They’ve been using the fear of automation to suppress wages and benefits for over 100 years now and the “we are now on the brink of” argument went stale in 1928.
The truth is if we were capable of replacing humans with automation, it would have happened already. To imagine it’s been held back for some altruistic reason is silly.
This is simply a power and money grab fueled by F.U.D…
1 Like
Do they say anything about getting ready of job protections for incompetent CEOs? Doing away with golden parachutes, stock options, gold-plated retirement and health insurance plans, nepotism, good-old boy networks? Are those really good for efficient, well regulated markets?
2 Likes
How do you think living standards actually rose for workers in the west? It wasn’t productivity gains; see the last forty years for evidence of that. It was exactly because of labor protections, and labor bargaining power generally.
This is not about insufficient production - Apple is sitting on a mountain of cash and could easily pay foreign workers a living wage, but chooses not to. The fact that capitalists attempt to bargain down wages by fleeing elsewhere is not an argument for reducing workers rights - the opposite is the case. The more workers are protected across the world, the more capitalists will be unable to bid their wages down by pitting them against each other (a state if affairs dubbed “globalization” that they engineered for exactly this purpose).
Finally, raising minimum wage laws, by removing cheap labor from the economy, encourages productivity growth, a.k.a automation. One reason growth has been so anemic lately (contra claims of rapid automation), is the availability of cheap labor, which obviates expensive r&d to automate tasks.
1 Like
Removing job protections could be good for the common good only if there was an adequate safety net for the unemployed. As it is right now here in California, workers are not allocated efficiently or allowed to set up their own business, because people are afraid to lose the health insurance that comes with the job, and have to think about the welfare of their families, if their new endeavors do not pan out. Universal health insurance and adequate unemployment payments would make the job market actually more efficient, as it would be better able to allocate workers to where they can be more productive. As it is now, the job market resembles semi-feudal indentured labor. Better social protections would make us freer and the economy better, but it would mean higher taxes and reduced profits for the rich, so the World Bank is not going to support that.
3 Likes
“The World Bank was just a bank that gave out large infrastructure loans.” is missing the end of the sentence:
The World Bank was just a bank that gave out large infrastructure loans that privileged development projected to extract resources from 3rd world countries for use by first world countries, at the ecological and social expense of those hosting the projects. Think World Bank-funded hydro electric dams that provide power not for those living most proximate to them, but to power bauxite-smelting factories that provided the US with the aluminum for soda cans and Boeing 74X-series fuselages, all at the simple cost of environmental devastation, malaria farming, community displacement (on the order of thousands to millions), and occasionally, genocide.
The only thing I “appreciate” is that “just a bank that gave out large infrastructure loans” is (a) utterly lacking in compassion, or (b) ignorant.
Likewise, “to regulate currency flow between countries” gives a nice gloss the the austerity program that is been central to the IMF’s agenda once Europe was reconstructed.
These institutions are a 20th century form of colonialism, and were designed with that in mind from the get go.
3 Likes
I don’t disagree at all; I only wish to state that the Bank’s role has evolved from a colonial one to a neoliberal one, and we might pointlessly disagree on which is worse.
Why not both?
1 Like
The French managed to…
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
