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by mjburgess 4335 days ago
"Reduced labour" isnt produced by automation, increased profit is. To "give back" labour you have to reduce profits.

"Leisure time" was won by unions, collective bargaining and legislation. "The Weekend" only exists at all because of the collective actions of the workforce, not of capital owners.

1 comments

Reduced labor (per output value) and increased profit are the same thing.

There is always a trade off between time spent working and wealth. Only through automation can we keep our current quality of life while working less, increase our quality of life without working any more, or do anything between those two possibilities.

No, automation just reduces the amount of repetitive labour. The remaining labour isn't distributed evenly across the workforce: some people take up more work to increase or maintain their level of wealth and some people become unemployed.

Envy and ambition create worst-case nash equilibria for all.