Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

Key word being "encouraging". A possible(!) recent example of this would be the maga hat kid. The beauty of this incident is, the initial incident is guaranteed to polarize people, but even if more truth comes out it the result is even more polarization. Can't lose strategy, provided no one notices what's going on.

I believe this is a bi-partisan issue, I imagine many similar examples could be found with the political roles switched.

An effective modern day Napolean is going to need the persuasive skills of Donald Trump combined with political beliefs from both poles (~ Trump + Bernie Sanders), but even then with the top down control (censorship) over modern means of mainstream communication it could be difficult to even get your message out there.

So far there always seems to be reason for hope though, while Bernie is getting along in the years almost out of the blue here comes this Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez girl, almost like a "far left" Donald Trump to keep things interesting.

If 1000 people spend $1000, that isn't the same as a person spending all that in one month. The 1000 people are going to spend the money differently and on a variety of things. Phone bills, electric, car payments, groceries, rent, clothes, entertainment, coffee. Perhaps a restaurant or two or a bar. Might need school supplies and medicine. Even better, these 1000 people are likely to do this monthly.

One person spending 1,000,000 isn't likely to spend it on those categories nor spend that monthly. Even then, the spending is going to be different. The spending is also more likely to be stable.

The economy generally will survive if the one person doesn't spend their 1,000,000. Even if they stop spending that monthly, that'll be OK.

However, the economy will suffer if the many people do not spend 1000 a month, depending on how close the people are to each other. All in one town probably means an employer has had hard times, and eventually other businesses close because of it - unless, of course, things start getting better again.

The economy hurts if trends shift. When folks get more poor and cannot spend on small luxuries or stop buying as mnay cheap clothes, the economy suffers.

The person able to spend 1,000,000 a month likely very much depends on those 1000 people spending 1000 per month, consuming the things they do.

The computer is the greatest automation tool for office work, and that scenario is obviously not the case if you look at what happened to the PC revolution. Local area networks with various file and application servers were a huge market for small and medium sized businesses, and there was lots of hype similar to what you are describing. Now everyone is back to centralizing on virtualized remotely leased computers, just like small and medium sized businesses used leased time-shared (and for IBM 370 series, virtualized) remote mainframes in the 1970s.

Same thing happened with the centralization of the automobile industry in the 1910s, and is happening today in the centralization of agriculture: better combines, tractors, Round-Up pesticides etc. are all available to family farmers, which are all being bankrupted by large factory farms.

Of course, there's also an interesting worry that's not connected to jobs here, namely, whether we may end up in a new age of SaaS companies selling automation to small and medium sized businesses as their main business model. Imagine if instead of large companies using tech alone, or people buying these machines alone, the likes of Google/Amazon/Microsoft/whatever started leasing them through an AWS esque service for X amount of dollars a month. We've already got Maker Labs and what not, this could be the future for that.

Since pride in one’s work tends to tie with the value that broader communities put on the work, would a broad-based ongoing PR campaign by well-resourced organizations (incl. local and federal governments) help with that? Perhaps we can put the DeBeers experience with creating a shared cross-generation myth of diamonds representing true love to good use.

Elderly care, for example, would be hard to automate cost effectively over the next couple of decades and possibly longer. If society puts more value and gives more prestige to the job, more people would be willing to train to do it.

(Obviously, the society should help people transition to their new roles as well for example by covering the costs of living and training for a substantial period.)

[1] Lump of labor fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

As concrete examples:

- Has every piece of potentially useful land well-developed as a magnificent public or private space?

- Has all public infrastructure needed been built and well-maintained to the best quality possible?

- Does every person, adult and child, have access to world-class education/training they want or need, including private tutoring if they wish?

This seems more like the Industrial Revolution + Twitter. Just like all the studies that the world is technically better off in every modern metric of improvement (poverty, starvation, mobility..etc, but things feel shitty because you are forced to read about the one dude kidnapping and eating children one state over, I think it's probably just amplified fears (and ultimately seperation of teams) than it was during other large periods of change.

It's also worth noting that people dont die, jobs just shift unexpectedly. Sure it can crush a generation (see the american midwest from 1960-2020), but most people move to where the work is geographically and intellectually or just die out.

Whereas farm hands and secretaries have transformed, and were not so densely localized. (And farm hands are still needed, large industrialized farms are still rather labor intensive, just more area can be successfully managed by the same sized staff + a lot more capital/machinery.)

I am not sure where you got that impression. The loss of blacksmith (and nailmaker, etc.) and farm hand jobs in 19th century England was a huge social issue (hundreds of thousands of people starved to death after being thrown out of work in England alone; over a million if you count the displacement that lead to the Irish famines), with regular government inquiries, newspaper coverage, and many, many books written about it.

In particular, there was a very famous book, called Capital, written by Karl Marx, that, among other things, points out that popular anti-automation anxiety goes back much farther than the Luddite movement:

> In the 17th century nearly all Europe experienced revolts of the work-people against the ribbon-loom, a machine for weaving ribbons and trimmings… Abbé Launcelloti, in a work that appeared in Venice in 1636, but which was written in 1579, says as follows: "Anthony Müller of Danzig saw about 50 years ago in that town, a very ingenious machine, which weaves 4 to 6 pieces at once. But the Mayor being apprehensive that this invention might throw a large number of workmen on the streets, caused the inventor to be secretly strangled or drowned." In Leyden, this machine was not used till 1629; there the riots of the ribbon-weavers at length compelled the Town Council to prohibit it… After making various decrees more or less prohibitive against this loom in 1632, 1639, etc., the States General of Holland at length permitted it to be used, under certain conditions, by the decree of the 15th December, 1661. It was also prohibited in Cologne in 1676, at the same time that its introduction into England was causing disturbances among the work-people. By an imperial Edict of 19th Feb., 1685, its use was forbidden throughout all Germany. In Hamburg it was burnt in public by order of the Senate. The Emperor Charles VI, on 9th Feb., 1719, renewed the edict of 1685, and not till 1765 was its use openly allowed in the Electorate of Saxony. This machine [the ribbon-loom], which shook Europe to its foundations, was in fact the precursor of the mule and power-loom, and of the industrial revolution of the 18th century… About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by Parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright's scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century [19th], chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used. [footnote: In old-fashioned manufactures the revolts of the workpeople against machinery, even to this day, occasionally assume a savage character, as in the case of the Sheffield file cutters in 1865].

From chapter 15 of volume I

Sure, which is why I said over time. If you look at any isolated period you’re not going to see any trends that take place over longer periods of time. The standard of living world wide goes up over time, and has done so at a very accelerated rate since the industrial revolution. The world is generally becoming a better place, it’s much better than it was 100 years ago, and still even better than it was 10 years ago. New technology, and the progress of emerging economies makes life better for the whole world. There’s plenty of people who have an interest in selling fear, especially when it comes to technology, but that deception has been around for as long as technology itself. They said all the same things about mechanization back then as they say about automation now. The sad truth is that good news is critically dangerous to too many people with agendas, that it’ll end up getting ignored or denied with ignorant passion.

Is it fair that society lets someone keep so much money? Maybe not. But if you are an owner (directly or through stock) or even an employee who de facto wants the company to succeed, it is mutually beneficial to have such highly compensated executives.

> It is the great merit of E. G. Wakefield to have discovered, not anything new about the Colonies, but to have discovered in the Colonies the truth as to the conditions of capitalist production in the mother-country… First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative - the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 3,000 persons of the working class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, "Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river." (E. G. Wakefield. "England And America," vol.ii, p. 33)

In the United States, the slave labor system kept the workers from subjecting their masters to this "violation" of property rights. There are many historical records of European colonists running away from indentured labor to join Native Americans (the reverse does not seem to have ever happened).

The wealthy need poor laborers a lot more than vice-versa. What is really happening with automation is that it is being used to build militarized police states around the world that keep the poor from squatting the land held by the rich, to force the poor to work for the benefit of the rich (for example, someone is going to have to keep working on oil extraction for a long time to come, even if all the farming will be done by robotic tractors). A police state forcing people into wage slavery is the necessary precondition for the "rich live in automated luxury" scenario to occur.