Blast techno-optimism

When I was in grade school, I came across some of those optimistic books which predicted flying cars and jet-packs by the 1970's. I asked teachers what went wrong, (almost expecting some dystopian period that nobody talked about) -- but they just said something about it being too expensive or turning out to be not practical.

My very first year of college, I had a fun class of Introduction to Aeronautical Engineering. The professor was in his 90's -- his first job was working on dirigibles during the era of the Hindenburg. One of his main themes in his lectures was "there is nothing new under the sun", (from the Bible). One of his favorite examples was that the jet engine, (one of the biggest new inventions in the field at the time), had actually been first created by the ancient Greeks. We were just now coming up with a practical use for it. The Chinese had gunpowder and printing long before the Europeans.

Over a lifetime of being involved in all kinds of technology, I realize that the problem of what we have is more economic than technical. It is good that book was written by an economist and not an engineer. An engineer will build something because they can, and tell you how wonderful it will make life, while an economist sees everything as trade-offs. You can have flying cars if you also accept heaps of flaming metal falling out of the sky when things go wrong. I think the true secular prophets of mankind should be Thomas Malthus, (Malthusian collapse), William Lloyd, (tragedy of the commons), and John Nash Jr, (game theory). They all tried to show how technological advancement always has a price. You can do things faster or better, so you consume more. You constantly negotiate the benefits of what is available over what it costs.

Yet there is a common naive meme that whatever problem we have can be solved with technology, even if many of those problems are caused by technology in the first place. Yet there seems to be a mainstream naive optimism that things will constantly get better as long as we get rid of all those opposed to modernization. Where I live, (an hour's drive from Google HQ), there are some real zealots. There is the "Singularity" club that believes once we have a supercomputer that is smart enough to program itself, it will immediately solve all the world's problems and usher in a utopia, (unless it decides it is better off without us). It implicitly assumes that all the world's problems are solvable and won't cost anything. There are the "Venus Project" people, who follow the doctrine that they can solve everything with technology if only they could overthrow the shadow government which holds back technology. They are mostly sold on the unscientific idea that there is a virtual abundance of resources that has been kept secret from just about everyone.

The truth is that there probably is some balance between what technology can provide and what we are willing to live with. We need to pick the level that we are comfortable with and which can be sustained, or evolution and economics will put us back in place. That's probably what a Singularity or Venus Project would figure out anyway.

So, actually it isn't "The End of American Growth", it is the compromise to a sustainable balance, and no country is immune.

I am more of the camp that there is warranted technological optimism, although I am pessimistic about it. As I come from a younger generation than both BitterCrank and swstephe (I assume, although I am not really that 'young', nearing 30 in a couple years), basically all the jobs that I worked beginning from my very first job at 12-13 to the present has been working some sort of automating machine that accomplished tasks that, prior to getting my first job, when I was a child, I remember vividly seeing multiple people toiling away as human appendages to the institutional productive idea. My first job was data entry using MS Access (late 90s), a job which my dad paid me to do, as his secretary just got laid off, the second was writing an online payment processing script (roughly at 15 years old) for a tourist company, who then subsequently fired the woman who was doing all that paperwork for them as well as the greeting cashier, before I made them a website, which allowed them to fire the three marketing and customer acquisition experts they had on payroll. Around 17-18, oddly enough, I became one of the IT helpdesk guys for the college I was attending; all the equipment I was maintaining had the symbolic blood of the eradicated labor, the printers and computers that got rid of the typists, the network wiring that got rid of the messenger boys, the online blackboard system for classes that got rid of teachers and paper mill producers. Then, I became the self-checkout guy at a grocery store back when these were brand new, and I was singlehandedly manning 12 machines, which, I guess, means 11 other people were fired in order to make room for these machines. Of course, when I became a union organizer, my job wasn't really automated, except for the fact that I wrote a scraper script to steal contact information for workers at the stores I was trying to flip, and then I quit because they started introducing self-checkout machines at these fastfood joints. And when I worked at a think tank, I replaced the data gatherers with scripts of a similar caliber. When I was in university, I used online search engines to find papers for my research, and that must mean a bunch of librarians were fired.

I'd say that in my short life (~30 years) I've personally been part of the replacement of over a thousand workers as a result of the technology that I was hired to operate. I don't know what the fuck these people are doing now, but since being young means, generally, to toil away at the lowest rungs of work as far as skill is concerned, then, looking around, I'd say that the technology is really eating us up, and my generation, more or less, will be competing for fewer and fewer openings.

To clarify my position, I am optimistic that the technology can get to the level of societal-wide catastrophe. I am really optimistic that they'll figure out ways to automate most of human labor, but I am entirely pessimistic that human society as whole will be better off materially. What we'll end up with is most likely a techno-fascist feudal corporatist society. I don't understand why the fuck people in my generation are all dancing and being happy and shit. The only dancing you should be doing is a funeral dance.

Reply to discoii After the revolution you will no doubt find yourself in an automated automation crimes trial. You'll have plenty of company, and you'll automatically all hang together on the automated gallows.

I've had some temporary jobs that I would have joyfully turned over to a machine: data entry, clerk - typist, that sort of thing. Most of it was extremely tedious and the social aspects were often demeaning. On the other hand, had the machines taken that job already, I'd have been shit out of luck.

The Machine and Automation can not deliver to mankind the promised blessing of leisure in which to pursue self-fulfillment because we have no idea how to distribute the benefits of automation. The machines are owned by corporate entities of various kinds, and the owners generally accept no obligations to the permanently displaced or never-hired-in-the-first-place victims, whether it is Apple, Exxon, or your Alma Mater. Labor is a cost with a solution: Get rid of it. Problem is, most people belong with labor and not with management or owners.

On the flip side, displaced labor becomes economically irrelevant, having no value as employees (too expensive) and little value as consumers (too poor). The problem of displacement is not yet critical, because there are enough people still employed to keep the world economy going. How all this will resolve itself is unclear to me. It probably won't be good.

Plutocrats can withdraw to various valhallas and let the lumpen proles starve, so don't look to the uber rich for solutions. Personally, I don't want to smash all the machines. I like the piece of automation sitting on my table that enables me to gather my own information and compose my own screeds without having to turn to the services of a secretary. I prefer the self-check out because I can then control the speed at which I have to bag my groceries and I sort of like the technology. Automated dishwashers do a better job than dish washers standing at a sink who are indifferent to the results of their labor, however honest and dignified it might be. Automated tellers are fine by me for most transactions.

The key to unlock the problem of plutocrat-owned automation vs. labor is, unfortunately for the plutocrats and their fellows, their demise. They don't have to be executed, but they do have to be divested rather thoroughly of their wealth and power. Theoretically, the fruits of labor to the laborers is do-able. Societies can decide what, and how much, when, and how work should be automated and what, how much, and when should remain for people to do. The producers and consumers can decide distribution of the proceeds.

Lots of work has been taken over by machines, and in some cases, most workers would say the machines are welcome to it. Like, for instance, automated barn cleaning equipment that removes tons of cow manure every day from large dairy barns. Shoveling up wet, heavy cow manure on a hot humid day is not a joy (and it has to be done whether it is hot or not).

I recommend that we exercise a preferential option for workers over machines as a starting point.

Quoting Bitter Crank

Against techno-optimism

Who needs all these gadgets to entertain us anyway? When I was a kid, all we needed were a few jacks and a rubber ball. I'm going to go stand on my porch and yell at the whippersnappers to get out of my yard.

As a checkout operator, I'm particularly concerned with the fact that advancements in technology have made my job almost redundant. Fortunately for me, many people are idiots, and can't or won't use the self-checkouts, and there are still frequent technical faults and age restricted sales which require assistance from a member of staff. I also work behind a customer service desk on the weekends, and the customer service aspect of retail has also been effected by technology, with automated customer service (e.g. automated telephone calls and online FAQ's), but this is often woefully inadequate and cannot (at least presently) effectively replace trained human staff.

Additionally, I expect employers would be forced to introduce redundancies gradually over time, so as not to cause a massive backlash.

Quoting Bitter Crank

I recommend that we exercise a preferential option for workers over machines as a starting point.

Yes, I agree, although doing so likely causes problems of varying significance depending on circumstance, position, outlook, context, etc., but I think that it's the right thing to do. If mass redundancies are to be introduced as a result of technological advancements, then the workers ought to be supported - at least in as much as being able to support themselves financially and in finding alternative work, but then that's why we have the welfare state with benefits for the unemployed and job centres. Perhaps more should be done, but at what cost? I know [i]I'd[/I] be pissed if I was made redundant because of a machine, and had to go back on the dole, meaning a significant reduction in my income until I could find another job. Who wouldn't be?

Reply to Sapientia Automation involves a question to which I haven't heard a satisfactory answer. Marx maintained that "labor creates all wealth". Metals are dug up, refined, turned into products, distributed, and sold -- all by the hands of laborers. Same for crops and forest products -- raw materials turned into finished goods by people's labor.

Automation still requires labor to create the automated machines (the self-checkouts, the robot spot-welders, etc.) but it seems like the labor input of automating machines gradually vanishes over time, since this capital equipment lasts a long time. It's possible to imagine an automated factory that manufactures automating equipment that takes care of itself.

Can machines create wealth? If they can, it would seem that they do so with less cost than using human workers. Can capitalists (employers of the most self-sustaining machines) do away with workers? If workers can be disposed of, isn't that the end of economics? If there is no economy, can there be wealth?

What is the endgame of the machine?

Quoting Bitter Crank

Can machines create wealth? If they can, it would seem that they do so with less cost than using human workers. Can capitalists (employers of the most self-sustaining machines) do away with workers? If workers can be disposed of, isn't that the end of economics?

Well, if that came to be, I reckon we'd have a revolution on our hands, and I think (and hope) that it would be to a large extent anti-capitalist and pro-socialist. Then perhaps Marx wouldn't have been too far off with his prediction that capitalism will lead to it's own demise and to socialism.

If Marx were correct and we all were motivated out of a sense to promote the common good, we wouldn't need check out operators. We could each just take what we needed from the shelves (no more and no less) and go home and feed our families. The check out operator is actually just a security officer, standing over the money and making sure no one takes too much. He's a creation of the capitalistic greed machine, where people are assumed to be selfish. I envision a time when such selfish motives will vanish from the human psyche and we'll all live together as one in a John Lennonesque orgasm (a Lennongasm if you will). All we need is for humans not to be humans, a realistic goal as any.

Reply to Bitter Crank

Gene theory is a significant discovery that has yet to see the advancements to the degree the others have on your list (I would distinguish it from Germ theory). There is a very exciting time ahead in medicine and gene therapy, a revolution knocking at the door (i.e., CRISPR). I understand your caution about the future of gene manipulation, but it seems inevitable so we should work now to nudge it in the right direction so its not disastrous. Parallel to or piggybacking on the genetic revolution could be an anti-aging technology and a significant life-expectancy boost that seems to be gaining steam right now.

Otherwise, you might be right that the technological revolution is over. It's hard to predict discoveries since they're either outside our current scope of vision or we treat them as an incremental step of advancement on existing technology.

It does seem we are outside a usual cycle of creative destruction with digital automation and online services. Human nature will be put to the test to see how people will remain productive, if at all. My guess is there will be an increasing turn to luxury and entertainment and production will be focused in that direction (e.g., YouTube stars, Etsy shops).

Quoting Hanover

If Marx were correct and we all were motivated out of a sense to promote the common good, we wouldn't need check out operators. We could each just take what we needed from the shelves (no more and no less) and go home and feed our families.

Was Marx really of the position that we're all motivated out of a sense to promote the common good? Or was he rather of the position that we ought to be? The former seems naïve and mistaken.

Quoting Hanover

The check out operator is actually just a security officer, standing over the money and making sure no one takes too much.

No, that's not quite right, since security is only part of the job. They're also to ensure that no one pays too little. They're to ensure that the correct amount of money is paid and secured, as well as providing satisfactory customer service. If security was the main concern, I expect checkout operators would be more like bouncers or security guards, and/or perhaps they'd be behind a protective screen, like in banks.

Quoting Hanover

He's a creation of the capitalistic greed machine, where people are assumed to be selfish. I envision a time when such selfish motives will vanish from the human psyche and we'll all live together as one in a John Lennonesque orgasm (a Lennongasm if you will). All we need is for humans not to be humans, a realistic goal as any.

Alternatives to capitalism need not be in the form of the naïve, unrealistic ideal that you describe above.

Quoting Sapientia

Was Marx really of the position that we're all motivated out of a sense to promote the common good? Or was he rather of the position that we ought to be? The former seems naïve and mistaken.

If he only thought that people ought to be concerned about the public good, but recognized they wouldn't be, then that would suggest he fully intended communism to be totalitarian, else how else would the people do something they didn't want to do?
Quoting Sapientia

No, that's not quite right, since security is only part of the job. They're also to ensure that no one pays too little. They're to ensure that the correct amount of money is paid and secured, as well as providing satisfactory customer service.

Concerns about people paying too little and that the money is secured are generally security matters, namely that the money that belongs to the store is received and protected.

Let's aim a bit higher than satisfactory customer service. Let's go for exemplary or remarkable. Come on team, we can do better!Quoting Sapientia

Alternatives to capitalism need not be in the form of the naïve, unrealistic ideal that you describe above.

I was attacking Marxism, which was what had been brought up. It seems that no matter how many times Marxist regimes fail, Marxists insist upon explaining how that failure was the result of poor adherence to true Marxist doctrine.

But to the question of whether there is something better than capitalism, I doubt it.

Quoting Hanover

If he only thought that people ought to be concerned about the public good, but recognized they wouldn't be, then that would suggest he fully intended communism to be totalitarian, else how would the people do something they didn't want to do?

Is that a serious question? First of all, the view that people ought to be motivated out of a sense to promote the common good need not represent a proposal for an enforced policy. Secondly, you seem to have implied that totalitarianism is the only means of getting people to do something that they don't want to do. If so, then has there ever been a government that is not totalitarian? According to that reasoning, there surely has not been; but I would disagree. And lastly, aren't you assuming that people don't want to promote the common good? That is arguable. There are certainly a very large number of people who do. For example, just ask people from the UK what they think of the NHS - whether or not it's worth maintaining for the common good.

Quoting Hanover

I was attacking Marxism, which was what had been brought up. It seems that no matter how many times Marxist regimes fail, Marxists insist upon explaining how that failure was the result of poor adherence to true Marxist doctrine.

Well, I am sympathetic towards Marxism, but I would not attribute the failure you speak of to a poor adherence to "true" Marxist doctrine - if by that you mean classical Marxism. I am more open to the idea of a reformed Marxism. For example, Jon Elster has answered the question as to whether he is a Marxist, by stating the following:

"If, by a Marxist, you mean someone who holds all the beliefs that Marx himself thought were his most important ideas, including scientific socialism, the labour theory of value, the theory of the falling rate of profit, the unity of theory and practice in revolutionary struggle, and the utopian vision of a transparent communist society unconstrained by scarcity, then I am certainly not a Marxist. But if, by a Marxist, you mean someone who can trace the ancestry of all his most important beliefs back to Marx, then I am indeed a Marxist. For me this includes, notably, the dialectical method and the theory of alienation, exploitation, and class struggle, in a suitably revised and generalised form."

Quoting Hanover

But to the question of whether there is something better than capitalism, I doubt it.

So do I to an extent, but even if capitalism is the best form of government, in the form in which it exists in today's society, it could be made much better, in my view, by fundamental reforms of a socialist nature.

Reply to Hanover My question wasn't about what Marx thought motivated everyone. My question was, "What happens to people who labor when machines take their place (when production is fully automated)?

I don't expect that we will soon see a dystopia where no one works, and all but a few are mired in wretched poverty. However, we are already seeing a displacement by machines of labor in various categories. Many of the displaced workers are finding themselves unnecessary in the existing economy. They are unneeded and unwanted.

I don't see any reason why the process of replacing labor by machines won't continue. Maybe the machines owe the unemployed financial support.

Quoting Bitter Crank

Maybe the machines owe the unemployed financial support.

If so, I hope they pay up before they rise up against us and attempt to wipe us out like in the Terminator films. Or perhaps it won't be so bad and they'll allow us to live out a seemingly normal life in the Matrix.

Reply to Bitter Crank As I recall, John Henry competed valiantly against the steam driven hammer only to die at the end. Such folklore began during the industrial revolution as people began to have the same fears we are now seeing reemerge as machines aren't just replacing our brawn, but now our brains. It's hard enough to compete against one another, much more so against machines designed to work harder and faster than us.

I don't know what ought to happen, but I do see what is happening. It's that fewer and fewer truly compete, with an educated elite ruling the world. The simple hard worker just has less and less to do. So, we raise taxes to give benefits to those who can't earn them and we redistribute the wealth and further polarize the have and have nots.

If we get to the point where the economy is largely automated, we have to start sorting out who gets the wealth produced, with me arguing it should go to the people who automated it, and you arguing a more equal distribution. With each election cycle we can see which way it'll go. One day we might get so polarized that there won't be any moderate candidates, like you might see if it's Sanders versus Trump.

Quoting Sapientia

Or perhaps it won't be so bad and they'll allow us to live out a seemingly normal life in the Matrix.

You might already be in the Matrix. As far as the guy in the Matrix knows, he wasn't in the Matrix until he was being told he was being removed from the Matrix.

Quoting Hanover

So, we raise taxes to give benefits to those who can't earn them and we redistribute the wealth and further polarize the have and have nots.

When the richest 62 people (in the world) have more wealth than 1/2 of the world's population, and when the richest 1% have more wealth than 90% of the people (in the world, not just in the United States) we are redistributing wealth, all right, but not in the direction you are suggesting. One doesn't have to be a Marxist to identify the gap between billions in poverty and a few hundred super-rich as the driving force behind polarization.

Reply to Bitter Crank Well, remember that Marx maintained that labor creates all wealth simply because money itself is the material form representing labor time. So, because products may be produced without human labor expended, at least after the machine itself was made by the laborer (or, as we will soon see more and more of, machines that make machines), the condition for the demise of capitalism is specifically the abolishing of labor-based monetary schemes, which we have today. In effect, when we exchange money for goods, we are exchanging labor for labor. Of course this cannot be sustained forever. We have to transition to a purely money-as-distribution-of-goods model, where labor expended and money itself is completely disconnected.

Reply to Hanover You are talking about a completely different time and technology type altogether. The steam engine simply augmented human brute strength, but it still required humans to direct it. In fact, the automation you saw during the industrial revolution was not an automation that was directly replacing human jobs, it was an automation that replaced humans due to its greater productive capacity. The people that lost their jobs were people who did not fit into the production quotas required by the market, given each machine plus one human could produce X, then the production quota / X is equivalent to the number of laborers required. If X increases as a result of augmented powers from machinery, then that specific company requires fewer workers. But it opened up possibilities to do other things in a more effective manner, so the market boomed. This, coupled with colonialism, ensured a growing world economy. It still required, nonetheless, humans to direct the operations, in other words, to augment their productive capabilities with this augmented power source.

Today's technology is a completely different species, although it has existed for millenia in more primitive forms. Today, we have general purpose machinery, the ability to remove the necessity for humans altogether for the vast majority of work. What we are augmenting here is our brain power, plus our brute strength. There is nothing left for humans to augment in this case--this is all there is to human labor: brains and brute strength.

Reply to discoii I'd appreciate your saying more about setting up a non-labor-exchange money system.

Do we, for instance, just give ourselves money to exchange for arbitrary value? I receive $1000 week in this new money with which to buy shelter, food, clothing, medical care, services, amusements, roses, books, etc. at arbitrary prices (produced in automated factories and farms) and all watched over by machines of loving grace?

Quoting Bitter Crank

My question wasn't about what Marx thought motivated everyone. My question was, "What happens to people who labor when machines take their place (when production is fully automated)?

If we do get to the place where machines can perform all human labor, will we also automate decision making? CEOs, Judges and Politicians are only fallible human beings who have to sleep and take breaks.

Maybe the machines will compute the optimal society and distribute accordingly?

Anyway, it sounds like you're talking about a post-scarcity society where no human need work. There will still be some jobs in entertainment and the sex industry out of preference, maybe crafts and what not. But nobody will need to work.

That's one version. The other is the rich and powerful own all the machines and the rest of us eat the crumbs from their tables. Probably grounds for a terrible revolution, but if the rich own the military (which could largely be automated as well), then they may be able to hold on.

Quoting Marchesk

Anyway, it sounds like you're talking about a post-scarcity society where no human need work.

Maybe machines will calculate the ideal society and distribute accordingly. I'd like that. I fear that such a happy outcome will probably not occur. What worries me is that there will be no post scarcity society, only one of increasing scarcity of everything most people need and desire. We are already creating large numbers of "surplus people", people who are unneeded and unwanted in the existing economy. They do not work cheaply and fast enough, or they are not skilled enough, or they do not consume enough, to be useful.

There is no real reason for this tragic situation to occur, except that it might be the choice of the uber rich who might be prepared to endure the death of billions of people as a solution to the problem of maintaining their control over resources (all of a piece with the grimmest dystopias).

Reply to Bitter Crank Unfortunately I spent too much time in the scientific socialism camp, so my thoughts are not advanced enough to posit a fully fledged system worthy of good criticisms. All I know is what the problem is, I am only just beginning to think about what alternatives there are.

That being said, I think you put it right: it'll definitely involve some sort of loving grace from the machines, something akin to, or derived from, Project Cybersyn. I think it would involve something like a directly democratic process. Outside of that, I only have vague ideas that might sound good, but due to obvious reasons (the Dark Side preventing it), there isn't that much data regarding alternative economic systems in recent years. We'd have to go throughout most of history to see examples, and we'd have to think of something new that is derived from those instances.

Reply to Hanover Quoting Hanover

If he only thought that people ought to be concerned about the public good, but recognized they wouldn't be, then that would suggest he fully intended communism to be totalitarian, else how else would the people do something they didn't want to do?

Actually Marx is occasionally criticized by political theorists within the Marxist tradition for having too overly-emphasized groups of people as self-interested economic actors. Which is why I find criticisms like these slightly humorous when they pop up. After the failures of the revolutions of 1848, he figured that the bourgeoisie couldn't be the source for true revolutionary agency because at a certain point it goes against their interests as a class. According to this view, the character of a political revolution is shaped by the social milieu of its primary actors, establishing ideologies and institutions with the intended effect of ensuring the reproduction of the conditions in which said actors could flourish (hence analyses that show that even the French revolution only took on more radical and less accommodating characteristics when the sans-culottes were agitated and formed the majority of bodies in political actions). He thought that the proletariat had become the true revolutionary class because it is in their self-interest to abolish themselves as a class, i.e. overturn social relations that involve their exploitation as an inherent part of its functioning logic. Whether he was ultimately right about this latter point is another question, but regardless I don't think you could fault him for believing some-such idea about how human nature is selfless or immediately directed to the public good.

He didn't really write much about what communism should or should not be, but forms of more direct democracy argued for by people in the tradition doesn't mean it's completely unorganized. It's not the 'honor system', as that would kind of defeat the purpose if any one individual could single-handedly undermine the conditions of collective ownership and control of the economic and political spheres. The 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is supposed to designate such a system, in which total political power emanates from democratic worker councils and governmental/inter-local institutions are meant largely as coordinating bodies for carrying out decisions coming from them. Of course we can all make criticisms of Marx and update it to more contemporary conditions. But if machines are going to be our betters 'at the top', I hope there are mechanisms in place which puts 'the top' in service to humanity and not the other way around (which isn't to say human masters are any better). The dangers of automation isn't so much a technological issue, but a political one of flow of power and resources. Or better yet, the technological question is always already a political one.

Quoting Shevek

The 'dictatorship of the proletariat' is supposed to designate such a system, in which total political power emanates from democratic worker councils and governmental/inter-local institutions are meant largely as coordinating bodies for carrying out decisions coming from them.

There would have to be a limitation placed on such a democracy which would require that it adhere to the principle that each must contribute to the best of their ability and each is entitled to his fair share. That is, you can't just assert there will be an open democracy with each voting his individual conscience for whatever he wants, else there most certainly will be some group of people who will vote for privatization and capitalism. which would defeat the whole point of enterprise. In fact, I'd expect that no rule could be passed (even should it emanate from the worker's council) that does not require certain behavior consistent with working for the collective. Those restrictions placed on democracy are what will (and has) led to totalitarianism within communist systems.Quoting Shevek

Of course we can all make criticisms of Marx and update it to more contemporary conditions.

Or we can simply finally recognize that Marxism is an unworkable theory in practice and that constant efforts to explain how it might work make it a meaningless tautology where it's just true that if we all live together as one, we'll be happy.

Quoting Hanover

There would have to be a limitation placed on such a democracy which would require that it adhere to the principle that each must contribute to the best of their ability and each is entitled to his fair share. That is, you can't just assert there will be an open democracy with each voting his individual conscience for whatever he wants, else there most certainly will be some group of people who will vote for privatization and capitalism. which would defeat the whole point of enterprise. In fact, I'd expect that no rule could be passed (even should it emanate from the worker's council) that does not require certain behavior consistent with working for the collective. Those restrictions placed on democracy are what will (and has) led to totalitarianism within communist systems.

Of course there are certain restrictions and limitations. I don't think anyone is claiming otherwise. Like I said in the sentence prior to the one you quoted, it would defeat the purpose if any one individual can single-handedly suspend the conditions on which collective democratic control of society rest. This is nothing peculiar to alternative leftist democratic forms. All representative political systems have foundational legal frameworks that organize its form. And it's not exactly a new idea that these restrictions are designed to be in service to democracy by protecting the conditions in which it can meaningfully exist by preventing arbitrary consolidations of power. Think Montesquieu and the separation of powers. Political and human rights do not simply exist as concrete abstract objects somewhere that will flourish when all restrictions are thrown off as fetters, they're written into law. It's a matter of inventing jurisprudences that say this or that is no longer possible. A Marxist would have it that we can easily come up with jurisprudences that are far more democratic than the ones we have now, given that the frameworks we have (the U.S. constitution, the magna carta, etc.) are designed to set up a political system that privileges capital and restricts democracy from the economic sphere of society. By your reasoning, any system with 'restrictions' (i.e. all of them) lead directly to totalitarianism.

You're going to have to do more argumentative work to establish that political systems proposed by Marxists always and necessarily lead to totalitarianism.

Quoting Hanover

Or we can simply finally recognize that Marxism is an unworkable theory in practice and that constant efforts to explain how it might work make it a meaningless tautology where it's just true that if we all live together as one, we'll be happy.

A bare assertion does not an argument make.

You purport to have figured out everything wrong with Marx's arguments when you're obviously coming from a place of ignorance. Have you even read Marx, let alone tried to extend the least bit of charitability in trying to understand his arguments? Attacking strawmen gets tiring, and it is quite unfortunate because I'd really like to hear intelligent criticisms of Marx from perspectives that know what he's talking about. I don't believe everything Marx says, but I try to understand what he says before evaluating it.

Quoting Shevek

By your reasoning, any system with 'restrictions' (i.e. all of them) lead directly to totalitarianism.

I've not suggested that there be a democracy without a constitution of sorts to designate the powers of government, and I've also not suggested that the creation of one would necessarily lead to totalitarianism. It's not as if I wasn't aware that there are many countries (most notably the US where I live) that are democracies and that also have constitutions that designate the role of government.

The distinction is that a Marxist government would have to set forth Marxist principles within its constitution and it would necessarily begin with the notion that the state (or community, or whatever you wish to call the collective) maintains some level of supremacy over the individual. It is that notion that leads to the totalitarianism that is characteristic of every state that considers itself Marxist. Such places have never been bastions of individual rights. And so when the proletariat votes, should it vote for anything over the subjugation of the person to the collective, then it has redefined it's god. Quoting Shevek

You're obviously coming from a place of ignorance when you purport to have figured out everything wrong with Marx's arguments. Have you even read Marx, let alone tried to extend the least bit of charitability in trying to understand his arguments? Attacking strawmen gets tiring, and it is quite unfortunate because I'd really like to hear intelligent criticisms of Marx from perspectives that know what he's talking about. I don't believe everything Marx says, but I try to understand what he says before evaluating it.

You miss my perspective is all. You can read Marx as a philosopher or you can read him as a politician. The former leaves us having all sorts of heady discussions about alternative ways to structure our society, and perhaps we can talk about revolutions and bringing down the oppressive structures so prevalent in our society (despite the fact that the oppressive structures in non-Marxist countries are child's play when compared to those in Marxist countries). The latter leaves us with a very different discussion. We stop caring about theories, hypotheticals, and endless debates in smoke filled rooms. We simply ask: does this work? It seems not to. You've built a hell of a mousetrap, but it just doesn't catch mice.

So, sure, I could go about discussing Marx like many discuss Descartes (for example). Interesting stuff with a massive academic history that really doesn't matter outside of academic settings. That, though, isn't why he's being discussed. You guys are discussing him like he ought to matter outside of academia.

Quoting Hanover

The distinction is that a Marxist government would have to set forth Marxist principles within its constitution and it would necessarily begin with the notion that the state (or community, or whatever you wish to call the collective) maintains some level of supremacy over the individual. It is that notion that leads to the totalitarianism that is characteristic of every state that considers itself Marxist. Such places have never been bastions of individual rights. And so when the proletariat votes, should it vote for anything over the subjugation of the person to the collective, then it has redefined it's god.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. Don't all governments necessarily back up their authority on principles that the state maintains some level of supremacy over the individual? I cannot flaunt laws at my pleasure and refuse to pay taxes lest I meet the coercive violence of the state, i.e. get shot, tased, and/or thrown in jail. How is this unique to nominally communist countries?

And why would a Marxist charter necessarily include such measures? Marxists want to create a system where the state isn't a coercive apparatus for the capitalist class to enforce their unequal power relation with labour and the economically/politically excluded. Large political and economic forces suppress the vast majority of individuals in capitalist societies. Freedom of expression and self-determination suddenly magically disappear when you enter the workplace, where most people spend a majority of their waking life. Owners of firms can make decisions that are life-altering and sometimes matters of life and death for workers without any mechanism for their input or consent, simply when it makes sense to maximize profit for an elite of shareholders. The state is beholden to and almost entirely controlled by the minority of owners of capital. Forms of oppressive power exist which are detrimental to the individual in that it creates layers and forms of alienation. It excludes and represses minority groups and creates racial divisions. The question is, which individuals are you protecting by favouring capitalist social relations and political formations?

Quoting Hanover

You miss my perspective is all. You can read Marx as a philosopher or you can read him as a politician. The former leaves us having all sorts of heady discussions about alternative ways to structure our society, and perhaps we can talk about revolutions and bringing down the oppressive structures so prevalent in our society (despite the fact that the oppressive structures in non-Marxist countries are child's play when compared to those in Marxist countries). The latter leaves us with a very different discussion. We stop caring about theories, hypotheticals, and endless debates in smoke filled rooms. We simply ask: does this work? It seems not to. You've built a hell of a mousetrap, but it just doesn't catch mice.

So, sure, I could go about discussing Marx like many discuss Descartes (for example). Interesting stuff with a massive academic history that really doesn't matter outside of academic settings. That, though, isn't why he's being discussed. You guys are discussing him like he ought to matter outside of academia.

So basically you've convinced yourself that by calling Marx a 'politician', you can dismiss an entire body of work and say that it's flawed without ever having to read it or understand it. That's pretty convenient. I should have tried that trick in my philosophy program in college. I can't believe philosophers haven't found out that devastating way of arguing yet.

Evaluating whether 'Marxism works' requires knowing what 'Marxism' is, which is already demanding that we treat his work in philosophical manners in interpretive debate, and then understanding the historical contexts in which actors say they are implementing 'Marxist' theories. We must then be able to argue that certain 'failures' are due to the foundational logic of 'Marxism' and not any other factor (is the failed-state of Somalia 'evidence' of the failure of parliamentary systems? Of capitalism? What counts as 'failing'?). Not saying you can't make the argument, just saying that there isn't even much of an argument here yet. Spoiler alert: 'Marxism' isn't a set of doctrines but a tradition of many different writers disagreeing with each other.

Quoting Hanover

(despite the fact that the oppressive structures in non-Marxist countries are child's play when compared to those in Marxist countries)

For what it's worth, I'm an American living in one of those scary supposedly 'Marxist' countries (Vietnam), and I can tell you from first hand experience that a) there is nothing meaningfully Marxist about the organization of society, except for perhaps some terminology and government posters, and b) to say that oppressive structures in the US are "child's play" compared to here is more than simply hyperbole, it's blatantly false and the truth is arguably the opposite in certain aspects. Corruption, undemocratic political form, exploitation, are all interlinked with the overwhelming and extremely fast in-flow of capital and the complete overturning of society by the wholesale integration into global capitalist markets. Why these countries turned out the way they did is a much more complex and complicated affair than just waving one's hand and saying 'because communism'. And for what it's worth, I think the converse is too simplistic also, that is to say that it is only because of outside factors that caused the failure of 20th Century-style socialism and there's nothing wrong with that form of socialism itself.

But I don't see any virtue in further discussing these contexts or arguing why Marx matters outside of academia if you're unashamedly sticking to intellectual laziness and dogmatism.

Quoting Shevek

Don't all governments necessarily back up their authority on principles that the state maintains some level of supremacy over the individual?

No, there are some governments that hold that certain principles are self evident and that derive from nature and cannot be infringed upon. The government is understood as the protector of those inherent rights, as opposed to the grantor of those rights.Quoting Shevek

Marxists want to create a system where the state isn't a coercive apparatus for the capitalist class to enforce their unequal power relation with labour and the economically/politically excluded.

This characterizes Marxist governments as nothing other than protectors against capitalism, as if they have no proactive goal of their own.Quoting Shevek

Large political and economic forces suppress the vast majority of individuals in capitalist societies. Freedom of expression and self-determination suddenly magically disappear when you enter the workplace, where most people spend a majority of their waking life.

It's hard to coherently speak of self-determination when you suggest it doesn't exist. If I voluntarily choose a job that requires behavior that I find oppressive, then one must ask why I chose it unless I find the pros of that job outweigh the cons, which simply means I've made a rational choice. If you're suggesting that I was forced to take that job because I was forced not to have adequate skills to find other employment, then I don't know what you mean by choice or self-determination. That is to say, if you don't like wearing a hair net at McDonalds because it makes you look silly, then don't work there.Quoting Shevek

So basically you've convinced yourself that by calling Marx a 'politician', you can dismiss an entire body of work and say that it's flawed without ever having to read it or understand it. That's pretty convenient. I should have tried that trick in my philosophy program in college. I can't believe philosophers haven't found out that devastating way of arguing yet.

And you again miss my point, although this time apparently intentionally. Is Cartesian dualism defensible? Let's first read the Meditations and break it down and figure out what it says, then we can see the strengths and weakness of it. All fun stuff. My question relates to whether Marxism pragmatically applied is better than capitalism. My position is hardly anti-intellectual. It just starts with the idea that if you're going to argue a political theory (as opposed to a metaphysical theory), it actually matters whether your theory works.Quoting Shevek

And why would a Marxist charter necessarily include such measures?

The better question is why they all do, not why they all must, including in Vietnam.Quoting Shevek

For what it's worth, I'm an American living in one of those scary supposedly 'Marxist' countries (Vietnam), and I can tell you from first hand experience that a) there is nothing meaningfully Marxist about the organization of society, except for perhaps some terminology and government posters, and b) to say that oppressive structures in the US are "child's play" compared to here is more than simply hyperbole, it's blatantly false and the truth is arguably the opposite in certain aspects.

Oh, yes, nothing like a single government media outlet to get your news from. Although I understand that you don't really care about the market force of demand, maybe ask yourself why the trail of immigrants moves from Vietnam to the US and not the other way around. Quoting Shevek

Spoiler alert: 'Marxism' isn't a set of doctrines but a tradition of many different writers disagreeing with each other.

And such is my point: trying to declare Marxism a failure simply results in its redefinition where someone cries out "yeah, but that's not really Marxism." The claim "Marxism doesn't work" becomes unfalsifiable, meaning it is a meaningless claimQuoting Shevek

But I don't see any virtue in further discussing these contexts or arguing why Marx matters outside of academia if you're unashamedly sticking to intellectual laziness and dogmatism.

I know, but you'll keep talking to me about it because you can't help yourself not to. It's just too near and dear to your heart for some reason.

.

Quoting Hanover

No, there are some governments that hold that certain principles are self evident and that derive from nature and cannot be infringed upon. The government is understood as the protector of those inherent rights, as opposed to the grantor of those rights.

You're just spewing ideology but missing the point. Those same governments that place restrictions on government to protect individual rights also have laws that give the state vast powers over individuals, and these powers are enforceable with violence. Some of these powers are biopolitical: the ability to determine matters of life and death and to regulate life. If the state has these powers, somewhere in its legal corpus it is maintaining the state's "supremacy over the individual" in some domain of life or another. Somehow you are under the illusion that this is entirely unique to 'communist governments'.

Your original claim was that communist charters involve setting up a 'supremacy of the state or collective over the individual', and it is this feature that necessarily leads it to totalitarianism. Yet clearly Western capitalist states have this feature. If you hold that a capitalist government can have this feature yet protect individual rights, then mutatis mutandis communist governments can. You haven't established why, in principle, communist forms of government necessarily cannot protect individual rights. I suspect this is because you don't know what you're talking about, and haven't actually read any Marxist political theory.

Quoting Hanover

This characterizes Marxist governments as nothing other than protectors against capitalism, as if they have no proactive goal of their own.

Fair enough, and that may be a limitation of my wording. But I figured "Marxists want to create a system" implies some proactive goal. The founders of the U.S. system 'wanted to create a system that protected individuals (actually white, property-owning, men) from the whims of arbitrary aristocratic tyranny'. Even if it sounds like an entirely negative formulation, it implies the creation of new political forms to provide such protections.

Quoting Hanover

It's hard to coherently speak of self-determination when you suggest it doesn't exist. If I voluntarily choose a job that requires behavior that I find oppressive, then one must ask why I chose it unless I find the pros of that job outweigh the cons, which simply means I've made a rational choice. If you're suggesting that I was forced to take that job because I was forced not to have adequate skills to find other employment, then I don't know what you mean by choice or self-determination. That is to say, if you don't like wearing a hair net at McDonalds because it makes you look silly, then don't work there.

I'm not sure what you mean at all. How can we not speak coherently of self-determination when it is suppressed?

Well, for the vast majority of McDonalds workers, that isn't a 'free choice', in the sense that a choice is a 'free choice' only if it happens under non-coercive conditions. If they decide they don't like working 60 hours a week at McDonalds and forced to wear stupid attire and flair and quit their job, then they're threatened with the prospect of going homeless, racking up debts and hurting their credit score, and not eating. And if they have children then those things are over their heads too. They are coerced into hierarchical forms of labour. The point is that there is a power relation embedded in the relationship between capital and labour. There are owners that get to decide matters of life and death for the majority of people. By your reasoning, slaves have self-determination and freedom of choice because if they don't like working for their masters then they can just try to run away or just stop working all together. Of course that's absurd, because we know it's not 'free' because such a choice is not happening under non-coercive conditions, i.e. they're likely to get flogged, beaten, or lynched.

And please don't give me the predictable crap about how wage-labour is not the same thing as slavery. Look at the point I'm trying to toy out with the comparison.

Quoting Hanover

Oh, yes, nothing like a single government media outlet to get your news from. Although I understand that you don't really care about the market force of demand, maybe ask yourself why the trail of immigrants moves from Vietnam to the US and not the other way around.

Oh the 'market force of demand' is alive and well in Vietnam.

As if the shitty corporate media in the US owned by a handful of conglomerates provides a vibrant democratic interchange of journalistic integrity. Get a grip man. And actually foreign news outlets are readily available just a couple of clicks away with your television remote. I'm not saying totally state-owned news channels is great and fantastic, just these condescending orientalist narratives coming from the West are deeply hypocritical and missing a sense of proportion. Yeah the news outlets are owned by the state, but there also aren't ghettos with an occupying militarized police force shooting blacks and latinos either.

They move to the US because that's where the wealth is. It doesn't matter if it was a vibrant democracy here, many are still poor. And the rich Viets like going to the West so they can buy up property to avoid taxes and launder money, a corruption that the West is more than glad to reinforce and partake in. Also the West is constantly glorified in the media, that is mostly Hollywood movies and such. As per the boat people, enforcing an embargo on a poor country that already endured decades of war certainly didn't help (the US dropped four times as much tonnage in explosives on this region than that used in all of WWII), and it's demonstrable that if they didn't have the subsidy system, a desperate situation would have turned into a humanitarian calamity. It also coincided with the war with the Khmer Rouge and the Chinese invasion. Do people also want to move because of the government and corruption? Yeah sure, but it's really naive and simplistic to pretend like this vast change in society to a capitalist market system has nothing to do with it. You point at governments here and say 'bad!' yet you defend the very systems and structures that make it worse.

Quoting Hanover

And such is my point: trying to declare Marxism a failure simply results in its redefinition where someone cries out "yeah, but that's not really Marxism." The claim "Marxism doesn't work" becomes unfalsifiable, meaning it is a meaningless claim

Yet I was implying that 'Marxism doesn't work' is a meaningless claim. You're making it not me. 'Marxism' isn't a definite set of principles or a political and economic system that we can test whether or not it 'works'. It's an intellectual and political tradition. You can argue that that tradition is wrong-headed for certain reasons, or that certain ideas within the tradition were failures, but then you might have to treat them like actual philosophers and read them. Yuck.

Even getting a charitable grasp from exegeses would work.

Quoting Hanover

I know, but you'll keep talking to me about it because you can't help yourself not to. It's just too near and dear to your heart for some reason.

Hah, at this point I'm more motivated out of sense of fidelity to philosophy than Marxism. You're intellectual laziness and dogmatism is too much to be left ungauded.

Quoting Shevek

You haven't established why, in principle, communist forms of government necessarily cannot protect individual rights. I suspect this is because you don't know what you're talking about, and haven't actually read any Marxist political theory.

This is the very nonsense I've been trying to avoid. Of course anyone can sit around and hypothesize a possible situation where a Marxist government would protect individual rights. That would be a wonderful exercise I suppose. But, to the extent that economic theories can be actually implemented, the question of whether Marxist governments have been protectors of individual rights is an empirical question. It's the same old argument that's been made for decades and decades: Marxism isn't per se bad, it just happens to be every time it's been attempted. Quoting Shevek

If they decide they don't like working 60 hours a week at McDonalds and forced to wear stupid attire and flair and quit their job, then they're threatened with the prospect of going homeless, racking up debts and hurting their credit score, and not eating.

We're all slaves under this definition. I have to eat, so I am a slave to food. Equating working at McDonalds to slave working the fields is hyperbole and a bit of an insult to those suffering slavery. We all have to work. Food doesn't fall from the sky. How you choose to work is your choice, but no one is making you work at McDonalds are in any particular job you don't want to. Quoting Shevek

Oh the 'market force of demand' is alive and well in Vietnam.

Of course it is. Without capitalistic initiatives, Vietnam's economy wouldn't be thriving and it would be a far more miserable place to live. Capitalism is saving Vietnam from its failed communistic system. That is pretty obvious even if it pisses you off.Quoting Shevek

As if the shitty corporate media in the US owned by a handful of conglomerates provides a vibrant democratic interchange of journalistic integrity.

The US media sucks, yet somehow everyone (here at least) seems to know it and seems to know what's really going on. That would seem to indicate that there is no control over information or opinions in the US and that media, in all its various forms, is doing its job.Quoting Shevek

Yet I was implying that 'Marxism doesn't work' is a meaningless claim. You're making it not me. 'Marxism' isn't a definite set of principles or a political and economic system that we can test whether or not it 'works'. It's an intellectual and political tradition. You can argue that that tradition is wrong-headed for certain reasons, or that certain ideas within the tradition were failures, but then you might have to treat them like actual philosophers and read them. Yuck.

I just think you're stuck in trying to evaluate Marxism as an intellectual enterprise as opposed to looking at what has happened when it has been implemented. The proof is in the pudding, not in the recipe.

Quoting Hanover

This is the very nonsense I've been trying to avoid. Of course anyone can sit around and hypothesize a possible situation where a Marxist government would protect individual rights. That would be a wonderful exercise I suppose. But, to the extent that economic theories can be actually implemented, the question of whether Marxist governments have been protectors of individual rights is an empirical question. It's the same old argument that's been made for decades and decades: Marxism isn't per se bad, it just happens to be every time it's been attempted.

Okay, have you conducted an empirical study of 'Marxist governments' and its level of totalitarian power over the individual? What 'Marxist states' do this, have there ever been any that went against the rule, and exactly what features that are 'Marxist' lead, empirically speaking, to such totalitarianism?

The problem is that you think you're being empirical and historical, but you are in fact very ahistorical and ideological. You point at China or Vietnam as evidence, yet these are highly capitalist societies, and you isolate them from the context of oppressive states (arguably more-so) that are nominally capitalist and US allies, i.e. Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Saudia Arabia, and so on and so on. You are unable to demonstrate, historically speaking, why 'Marxism' necessarily involves totalitarianism. On the other hand, I have shown why capitalism as an economic system, to the extent that it is actually implemented and in theory, necessarily involves unequal power relations enforced through coercive apparatuses that thwarts the will of the individual.

Quoting Hanover

We're all slaves under this definition. I have to eat, so I am a slave to food. Equating working at McDonalds to slave working the fields is hyperbole and a bit of an insult to those suffering slavery. We all have to work. Food doesn't fall from the sky. How you choose to work is your choice, but no one is making you work at McDonalds are in any particular job you don't want to.

No not really. 'Nature' isn't an authority you can appeal to, it doesn't have any characteristics of agency to subjugate you for its own self-interest. The universal fact that we have to eat to survive is just a brute fact. It's a property of our universal facticity as natural, living, fleshy animals that has no meaning in-itself. It just is. On the other hand, capitalism is a social system. Anyone that tries to argue that a social system 'just is' rooted in the natural and cosmological state of things is spewing ideology (that is, in my view, a primary role of ideology), whether it be 'the divine right of kings', the tripartite estates system, the 'natural harmony' of the Indian caste system, or capitalists justifying inequality on some grounds of 'survival of the fittest'.

We all have to eat and contribute work toward being able to eat, but that doesn't automatically mean it has to happen under hierarchical and coercive contexts. There is no 'outside' of capitalism that someone who wants to opt-out can go to, they're coerced into this social relation of a few owning everything and the rest having nothing but their labour to sell for wages. No where did I 'equate' working at McDonalds to a field-slave, but I did compare them. In my view, to write off the really-existing oppressive conditions that such workers have to endure unless they want to starve and go homeless, and to just pretend like they enjoy all of the freedoms to choose types of work that any middle or upper class person with few or no restrictions can is an insult. And yes, they are being coerced into work at McDonalds or a particular type of work. The fact that you think otherwise tells me you've never experienced being in such a position and you live in your privileged bubble where you think everyone's experience is the same as your own.

Quoting Hanover

Of course it is. Without capitalistic initiatives, Vietnam's economy wouldn't be thriving and it would be a far more miserable place to live. Capitalism is saving Vietnam from its failed communistic system. That is pretty obvious even if it pisses you off.

It's not obvious at all. Any country that is embargoed, bombed to the stone age, and invaded/attacked by its neighbors for trying to adopt some system or another is set up to fail. This once again gets to your ahistorical and decontextual narratives. In your ideological universe, you don't have to know any of the historical circumstances why something happens, just a waving-of-the-hand and saying 'because communism' suffices for you.

You don't know anything about contemporary Vietnam, let alone its history, but you still seem confident that you're equipped to opine about broad and complex matters such as political economy. Here's just a few reasons why your narrative turns out to be too simplistic upon closer inspection of the situation: while GDP per capita is increasing, that income generation is intensified into the hands of an elite class, much of the development here is happening with unsustainable levels of debt, they're deteriorating the environment and the mechanisms that would have previously enabled them to control the oncoming sea-water that is rendering much of the agricultural land in the delta useless, public hospitals are deteriorating in favour of expensive private hospitals the vast majority of people cannot afford, malls, and rich condominium developments where nobody lives but their sole purpose is for the rich to buy and sell on the market. Come to Vietnam in 50 years when a majority of their population is expected to be displaced from rising sea-levels due to climate change, another brilliant innovation gifted to us by modern capitalism. The TPP will price a majority of the population out of medicines, and scary 'socialist' programs that are a matter of life and death for many people are deteriorated by 'economic liberalisation' requirements for foreign investment. If it wasn't for the last vestiges of socialist policies, they wouldn't have universal health care and education, something that aids the poor, however low-quality that care is due to the country's lack of resources and wealth, compared to countries of comparable GDP per capita that didn't go through 'evil communism'. I suspect you're not interested in complicating matters for a better picture of reality however, especially when it contradicts your simplistic ideological narratives. I don't purport to have all the answers, and I would disagree with someone that says 20th Century-style socialism is the easy answer, but I at least try to understand the roots of the problem.

Quoting Hanover

I just think you're stuck in trying to evaluate Marxism as an intellectual enterprise as opposed to looking at what has happened when it has been implemented. The proof is in the pudding, not in the recipe.

I look at history too, but the problem is you have to actually know what you're talking about. Turns out, proving 'Marxism is a failure' might actually require knowing what Marxism is and getting a more nuanced view of history.

A few comments about the actual OP.

What is systematically forgotten in the discourse of technological advancement, is demand, the other side of the coin to supply. As swstephe, it is a lot more about economics, not just about technology itself. Because basically what technological improvements come down to is to lower the costs production, hence lower supply costs. Well, that's just part of the equation. To forget the other part of the equation is the problem we have today.

Put it another way, the question to ask yourself is this: Why were the Luddites wrong in the 19th Century?

In the 19th Century the vast majority of people in West were working in the agricultural sector. In the 20th Century and in this Century, it's just a small fraction of people that are farmers. We know what happened: hordes of unemployed masses didn't surface, all those that lost their jobs and their children, didn't wreck havoc to the Western society and didn't collapse our societies. They "just" got new jobs. Period. As if this just happened naturally. What this typical reasoning doesn't get here is that the technological advacement wouldn't have happened if there wouldn't have been the demand for it. People who now think that with advances with robotics and Computer science will create large hordes of unemployed people simply don't get this at all: if the people truly get poorer, there will be no technological revolution. Sure, some Nikolai Tesla could invent truly fabulous stuff, but if the demand wouldn't emerge, who cares? Who would hear about Nikolai in the first place? The most whimsical and naive idea is that somehow the ultra-rich people will compensate for the demand of the masses. No, it doesn't go that way.

We see this clearly from the example Third World. They surely have their super-rich people, but those hardly matter. And the technology is there for them to use, yet it hasn't radically transformed the poorest societies.

Now for a China to grow from an economy less in size than the Netherlands to the second biggest (or by some indicators, the biggest) in the World didn't happen because of Chinese demand, but because demand from the West. Without that demand, without the all important export sector, the Communist Party of China likely wouldn't have had any chance to get a lot Chinese out the misery that were in... Yet a lot of countries are in exactly dire situation that their people are basically dirt poor and hence there is no demand for a large service, for advanced consumer products and all what we find in a highly industrialized country. Poor countries simply don't have the means to invest in R&D and technology. They don't have the educational systems to bring out those smart new engineers and innovators. Their only economic growth comes from possible raw materials extraction, again done for the export sector. The importance of demand is just barely touched with the focus on the importance of the middle class, which is understood to be important for growth. Yet in my view the idea of the importance of a middle class simply hides the bigger question of the importance of demand. And that demand is as crucial to any technological breakthrough to be exploited as is the innovation done by some engineers or scientists in the first place.

Hence the question about techno-optimism is a lot more about economic-optimism than usually acknowledged.

Quoting ssu

Why were the Luddites wrong in the 19th Century?

The Luddites are irrelevant here. Talking about the limitation of techno-optimism has nothing to do with Luddite-ism. I'm not a Luddite. I'd love to have a robot that would be both my auto and my chauffeur (I can't drive). I think a lot of people would like that. I look forward to intelligent appliances like cooking stoves. Why can't a stove tell when something is too hot and reduce the heat? This isn't a rocket science problem -- its a matter of sensors and processors. But a smart stove or a clever refrigerator isn't a revolution.

Quoting ssu

Hence the question about techno-optimism is a lot more about economic-optimism than usually acknowledged.

Yes, absolutely. Which is why Gordon is pessimistic about techno-economic optimism. His prediction for the next 25 years is slow growth, but growth none the less--maybe 1.1% - 1.3% annual growth (and this is for the US/Europe/Japan -- not China or India). He believes that one of the 'headwinds' that will keep growth low is the highly disproportionate pile-up of wealth in the very rich that top 1, 2, or 3%. They can't and aren't going to consume enough to create a lot of demand, and they have so much of the wealth tied up under their control that the rest of the population does not have enough wealth to spend a way to higher growth rates.

There will be demand, of course, but the kind of innovations that are likely are not the kind that recast society and generate tsunamis of new wealth -- like broadcasting, railroads, electricity, telecoms, autos, and so forth did. A new car that can back itself out of the garage, drive you to the office, and then come back home to deliver children and spouses during the day (all by itself) is still a car. It's not the revolution that moving from horses and foot traffic to autos was. Yes, robot cars will require some new infrastructure, but it will be much more modest than building the superhighways, roads, streets, and parking ramps in the 20th century.

The other reason he sets a fairly low limit on growth is that it takes around 50 years for a really important innovation to mature economically. The huge innovations of the late 19th century have matured. The personal computer has matured. (It has gotten smaller too, and been integrated with telephones). The Internet is still fairly new, and there aren't any huge innovations on the horizon that are going to mature in the next 25 years. That might happen in the 25 years beyond his predictions. But then there is global warming to factor in.

I haven't finished reading his book, but I think the upshot is that both pessimism and optimism should be guarded. Holding our own in the next 25 years might be THE major achievement.