951
Bill Gates says a 3-day work week where 'machines can make all the food and stuff' isn't a bad idea
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
951 points (95.2% liked)
Technology
59559 readers
3837 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Their goal isn't to get rid of people. It's to have more people. That's why abortion band and stuff are pushed. More people in this system means more people trading their lives to give profit to the owners. Unless there's an actual threat of revolution, more people is useful to them.
Yeah but my point is, more people may not mean more profits in the future. Depends on what can be automated.
So basically im saying there are two ways to increase profits, either reduce costs (salaries) or increase sales. It's possible that in the future, the equation becomes that it's possible to reduce costs very very much by reducing employees to almost nothing, but someone needs to buy the products for it to be a profit, I agree.
It just seems so primitive what we are doing now. We should build societies where humans are happy, but capitalism is the opposite, and other systems seem to suck also.
Those star trek societies are only possible because they can generate items from thin air...
The "other systems" historically have been sabotaged. For example, Cuba had basically no ability to trade externally because the US wanted them destroyed. They've been fairly successful despite this though.
For another example, the Guatemala coup occurred when a new democracy formed and elected a leftist who destributed land to the poor and implemented a minimum wage. The United Fruit Company (Chiquita now) was using the land and cheap labor for their banana empire, so they lobbied to have the US overthrow them. They did, and Guatemala ended up with a dictatorship, which also genocided the natives while the US did nothing to stop them.
There are plenty of other options. Capitalists are just scared of them, so they push the myth they always fail. Instead they fail because they kill them.
Yeah it makes sense. They want to protect what they have built now, all based on interest rates and everyone borrowing money they have to pay back their entire lives by working.
And more competitions for resources. Which means the owners of those resources (landlords, corporations) can drive up the prices. Kill off all the poors and then there’s no demand to rent your apartments or buy your shit. No demand drives prices down and therefore profit down.