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> what that really means is that someone with the means to production/capital/etc has to part ways with some of his (labor, gasp he's no longer free)

This assumes that automation is not possible.




And if it was possible? Are you going to say that the fruits of said automated labor do not belong entirely to their owners (or people that created it/bought it/etc)?

There is no in-between. Either we live in a dystopian society where all labor (or means to production) is collectively owned and the fruits of it are portioned-out. Or we live in a society where only a portion/percentage of said labor is redistributed, thus invalidating the OP's suggestion that such a society would mean freedom for all "...to pursue hobbies and live without careerism (I paraphrase there)".

I can only assume that "careerism" in that sense is in reference to a job, and/or participating in a labor market of sorts.


> Are you going to say that the fruits of said automated labor do not belong entirely to their owners (or people that created it/bought it/etc)?

No. Why would I? That's silly.

> Or we live in a society where only a portion/percentage of said labor

Not only is this a false dichotomy, but it's also missing my point: that the purpose of automation is to eliminate the need for labor, and that by pursuing automation of tasks that few (if any) people actually want to do as hobbies or "labors of love", OP's suggestion is actually feasible.

It sounds like you're trying to pin me to some communal Marxist philosphy (never mind that I personally subscribe to philosophies that can power most of Europe by wiring the corpse of Karl Marx to a dynamo in his grave). The idea of a post-labor society is actually quite compatible with capitalism; if you have a machine that makes chairs and I have a machine that makes tables, there's nothing stopping us from trading, say, a table for four chairs, or a chair-making machine for a table-making machine, or selling our tables and chairs for money and using that money to buy, say, couches.




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