Don’t you think that the capitalists will invest in automation before ever agreeing to actually pay people more? Why raise living standards for people you’re just going to have to keep paying more when you can invest in robots and hire the bare minimum number of humans to manage them as possible? Since they only care about profit and max…
Don’t you think that the capitalists will invest in automation before ever agreeing to actually pay people more? Why raise living standards for people you’re just going to have to keep paying more when you can invest in robots and hire the bare minimum number of humans to manage them as possible? Since they only care about profit and maximizing shareholder value, it seems that humans will lose a CBA every time. I would love to be proven wrong.
Capitalists will always invest in automation if it will lower labor costs no matter what the laws are. It is important to grasp this. They will always try to push labor costs to zero no matter what. That is their inherent incentive. This is actually the rationale for imposing regulations upon them.
I appreciate this so much and your work in general -- I am guessing that this is the type of piece written to be compelling and move our collective imaginations away from how limited they are currently.
But I struggle to see how to build the leverage for something like this nationally or internationally -- it feels like a idealistic push that ignores one of the most critical parts of the current administration's awful plan, which is that the US is about to finally lose any kind of real international trade power (happening faster than ever).
How do we -- nationally or internationally -- meaningfully build leverage around this?
It is not any more idealistic than 140% tariffs on China are. Just in a better direction. There are already minimum wage agreements in trade deals between specific nations, this is just an expansion of it.
I don't mean to be all doomer, but we can no longer assume:
1. The US state can be a stable vehicle for redistribution
2. The US has enough moral or political capital internationally to lead anything re: international economic policy.
You're right that it's not more outlandish than the tariffs, but precedent around this kind of thing (when the US was the Global Economy Force) was already unenforced, non-binding, or symbolic.
There's nothing more annoying than commenting on an essay to complain that the essay isn't about something completely different -- but it troubles me when I see so many of our best labor thinkers ignoring that the US is no longer in the same place in the world order.
Trump is making awful plans because he was able to get enough power to do any plan, no matter how awful. I don't understand how to move forward without engaging with our lack of comparative power domestically or internationally...
Don’t you think that the capitalists will invest in automation before ever agreeing to actually pay people more? Why raise living standards for people you’re just going to have to keep paying more when you can invest in robots and hire the bare minimum number of humans to manage them as possible? Since they only care about profit and maximizing shareholder value, it seems that humans will lose a CBA every time. I would love to be proven wrong.
Capitalists will always invest in automation if it will lower labor costs no matter what the laws are. It is important to grasp this. They will always try to push labor costs to zero no matter what. That is their inherent incentive. This is actually the rationale for imposing regulations upon them.
I appreciate this so much and your work in general -- I am guessing that this is the type of piece written to be compelling and move our collective imaginations away from how limited they are currently.
But I struggle to see how to build the leverage for something like this nationally or internationally -- it feels like a idealistic push that ignores one of the most critical parts of the current administration's awful plan, which is that the US is about to finally lose any kind of real international trade power (happening faster than ever).
How do we -- nationally or internationally -- meaningfully build leverage around this?
It is not any more idealistic than 140% tariffs on China are. Just in a better direction. There are already minimum wage agreements in trade deals between specific nations, this is just an expansion of it.
I don't mean to be all doomer, but we can no longer assume:
1. The US state can be a stable vehicle for redistribution
2. The US has enough moral or political capital internationally to lead anything re: international economic policy.
You're right that it's not more outlandish than the tariffs, but precedent around this kind of thing (when the US was the Global Economy Force) was already unenforced, non-binding, or symbolic.
There's nothing more annoying than commenting on an essay to complain that the essay isn't about something completely different -- but it troubles me when I see so many of our best labor thinkers ignoring that the US is no longer in the same place in the world order.
Trump is making awful plans because he was able to get enough power to do any plan, no matter how awful. I don't understand how to move forward without engaging with our lack of comparative power domestically or internationally...
Thank you for writing, as always.