| without organizing, the vast majority of us will be doomed. i figure a couple of clues as to where we're headed... 1) the black population in america. largely discarded, warehoused in prisons and and kept in poor, hopeless neighborhoods. add in large populations of poor white people in vast swaths of rural land areas. and, possibly in a much more extreme situation, 2) palestinians in the west bank, and particularly gaza. gaza has been described as the world's largest open-air prison, with good reason. at the current rate, they're doomed, too. both situations are just US policy - they're not magic, or what other people or governments choose to do. what do all these people do in their current circumstances? try to survive. try to maintain some semblence of dignity. try to hold onto their humanity and that of the people doing this to them. so, our current neoliberalism craze is stratifying the US population by income even more, creating more and more extraneous/disposable populations. automation might be exacerbating our move towards faciscm and domination and extraneous populations, but it's only that -- just helping, not a primary driver, imo. - 4-day work week could help.
- things like GBI could help.
- billionaires and rich people paying taxes could help.
- organizing obviously could help.
- technology sanity (ludditism) could help.
- a less insane intellectual culture could help.
- more democracy could help.
my take on automation is that there are shocks to the system, but over the long haul, there is plenty of work to do, but without popular organizing, most of us are doomed. |