[nimbius]

this is relatively unremarkable for those with an understanding of wage, labor, profit, price and capital.

capitalism will always seek to reduce labor cost. during the epoch of neoliberalism it achieved great strides in this by reducing labor power through union busting by both thatcher and reagan in the UK and US respectively. it has also effectively curtailed any increase in the minimum wage for nearly 20 years as well as reduced protections, regulation and prosecution for wage theft and overtime pay violations which it maintains as exclusively as civil matters while ensuring theft itself from a merchant in turn is always a criminal matter through the primacy of private property.

to learn more i recommend reading Marx's "Das Kapital," albeit its rather academic. Engels "wage labor" is also a good read to understand why housing is so persistently unaffortable but helps to understand why any other good or service slowly becomes so as well.

[torginus]

The problem is we are one step beyond capitalist exploitation as described by Marx - basically the surplus which fatcat industrialists extract from the laborer does not really exist - you have to compete in the market with others who do the same, and offer things at the lowest possible margins, and if you need to be big enough to get capital in, you have investors who demand their profits.

So basically you are squeezed between the public demanding lower prices and the investors demanding record returns. If you are not a monopoly, that is an impossible ask

Basically the only truly profitable businesses left out there is selling hopes and dreams to investors, and shovels to those who build them, which just about describes tech & AI, with companies who regularly manage to 10x their valuations (and P/E ratios)

[aeternum]

Marx fails to imagine a world in which labor actually has little to no value.

His worldview is primarily that capitalists 'steal' the valuable labor. However it doesn't seem that that is actually the world we are in. Instead the intrinsic value of human labor seems to be slowly trending towards zero.

And it kind of makes sense, same has happened with oxen labor, horse labor, etc.

[saghm]

> And it kind of makes sense, same has happened with oxen labor, horse labor, etc.

Sounds like we should start imagining a world where we don't treat people like literal livestock, and then figure out how to get there fast

[wqaatwt]

Isn’t it the complete opposite? i.e. high automatization means that a single worker can create many times more value than before. However it reduces the demand for labor and worker bargaining power. So companies have no incentive to pair “fair” wages.

[aeternum]

That is true but likely only temporarily. Why is the single worker even needed?

We tend to have a pretty human-centric worldview so if there's a single human working to keep a hotel running, our default is to attribute all the generated value to them when it really isn't the case. You can imagine that hotel at some point in the near future goes from requiring 1 worker to keep it running to zero.

[wqaatwt]

> is the single worker even needed

Because he is? I do not expect for some sort of universal “AGI” to emerge within my lifetime which would supplant humans in every area (of course what do I know.. but still there is no real indication we are even remotely close to that currently)

> default is to attribute all the generated value to them when it really isn't the case

Certainly, you should attribute a significant proportion to the people who installed the automated system and even more to those who designed it.

[aeternum]

>Certainly, you should attribute a significant proportion to the people who installed the automated system and even more to those who designed it.

Indeed, but what happens if/when they choose to sell the system and someone else buys it? Now the owner is who is generating the value. Even if he hires some maintenance worker to come by once and awhile and check up on it, it is the system (aka the capital), not the worker that is generating the vast majority of the value.

[arthurptj]

Then why does every plumber I know own a yacht

[cucumber3732842]

Industry cartel.

If you landscaper had one like the plumbers do he'd have his own yacht.

Or he wouldn't exist because you'd buy about as much of his services as you do a plumber's.

[AngryData]

Because you live in a prosperous area and the plumbers unionized in order to maintain wage growth along side their neighbors.

[anthonypasq]

low skilled human labor is going to zero. high skill approaches infinity.

[torginus]

> Marx fails to imagine a world in which labor actually has little to no value.

Marxism was an idea formulated especially as a reaction against a world where labor has lost almost all of its value. Which is precisely the origin of capitalism - the idea that money itself can be productive, and thus people who have lots of money can be expected to get more of it.

This was an untrue idea for most of human history, outside of the circles of moneylending and banking.

[AlotOfReading]

It doesn't seem like the value of human labor is going away. If you look at luxury goods, they're still "handmade". Telecoms still advertise human representatives. Nursing homes still charge massive amounts for personal service.

What's changing is how much of that surplus value is captured by the workers doing the labor.