Comment on How in the hell
helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 year agoNo, 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 1 year 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.