The elite end game is mathematically ridiculous and morally reprehensible says Jared A. Brock for "Surviving Tomorrow "- April 27, 2021.
Hyper-elites aren’t thinking straight about the end game.
Case in point: Elon Musk wants to build automated car factories that can build more automated car factories.
It’s a cool idea until you realize Musk will inevitably run into the Henry Ford Problem.
According to legend, Ford realized that cars were expensive and workers weren’t paid enough to afford cars. So Ford made it his mission to build cars affordably and pay his workers well enough that they could all afford to buy a Ford.
Musk does the opposite: he builds expensive cars and wants to do so without any employees.
It’s the same for billionaires around the world.
Human workers — the people who have done all the real contributive work for all of human civilization — are just a pesky expense line that elites are happily erasing in order to pad their bottom lines.
But don’t worry: Techno-delusionists believe humans are so creative that we’ll always find a way to create new jobs.
Sure. - Maybe.
But efficiency-driven capitalism demands evermore specialization, meaning tomorrow’s jobs will inevitably be more miserable for the human species, which is hardwired for newness and variety. (Plus, the future’s jobs will be poorly paid, and entirely without rights and benefits in the gig economy.)
These hopium-filled tech folks are also conveniently ignoring the fact that the same billionaires who are creating widespread joblessness are also evading taxation and undermining democracy so there isn’t a meaningful social safety net for all the people they’re currently hurling through the cracks.
We can hope and dream that maybe tech will magically create more jobs in the shiny future, but it’s cold comfort for the 500,000+ Americans who will sleep on the streets tonight.
But that still doesn’t fix the long-term problem that Musk et al are creating.
What happens when billions of humans are deemed economically irrelevant when computing power bests brainpower, AI knows us better than anyone, and 24/7 robots perform tasks far more efficiently than “mere” homo sapien ever could?
The math is clear: Without the vast majority of people possessing well-paying jobs and having affordable things to spend that money on, the economy simply collapses.
For the full article in pdf, please click here:
Jared A. Brock is an award-winning biographer, PBS documentarian, and the cell-free founder of the popular futurist blog Surviving Tomorrow, where he provides thoughtful people with contrarian perspectives on the corporatist anti-culture. His writing has appeared in Esquire, The Guardian, Smithsonian, USA Today, and TIME Magazine, and he has traveled to more than forty countries including North Korea. Join 20,000+ people who follow him on Medium, Twitter, and Substack.
Hyper-elites aren’t thinking straight about the end game.
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