In the 1880s Marx was arguing that the onward march of technological progress would ultimately free workers from harsh labour and lead to a reduction to working time. This is one of the reasons he was keen to talk about work and the economy as forms of social rather than contractual relationships. In the 1930s John Maynard Keynes was predicting that automation would inevitably lead to a shorter working week - Keynes predicted a working week of 15 hours by the 1980s! - and around the same time Bertrand Russell was considering what the resulting "idleness" might mean for people.Sean Hayden wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 6:47 pmWell yeah, it's difficult to imagine researching this from the pov of employees being willing to accept lower pay to stave off automation. We could get there though, and I imagine that it's closer to that in countries with strong union integration.
I remember at a university interview - back when all this was fields - that in response to my boilerplate question about my post-graduation employment prospects my interviewer started going on about an increase in 'leisure time' that was just round the corner, and how the course would not only increase my employment chances but I'd have a lot more free time than previous generations to pursue my interests. Sounded great to me - although I ended up at a different uni in the end.
What a lot of people have assumed is that the productivity gains of technology and automation, of doing and making more things more quickly and cheaply, would continue to be fairly distributed - that people would basically get the same pay for fewer hours and that profit, asset, and wealth taxes would continue to contribute to the development of public services and the social progress that follows. Right, yeah.