Posts by Tom Hagan

I, for one, welcome our robotic communist jobless future

Help!

My ufinished post got away prematurely. What can I do about that?

No need for communism

This piece is almost right.

But it's not in the future, it's now. We have already arrived at the point where only a few need to work - almost everything we need could be built for us by robots. But many robots are idle, out of work themselves. It's known as the Global Financial Collapse. The collapse happened because displaced workers can't buy what the robots could produce, if they were producing.

And the owner of a robot makes a profit only if the robot is working.

Gotta get them robots back to work!

Two ways: communism, as you suggest, or capitalism.. We know from the Soviet Union that communism does not work. But a recovery can be effected under capitalism.

That would require that income be redistributed downward, reversing its direction of recent years. Inequality must be reduced, to let those displaced by robots buy what the robots could produce - if they were working.

Since the robot owners also own our politics, only if they see it to be in their interest will it happen. And it IS in their interest, both to get their robots back to work so they can earn profits from them, and more importantly, to save their own skins.

Because the inexorable rise of inequality will reach a point where displaced workers will no longer be able to feed their families, and then they will revolt. It's where we are heading. The robot owners can instead give us a government that has a truly progressive income tax, to fund a Citizens Dividend for all, sufficient to reverse the direction of the flow of income from bottom to top.

Then the robots can get back to work. The inevitable revolution can be avoided. And the oligarchs who control it all can save their skins.