Class Markers Used in the Real World

It’s important to remember something about jobs: every industry is trying as
hard as it can to automate human workers out of existence in order to
maximize profit. And they’re finding some success. We should only expect
that success to continue, and to accelerate.

Remember what the priority is: profit. Not jobs. Not America. If technology
makes it so that 75% of Walmart’s workers can be replaced by computers, then
that’s precisely what will happen.

Expect it.

You should actually be surprised if you see us gain jobs, not if we
lose them. Given our constant advances in what computers can do in place of
humans, and our ravenous obsession with profit, losing jobs is now the norm
and will remain so until we do one of two things:

1. Put human livelihood and happiness over capitalism and profit, or

2. We stop developing technology to replace humans in the workforce.

Like I said, expect it.

[ Feb 26, 2019 — This is interesting to read now that there is so much talk
about AI replacing jobs, people like Andrew Yang being out there, etc. At
this point these truths are nearly self-evident for most who pay attention,
but the problem remains the same. The question is whether we can make
changes fast enough to absorb what’s coming, or if there will be inevitable
large-scale conflict. ]

[ Feb 17, 2013 ]