[matz1]

I don't understand how technology alone won’t solve the problem. If I have a technology that can provide me my basic need (food,shelter,etc) and it cheap enough and easy enough for me to operate myself, in a way that I can be self sufficient without relying of other human, how is the notion of traditional job will not change in this situation ?

[TaylorAlexander]

Total individual self sufficiency is not really the best solution - collective self sufficiency is. But once we start collaborating, we fall in to structures where all the benefit we create ends up in the bank accounts of a few people instead of building a utopia. It takes a different structure to society, not mere technology, to change this situation.

Moreover: liberating technology will not be developed by the capitalist establishment because our liberation runs counter to the opportunity we represent as tools to be exploited. This is why Silicon Valley relies on surveillance and the big companies don’t share their key source code. They don’t have the goal of liberating us.

[matz1]

Do you mean someone or some group of people is going to prevent the invention of this technology (individual self sufficiency) ?

Invention of technology doesn't rely on capitalist establishment though, as long as there is at least one engineer out there to work on it just for the sake of it. For example, the invention of linux.

[SequoiaHope]

No, but technology does not spontaneously occur. I am in fact a huge advocate of the development of liberatory technology like Linux, but I emphasize that actual people have to be working on that problem for the technology to develop. It is not the case that it simply “will happen”. It will only happen if we build it. The capitalists will not build it.

[noonespecial]

I think his point was that right now, if that technology did exist someone would decide that you need their permission (and some payment of course) to operate it and show up with soldiers if you tried anyway.

[jtolmar]

The amount of labor necessary to satisfy basic needs has went down significantly over the last hundred years, but the amount of labor needed to afford satisfying basic needs has not. A successful strategy for full automation would see work hours gradually reduce until they hit zero.

The reason this has happened is that we use an economic system where laborers are paid market rate and the owners are paid the rest. So when we automate something new, the market rate for labor stays the same (at best), but reduced costs mean there's a bigger chunk leftover for the owners. So business owners capture all the returns from automation. As long as this holds, you should expect increased automation to benefit whoever already owns the machines, not society at large.

And there are lots of possible solutions for this, some quite simple, but they're all considered socialism or communism, so when you start talking about them people assume you want Soviet Russia and stop listening.

[TaylorAlexander]

Agreed. But I believe worker ownership of the means of production can be achieved legally in our present system. A network of cooperatives could ethically support its members, and there would be no elite owners to suck up the wealth they generate.