the so-called luddite fallacy has always failed in the past because somebody needs to build or run the machines. the steam engine may have displaced specific kinds of labour, but somebody had to operate it; the typewriter may have replaced the copyist, but somebody had to type. what we actually saw, mostly, was that technology actually created jobs as a consequence - you would retrain the people to fill their replacement role, and then create jobs in manufacturing the machines.

the issue with bringing robots in to replace....slaves....is that the replacement is total. we've seen this in manufacturing, where job losses have just been total. could you run a restaurant with absolutely no people? you probably wouldn't need more than two - and one is no doubt a security guard.

but, we should still need people to build the robots. except that it's increasingly the case that robots are building robots. well, then we need people to bring the materials in - except that we increasingly don't.

this is only a catastrophe if you're a capitalist. if you're on the left, it's an opportunity to break the bonds of wage slavery and allow people to enjoy true positive freedom in their day-to-day lives. that doesn't - and i would say shouldn't - necessarily mean more high paying jobs, so much as it can mean more artists living near to subsistence that are just happy to have freedom to create. we loony leftists may even go so far as to say it promises to usher in an era of civilization.

if you take this view, the challenges of this shift lay less in unemployment and more in immigration and family size. we want to keep breeding down near replacement, and no longer have economic reasons to bring people in - which is no doubt to create a different kind of racial conflict. i'd like to see a report by brookings on that topic. what are the social consequences, in terms of race harmony, of a society rooted in automated labour?