Here’s the thing. We could have that right now, today, we’re there, they’re right. Computers and just useful software (fuck AI) alone have increased productivity so much that one guy with fancy Excel can do the work of what used to take 98 people (7 banks x 14 person abacus teams). And that’s just one regional bank. Before email, corporations had internal mailing departments, now there’s dirt cheap and super convenient email. There are untold numbers of shell scripts out there quietly replacing whole ass departments of people. Soft automation alone, no robots needed, has increased human productivity to an absolutely bonkers degree since these statements were written. Thanks to the Friedman doctrine and Reagan and Thatcher and their ilk, all the benefits of that productivity got turned into a benefits for the asset holding class, while the middle and lower classes got lectures on the morality of hard work.
People talk about the age of abundance - we’ve been living it for decades. Money is created out thin air, automation and industrial have done the rest.
Marx called it 100 years ago. Thomas Piketty nailed it down a few years ago : Surplus goes to assets owners - the more assets you own, the more surplus you accumulate and it’s effective are compound over the time. Until you have a handful of people people who own all the asset, which is where we are now.
Here’s the thing. We could have that right now, today, we’re there, they’re right. Computers and just useful software (fuck AI) alone have increased productivity so much that one guy with fancy Excel can do the work of what used to take 98 people (7 banks x 14 person abacus teams). And that’s just one regional bank. Before email, corporations had internal mailing departments, now there’s dirt cheap and super convenient email. There are untold numbers of shell scripts out there quietly replacing whole ass departments of people. Soft automation alone, no robots needed, has increased human productivity to an absolutely bonkers degree since these statements were written. Thanks to the Friedman doctrine and Reagan and Thatcher and their ilk, all the benefits of that productivity got turned into a benefits for the asset holding class, while the middle and lower classes got lectures on the morality of hard work.
Flawless .
People talk about the age of abundance - we’ve been living it for decades. Money is created out thin air, automation and industrial have done the rest.
Marx called it 100 years ago. Thomas Piketty nailed it down a few years ago : Surplus goes to assets owners - the more assets you own, the more surplus you accumulate and it’s effective are compound over the time. Until you have a handful of people people who own all the asset, which is where we are now.
People used to physically carry boxes of paper checks out to planes to be shipped between banks.