The Batlord

And the company exists to develop self driving cars that put their workforce out on the streets but no one cares because workers are pawns for the magnificence of "geniuses" who will take the middle class to a next level of existence.

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The Batlord

What does that have to do with anything?

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adidasss

The future of real communism lies in full automation. Only when all people are liberated from labor will there be a chance for true equality!

I read that sometimes somewhere and it seems like it could work. :/

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“Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle.

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SGR

More like an army of docile, fat, porn-consuming, netflix binging couch potatoes. Good luck with the revolution.

The Batlord

There's plenty of people out of work from industrial jobs and it didn't tip the world to revolution. It simply increased alienation which was a boon to the owning class. Alienation is a thing to be feared by the working class but apparently not by the owning class.

Automation is also a thing to be feared by the working class but which the ruling class greets again and again with indifference because so long as they aren't literally starving it doesn't matter what the working class don't like.

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SGR

Alienation is obviously a counterweight to any kind of revolution. Revolutions require coordination and a focus and unified social purpose. Honestly - the more division the ruling class can instill in the lower classes, the better (for them). As long as they (lower class) fight amongst each other, they (ruling/owning class) can continue lining their pockets without true opposition.

Automation without some kind of UBI or mass re-education program(s) will spell disaster. Machines do not require maternity leave or health care insurance, which is obviously why the owning class is very much in favor of it. Over the long run, it increases their profit margins and decreases their risks.

adidasss

Yeah but in the (distant) future, everyone (or no one) will own the means of production, which will be fully automated. That's communism baby!

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“Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle.

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The Batlord

Precisely. So you can either side with the owning class and abandon morality the same as any slave driver with a whip as is easy, or you can figure out what it means to be a good person in opposition to that. Which is obviously hard and complicated.

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SGR

How will no one own the means of production? You think there's a future in which all these automated machines/factories take care of themselves? You think they'll become self-sufficient and self-serving?

If so, we are no longer in a discussion about political philosophy, but rather in a discussion about survival between man and machine. An automated dystopia.

adidasss

Yes! And I'm not convinced it will ever come to some kind of conflict, it hasn't so far so no reason to believe it will. We create machines to do a specific job, and that's their limitation. So, I don't see a dystopia but a utopia.

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“Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle.

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