Do you remember this scene from Beauty and the Beast? (No, not the original animated one, but the remade live-action one.) Belle had rigged up a machine so that a donkey can do the washing while she sits and reads a book, while other women of the village hand-wash their clothes. I bring this up because I want to talk a little bit about automation and its impact on human lives.
I was watching this video on how Disney was creating a robot with programming to do stunts and how it can change the industry. Instead of seeing comments on how this could save many stunt doubles’ lives, I see comments on how yet another robot is taking jobs from our hands. That, my friend, is a very capitalist way of thinking.
One comment even mentioned what are stunt doubles going to do if robots are doing their jobs now? Well, I want to introduce you to a man named Karl Marx. Okay, yes, boo, communism, but there is one point of his that I really clung to when I was learning about him in art school. Now, I am not deeply versed in Marxism and don’t claim to be an expert, so my interpretation might be slightly off. What I do remember is that Marx said that if we get machines to do our menial jobs, we can spend more time on other pursuits, like science and art. Or to put it into other words, instead of spending hours handwashing my clothes, I can invent a machine to do it and spend that time reading instead.
I understand people’s anger when automation replaces a living person’s job, but you’re blaming the wrong thing. I am fairly certain most, if not all, inventors of automation did not invent those machines to make other people’s lives worse. In fact, quite the opposite. Usually, the inventor would see a back-breaking task is causing pain and suffering to a certain group of people, so they invented something to make those people’s lives better. Like a machine harvester so farmers don’t have to hurt their back or construction equipment so builders don’t have to strain themselves or even a bomb-defusing robot so people don’t have to risk their lives. Often, it’s the people higher up that realized that they don’t need to spend money on wages and instead spend that money on a machine that they never have to feed or care about their wellbeing. They do this so they can hoard the money for themselves.
This is capitalism, people.
Automation is supposed to be like this: we, humans, have machines gather water for us, cook food for us, build our houses for us, and we can just watch them provide our basic needs while we pursue other things that aren’t as necessary to our survival, like creating art or playing sport. Instead, what happened is the rich few decided they want to hoard everything and not care about the rest of the world.
A perfect example of this is Amazon. We all know Jeff Bezos is one of the richest human beings on this planet. His company practically relies on automation. His warehouses, his website, they’re all algorithms and robots. Bezos is getting richer and richer and the warehouse workers are sustaining injuries, getting sick, and lose their jobs to machines. Bezos can easily take a small chunk of his vast wealth and easily support a small town for a long time.
So don’t attack the robots for stealing your jobs. They literally don’t care and they can just build and buy new ones. In fact, they can save lives. Attack the rich. Go after them instead.
