Hyper-automation
will allow the super-rich to “get rid” of the rest
by system
failure
Since the
French revolution and the new form of the urban states-democracies,
the ruling class had to make the so-called "social contract"
with the majority. From the moment that the dominant urban class took
the power from feudalism and monarchy, should had to find a way to
protect the means of production and the labor force.
Therefore,
the ethnic consciousness in each state served to bound the majority
in order to shape national armies to protect the ruling class
interests. In exchange, the ruling urban class had given the
so-called social state, labor rights, etc., through the nation-state
as a carrier and guarantor for all these benefits for the middle and
lower classes.
Since then,
there have been a lot of battles and the majority managed to conquer
some benefits. At the start of 20th century, the technology progress
had brought the mass production. Western societies increasingly
became addicted to consumerism and progressively dominated by a
culture of extreme individualism until today.
This has
happened because corporations had to find consumers for the products,
so actually the "homo consumericus" came after Freud's
theories, exploited by his nephew - father of Public Relations -
Edward Bernays. However, the ruling class still needed labor hands
and therefore the social contract remained alive, always through the
nation-state as guarantor.
The war
has started
Now, this is
all about to change. Hyper-automation is the key for the ruling
class to break the social contract exactly because it doesn't need
human labor anymore. The culture of extreme individualism serves
perfectly the plan, because for decades generations learned to grow
just to consume and protect their individual rights without caring
for the others (this is the general picture of course, there are
exceptions). The “inflation” of the middle class based on this
one-dimensional culture, destroyed any class consciousness, fed
apolitical generations and now used as a tool to trigger conflict
interests inside the shrinking middle class, always on an economic
basis.
The war has
started. The mainstream media propaganda is launched in full force.
In the US, the mainstream media are demonizing the poor, they say
that they should start pay taxes and at the same time they support
tax-reliefs for the richest, even when all the data show that the gap
between the richest and the poorest continuously grows.
It's not a
matter of money of course. It's because the nation-state should be
destroyed as the elementary mechanism required to protect the rights
of the majority. Until then, the state will be used to distribute a
minimum subvention to the armies of unemployed, so that the big banks
and corporations not to be threatened by sudden and massive
uncontrolled riots of totally desperate people.
Land
grab, natural resources and the two big barriers
Having
secured the new labor force through fully automated machines, what
has left for the dominant elite now, is to take all the resources.
Big corporations are grabbing huge cultivable areas especially in the
developing countries in order to control food production.
Oil and
natural gas fields in many areas of the planet are already controlled
by big private corporations, except that there are two big barriers
left to deal with: Russia and China.
The new cold
war which started with the crisis in Ukraine, has not only to do with
the natural resources of the vast Russian territory. It also has to
do with the model that the Western plutocrats want to impose, which
requires the absence of the nation-state in its final phase. Their
various think tanks probably wrongly estimated that Russia had
permanently passed to the neoliberal phase and would be an easy
target, but Putin made them run.
What we see
now, is a cruel battle with time. On the one hand, Russia and China,
together with the rest of the BRICS, are trying to get rid of the
dollar and form their own currency system to gain complete
independence, on the other, the neocon banking-corporate puppets in
the US are in panic and seek desperately a pretext to come to war
with Russia and put an end to this threat for their plans. This
explains their agony to drag Russia into a warm conflict.
Private
armies and test fields for robots to protect robots
We see a
rise of private armies that act in various battlefields, like in
Ukraine, exactly because in the absence of the nation-states and the
national armies, someone has to protect the natural resources and the
new means of production for the dominant elite.
But when the
arms industry will fully automate the new weapons, private armies
will only serve as assistance to fully automated war machines. We
already see the test fields of the weapons of future˙
the drones in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
It's not
accidental that the arms industries demonstrate new weapons designed
to be used inside urban areas for suppression of potential riots.
There will be no "outside enemy" in the future. The threat
for the dominant system will come from the interior, the big urban
centers. Soldier-robots will protect worker-robots and resources.
In such an
environment everyone will be left alone to survive. Human life will
totally lose value. This is the return to perfect barbarism. Many
still believe in the myth of the free market. They have an ideal
situation in mind where everyone will be free from the state
suppression and the free market will drive societies and individuals
to balance and prosperity. It's just an illusion because in reality
the game is more rigged than ever. We are not talking about
capitalism, not even neoliberalism. We are talking about the new
global, brutal feudalism!
Read
also:
Ask journalism how much it got for its soul.
ReplyDeletehttp://patrick.net/forum/?p=1223928
"Journalists" - in the same way that vending machines are "chefs".
ReplyDelete"Hyper-automatization" could eliminate the need for labour but it won't eliminate the need for customers. Capitalists can get robots to make everything but they need to be able to sell the products to someone in order to make a return. I think technological advancement is inextricably dependent on a certain amount of economic democracy. If we don't embrace that I fear we will squander our potential.
ReplyDeletehttp://directeconomicdemocracy.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/rich-people-could-benefit-if-everyone-else-were-also-rich/
There is a huge potential of consumers due to unprecedented human population. Once wages will further rise in China-South East Asia, there will be plenty of consumers to buy more products. However, I'm afraid that this is also only a transition phase. It's not a matter of money, they can print as much as they want. It's a matter of power and control. Once the elites reach the point to control all the resources and the means of production, the model will change from capitalism to global feudalism.
DeleteRobots of all sorts still require designers,manufacturing, parts, and fuel...also an army of repairmen.
DeleteA quick view of human history shows that every single culture using slaves stagnates very fast. There is no drive for progress, for innovation.
The world you describe does loom, but is so extreme it will cause the Boomerang Effect in countless ways. These madmen planning it still can't predict their own young....or the effect of scandals and betrayals on each other. And we plebes can always take heart from the inbreeding among the elite...no hybrid vigor and fresh air.
It will all boomerang...perhaps we'll have another Methodist revival or upheaval of a sort of Confucian Christianity...could happen!!
Doesn't make sense to me. I agree that there will be more automation but that will create more goods so that the elite who produce them can get richer from selling to the rest. Snag being that those who would buy will not have the skills or labour to attract the wage to pay for those goods, so we are forced to change the way money is created or even the wealthy go bankrupt.
ReplyDeleteI believe you might have missed the point of the author. I think the author is making the point that fiat money is irrelevant to the "elite" he mentions; they don't need to sell products to anybody to make money, they need just print dollars or euros (as many they want). People will and are exchanging real goods and services for these fake notes of fiat money. Once they've achieved full automation (according to the author) they will eventually use this fully automated production to ONLY fulfill their own needs, not to sell or give away the products to a redundant population of "unneeded" serfs (penniless serfs). (BTW, it's China that's leading the calls to fully automate their factories going forward. Why? Because of current and future labor shortfalls as their population ages and not enough young people will exist to support their elderly - all because of China's Trojan horse one-child policy. They will be a case study in population crash and full automation thanks to their previous leaders mistake of being duped into implementing a one-child policy by that demonic duo Nixon and Kissinger as well as the other demonic duo, Carter & Brezinski)..
DeleteAccording to the author, initially they'll use the goods produced by fully robotized factories to supply welfare goods to the masses, to placate them and render them further dependent, later as this generation of useless eaters dies off, and the population's numbers drops down to a non-threatening level, they'll drop any pretense of welfare and cut the "useless-eaters off".
This what this author seems to be contending, however I don't agree with him: I heard the Chinese have a saying (whether this really is a Chinese proverb or not, I don't know). The saying goes something like this: No family is poor for more than 3 generations and no family is rich for more than 3 generations. - Meaning the every class undergoes generational decay, especially the rich. The grandchildren of the rich/elite are spoiled soft and incompetent copies of the grandparents that produced them: The 3rd generation will squander the gains of their parents and grandparents, due to their, apathy, incompetence, genetic failure, their cultivated emotional weakness (never learning life's hard lessons), and conditioned sloth-hood.
While the author makes excellent points in this article, I'm not sure the "elite" he alludes to have the smarts or stability to pull off the kind of scenario he outlines. I certainly believe that there are some in the bloated so-called elite that are striving to achieve very the goals mentioned in this article. I just doubt their ability to pull it off.
I can tell you that the elites are pushing for as much automazation as possible, but the tech still isn't reall ythere. At most they may elminate large swaths per job classification, but even im skeptical. Instead, i think many jobs will be call centered through webcam, elminating 'dead time' on the job, and maybe 10-20 percent of jobs per classification? It's a disasster to be sure, but they will still need people to move things.
ReplyDeleteYou don't need people to move things. Self driving cars are here. They just don't let Tesla advertise it in those words yet. But you can buy a fully self driving Model S today that's probably a safer driver than you are.
ReplyDeleteI would have expected already a genocide against those with low IQ, because they are the least useful in the coming 50 or 100 years. A good worker / slave should have an IQ of maybe 120, not 80. But the reverse seems to be occurring. They'll be left with a mass of humanity that could never maintain, let alone design, their robots and other systems.
Interesting in terms of the demise of the nation-state. But robots can't produce new value, nor profits on which capitalist accumulation depends.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is one possible scenario. However, the "elite" will need humans to serve them as analysts, designers, engineers and so on. The "elite" do not know how to repair or build actual real life things. Will the servants be obedient and willing in this scenario? Perhaps, perhaps not. A clever idea is selling the servants the idea of belonging to the "privileged" class. Big salary and gadgets do not make a servant-slave free, but it may buy some co-operation. Even a lot of co-operation.
ReplyDeleteAnd what will the "elite" do when they hypothetically control all the resources? Fool around with other "elite" like the aristocrats of old and avoid poor people who want to kick their teeth in? Many of them do not want to been seen as masters and tyrants.
One problem is that the middle class is taking the remaining "free" resources, which may create a lower class who are effectively useless slaves as they don't own anything. That would be dangerous for the elite if the lower class then tries to seize and grab their resources. Taking the middle class out of this equation will only make the situation worse. I don't know what they are going to do about this, but this is the current situation.
The upper-class-servants must be controlled by making them want to consume and own things. Someone with a big salary could easily drop out of the system completely, which would mean there's no one doing the work which can't be automated. The downshifting and early retirement by living frugally is evil because the servant can give the finger after ten years of service. Luckily for the elite, many people have no idea how to live a meaningful life without "achieving" some monetary results.
Crab: No
ReplyDeleteCrab: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Big Butt Screaming: And The Woods And The Hood
Butt Screaming: And The Woods And The Hood
Mary Jane Watson: (Screaming)
Mary Jane: (Screaming)
Zeus: No
ReplyDeleteZeus: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Big Butt Screaming: And The Woods And The Hood
Butt Screaming: And The Woods And The Hood
Mary Jane Watson: (Screaming)
Mary Jane: (Screaming)
Zeus: No
ReplyDeleteZeus: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Big Butt Screaming: And The Woods And The Hood
Butt Screaming: And The Woods And The Hood
Mary Jane Watson: (Screaming)
Mary Jane: (Screaming)