alt Hacker NewsAssuming large-scale automation[1]: workers have in aggregate automated themselves. It takes labor to automate. And yet those former workers are now a “burden”? We’re assuming automation, so was the making of the food stuff, the transportation of the food stuff, the automation of the infrastructure maintenance... was that done or not? Where is the burden being felt?
You’re gonna call the people that built everything a burden?
Either we are talking in terms of propagandistic guilt assignment, or we’re talking realpolitics. Either:
1. we can trivially support the “burden” because of automation (no burden); or
2. billionaire resource hoarders (a burden?) do not need the vast majority of their underlings (maybe just a few for Epstein 2.0) and can let them fend for themselves or die off. (It’s literally not even a question of whether they have a big red Automation Button that would sustain the “burden” indefinitely. What incentive do they have to press it?)
[1] I notice scale is a favorite buzzword now
More jobless are a burden in a capitalism based social security system. Has nothing to do if those build something useful or not. Caputalism doesn't care.
In the end the upper 0.1% get the profit and those who still have jobs have to finance the social security systems. More jobless and less working means the jobless become a burden and in the long run the system will fail.
So you either need to tax automation or the rich. Guess if that will happen.