Ask Prof Wolff: How Robotized Jobs Can Help or Hurt Workers

A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I have a question regarding Robots and AI. What happens to using the workplace instead of the state when there are no jobs for 80 percent of the people, no place to organize or combine? Without the state as the primary control of a situation, when there are no jobs for most people... where do we go?"

This is Professor Richard Wolff's video response.

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“Marxism always was the critical shadow of capitalism. Their interactions changed them both. Now Marxism is once again stepping into the light as capitalism shakes from its own excesses and confronts decline.”

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Follow Wolff ONLINE:

[jeffreywillstewart]

I love Prof. Wolff. Keep up the good work.

[peterjol]

almost all problems could be solved by making it financially worthwhile for people to SHARE the jobs we can agree we NEED people to do and work much LESS....and then more robots and automation could only ever mean that humans can enjoy working ever increasingly LESS.

[Aceks]

Automation can work if the workers that get displaced can find new jobs, but if they cannot it leads to structural unemployment which is very bad.

[paladinsorcerer]

One argument that the CEO would make is that if machines replace worker time, then its use should be maximized in order to maximize profit. Prof Wolff agreed that the CEO would say that. But the problem lies in the CEO's next argument. If the company doesnt maximize profits now, later on a competitor who does maximize profit will outperform the CEO's company. If the market is harsh, it could mean the difference between success or bankruptcy down the road. In order to compete, a company has to make its workers work as many hours as they can get away with. Unless the entire market is in sync about maximizing leisure for its workers, the one company that doesn't abide will trigger a collapse of the agreement, since there is no profit incentive to maximize worker leisure. It might take something like the great resignation or mass demostrations and strikes to get companies to adhere to the plan.

[clarestucki]

Wolff actually gets one right for a change!!! The mechanization, high-tech, robotics, etc actually benefit everybody, in the long run. It's true that some displaced workers suffer in the short run, when required to find another way to be productive, but as Wolff implies, there is no limit to the amount of productive things that can make us all better off, and/or, have more leisure.

[DJWESG]

"Make automation pay for the human labour it replaces"

[DanzoB]

Wolff makes some good points, but I would STILL like to see Universal Basic Income enacted JUST IN CASE automation ends up having some devastating consequences for the American workforce. And even in automation has no net negative consequences whatsoever, I believe that UBI should be there to ease the financial burden of people raising children.

[BinanceUSD]

Great and keep the consumer price going up.

[johndeerishere]

Automated co-ops using robots would be an interesting experiment. You could have people maintaining the robots while the robot doing the menial repetitive work which allow for more leisure time or they could use that time for learning more about robotics which allow for ideas for more advanced robotics or learn more about how to improve the company.

[emanuelneagu]

Technology evolving is also contradicting capitalism because despite that in short time it may increase profits, in the long run it's decreasing the rate of profits because less people get jobs and consume which directly leads to less value extraction from worker salaries and robots doing the actual work get, as well, more expensive as they get more reliable than humans, but you can't deal with them any salaries, you have to pay their price and their exact maintenance so basically this replaces profits from value extraction with spendings.

[kevinschmidt]

Robotized Jobs are why we need a UBI. It is the working class producers who have created all civilization, including all technology. We created all the wealth in the world too. However, most of the wealth was stolen by the wealthy class takers. It is time for that theft to finally stop. Therefore, the wealth created by robotized jobs belongs to the working class.

[PhilAndersonOutside]

Outstanding video. I don’t always agree with Prof. Wolff, but he is spot on 100% correct here.

I should note I study futurism. What’s going to happen by about 2040 is around half of all job related tasks will be automated. It could take another 40+ years to get to 80% of total jobs gone. But his solutions are exactly right. There’s plenty of “work” society will still need done by people. Helping the elderly, helping the disabled. Cleaning up city parks. Adult help at day care centers. Home and habitat repair. Food preparation, etc. Most of which could greatly improve society and life in general.

If we instead just view automation as a way to elongate workers, while the board of directors class reaps all the profits, it will result in a far more massive split in wealth inequality than now, and ultimately economic collapse when half (and growing) of society is pushed in to poverty.

Various types of WPA and (dreaded word here) socialist programs will be needed, likely a larger safety net, and possibly a means-tested UBI, or at least a CBI (Caretaker basic income).

[antimattv]

I'd like to raise one point. A lot of the time the actions of capitalist cruelty are twisted in such a polite and humanist way to make you think they're doing you a favour. Then you get home and realize the truth.

[milesobrien]

Machines are brought in to reduce the cost of labor's benefits. Robots don't get sick, don't take vacations, don't have payroll taxes (in fact machines are depreciated over time and often are implemented through tax breaks) don't steal and certainly don't require a heath insurance plan.

[andrewthurman]

Of course if an industry found a technology that allowed twice the productivity and the workers decided to work half the time because of it because they made the same amount, people in other industries who are still working 40 hours would want that product of the company that workers are now working 20 hours at the same pay to sell their products at half as much.

[willcooper]

The advent of AI is different than the past technological revolutions that Dr. Wolff cited. It threatens to replace not only service jobs and factory jobs but many white collar workers, too. Machines will be better at thinking than human beings. They'll be better lawyers, doctors, engineers, accountants, perhaps even professors of economics. They'll be better physicists, chemists, and biologists, even though they're abiotic themselves. I would imagine they'll even be better artists, creating novels, plays, paintings, musical compositions of astounding complexity and beauty. All of this won't happen right away. The growth of AI will take time, but once general artificial; intelligence arrives, its progress will be exponential. That is the threat. How will humanity protect itself against becoming unimportant and worthless from the machines' perspective? We face an existential threat.

[jason]

this is very difficult issue to come up with one definitive solution. I think the society should promote higher education to give people jobs that cannot be replaced by machines at current level of technology. now "promoting higher education" is another big issue here so....

[piotrjeske]

Well that is all nice for people in their 20s, but what are people in their 40-50s suppose to do?

[dennisgrandy]

Use automation to let workers work 20 hours a week instead of 40? I don't think a 50% cut in pay is going to go over well with the workers, labor unions would be demanding that lower seniority workers be laid off so higher seniority people would get their 40 hours. If you are suggesting they still get 40 hours of pay then that would be ridiculous since a reduction in labor "cost" (not value as you claim) is the purpose of getting the automation in the first place.

[peterjol]

Alien: Those humans created robots to do the work for them ...and couldn't work out that all they had to do was make it worthwhile to SHARE the jobs left and enjoy working much less...the couldn't understand the idea of SHARING when it came to the work.