The laying on of scorn
Dan Crawford notes Paul Krugman’s change of heart on the increasing importance of automated systems, in particular robotics:
In the past discussions at Angry Bear on the impacts automation might have on our lives, and the economics involved, gathered comments such as “You are a neo luddite”. As if widespread use of automated systems was automatically good for us overall because we would have access to ‘more higher wage and higher skilled jobs’, cheaper goods, and robots need a work force to maintain them…of course, there was no offering of numbers of jobs and whether the wage premium for a college education would be maintained. This is the time to pay more attention as ‘insourcing’ gains traction as a buzz word…
Peter Frasure Robots and Liberalism, Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center responds, and offers a post as a lesson in scorn, and he was kind to me, tough with others:
What I mainly find interesting is what all this interest in technology and jobless growth says about the limits of contemporary liberalism. We can all hope that Gavin Mueller’s reverie of Paul Krugman dropping LSD and becoming a Marxist will come to pass, but in the meantime his type seems to have no real answer. Nor do those of a more labor-liberal bent, like Dan Crawford at Angry Bear, who laments being called a neo-luddite and scornfully says: “As if widespread use of automated systems was automatically good for us overall”. As if a world in which we hold back technical change in order to keep everyone locked into deadening jobs is a vision that will rally the masses to liberalism.
So exactly who is the man actually talking to?? What am I missing?
It’s Peter Frase.
Gee Dan
what i think Peter Frase is missing is that no one here is against automation per se… as neither were the Luddites…
but against mindless automation which
leaves lots of people without hope of meaningful work at a wage that supports a decent life
leaves consumers with mindless automation like automatic checkers that don’t quite work, or automatic phone answering systems that waste the consumers time in order to save the sharholders a dollar… for awhile.
saw a piece on the web the other day saying the Post Office served no useful purpose any more. Just on the day I was deciding to throw away my computer and write real letters.
on the other hand robots will do everything the ruling class needs done. until of course they don’t, and there are no people with actual skills in real world work to adapt to the new environment that will certainly come.
humans still being better at adapting than computers. actually, rather “low iq” people are better at adapting than computer specialists.
so sure, lets automate everything we can. but lets try to think about the consequences.
Dan
who is the man talking to?
if you follow these things as i do, you would have learned that most people are talking to the voices in their own head.
they pick up two or three words that you say, marry that to their theory of everything and give you their previously prepared remarks.
Robots doing our work has been desired for generations. Embrace it. There are programmers and other jobs to do, we just do not have to work so long or as hard. We need a Robo-automation Tax on these mechanical workers. Than provide each citizen with a stipend of that money.