Comment on How in the hell
unfreeradical@lemmy.world 11 months agoEngineers are workers.
Sewer cleaners are workers.
Neither are business owners, who make the decisions within enterprise, about how workers use enterprise.
If business owners decide that engineers may design machines, that factory workers may then build, and that sewer cleaners may then utilize, then the events may occur. Otherwise, not, and the determining force is the profit motive, not the will or workers.
At any particular time, some automation may be profitable, and some automation may not be profitable.
The straw man you attacked was my alleged claim that no automation is ever profitable.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 11 months ago
Yes but sewer cleaners do not have the capacity to create automations…that’s why they clean sewers. That’s what we were discussing.
unfreeradical@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We are discussing the reasons certain workers may be prevented from having better experiences through automation, even if development, manufacturing, and utilization of relevant automated systems are possible in principle, through the collective capacities of workers as a class.
You asserted the premise that the non-existence of certain systems of automation is evidence of the impossibility of their being caused to exist.
The premise is obviously false.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 11 months ago
No, we are discussing why people choose to work cleaning sewers. Then someone suggested we could automate the jobs. Then I suggested if we could, we would have already (because profits). Then you suggested that only sewer workers could automate those kind of jobs because it wasn’t profitable for companies to do so.
unfreeradical@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I have observed that workers as a class may have the capacities to provide automated systems either that improve the experience of those working to clean sewers, or that may obviate the social need of anyone to be working as such.
I also have observed that utilization of enterprise, and direction of worker capacities, is currently controlled by business owners, bound by the profit motive.
Your premise is false, that all automation always is supported by the profit motive, and my alleged premise is a straw man, that no automation ever is supported by the profit motive.
Your suggestion, that “if we could, we would have already” “automate[d] the jobs”, is false.
Its flaw is that it erases the conflict of interest between workers and owners. subsuming both beneath an imaginary monolithic “we”, who would all share the same interests.
In fact, workers and owners have mutually antagonistic interests.
Owners seek to extract the maximal possible value from workers at the minimal possible cost.
Workers seek better conditions, higher wages, and greater freedom and enjoyment in their lives.