this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
1269 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
60130 readers
2698 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Nah there's definitely another option and that's to abolish capitalism.
Did you know that with the automation tech from 10 years ago the world could already have 70% unemployed and yet produce western middle-class living standards for absolutely everyone? The reason it's not done is not that investing in automation doesn't have a gigantic ROI, it's that it's too long-term for capital to care. Also we don't want that kind of power in the hands of capitalists anyway but that's another story. The Diamond Age it's called, I think.
Ah, here's something I can actually reply to...
No one said anything about automation. We were talking about a human being switching for one operating system to another and learning a new tool/program that will save them money in the long run, versus being short-sighted, or as they used to say, "penny-wise, and pound foolish".
Your position, as I understood it, was that it should never be done because it's not cost beneficial, it's cost prohibited. I was trying to get a qualifier from you of if you thought that was true for just short-term gains, or both short-term and long-term gains.
I explained why it's not done. I'm not saying that the system is good.
The existing short-term and long-term incentive structure is what it is. That's the material conditions we're dealing with. Don't like them? Become a revolutionary, but don't stand there and pretend they don't exist as if users are frictionless, spherical cows floating in platonic space.
They don't exist, not in the way you're trying to apply them to this situation and the question I asked. Your just strawmanning.
Ok I'll humour you. If the material conditions aren't as I described them to be, then what are they, in your opinion? What's the cause? Why aren't companies rushing to switch over their operations?