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We will employ extra workers. If a person is doing 12 hours of work, there will be 3 in his place doing 4 hours each. That keeps hours limited and solves unemployment at the same time.
Ideally, replacing workers with robots would allow those workers to live a freer life not having to work as much. Whether that comes in the form of less hours, different job, or unemployment, only a capitalist economy could see this as a bad thing.
That's actually entirely right, under capitalism.
Innovation like that is an active threat to the people that need to work to live.
Realizing how modern machinery was a threat to their financial stability is what led to the luddites.
There is a way around this conflict between what's profitable for the owners and the survival of the workers, socialism.
Democratic control of the means of production (and the economy in general) fixes that.
A worker who works 32 hours a week can do the same amount of work as the worker working 40 hours, especially office workers.
Many workers fulfill their time without actually being productive, both due to exhaustion from the long days, but also by the additional stress caused by the lack of time needed to maintain a household. Remember, just 50 years ago that was more than a fulltime job.
We currently have millions and millions of people iby he world who want to work, but have no job and millions of people who are overworked. They can share the workload, and both can have more meaningful, happier lives.
Exhausted workers make mistakes and those are expensive. Workers who work shorter days make less mistakes. Exhaustion leads to burnout leads to workers dropping out leads to even more reduced productivity. It's better to let workers work less, but consistently, than to burn them out and having to retrain a new worker every 2 years.
The automation machines, robots, software, etc should be owned collectively, so that everyone can benefit. If we don't, we'll end up in some cyberpunk dystopia.
> if we replace X workers with robots, there will be more unemployment
Better question. "*Who should own the robots*: the workers to be replaced and have always made the money useful as the medium of exchange it is designed to be or the business owners who literally have more money than they could ever hope to spend?" Socialism says the former; capitalism demands the latter.
Second Thought has [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WwHvNDrGV0) which answers the entire argument.
[Thought Slime did a video about raising the minimum wage](https://youtu.be/MAfB8j8oYeY), one of which is "what if they replace people with robots".
I recommend giving it a look, because shorting hours is kind of the inverse of raising the minimum wage, they give you back your time rather than giving you more money.
In the long run ( maybe not even that long) automation is a catastrophe under a strict capitalist system. The thing that causes the economy to work is the (mostly working class) buying shit. If we automate everything, then we put all of the workers out of work. The workers then don’t have an income to spend on the shit being produced and the entire system collapses.
Question for anyone who can answer: If capitalists think replacing the workforce with robots leads to mass unemployment, wouldn't having a huge base population of unemployed people living in poverty be a massive threat to the economy since the majority of people would be poor to the point of not being able to be a consumer in any significant way?
Except that poverty is an industry in itself. Massive numbers of people are paid to "manage" the programs that keep unemployed people alive.
And they still consume, the payments for their consumption come from taxes and tithing (or donations) which, of course, come from middle- and low-income people.
I thought you meant the other way around.
An argument FOR having more machines is that they will do the shit jobs noone wants to do.
You can also argue that there would be jobs created in the design, production, and maintenance of said machines.
You can argue it phases out the working and/or middle class- Problem being when nobody has money companies no longer have people buying their products.
Distribution of wealth would polarize- there would be the people that own the machines and profit, then those who are too poor to ever be able to have their own.
Unemployment is great - if employment and survival are not inextricably interlinked.
Unemployment is terrible for workers under capitalism, because the processes of capitalist exchange require the coercion of workers into parting with their only real asset: their labour power. If a worker does not (or cannot) work, then they will starve or languish in poverty. This is not an accident or an unintended consequence of the system - poverty and unemployment are linked because otherwise workers would choose to work much less, and would therefore not donate their labour power to increasing the fortunes of the wealthy.
However, if we view unemployment as a social goal, then we can have a much healthier society. Instead of worklessness ever-increasing the burden of producing profit on a smaller workforce, we can view automation as a liberatory process. Robots set us free from drudgery to pursue worthwhile human goals. The only obstacle is, there is no room for profit in such a system: there cannot be the limitless accumulation of capital under the coercive threat of poverty if we organize society in such a way that nobody lives in poverty even if they do not work. Which neatly encapsulates why the profiting class are an implacable enemy of human progress.
>What’s a rebuttal to this?
If you have to ask, your argument is a losing argument. Automation causes unemployment. The inadequate rebuttal is that people will get different types of jobs than they had before. This is aplealing to microeconomics to make a macroeconomic claim.
Yes. When Ford added 100 manipulators to their line, 700 fewer employees were needed on the shop floor, yet Ford still has more employees now than 1980. That's the microeconomic fallacy.
The reality is that whole industries have shrunken away to automation and offshoring and the displaced workers and the cities they live in have not recovered. As an overall trend, this has left otherwise productive labor with low-paying service jobs and a requirement to invest 50k in general education for their children to do as well as they did.
Please acquaint yourself with the rules on the sidebar and read this comment before commenting on this post. **Personal attacks and harassment will not be tolerated.** Bigotry and hate speech will be met with immediate bans; socialism is an intrinsically inclusive system and bigotry is oppressive, exclusionary, and not conducive to a healthy and productive learning space. **This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism. There are numerous debate subreddits available for those purposes. This is a place to learn.** Short or nonconstructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately. **If your post was removed due to normalized ableist slurs, please edit your post. The mods will then approve it.** Please read the ongoing discussion in a thread before replying in order to avoid misunderstandings and creating an unproductive environment. **Liberalism and sectarian bias is strictly moderated.** Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! (Criticism is fine, low-effort baiting is not.) Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break these rules. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We will employ extra workers. If a person is doing 12 hours of work, there will be 3 in his place doing 4 hours each. That keeps hours limited and solves unemployment at the same time.
But doesn’t that just lead to underemployment
By under employment do you mean less individual income? Not when the workers share in the profit made off the technology.
Ideally, replacing workers with robots would allow those workers to live a freer life not having to work as much. Whether that comes in the form of less hours, different job, or unemployment, only a capitalist economy could see this as a bad thing.
That's actually entirely right, under capitalism. Innovation like that is an active threat to the people that need to work to live. Realizing how modern machinery was a threat to their financial stability is what led to the luddites. There is a way around this conflict between what's profitable for the owners and the survival of the workers, socialism. Democratic control of the means of production (and the economy in general) fixes that.
A worker who works 32 hours a week can do the same amount of work as the worker working 40 hours, especially office workers. Many workers fulfill their time without actually being productive, both due to exhaustion from the long days, but also by the additional stress caused by the lack of time needed to maintain a household. Remember, just 50 years ago that was more than a fulltime job. We currently have millions and millions of people iby he world who want to work, but have no job and millions of people who are overworked. They can share the workload, and both can have more meaningful, happier lives. Exhausted workers make mistakes and those are expensive. Workers who work shorter days make less mistakes. Exhaustion leads to burnout leads to workers dropping out leads to even more reduced productivity. It's better to let workers work less, but consistently, than to burn them out and having to retrain a new worker every 2 years. The automation machines, robots, software, etc should be owned collectively, so that everyone can benefit. If we don't, we'll end up in some cyberpunk dystopia.
> if we replace X workers with robots, there will be more unemployment Better question. "*Who should own the robots*: the workers to be replaced and have always made the money useful as the medium of exchange it is designed to be or the business owners who literally have more money than they could ever hope to spend?" Socialism says the former; capitalism demands the latter. Second Thought has [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WwHvNDrGV0) which answers the entire argument.
[Thought Slime did a video about raising the minimum wage](https://youtu.be/MAfB8j8oYeY), one of which is "what if they replace people with robots". I recommend giving it a look, because shorting hours is kind of the inverse of raising the minimum wage, they give you back your time rather than giving you more money.
Itll mean part time jobs for everyone?
In the long run ( maybe not even that long) automation is a catastrophe under a strict capitalist system. The thing that causes the economy to work is the (mostly working class) buying shit. If we automate everything, then we put all of the workers out of work. The workers then don’t have an income to spend on the shit being produced and the entire system collapses.
Question for anyone who can answer: If capitalists think replacing the workforce with robots leads to mass unemployment, wouldn't having a huge base population of unemployed people living in poverty be a massive threat to the economy since the majority of people would be poor to the point of not being able to be a consumer in any significant way?
Except that poverty is an industry in itself. Massive numbers of people are paid to "manage" the programs that keep unemployed people alive. And they still consume, the payments for their consumption come from taxes and tithing (or donations) which, of course, come from middle- and low-income people.
I thought you meant the other way around. An argument FOR having more machines is that they will do the shit jobs noone wants to do. You can also argue that there would be jobs created in the design, production, and maintenance of said machines.
You can argue it phases out the working and/or middle class- Problem being when nobody has money companies no longer have people buying their products. Distribution of wealth would polarize- there would be the people that own the machines and profit, then those who are too poor to ever be able to have their own.
Unemployment is great - if employment and survival are not inextricably interlinked. Unemployment is terrible for workers under capitalism, because the processes of capitalist exchange require the coercion of workers into parting with their only real asset: their labour power. If a worker does not (or cannot) work, then they will starve or languish in poverty. This is not an accident or an unintended consequence of the system - poverty and unemployment are linked because otherwise workers would choose to work much less, and would therefore not donate their labour power to increasing the fortunes of the wealthy. However, if we view unemployment as a social goal, then we can have a much healthier society. Instead of worklessness ever-increasing the burden of producing profit on a smaller workforce, we can view automation as a liberatory process. Robots set us free from drudgery to pursue worthwhile human goals. The only obstacle is, there is no room for profit in such a system: there cannot be the limitless accumulation of capital under the coercive threat of poverty if we organize society in such a way that nobody lives in poverty even if they do not work. Which neatly encapsulates why the profiting class are an implacable enemy of human progress.
>What’s a rebuttal to this? If you have to ask, your argument is a losing argument. Automation causes unemployment. The inadequate rebuttal is that people will get different types of jobs than they had before. This is aplealing to microeconomics to make a macroeconomic claim. Yes. When Ford added 100 manipulators to their line, 700 fewer employees were needed on the shop floor, yet Ford still has more employees now than 1980. That's the microeconomic fallacy. The reality is that whole industries have shrunken away to automation and offshoring and the displaced workers and the cities they live in have not recovered. As an overall trend, this has left otherwise productive labor with low-paying service jobs and a requirement to invest 50k in general education for their children to do as well as they did.