Society and Economics
Increasing productivity

The changing role of labor

COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Distributing Freedom

The component of productive capacity that is called labor is diminishing. It is being replaced with technology, automation, and robotics. At the same time the component called Labor still must eat, be sheltered, receive medical care and learn the skill necessary to function in a human community. Unless you have a social mechanism to distribute the life essentials to this unneeded population of human lives, you must make the moral decision to allow them to starve to death or be more proactive and kill them.

This reduction in the need for labor is not new. It has been rapidly increasing in recent decades. In the past we have simply created new material toys for people to produce and consume. But as population increase and material resource become stressed the use of human labor must become very different from the current practices. There is a limit to utilization of 'productive' capacity in the form of human labor.

That is why we must begin to create an all inclusive Social Security safety net now to avoid restless populations to fuel a confrontation against the governance of the Nation. Having a guaranteed income with no means testing and no bureaucratic intervention and moral judgement of the worth of an individual life. It must be as automatic as applying for Social Security and Medicare when you retire.

The results will be freedom of choice in how each individual lives his life. Human beings can be very creative in living with out material toys when removed from the system of being compelled to do work that he does not like and would not voluntary do. The age of Wage-Slavery would come to an end and freedom of expression would begin.

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A World with little use for Human labor in production of life essentials is coming.

We must prepare for an equitable distribution of the basics of food, shelter, healthcare and education if we are going to escape the unrest of a wage-slave society.

1 comments: Peter Burgess said... And we do this in large part by having meaningful metrics that are relevant for a smart productive society. I call this TrueValueMetrics November 4, 2011 9:53 PM