For a long time after the Industrial Revolution, many thinkers believed that automation would lead to us living lives of leisure. Twenty hour work weeks, or even less, and many people wouldn’t need to work at all, but would still live good lives.
It never happened.
Economists will tell you this is because there’s always more work to be done, but economists are the priesthood of capitalism, not scientists, not even social scientists.
Most of us are well aware that many jobs are, in David Graeber’s memorable phrase, bullshit jobs. They either don’t really need to be done or are actively harmful. Everyone working in private equity. All the engineers optimizing ads. Almost everyone who works on Wall Street or in shadow banking. Most bankers, for that matter. The jobs which are actually necessary, “essential workers”, are badly paid and treated, but if they don’t show up, as we find out in a garbage, nurse, transit or teamster strike, disaster ensues.
If the janitors don’t show up, everyone’s in shit. If the CEO doesn’t show up, life continues and most people don’t care. Indeed, without CEOs most companies would run better than they do, and you’d be in a lot less danger of losing your job.
We could easily work 20 hour weeks already, if that was a priority.
But the structure of capitalism makes this impossible. We create goods which are designed to wear out quickly and be replaced. “Planned Obsolesence.” We need people to have jobs to get money to buy these shoddy goods. We buy fast food crap because we’re too busy, rather than cooking good food, and most people spend their lives doing work they’d never do if they didn’t need money to survive.
So we find more bullshit jobs, and more harmful jobs for people, and the machine churns on, destroying the environment, making people sick and unhappy and forcing us into wage slavery. Most people spend most of their waking hours doing what they’re told. Or else. Then when you’re old, you might be allowed to retire, and enjoy your declining health. Might.
We have more houses than we need, far more than the number of homeless. America throws out one-third of its food, yet people go hungry. There’s more than enough, literally more than enough food for everyone in the world to have a full and healthy diet.
Perhaps they will, I hope so. To do so, however, they will have to move away from capitalism towards true communism, where everyone shares in the benefits of automation, and not just a few.
There is no reason why this isn’t possible. It could have been done any time in the last century or so, had we wished to.
Remember this: you work like a dog, obey some manager’s orders and don’t do what you really want to do because our system, and our leaders require it when it isn’t actually necessary.
Capitalism might (or might not) have been necessary for industrialization. But it is a set of leg irons weighing all of us down now, and threatening to destroy the very conditions required for life to continue on Earth.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, and the task of the next generation of leadership is to figure out how to run modern societies without it, without wasteful over-consumption and without destroying the environment, while making sure everyone has what they need and can live fulfilling lives: lives they choose, where most of their time is their own to do with as they would, not as some boss desires.
May it be so. The other options are far, far worse, likely catastrophically so.
This site is only viable due to reader donations. If you value it and can, please subscribe or donate.
Purple Library Guy
I’m not a religious man, but I’ll give this post an amen.
Bob
There is less than zero probability that the humanoid robots will be deployed to allow the humanoid humans to enjoy more leisure time.
The ruling class are most likely creating this stuff so they can wipe out the competition for what will become ever scarcer resources. Whether it’s the raw stuff with which to produce technological nik naks or food, the powerful will be glad of a change to replace their minions with machines that dont eat and don’t argue back (although that capacity seems to have been beaten out of the humans over the last 10k years or so).
There is no good future with industry or technology in it. Every electrical amd electronic thing requires an army of Africans including children to be digging and dying.
Failed Scholar
Yes, as always the political obstacles are the most important. This reminds me of a piece from Michal Kalecki’s 1943 Essay on the political obstacles to achieving full employment, something that Yves Smith flagged a few days ago in her introduction of a Rob Urie piece on American Decline ( https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/11/rob-urie-american-decline-in-three-parts.html , and the actual Kalecki article and discussion here: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/kalecki-on-the-political-obstacles-to-achieving-full-employment.html )
Yves intro:
The rest of what you are saying really makes me wonder how “communist” the Chinese government is. I know they are on paper, but I’ve wondered for a while now what that actually means on a practical level within China’s leadership classes, and how important it is for them to transition to something better than what they have right now, in the future. Or to put it another way, what does communism *mean* for China? Because that will be important for our futures I think.
Strangely enough, I’d say I’m more optimistic nowadays in terms of the ‘techno fixes’ to what ails civilization than I have been previously just by seeing how well the “socialism with Chinese characteristics” has worked to create entire industries out of thin air over just my own lifetime. I really think they will be the ones to figure out the problem of getting society off of fossil fuels, and whoever does that will own the 21st century. The fact that I can order sheets of solar panels from China for less than the cost of an equivalent size piece of plywood is absolutely astounding to me, as is the advances in revolutionary battery technologies like sodium ion batteries. They have an unmatched ability to scale. I think the society that they come up with in, say, 40 years from now will be the one the rest of humanity aspires to, for better or ill.
Joan
I am the type of person who would happily work a few hours per week and spend the rest of my time creating and sharing art if I could afford to do so. I’ve already written and self-published sixteen novels and this endeavor has become the joy of my life. I can’t wait to see how many more I can get out there before I kick the bucket. I do this while working full-time, but I would do it even more if I only had to work part-time to be secure.
bruce wilder
It is some respects kind of a technical point in economics (acknowledging that actual economics is a civic religion), but I will make it anyway: what is needed to realize the realize inframarginal gains from technological progress is constraint on consumption at the margin. Jevons was the economist who noticed that increased efficiency in the use of coal for productive energy never actually reduced total consumption of coal. People just found more and more uses, always presumably finding their way to the margin where the productive benefit barely matched the cost.
We have ways to produce illumination that are vastly cheaper and more efficient than Edison’s incandescent bulb, let alone candles, say. But, we never reduce the total energy consumed in illumination. We always turn up the lights to the point at the margin where it becomes completely wasteful.
We would have to recognize the margin as wasteful or actively harmful and constrain ourselves and our economic system generally. We would be using vastly less electricity for illumination if we hadn’t multiplied the number and uses of lamps.
The whole economy is like this. One would think the implication for global warming etc. would be obvious: conserve by constraining consumption and production, eliminating the least valuable applications of effort.
We would all be better off if we could institute constraints of economic activity that press us all against the wasteful margin.
Live in smaller homes. Drive smaller cars. (Or no cars) Eat minimally processed foods. Tax advertising and marketing heavily and ban many channels for them altogether. There would be a lot less work to do and that would be a good thing.
mago
As you and others have pointed out, those in power and control will do everything possible to perpetuate the system that feeds them.
There’s always another school of piranhas to replace those who die. Thus inter generational wealth, and even the PMC and their spawn will perpetuate.
However, this degree of distortion and destruction will self immolate at some juncture of causes and conditions coming into affect, but not in my lifetime. In the meantime, suffer thee little children.
Speaking of children, I hope the offspring of my younger friends and acquaintances will be the torchbearers for a better world rather the victims of the one that pertains today. May it be so.
NGG
I Think someone has been promising this snake oil, since the wheel was invented.
spud
as i said a few days ago. the Chinese could do us all a favor by cutting their work week with the same pay and government benefits.
with social media, the fascists running the west would have a very very hard time burying the bragging and taunting that the average Chinese would do to the western world.
if they bungle this, it means their trade surplus is more important.
automation in the west will be as cheap, reliable, and easy to fix as a f-35, or a john deere tractor.
which the parasites will view as a success!
Jan Wiklund
Concerning possible benefit of letting robots do all the work, I have no idea about what “true communnism” is or if it is possible.
In all human societies there are always social traps turning up which need both collective bargaining and collective decisions. And in such situations, there is always possible for people with imagination or extra resources to get the better of the others. And the more complicated society is, and the more key functions there are, the more this is possible.
For robots to be constructed, society has to be very complicated indeed. With the corresponding opportunities to build privileges around the complications.
The only true life insurance we have is to be indispensable – that is, if we are not there the job will not be done (or the tax will not be paid, for politicians and bureaucrats). That is the meaning of the strike. Bullshit or not bullshit job, somebody wants to have it done. If we are without function at all (because robots do all the work), we will be sidestepped by those who have, and left to die.
Why sould it be otherwise?
GM
Remember, the USSR could have been much further along this path the China is now had it taken a different course in the 1960s (i.e. pursued a fully networked automated society), and the scientists there and some of the true believers in the party were in fact pushing for it, but they were vetoed by the bureaucracy because it would have meant eliminating most possibilities for corruption (can’t do that when you have real-time material balance and when the computers run everything — there is nothing to skim off).
Does the Chinese communist party have the strength of conviction to overcome that internal barrier? I don’t know. They have learned very carefully from what the Soviets did wrong so far, but this is a much bigger leap.
KT Chong
In response to ventzu’s question for me in a previous discussion thread: on youth employment and “so is China just developing a different system of oligarchs vs the masses?”
I haven’t looked deeply into the youth unemployment situation in China, so I don’t really know the full picture. My understanding is that the Chinese government has been hiding or revising the unemployment data anyway, so it’s difficult to research directly.
So I’m just gonna use my past and present observations, a bit of common sense, and lots of intuition to connect automation and youth unemployment in China over a timeline of the past decade:
• 2015 — “Made in China 2025”
The CPC government sets a ten-year roadmap for “smart manufacturing” — basically, large-scale automation across factories, logistics, and related sectors.
• Mid-2010s — Manufacturing automation scales
Factories start adopting robots, automated assembly lines, and smart control systems.
Entry-level assembly jobs — often filled by young migrant workers — begin to shrink.
• Late 2010s to early 2020s — Logistics & warehouse automation scales
E-commerce giants deploy robots, AGVs, and automated fulfillment systems.
Warehouses reduce the number of entry-level jobs previously available to young people.
This is also around the time I first saw videos of “lights-out” dark factories.
• 2020–2022 — COVID-19 pandemic accelerates automation
Lockdowns prevent people from going to work, creating severe labor shortages.
Businesses invest heavily in automation to overcome the shortage and maintain production and retail operations.
Automation spreads into healthcare, stores, convenience retail, and delivery. Videos of unmanned systems and robots start to proliferate online.
• Post-pandemic (2022 onwards)
Businesses stay automated because:
the upfront investment has already been absorbed
human labor is more expensive in the long run
→ meaning once they automated, there’s no point in “de-automating” and rehiring humans.
A lot of jobs previously available to young people are now permanently eliminated.
Driving and delivery jobs are now being automated too; young Chinese are increasingly replaced by self-driving taxis and delivery drones.
Youth unemployment rises sharply.
After 2022, the youth unemployment rate for urban 16–24-year-olds climbs to historic highs (~21% in 2023). This happens after the pandemic ends.
The issue is structural, not just cyclical: there simply aren’t enough entry-level jobs to match the massive number of young graduates and migrants.
• Global significance
China, as the world’s manufacturing hub, becomes the first “canary in the coal mine.”
The West is now starting to experience similar automation pressures in manufacturing, logistics, and retail — following the same trajectory, just 5–10 years later.
i.e., we have not yet seen the worst for young people and labor in the West; that’ll come in another 2-3 years.
Just to be clear: I don’t know whether the CPC will adopt UBI, tax automation, or come up with some other mechanism to redistribute the output of automated production back to people. It really is a structural problem, and I can’t think of any other way to solve it. I just hope the CPC finds a workable solution before things reach a breaking point.
And frankly: politically, ideologically, and structurally, I think China (as a socialist/communist system) is better positioned to deal with this kind of problem than the U.S. In the United States, capitalists — who essentially control the government — own the automation, own the production, and control the politics and system. They are not going to willingly allow taxation or redistribution of their automated output for the greater good.
Capitalists like Elon Musk used to talk about UBI, but they never explained how the government would actually fund it, especially when they themselves don’t want to be regulated or taxed — not even a little. There’s always been a blind spot or a disconnect in their UBI rhetoric. (I honestly think people like Musk assumed the government should just “print money” to fund UBI.) The fact that Elon Musk doesn’t talk about UBI anymore probably means he finally realized that UBI requires higher taxes on billionaires and redistributions — and he definitely doesn’t like that.
ventzu
As everyone has noted here, humanity needs a radical restructuring. Though I can’t see how this will happen with oligarchs in charge, and political parties beholden to them. The system cannot change without a revolution, but: a) things aren’t desperate enough yet, so it is easier to blame immigrants and keep heads down; and b) surveillance and military apparatus (and now robots?) make the bottom-up grass-roots organising near impossible.
As KT Chong says, China offers the best glimmer of hope, but given the incentives of massive wealth I’m not sure. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that they will at least provide a decent safety net for the majority of the population, even with massive inequalities. But if growth slows, won’t the oligarchs simply look to tighten (others’) belts?
I can’t see how the current trajectory changes until a major catastrophe causes a breakdown of the state. But that has its own problems.
I now understand why Chinese hermit monks quietly moved to a different mountain as soon as someone stumbled across them.
ventzu
Further to my previous post, this is depressing reading:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/israel-gaza-war-palestine-views-friendship-b2868429.html
It reports that in the UK – after 2 years of genocide – only 26% “sympathised more with Palestine” (vs 14% with Israel). 45% didn’t take a side, and the remainder were unsure!! And 67% either fully or somewhat agreed that some protests about Palestine should not be allowed as too disruptive.
With that level of apathy in the face of a genocide, I don’t really see a more fundamental change on the cards.
mago
I also have to wonder about the future of food service. Will robots broil and serve the salmon and steaks, cut vegetables, batter and fry your tempura? Maybe they could just microwave everything, or nuke it as they say in the industry. (I see the basis for some great satire here)
There’s already a movement afoot to automate farming. There’s so much wrong with that I don’t know where to begin. But then, there’s so much wrong everywhere that it’s almost impossible to parse the distortion. No happy endings on the horizon, that’s for sure.
Purple Library Guy
@bruce wilder: I think you make an important point. But that in turn leads to another issue–what you’re proposing cannot happen under capitalism. Capitalism is about private individuals investing money (capital) to make a profit, which is then reinvested, in a process of endless compounding growth. Among the tactics implied by that basic fact are things like creating demand, planned obsolescence and so forth. Capitalists need people to buy ever bigger cars, ever faster fashion and so on and so forth if they are to continue growing their profits.
So, a more efficient, non-growth-oriented economy that does not pointlessly do more of everything just because it can, would have to be something other than capitalist. Some sort of socialism, ideally with a good deal of direct popular control, would be the main alternative on offer. The non-socialist Green alternatives I have seen proposed never seem to amount to an actual alternative system . . . they’re more “wouldn’t it be nice if people all did this” with no structural measures to make that actually be a way that people would behave. It’s like social democracy and the New Deal . . . you could make it happen for a little while with a lot of struggle, but if the economy is still run by people trying to make a profit, and profit comes from selling more and from successful class warfare, you’re going to end up with environment-killing oligarchy.
Sub-Boreal
@GM: Your comment reminded me of the interrupted experiment with cybernetic control of the Chilean economy developed by Stafford Beer under the Allende regime.
See:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/22/stafford-beer-chile-allende-technology-cybernetics
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/project-cybersyn-chiles-radical-experiment-in-cybernetic-socialism/
Robby
It’s really a values problem. Capitalism’s only value is seeking a greater return on the capital. Technology has vastly enhanced capitalism’s ability to focus on the most profitable businesses, rent seeking value extraction sorts of businesses. But since capitalism and profit seeking is our primary, shared cultural value, we don’t have a coherent value structure to use for limiting capitalism.
https://vermontrobbyporter.substack.com/p/we-need-peps-more-than-stem
Gary W Borg
As my wife says, “If your job doesn’t require you to actively strangle someone, you have a good job.”