Block, the company behind Square, Cash App and Afterpay, is cutting its staff by 40%. The reason: “intelligence tools,” according to a letter to shareholders by co-founder Jack Dorsey.
In theory: automation makes the few working people massively more productive, so countries as a whole can easily sustain proper social systems even with those numbers.
Reality: Turbo-capitalism says fuck you!
Reality 2: AI is bullshit and not actually able to replace most people. But it will of course not prevent employee-hating CEOs to do in anyway.
I remember telling people, starting probably in conversations I had in the early 00s, that we should really start having conversations about universal basic income and other considerations about what to do with the rise of radical automation.
I was looked at like a complete loon. I think it’s hard to have those conversations even now. It seems some people would rather starve than admit that something that sounds like “Communism” could work and unfettered capitalism does not.
And not only was there no progress regarding universal income, but basically all productivity increases of the last decades went directly and mostly untaxed to the top. All while wages (and social and health contributions, lots of taxes and sometimes even pensions linked to them) are stagnating.
So we are not only doing nothing to account for that issue, we are in fact already moving in the wrong direction for quite some time. And we are already reaching the point were a lot of Western countries are now loudly telling the fairy tale of how demographics are the problem that makes existing system unsustainable, when in reality the blatant transfer of economic output to the upper 0.X% is the issue.
So… how does it work, when the world has a 50% unemployment rate?
In theory: automation makes the few working people massively more productive, so countries as a whole can easily sustain proper social systems even with those numbers.
Reality: Turbo-capitalism says fuck you!
Reality 2: AI is bullshit and not actually able to replace most people. But it will of course not prevent employee-hating CEOs to do in anyway.
I remember telling people, starting probably in conversations I had in the early 00s, that we should really start having conversations about universal basic income and other considerations about what to do with the rise of radical automation.
I was looked at like a complete loon. I think it’s hard to have those conversations even now. It seems some people would rather starve than admit that something that sounds like “Communism” could work and unfettered capitalism does not.
And not only was there no progress regarding universal income, but basically all productivity increases of the last decades went directly and mostly untaxed to the top. All while wages (and social and health contributions, lots of taxes and sometimes even pensions linked to them) are stagnating.
So we are not only doing nothing to account for that issue, we are in fact already moving in the wrong direction for quite some time. And we are already reaching the point were a lot of Western countries are now loudly telling the fairy tale of how demographics are the problem that makes existing system unsustainable, when in reality the blatant transfer of economic output to the upper 0.X% is the issue.