Can we talk about automation and what impact this is going to have on society and capitalism...

Can we talk about automation and what impact this is going to have on society and capitalism? I'm not here to push any specific opinion, but I'd like you to share your thoughts on the matter. I get the impression its going to be an increasingly important subject and the opportunity for posters/lurkers to share ideas is important.

It will end up destroying capitalism. No slave labor = freedom.
Science eventually kills it especially with accessible self-sustain technology, there are also always pirates who copy software or hack into phone services (phreaking), etc.

I want the future to have a more Technogaianist approach that would be optimal imo.

COIN is making accountants and bankers obsolete. Self-driving vehicles will eventually take over transport and they're already working on automating retail. AIs can make art, write music, detect and diagnose illnesses, build houses, do legal work, and program.

There are a few optimists who think automation will create more jobs than it replaces in the long run, because jobs that require good social skills, common sense, etc. won't be able to be automated in the same sense.

Unfortunately, scientists are already growing cortical cells and outright building synthetic neurons, so you might think you're safe in your comfy social worker or HR job until you're replaced by an employee born last week in a vat of stem cells who's more friendly, compassionate, and hardworking, doesn't sleep, loves their job more than life itself, and is willing to work for free.

It'll increase profits in the short term, but in the long term the more unemployed people you have, the less consumers you have. Full or nearly full automation will throw capitalism into a crisis it can't recover from. Automation in will one of, if not the most revolutionary events in history.

Automation is good and is a phenomenon of capitalism. It proves that before communism we need to get through capitalism.


Porkies will not step aside so easily.

I'm well aware but once the technology is there poor skilled people will find ways to get it. "Legally" or "illegally".

60s Phreakers were based as fuck & prank called the Pope all the time.

Automation will be making it's largest breakthroughs(and thus deprive the consumer class of profits). Right around the same time that systemic worldwide ecological collapse will make it incredibly hard to sustain such an incredibly large consumer class. So we'll be a noticeable resource drain on the propertied classes right around the same time that we no longer produce any value.

One thing that we'll undoubtedly see traces of is in the way that advances in automation will be applied to weapons technology. And I imagine also that a lot of the R&D that SpaceX is putting into sustaining a Mars Colony will eventually change it's focus on sustainable colonies that are essentially giant bunkers hidden underground, which, by virtue of being a bit cramped, wont have very much room at all for just anybody.

It could also give porky a push to pull out those conspiracies like the ones you see in Deus Ex where they try to kill 90% of the world.

life is not a videogame. don't be Holla Forums. shit will fail them, hard.

obviously automation stealing away all our decision making is going to bring communism and freedom

life is not a shitty deus ex game.

Get your head of the sand, decision making is already based on algorithms today.

wtf

Actually it is. We get all the bad things of cyberpunk and none of the cool things like hover cars.

It's only bad if it has graphics of a video game from 2000.

No wage labor means the destruction of capitalism, yes. But what happens when the proles are superfluous but the entire production is still in the hands of the capitalists? Would they just share the proceeds with everyone freely? I doubt it. The proles may finally decide to destroy the system when they're completely disenfranchised, but at that point we have such advanced military robots that they'll have little chance to bring down the ruling class. I wouldn't be so confident this development will not lead to the worst dystopia to dateā€¦

The term you look for is rail, son.
Landlords don't work either, doesn't stop them from consuming a lot. Talking so much about consumers seems to amount to believing that increasing money transfers to unemployed/under-employed could save the system by stabilizing demand. But according to Marxists, aggregate monetary profit is a supply-side phenomenon based on human work time.

Automation is shit.

The most dramatic advances in automation currently seem to be happening in secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy, including self-driving vehicles, automated retail, finance, and light manufacturing. The thing is, all of these activities arguably shouldn't exist in a socialist society, as they are exceedingly wasteful and complex, and add significantly less value to human society than more basic economic activity. 3D printing is a good example of an expensive technology for producing nothing but cheap molded doodads and toys which are wholly unneeded and useless to most people. Automation doesn't do much to improve the primary sectors of agriculture, basic industry, and mass transportation, which already can provide abundance for everyone, and if anything need to be de-intensified to ensure resource sustainability.

IMO automation is something to be resisted, not embraced, by socialist society. It's part of a larger necessity to unmake our current global economy, which is wound entirely too tight, exceedingly exploitative and dependent on unsustainable levels of resource and fossil fuel exploitation. My vision of socialism is to free up society to allow a focus on naturally inefficient, time-consuming craft industries, instead of automating labor out of existence. Maybe automated industry and transportation can provide a complement to this, by supplying a stream of basic goods and services in case the human-powered economy falters, but I don't think it's that essential.

Automation is causing a crisis for capitalism, but it's not gonna lead to communism. FALC is a delusion; socializing and fully automating our current global economy is exceedingly unsustainable and anti-labor. If automation is allowed to continue, the worst of all possible worlds might be created: a post-capitalist neo-feudal hell, where most of the proletariat has been automated out of a job, but the benefits of automation are not extended to everyone (either because of resource limits, or simple class repression). Then the vast majority of the people will be left to languish in poverty and misery, while the future bourgeoisie will live secure in automated enclaves, mostly independent of the need to exploit human labor to survive.

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3D printing is good for prototyping shit and making one off parts. It's great technology for those purposes but not for mass production. It's only idiot journos who try to sell it as some sort of potentially revolutionary tech in manufacturing. The people actually using it for what it is good for aren't the ones doing that.

Basically, unless we implement social democratic solutions like UBI, the loss of jobs is going to destroy capitalism. If UBI is implemented, you can be sure it will mostly be threadbare and subject to relentless cuts. It will itself lead to a situation where 80% of people don't have jobs and are living off these threadbare existence, at which point revolution would be almost inevitable.

We should attempt to own the robots right off the bat instead of allowing this reformism to play out for probably another 50-100 years

Automation will either bring us communism or mass death.

Maybe that's the reason why they aren't acting on climate change. That and they make way too much money.