• @ABCDE
    link
    24 months ago

    Technology has not resulted in reductions in employment.

    • @PunnyName
      link
      84 months ago

      Depends on the field. Ain’t no milk man or ice box delivery anymore.

      • @ABCDE
        link
        54 months ago

        Depends on the country, but that was not my point. Overall employment has not suffered at the hands of technology; it improved efficiency, yes, and resulted in some occupations needing fewer (or no) people, however people found work in other areas.

        • knightly the Sneptaur
          link
          fedilink
          74 months ago

          You seem to be missing the Luddites point, which is that the benefits of industrialization all went to oligarchs and shareholders while the displaced workers suffered economically as the value of their skills evaporated.

          The problem is Capitalism, having a machine do the work should liberate people from toil rather than income.

          • @ABCDE
            link
            -14 months ago

            Unless efficiency increases as the population does too.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        -14 months ago

        Those aren’t skills. Driving a truck is a skill, and there’s no shortage of demand for truck drivers today.

      • @ABCDE
        link
        24 months ago

        Please highlight it for me.

        • knightly the Sneptaur
          link
          fedilink
          44 months ago

          The industrialization of industry under Capitalism benefits Capitalists, not Workers.

          The luddites would never have been a thing if the rewards of automation were distributed among those whose labor they devalued.

    • @UnderpantsWeevil
      link
      English
      34 months ago

      Industry consolidation and outsourcing reduces the local labor demand by setting monopsony rates for workers.

      This consolidation is often facilitated by legal enclosures, environmental degradation, and state subsidies/contracts for political insiders.

      So you end up with working people who lose access to primitive accumulation, while big industrial owners are able to undercut skilled tradesmen with below cost merchandise in a recessionary economy.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      -34 months ago

      Sure but sometimes individuals do lose their jobs so it would have been ethical to stop technological progress back in the 1800’s

      • @ABCDE
        link
        34 months ago

        It would not have been ethical with increasing populations and no means to scale up effectively to meet their needs. Individuals, sure, but not overall; technology has replaced people in specific situations, people who then went on to get employment in other areas.

        • knightly the Sneptaur
          link
          fedilink
          4
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          So those workers who were made redundant got severance pay and training for the new jobs they were assigned to, right?

          No? They got thrown out on their asses with no means to provide for themselves and their families?

          Geeze, sounds like the Luddites were right.

          • @ABCDE
            link
            04 months ago

            Looking at the bigger picture… layoffs happen all the time for many reasons. Overall, technology has not increased unemployment.

            • @UnderpantsWeevil
              link
              English
              24 months ago

              layoffs happen all the time for many reasons

              Layoffs are the result of primitive capital being monopolized through enclosure and the local labor force being corralled into industries that generate more goods than the deflated economy can absorb.

              There’s no layoffs for yeomen farmers and independent craftsman. You only experience the phenomenon when land barons control the property and dictate how many people they wish to employ.