Here's something weird I have noticed when talking to people.
So imagine this. I am talking with a friend about some business branch which could very well be automated and costs of production (rationally) could go down (clearly by firing employees and just having a service that a robot does or the user themselves has to do, so without actually having to employ labor-power for the entire working day). I tell him, from the standpoint of capital, this is rational, this is good, and we should pursue it so that more and more time is freed up and the productive process is more optimized bla bla bla. Imagine I am a venture capitalist convincing you to invest into AI. You get the idea.
But then he gets kinda pissed of at me and starts asking me to justify this process to some abstract worker that would find himself in this situation. He continues - it would be so good for them to lose their job and be unemployed (sarcasm) so of course he is against automatization.
I see this social-democratic viewpoint everywhere. Whenever I try to talk to people on this "higher" level of abstraction (society, state, classes) they always fall back down to this Robinson Crusoe that suffers because of my opinions. What gives? Are people just that blinded by capitalist individualism that they can't even see past particular people, humans, themselves?
I understand that my friend is not a part of the classes or stratum of a class that I ought to agitate, but their viewpoint is something I encounter often in different scenarios. How to battle this?
>>2618260Can you just say it again without resorting to any hypothetical scenario? I mean I lost you at capital.
>>2618260The greatest sin
its a metaphor not moralism is waste and the ultimate form of waste is unnecessary labor. If a planned economy doesn't prioritize minimizing labor hours per unit its inefficient and failing to provide the most it can + it wastes everyones time in labor that could be spent in leisure. This doesnt mean the economy should produce only goo slop for consumers as this has low use value. Its more about producing high quality products as efficiently as possible.
Profits come from the exploitation of labor. V vs C. Buying machines that automate production transfers profits from the employer of labor to do the job to the employer of labor that builds the machines to do the job. The morality of a worker losing their job is just cover for this process and its why we cannot seem to automate away jobs even though we have the technology to do so.
Practically however, when integrating automation, you always have a transition period where you need workers to make the machine do what it is supposed to, it may fail or it may do something too quickly and overproduce. It may need fixing constantly. This creates friction and workers may sabotage this process.
>>2618481>Profits come from the exploitation of labor. V vs C.Youre ignoring relative surplus value. Automation (increasing C) reduces the cost of goods required to sustain a worker (like food, clothes, housing). If machines make life cheaper then the value of Labor Power (V) drops. The worker now "pay for themselves" in 2 hours instead of 4 thus decreasing necessary labor time and increasing surplus labor time. The capitalist doesnt lose profit but captures more of the working day as a surplus. Automation intensifies exploitation of labor.
>Its why we cannot seem to automate away jobsThe reason why 1st world countries dont automate isnt a conspiracy to preserve jobs but because human labor in the global south is cheaper than the cost of machinery. Why invest in complex robotics when you can exploit workers in the periphery for fraction of the cost?