Machines making machines....

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How perverse!

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could- ... 19022.html

okay so these have been around for a while now, but they're getting smaller, and once we get to the point where metal working CNC's are also feasible we're going to be looking at the undeniable advance of communism. We might have 100 years if we adopt socialism now, or 200 at most if we don't, point being capitalism is on it's way out, and that's not even a question at this point.
If I hear "crony" capitalism one more time I'm going to be ill. Capitalism is capitalism, dog eats dog and one dog ends up on top, and he defends that place with all the power he's accumulated.

Re: Machines making machines....

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Interesting.

Not getting the connection to capitalism/communism/socialism though. Please explain.

Are you saying if human labor becomes obsolete, there is no longer surplus value for capitalists to extract....? Or something.

(So far, I think only makers of marzipan bunnies are in danger of obsolescence....)
"To initiate a war of aggression...is the supreme international crime" - Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson, 1946

Re: Machines making machines....

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Are you saying if human labor becomes obsolete, there is no longer surplus value for capitalists to extract....? Or something.
Pretty much.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
Now the early socialists thought this would come with a "new man" that somehow humanity would do away with it's envy, and greed... but others knew that the day would come when physical labor would become obsolete, either by design, or by the inexorable march of human ingenuity, leaving only mental labor left, and when that came, you would not need the same incentives as we do now, because those jobs are done by people who's primary reason for taking them, is not money.

Or to put it simply, as the capitalists do, when all are financially equal, who takes out the trash? Utopian socialists answered, that someone would because of the "new man", realists answered "Technology, what the fuck else". Later after computers that answer became, "robots, Duh!"

Edit: damnit, this is capitalism evolving into communism naturally, I may owe ABN some money in the distant future.
If I hear "crony" capitalism one more time I'm going to be ill. Capitalism is capitalism, dog eats dog and one dog ends up on top, and he defends that place with all the power he's accumulated.

Re: Machines making machines....

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gendoikari87 wrote:...the day would come when physical labor would become obsolete, either by design, or by the inexorable march of human ingenuity, leaving only mental labor left, and when that came, you would not need the same incentives as we do now, because those jobs are done by people who's primary reason for taking them, is not money.
Speaking as mental laborer in the private sector, it's not working out that way. I am as exploited as any coal miner, even if my fingernails are cleaner!
"To initiate a war of aggression...is the supreme international crime" - Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson, 1946

Re: Machines making machines....

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larrymod wrote:
gendoikari87 wrote:...the day would come when physical labor would become obsolete, either by design, or by the inexorable march of human ingenuity, leaving only mental labor left, and when that came, you would not need the same incentives as we do now, because those jobs are done by people who's primary reason for taking them, is not money.
Speaking as mental laborer in the private sector, it's not working out that way. I am as exploited as any coal miner, even if my fingernails are cleaner!
That's because capitalism is still the order of the day. If you aren't part of the ruling class you are going to be exploited barring some obscenely rare skill class.
If I hear "crony" capitalism one more time I'm going to be ill. Capitalism is capitalism, dog eats dog and one dog ends up on top, and he defends that place with all the power he's accumulated.

Re: Machines making machines....

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gendoikari87 wrote:
larrymod wrote:
gendoikari87 wrote:...the day would come when physical labor would become obsolete, either by design, or by the inexorable march of human ingenuity, leaving only mental labor left, and when that came, you would not need the same incentives as we do now, because those jobs are done by people who's primary reason for taking them, is not money.
Speaking as mental laborer in the private sector, it's not working out that way. I am as exploited as any coal miner, even if my fingernails are cleaner!
That's because capitalism is still the order of the day. If you aren't part of the ruling class you are going to be exploited barring some obscenely rare skill class.
Just out of curiousity, explain to me how I'm being exploited by the ruling class in my chosen profession?
*DISCLAIMER* This post may have been made from a barstool.

Re: Machines making machines....

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In Marxian economics, exploitation refers to the subjection of producers (the proletariat) to work for passive owners (bourgeoisie) for less compensation than is equivalent to the actual amount of work done. The proletarian is forced to sell his or her labour power, rather than a set quantity of labour, in order to receive a wage in order to survive, while the capitalist exploits the work performed by the proletarian by accumulating the surplus value of their labour. Therefore, the capitalist makes his/her living by passively owning the means of production and generating a profit, which is really the product of the labor which is entitled to all it produces.
Basically because someone "owns" a portion of the company you work for they get to keep a portion of your labor input, only because a piece of paper says so.

das Kapital volume I. has a much better explaination if you care to read.
If I hear "crony" capitalism one more time I'm going to be ill. Capitalism is capitalism, dog eats dog and one dog ends up on top, and he defends that place with all the power he's accumulated.

Re: Machines making machines....

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gendoikari87 wrote:That's because capitalism is still the order of the day. If you aren't part of the ruling class you are going to be exploited barring some obscenely rare skill class.
Man, that's better than tax exemption. I'm exploitation-proof! W00T!
In a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich the chicken and cow are involved while the pig is committed.

Re: Machines making machines....

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gendoikari87 wrote: Edit: damnit, this is capitalism evolving into communism naturally, I may owe ABN some money in the distant future.
Like I said, nature's going to right itself. You have to stop thinking of the situation in current terms and start looking at the possible future. You also can't look at something and go "well that won't work because," but instead "how could this work?" Capitalism will go out kicking and screaming, but the beauty about it is competition, and with competition you always have someone out there trying to do something better than the last guy so it's going to happen, it's just a matter of how long will it take.

Oh and I accept only silver or gold. :mrgreen:
Everything You Wanted to Know About ARs
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Re: Machines making machines....

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gendoikari87 wrote:
In Marxian economics, exploitation refers to the subjection of producers (the proletariat) to work for passive owners (bourgeoisie) for less compensation than is equivalent to the actual amount of work done. The proletarian is forced to sell his or her labour power, rather than a set quantity of labour, in order to receive a wage in order to survive, while the capitalist exploits the work performed by the proletarian by accumulating the surplus value of their labour. Therefore, the capitalist makes his/her living by passively owning the means of production and generating a profit, which is really the product of the labor which is entitled to all it produces.
Basically because someone "owns" a portion of the company you work for they get to keep a portion of your labor input, only because a piece of paper says so.

das Kapital volume I. has a much better explaination if you care to read.


Actually I don't care to read more about it. This is where I'll differ from the socialist movement, I think it's a bunch of hogwash. Why shouldn't they keep some of money? We both put an effort into keeping the company progressing. The owner put up the initial capital to start the business
*DISCLAIMER* This post may have been made from a barstool.

Re: Machines making machines....

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I'm sure once the mechanisms are in place to liberate the rest of us, there will still be people who enjoy their exploitation and having somebody tell them what to do, and people who enjoy telling other people what to do to give orders to the first group.

Really that's my biggest issue with socialism, not the question of whether or not we're being exploited, but the question of how you free everybody when so many people like the weight of their chains. Since it's an all or nothing proposition, and people who'd prefer being ruled would form the counter-revolutionary reaction to any revolution, I figure like ABN that we may as well just let the entire system experience its inevitable collapse on its own and rebuild from the ashes then try to get everybody to work together to reform the world we have now. Capitalism is fatally flawed, the governments dominated and controlled by capitalism are fatally flawed, and the cracks are already showing. It cannot be sustained. The only question becomes how great will the destruction be, and how much work will the younger generations have in rebuild the shattered world left by the actions and inactions of the previous generations.

Bringing it back to the original post, the ability to have something that can make anything makes factories irrelevant. It will have a massively transformative effect on society, particularly as the technology improves. Eventually we may get something that works like the "Makers" and "Replicators" of science fiction, which can take any material, break it down, and remake it into something else. If industry had gotten in ahead of the curve on this, they might be able to have Makers that only use copyrighted input material arranged in a certain manner and only to produce authorized items, but as it looks from the story, open source maker-machines are being developed ahead of capitalist industry development. Right now they are very limited in what they can produce, but simply being able to make things like cups, plates, toys, things like that, has a large potential. And the level of complexity will only go up.

Technology, it will be the tool either for the utter and complete permanent enslavement of the human race, or it's utter and complete liberation.
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Re: Machines making machines....

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Progurt wrote:I'm sure once the mechanisms are in place to liberate the rest of us, there will still be people who enjoy their exploitation and having somebody tell them what to do, and people who enjoy telling other people what to do to give orders to the first group.
This makes me LOL. Perhaps it's your ignorance for what I do but, please explain to me how I'm being exploited?
*DISCLAIMER* This post may have been made from a barstool.

Re: Machines making machines....

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whitey wrote:
gendoikari87 wrote:
In Marxian economics, exploitation refers to the subjection of producers (the proletariat) to work for passive owners (bourgeoisie) for less compensation than is equivalent to the actual amount of work done. The proletarian is forced to sell his or her labour power, rather than a set quantity of labour, in order to receive a wage in order to survive, while the capitalist exploits the work performed by the proletarian by accumulating the surplus value of their labour. Therefore, the capitalist makes his/her living by passively owning the means of production and generating a profit, which is really the product of the labor which is entitled to all it produces.
Basically because someone "owns" a portion of the company you work for they get to keep a portion of your labor input, only because a piece of paper says so.

das Kapital volume I. has a much better explaination if you care to read.


Actually I don't care to read more about it. This is where I'll differ from the socialist movement, I think it's a bunch of hogwash. Why shouldn't they keep some of money? We both put an effort into keeping the company progressing. The owner put up the initial capital to start the business
Yes, management is entitled to their share, not yours. And the investment part is bullshit. In any other form you take out a loan, you pay it back with interest, your done, but with stock? nope, you've got to keep paying the owning class.
Actually I don't care to read more about it.
you know, this speaks volumes. I might detest capitalism, but I do read their theory, I didn't dismiss it out of hand, just as I didn't dismiss socialism before I was a socialist. I actually took the time to understand both viewpoints before making an informed judgement.
If I hear "crony" capitalism one more time I'm going to be ill. Capitalism is capitalism, dog eats dog and one dog ends up on top, and he defends that place with all the power he's accumulated.

Re: Machines making machines....

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Well seeing as the company I work with isn't publicly traded, I guess it doesn't fall into this category.

Edited: yes, my statement about not wanting to read up on das kapital does speak volumes. Why? Because at the end of the day, nothing changes. You sit on your ass complaining about the capitalist system all day and that has gotten you where? Your search for eventual employment will lead you right into the capitalist system you despise. Then what will you do? Fight the system from within? You fit the stereotypical angry young man that pisses and moans and yet yoh will get nothing advanced. I'll go on my merry way enjoying life with its ups and downs and enjoying the fruits of my labor as an indentured slave you like to think I am.
Last edited by whitey on Fri Feb 10, 2012 9:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
*DISCLAIMER* This post may have been made from a barstool.

Re: Machines making machines....

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whitey wrote:This makes me LOL. Perhaps it's your ignorance for what I do but, please explain to me how I'm being exploited?
Is there somebody making more money off of what you make than they put into it? Are you producing more value for someone than you receive in pay? Then you're being exploited. But wait, you say, I have a choice in whether or not I take this job. I can't be getting exploited if I have a choice. I agree to work at this rate, it is what the market will support. Well, yes, you have a choice to do that job. You do not have a choice to do no job. And you do more work at your job then you would have to do simply to support yourself because so much of your work, your produced value, goes to the pocket of somebody above you.

If you're a truck driver working for a trucking company, this is especially true. It is much less the case if you're an independent trucker. Generally, self-employed people have escaped the exploitation of the system, which is why I think it's ideal that people be self-employed if they can manage it, or part of a company collectively owned by the workers. However, the exploitation still exists, and every time that self-employed people participate in the economy they are participating in that exploitation.

Using my job as an example, I get paid a truly embarrassing amount of money, particularly for the comparatively level of work I have to do. The company manager for our location gets paid even more, but this is commensurate with his responsibilities. However, the people who really make bank are the high level executives back in the US, and they have little to nothing to do with the overall effectiveness of our day to day operations. Certainly not to such an extant as to justify the pay difference. If we weren't sending the lion's share of the contract money back to them, we could not only be paid more here, but we could charge the American taxpayers less for the whole process. The practice of hiring contractors for non-combat positions that were previously filled by members of the military would actually reap the savings it was originally supposed to have.
gendoikari87 wrote:
whitey wrote:Actually I don't care to read more about it. This is where I'll differ from the socialist movement, I think it's a bunch of hogwash. Why shouldn't they keep some of money? We both put an effort into keeping the company progressing. The owner put up the initial capital to start the business
Yes, management is entitled to their share, not yours. And the investment part is bullshit. In any other form you take out a loan, you pay it back with interest, your done, but with stock? nope, you've got to keep paying the owning class.
Yep. They deserve to make a profit from it. They don't deserve eternal ownership of their workers' labor. If and when I start a business, it will be a collectively owned one and once I make back my initial investment, I'll be paid the same as anybody else there. I've got an idea I've been knocking around for a while to open a collectively owned hookah bar. I figure if I become a lawyer I'll probably have das kapital for that.
whitey wrote:Well seeing as the company I work with isn't publicly traded, I guess it doesn't fall into this category.
I used to work for a privately owned company. They were just as exploitative as any publicly owned company. With them, it was all about getting the maximum amount of work out of the fewest number of workers for the lowest amount of pay, and pocketing for themselves our prodigious profits. When I personally was the reason we were able to sell and support a specific product to a customer, and that one sale accounts for over a hundred grand in income for the company, and I'm only getting paid $15/hr, and this is just one customer of many, you can't tell me I wasn't being exploited. Same for my coworkers, my boss, the programmers downstairs from us (who were paid barely any more), the people maintaining the data center and operations (who were paid significantly less), and so on.

I'm not a socialist because I'm some wide-eyed foolish young college student who has never seen the real business world and who just needs some more life experience in order to become another jaded and cynical wage slave, angry at anybody who points out the jingling of the chains. I'm a socialist because of business world experiences, not because of a lack of them.
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Re: Machines making machines....

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Progurt, there's no arguing with you because you're right and I'm wrong. So I'll just end it with this thought. Like you I make an obscene amount of money for what I do, I don't begrudge the owner of the company I'm leased to for the money he makes, the houses he has, or the amount of cars he toys with. Had he not had the drive to build up his families business to the size and stature it is now, I wouldn't make the money I do. I have an enjoyable lifestyle thanks to that determination and if you or others think I'm being exploited or having money taken away from me, you're sadly uninformed. Maybe if we sat down and discussed business models, you could tell me where I'm wrong or shocking I know, but maybe you would see where you were wrong. I've been self employed since I was 21 and the times I felt like I was being cheated out of money, I took my business elsewhere.
*DISCLAIMER* This post may have been made from a barstool.

Re: Machines making machines....

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What about the capitalist who controls the levers of the manufacturing rigging the system that only so much is manufactured for the masses... the masses who must then do something, anything, in order to earn the fruits of the self-replicating machine labor.

After all, why should King Capitalist direct his machines to create enough cars for all? Enough bicycles for all? Enough clothing for all? Enough food for all? Why not direct his machines to create a security force capable of securing and patrolling a few million acres in pristine nature, and only create enough food to keep the nearby populace hungry enough to fight in the gladiator arena? Furthermore, why create advanced weapons? If the surplus is of human flesh, then advanced body armor is unnecessary, there are always fresh warm bodies ready to step up and fight in m'lord's army. Good weapons are also not a luxury to be supplied to all, either, as you wouldn't want a coup.

...

When the king can, with a few turns of a single gear, mechanically produce enough goods to sustain a nation... then the only thing keeping the king on the throne is to severely limit the distribution of those goods to the nation.

Re: Machines making machines....

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whitey wrote:Progurt, there's no arguing with you because you're right and I'm wrong. So I'll just end it with this thought. Like you I make an obscene amount of money for what I do, I don't begrudge the owner of the company I'm leased to for the money he makes, the houses he has, or the amount of cars he toys with.
"So long as my cage is sufficiently gilded, I won't mind the bars."

Which is why, as I said above, a revolution would be pointless. Too many people like letting some paternalistic Owner figure control them.
whitey wrote:Had he not had the drive to build up his families business to the size and stature it is now, I wouldn't make the money I do.
Did he do it alone? Did he personally manufacture the trucks or the goods they transport? Could he have made his business what it was without the assistance of others?

One may have the drive to be a very effective burglar, but it doesn't make burglary a good thing.

You are right that arguing would be pointless. As Upton Sinclair said,
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
You like what you have and I wouldn't take it away from you, but I want something better for myself and my children than a lifetime of service to enrich an Owner, or worse, a lifetime as an Owner being enriched by the service of others.
If you have any complaints about my posts, they can be addressed here at this link
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Re: Machines making machines....

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Question whitey, why do you fear democracy? The fear of socialism is the fear of democracy in the last place that is run by an oligarchy, that has a vast impact on our daily lives.
If I hear "crony" capitalism one more time I'm going to be ill. Capitalism is capitalism, dog eats dog and one dog ends up on top, and he defends that place with all the power he's accumulated.

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