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>I'd rather be building complex medical instruments than toasters. Why? In what way is it better to have a handful of elite workers creating a handful of units
by minikites 5y ago
>I'd rather be building complex medical instruments than toasters.
Why? In what way is it better to have a handful of elite workers creating a handful of units sold to a handful of consumers instead of having many ordinary workers producing many units for many consumers?
- ethbr0 5y agoBecause ordinary workers, producing many units, is a business with low margins. And in modern developed economies, those margins are insufficient to support a decent salary.
- minikites 5y agoSo what happens when every economy becomes developed? What happens when we can't rely on the existence of low wage workers?
- ethbr0 5y agoI have a sneaking suspicion that's fundamentally impossible, as some of the prerequisites for developed economies (in the modern, not-industrialization sense) seem to require predatory exploitation of developing economies. And the global inequality of capital ensures there's a power disparity sufficient to enforce it for the former, to the detriment of the latter. But I guess it's really a question about post-scarcity economics, and whether they're possible?
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y agoI think your mistaking how it tends to be for how it must be. I’m more optimistic. Not really sure I have much to base my optimism on, but oh well. Edit: fixed a word
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y agoThis always seems like a question with an agenda. What happens? Well I suppose the economy collapses and the proletariat rise up and usurp power, or something fantastical. What’ll more likely happen is we’ll further automate repetitive low skill tasks, and / or start making more durable goods, or otherwise ingenuity our way forward.
- sennight 5y agoPost-industrialized countries make it impossible to for those countries arriving late to the party to advance any further, by way of global environmental agreements and glass bead "carbon credit" payments, thereby ensuring a permanent pool of slave labor.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoAll of the statistics on wage and per capita GDP growth contradict your claim..
- sennight 5y ago> > > So what happens when... > > Answer for what happens when > That hasn't happened yet!1!! Time isn't that complicated a concept.
- b9a2cab5 5y agoEventually it becomes more profitable to automate. See: Sony's automated PS4/5 factory. Formerly these would've been assembled in some Foxconn plant by tens of thousands of low wage workers.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoIt happens very gradually, and in aggregate we tend to end up working fewer and fewer hours per year.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoBecause there won't be "many ordinary workers" producing those toasters. Low margin products like that will have their manufacture automated to the n'th degree and they'll be built by "a handful of elite workers" supervising the automation. Or, you know, they'll send it to the lowest-cost labor supplier they can find to build by hand and that won't be in the US!