

Is it ethical to automate business? - jpritikin
http://justiceplat4m.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-it-ethical-to-automate-business.html

======
warrenwilkinson
'Economics in One Lesson' refutes this logic in its chapter "The Curse of
Machinery" (<http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap07p1.html>). Some
highlights:

\--

If we assert automation removes the need for labour. Then it follows that to
maximize labour, we must make our jobs as inefficient as possible.

\--

Not only should we regard all future improvements as calamitys, but we must
also regard all past technology with equal horror.

\--

Why should freight be carried from Chicago to New York by railroad when we
could employ enormously more men, for example, to carry it all on their backs?

~~~
jwhite
Everyone, especially those on the left of the political spectrum, should read
'Economics in One Lesson'.

------
brmj
I assert that, in principle, any labor performed by humans may be replaced by
equivalent labor performed by machines, and that as technology advances, the
fraction which may be cost-effectively replaced will increase, most likely
going to 1 shortly after the invention of strong AI.

I also assert that the total amount of labor which a finite population can
productively make use of at once is finite.

It follows that if technology continues to advance, there will reach a point
at which less human labor is can be productively made use of than is
available.

Under a capitalist system, people who don't own the means of production must
exchange their labor for anything they need. Therefor, this set of facts would
predict that continued technological advancement within a purely capitalist
system would eventually lead to starvation amid plenty once human labor
becomes close to valueless. Rather than halting the progress of technological
advancement, replacing the capitalism with either collective ownership of the
means of production or a sort of vestigial capitalism with massive entitlement
programs at or before that point seems like the way to go to me.

------
jdietrich
Don't mind me, I'm just going out to smash a few looms.

[http://www.cottontown.org/page.cfm?language=eng&pageID=5...](http://www.cottontown.org/page.cfm?language=eng&pageID=5096)

