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Scarcity is the enemy.
The reason why we oppose capitalism’s version of growth is scarcity.
It’s a reckless system that doesn’t pay enough heed to real limits like how many PPMs of CO₂e our atmosphere can handle, how much we can drill out from our lithosphere, and even the limited bandwith of “renewable” resources like wood and sunlight. The way capitalist growth causes scarcity, and even rewards creating scarcity, is killing the Earth.
In a world where resources means life, effiency that can save resources also can save lives.
Automation can be a form of efficiency, if it’s done in an accountable way, and with workers instead of as a way to control them.
Now, the way a lot of automation is done today is just sweeping the problem under the rug, out of sight, out of mind.
Since our current way of life is wasteful, when our levers are pulling other levers that are pulling other levers, that’s multiplying and exacerbating the waste. But if our lives were frugal and elegant and preservatory and careful and gentle, then our automations would be a way to save time and wear and effort. They would create savings and they’d fight scarcity.
In the kitchen I pour my wheat berries with a scoop or a mug or a spoon, or even with the palm of my hand sometimes. If that automation didn’t exist, I’d have to pick up each kernel one by one by one. I’m not wasting anything by using the scooping method. I’m not rushing or stressing, either, it’s just appropriate, elegant, self-evident, people are probably facepalming bruises when reading this for me using such a dumb example, that’s how zen and clean it is to scoop those grains.
It’s even sounds like a strawdoll, that’s how used we are to pouring our grains, but that’s how it was in the olden days. You’d pick your berries one by one.
Choosing to do something that way can sometimes be done for great reasons, like as part of awareness practice or just because it’s fun or relaxing. But being forced to do something that way when there are no good reasons, it feels like I’m wasting my life, like teacher tells me to write “Nobody loves me” 1000 times on the blackboard while it’s perfect kiteflying weather outside. Waste we can’t afford.
Capitalism really is the reason why automatization is bad.
Workers being replaced by robots are starving.
Workers being ruled by the robots they should instead be wielding are powerless.
Robots guzzling gas and water unaccountably are wrecking the Earth.
Labor exploitation and underaccounted-for environmental impacts are the two hallmarks of market capitalism. Automatization are making both of those two hallmarks worse because automatization is a lever. If we could make a good world instead, which we’ve got to do as soon as possible, automatization could make that good world better.
We went over all this in the industralization 1700s. The machine bosses won that time. If it happens again, they can have their victory party on the cinder.
Renewable doesn’t mean infinite