[leaveyou]

"It was bad because you couldn't get basic goods". True. But the current system is (even more?) problematic because you can't get basic JOBS. And not only that but a fundamental part of the current system is the accelerating race of getting rid of jobs. And not only that but now, unlike ever before, the system uses the best tools against jobs: software & automation.

[brc]

Well, that is just not true. Technological innovation has been automating jobs since, well, the Romans built aqueducts and hydro-power and stopped people having to haul water in buckets up hills and bashing grain with a rock.

There are more people employed now than at any time in history. That's only possible with automation. Even since the time of the Luddites, people have been freed from drudgery and poor jobs and have higher quality of life, despite industry after industry being dissolved.

For each product that is produced at lower cost and higher quality through automation, extra spending is released by the consumers who get to purchase those products at lower cost relative to their income. The extra spending either goes into savings (good) or spending (still good) which in turn creates new industries which create new jobs.

Essentially, you can't have a gaming and micro-brewing industry without the more menial tasks being replaced by automation. I want no part of a future where new innovations can't happen because we insist on slowing technical progress to keep people in menial jobs.

The process has been repeating for a millenia - you have to have a very compelling reason to suggest that it will somehow stop because of more technology.

[leaveyou]

I agree with you on many points. Trying to keep my messages short, I made them too ambiguous. I'm not a Luddite. My only worry is that Thomas Piketty may be right. I don't know where you live, but where I come from, there is a very small percent of shareholders/capital owners/producers and a very large number of consumers/labor owners. The consumers have less and less money and the producers need less and less labor. Are you sure a system like this is stable ? Technology and innovation is great if it works for you and useless if it's someone else's and he has no incentives to share it with you.

[leaveyou]

Personally I specialize in warehouses because with the coming levels of automation, increase of robotic productivity and loss of jobs, there will be so many products and so few customers that only bigger warehouses will be the solution :)