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hackyhacky • today at 5:35 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

> Technology and "progress" haven't been improving the workers life in a long long time, again: welcome to the club.

That's ridiculous and myopic. Technology have improved many people's lives for a long time. Or would you prefer to stop wearing industrially-manufactured clothes, stop taking scientifically-developed vaccines, and of course stop using the device that you are reading this on now?

The difference is that in the past, technological development victimized only subsets of the work force. Mechanical looms were bad for textile workers, but good for everyone else. Personal computers were bad for "human calculators," but good for everyone else. The people who lost their jobs to technology could, theoretically, retrain and get another job.

But now we're facing technology that is theoretically capable of doing any job, at a price that's cheaper than any human. If you lose your job as a programmer due to AI, you can't just retrain as a lawyer, because those jobs are gone too (or will be soon). You can't just become a barista or a cab driver, those jobs are gone too.

Sniping at fellow working-class members is counterproductive. Ultimately, this is a test of democracy: can our government be forced to serve the people who it represents, or only corporate interests? If the latter, then we're entering a period of neo-feudelism.