introduced to suppress dissent and environmental resources become more exploited and destroyed. ~Zeitgeist Movement Activist Guide -
Industry and Labor
Statistics have shown that human beings are increasingly being replaced by automated machines in the workforce, causing unemployment and hence a reduction in the purchasing power of its citizenry. Over time, as this phenomenon progresses, a tipping point will occur when the lack of consumer purchasing power will destroy the monetary based economy, for it won’t matter how cost effective the production companies are, people will simply not have any money to buy the items with, thus ending the mechanism of ‘cyclical consumption’. Cyclical consumption, the circle of employer to employee to consumer back to employer, demands problems for the entire monetary system to work. This is not only outrageous but it creates a tremendous amount of resource waste. If this circle, which I call the circle of wealth, was properly managed, society could have flourished. Sadly this is not the case in many countries as there are many leakages that disturb the required circular flow and it is related to capitalism and the free-enterprise (self-interest) system.
The real power in any country is in its productive capacity and not its financial resources. As explained, in many of my articles, money only serves as a tool to facilitate transactions, because bartering is too time consuming and inefficient, but it is not a natural resource. Meaning one cannot put money into their car to get it to run nor can one eat money to get the required nutrients for ones body. So take away labor, industry, and the earth’s resources and there won’t be anything left for money to do. However if you take away money and leave only the earth’s natural resources behind we can still labor and produce food and items to survive. This is why China is considered a super power. Not because of their financial resources but because of their productive capacity.
The free-enterprise system pursuit is to maximize profit. So through the advent of globalization this pursuit has been further developed. The result of this was the massive movement from industry to countries where the labor cost is significantly lower. The effect of this is that as companies downsize, which is profitable by the way, and/or move overseas, persons will be out of a job and must find work more then likely in a new industry. Now if the equally load balance is disturbed and only one or a few industries are left over for the masses to try and find work, it is obvious that these remaining industries cannot absorb all of the job losses. But as mentioned in one of my previous articles, human creativity is resulting in technological development that is now not only in direct competition with human labor, but also with industry themselves.
Consequently, we are now seeing a deliberate stifling and withholding of technological development for the sake of keeping people employed in order to support the monetary system. It is like having an electronic drill available on a job, but instead you use a manual drill because you want to get paid for more hours. This is fundamentally counterproductive. It is nothing but insanity to slow/ignore technological development in order to preserve an outdated social system. The entire point of technology is to free humanity from labor itself. We need a social design that focuses on maximizing our technological abilities for the sake of freeing humanity from drudgery and increasing productivity to its highest potential. Anything less will eventually lead to disaster.
Any new employment sector skill adjustment takes an amount of time to adapt to. Compounding this is that new skills would need to be on pace with applied technological advancement itself. Because of the exponential growth of computing, being computer literate is almost a pre-requisite for almost anything you do now. So there is a learning process and that takes time. Loosely speaking this adjustment period would need to increase at the same rate of technological change. There is no evidence that this is happening. Technological processes is leaving the human labor market behind. Mechanization is leaving us behind. However, that is only one side of the coin. The cost of computing technology, which is the backbone of mechanization, is now becoming exponentially cheaper as well. The first mass produced calculators were about $100 in 1949. That is $736 adjusted for inflation in 2009. A new digital pocket calculator could have been obtained for $1 or less in 2009 if not free. The evolution of computer power versus cost, as researched by Ray Kurzweil, in millions of instructions per second (MIPS) per $1000 is interesting to note. In 1990, the cost was one (1) million MIPS per $1000. Ten years later, it was a thousand million per $1000. Ten years later a million million, and by 2020 it will be a billion million. If for the cost of $1000 we apply this pattern to technology on a whole, meaning if we apply the pattern on a whole to applied invention, this means that it would be just be a matter of time before corporations can no longer rationalize their moral obligation to maintain their employees for the sake of the system. The cost differential between giving a human being a living wage versus automation would be far too dramatic. It would be far too cheap to mechanize.
Social Progress
Technology and science (understanding the natural elements) has the ability to improve social progress and therefore the lives of everyone. However in a monetary system, social progress and human well being is secondary to monetary gain. If people cannot make money out of solving social problems it simply won’t be done. Social progress can actually be a threat to the establishment. Corporations are not just in competition with other corporations. They are in competition with progress itself. That is why social change is so difficult in a monetary system. In other words, the established monetary system refuses free flowing change. You really cannot have a social convention where money is made off of inefficiency and scarcity and expect a quick incorporation of new advents which can relieve those problems. But because of competition (free-enterprise system) caused by globalization and the use of technology, corporations have to consistently reinvent themselves in order to keep up if they want to remain in business (e.g. As a result of the digital camera, most photo studios went out of business).
The only way to achieve maximum efficiency in all sectors is to limit or remove human involvement. This is called labor automation or mechanization. The more we mechanize the more productive things become. But the more we mechanize the less purchasing power people will have. It is in the best interest for corporations to mechanize as described above but who will buy their goods if there is no purchasing power. This dilemma can be considered the contradiction of capitalism.
