Photo: Daymon J. Hartley
The media talk about the wonders of robots and computers, bringing a wonderful world —
But for whom?
Today humanity is in an epoch of social revolution, revolutionized by microchips, computers and all their derivatives.
The cover story, “Robots in Fields” (pages 8) talks about: A wine-grape pruning robot doing the job at half the cost of manual labor; a strawberry-picking robot that works day and night; a lettuce-thinning machine in development to do the job 20-40 times faster than a person; an orange-picking machine that is nearly ready for use and already cheaper than a live picker.
Wow! This sounds great, no more back breaking labor, and no more inhaling poisonous pesticides in the field. But what’s going to happen to the worker as robots and computers take our jobs, not only in agriculture but also in manufacturing and service?
Capitalism is an economy where there are buyers and sellers of commodities. The worker sells her/his ability to work (commodity) to the capitalist; the capitalist buys it to produce goods and services that he in turn sells.
Without jobs workers can’t put food on the table, buy/rent homes, or essentially provide for their families.
In “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization?” the authors estimate that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are “at risk” of being eliminated in the next 20 years by artificial intelligence.
But there’s another side to this wonderful technology. It promises a world of abundance, without want and scarcity, for the U.S. and the entire world. But only if the working masses use the government to administer the common wealth produced by the workers and the means of production.
The working masses have historically created society’s wealth. Therefore, they are the true owners of the means of production and must use them for humanity’s well-being.
We won’t have to compete against one another but cooperate to take care of each other. This means reorganizing society along cooperative lines.
One of the most meaningful contributions we can make to society today is to advance that cause.
