Machines are becoming faster, cheaper, smaller and, most threatening of all, smarter
“I do think that . . . people . . . over the past century, [have been] replaced by machines and will continue to be.” — Sergey Brin co-founder of Google.
“You order on a kiosk, you pay with a credit or debit card, your order pops up, and you never see a person.” — Jeffrey Pudzer, CEO of Carl’s Jr.
“Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and, as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache.” — Terry Gou, CEO of Foxconn Technology Group
A specter is haunting the global job market and all who must make their way in it. For the past 40 years or so, advanced robotics have crept into every sector of the workforce. There are very few labor struggles today wherein the threat of robotics cannot immediately be waged against labor.
The machines are becoming faster, cheaper, smaller and, most threatening of all, smarter.
Jeffrey Pudzer, CEO of Carl’s Jr., in an interview, recently spoke of his desire to automate all Carl’s Jr. sites. This comes on the heels of labor winning historic victories in the fight for $15.
The connection is clear for anyone willing to make it.
The labor struggles of the past could all be waged on the basis of labor demand. This is increasingly becoming untrue. It has been increasingly untrue for my entire life.
I was born in 1981. Robotics is not the stuff of some future dystopia. I was born in the future — but no one bothered to tell me. In high school, I was told the economy had changed and that college was the only path to success.
In college I was told not to choose a frivolous degree. Returning to a trade school as an adult, I was told I would need to learn several skills and prepare for several careers. This was all within the framework of joining what I was told was the service economy, then later the global economy, and today, the information economy.
The truth is that Google employs less than 50,000 people. Facebook less than 5,000, Twitter less than 4,000, and eHarmony has more questions about compatibility than people in the building. There is no new economy. That is a damned lie.
Increasingly people are taking entry-level jobs at places not unlike Carl’s Jr. The average fast-food worker is not a teenager, but rather, a 28-year-old with a child. Things are worse today for workers than they were 10 years ago. They were worse 10 years ago than they were 10 years earlier. This is not going to stop, and it is irreversible.
Under these conditions — where machines are making machines and taking the jobs — the old axiom of property, “they who shall not work shall not eat,” means death to the job seeker.
We need to abolish the system of private property. We need a new society built around a different kind of economy. We need a system of distribution that matches this new system of production. It’s just that simple.
Get with the program.
