(en) wsm.ie/Stephen Hawking - choice is between life of
shared luxurious leisure and greedy miserable poverty
If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are
distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth
is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully
lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second
option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality" ---- That was the warning top
physicist Stephen Hawking delivered when asked "Have you thought about the possibility of
technological unemployment, where we develop automated processes that ultimately cause
large unemployment by performing jobs faster and/or cheaper than people can perform them?"
The quest was asked during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session
Back in 2013 we outlined the alternative we should organise for "In the era of robots,
vertical farms and libertarian communism, a life of leisure will not just be the preserve
of a small elite, luxury will be the birthright of all. Under capitalism, automation
drives up unemployment or drives people into "bullshit jobs", in an anarchist,
post-capitalist society, the slogan, "from each according to their ability, to each
according to their needs", would be a reality.
How we organise to overthrow the capitalist system and how we replace the functions of the
state, is another day's discussion. Here, the line is drawn at the fact that the material
conditions to realise the abolition of labour and a society of abundance, exist in the
here and now; If we want such a society, it is up to us to "make it so"
http://www.wsm.ie/c/stephen-hawking-shared-luxurious-leisure-miserable-poverty
