Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Now that new, improved Socialism 2.0 is here thanks to Bernie Sanders and AOC, can the updated communism be far behind? No, thanks to the New York Times' opinion page.

In a way, it seems a throwback to only 2-3 years ago. Remember when everybody's job was going to be lost due to automation?

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Automation, robotics and machine learning will, as many august bodies, from the Bank of England to the White House, have predicted, substantially shrink the work force, creating widespread technological unemployment. But that’s only a problem if you think work — as a cashier, driver or construction worker — is something to be cherished. For many, work is drudgery. And automation could set us free from it.

Meanwhile, in the real world the machines have so far failed in their ruthless quest to eliminate jobs. The US unemployment rate is 3.6%, the lowest it has been in almost 50 years. But to a communist, that sounds horrific:

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To say the present era is one of crisis borders on cliché. It differs from the dystopias of George Orwell or Aldous Huxley, or hell in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. It is unlike Europe during the Black Death or Central Asia as it faced the galloping Golden Horde. And yet it is true: Ours is an age of crisis. We inhabit a world of low growth, low productivity and low wages, of climate breakdown and the collapse of democratic politics. A world where billions, mostly in the global south, live in poverty. A world defined by inequality.

He notes some interesting new technologies, like lab-grown beef, and the potential for asteroid mining. The problem? No surprise here:

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But there’s a catch. It’s called capitalism. It has created the newly emerging abundance, but it is unable to share round the fruits of technological development.

Let's remember that the last time communism was tried on a vast scale, it couldn't even provide fruit, let alone the fruits of technology.

via International Skeptics Forum http://bit.ly/2MJCjh4