IMF Chief Kristalina Georgieva warned AI is hitting the global labor market like a “slow-moving tsunami,” with young workers entering the job market the most exposed.
I’m not really a Marxist, but the guy had a pretty serious and valid point when he draws our attention to who owns and controls the means of production, and it really calls into question why we consider that simple fact of ownership and control to be something that has any economic or social value, much less nearly ALL the economic value those means of production actually produce.
I’d argue capitalism has some virtues, but it’s an economic tool, not an economic law. We’re not supposed to be using it blindly everywhere for everything, we’re supposed to be using it thoughtfully and where suitable and appropriate. There is zero thought about it anymore, and that’s a bad thing. There hasn’t been any real serious thought about it at least in the western world for around 80 years. That’s an awful long time for unchecked capitalism to really warp people’s minds.
It is really, really important for us to start to figure this issue out more carefully, if we think that we now might be literally on the verge of automating most of the workforce and actually potentially achieving the life of idle luxury we always dreamed of (for a variety of very real, very significant reasons we’re actually not nearly as close to that as we’d like to imagine, but if that’s what we’re actually planning and attempting to achieve, we need to start planning for it properly.)
I’m not really a Marxist, but the guy had a pretty serious and valid point when he draws our attention to who owns and controls the means of production, and it really calls into question why we consider that simple fact of ownership and control to be something that has any economic or social value, much less nearly ALL the economic value those means of production actually produce.
I’d argue capitalism has some virtues, but it’s an economic tool, not an economic law. We’re not supposed to be using it blindly everywhere for everything, we’re supposed to be using it thoughtfully and where suitable and appropriate. There is zero thought about it anymore, and that’s a bad thing. There hasn’t been any real serious thought about it at least in the western world for around 80 years. That’s an awful long time for unchecked capitalism to really warp people’s minds.
It is really, really important for us to start to figure this issue out more carefully, if we think that we now might be literally on the verge of automating most of the workforce and actually potentially achieving the life of idle luxury we always dreamed of (for a variety of very real, very significant reasons we’re actually not nearly as close to that as we’d like to imagine, but if that’s what we’re actually planning and attempting to achieve, we need to start planning for it properly.)