cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/49663892
Does technology provide more jobs than it takes away? In the modern world where most industries are constantly changing, most jobs are completely unnecessary, many are unproductive and people can move countries to find work it can be difficult to judge this claim. But we can go back before benefits, government-funded useless jobs, international travel and chaotic job markets. If we do that we can see more clearly how technology has affected the availability of jobs.
The Second (or British) Agricultural Revolution provides one example of technological change. Did it lead to more jobs or less? Here's what I learned about this today. Most of this information comes from here and the pages it links to.
This revolution wasn't an overnight technological development which led to a temporary wave of unemployment that ended as new jobs were invented. This was a gradual change over hundreds of years which led to rising unemployment and poverty that didn't go away.
The lead up to it began in the 1400s with enclosed farms that were able to make better use of the land and crop rotations. This became more common into the 1500s and meant that fewer people needed to work on the farms, causing some to slide into poverty. The government and nobles of the time were apparently unfamiliar with non-temporary unemployment except as a result of laziness or disability. It was a totally alien concept to them. In reaction to increasing numbers of beggars and vagrants the government passed laws to punish them. At the time making poverty harsh was seen as a way to motivate people to get jobs. This approach didn't seem to work as by the end of the 1500s the government decided to change their approach and begin making Poor Laws. The first (Old) Poor Laws provided housing, money, food and clothing to those who were unable to work because of age or illness, but at the same time the able-bodied could be made to work in houses of correction as punishment for being a "persistent idler".
The British Agricultural Revolution really started to take off in the mid-1600s and by the end of the century unemployment and poverty had increased further, leading to the workhouse movement. These gave housing and employment to the poor and reserved houses of correction for punishment. But put poverty didn't end and around 1 million Britons may have relied on poor relief by the end of the 1700s. The number of able-bodied males taking poor relief was rising and again this has been attributed to the enclosure movement that increased agricultural productivity.
Because machines were taking people's jobs, there were widespread riots that destroyed machines in 1830, known as the Swing Riots. The existing system of poor relief wasn't able to handle all the poor people so in response to this and the riots the New Poor Law was passed in 1834. This made it harder for the able-bodied to get relief and made workhouses harsher to discourage leeching. The new system was a complete failure because the unemployed either went without any provisions or suffered in prison-like workhouses. There was no attempt to undo whatever had caused all the jobs to disappear in the first place.
In the end the Poor Laws gave way to country councils providing public housing, government pensions and eventually the full UK welfare state. The Poor Laws were an early example of a European welfare program that influenced the development of welfare states beyond the UK.
So considering all this, do we really think technology has helped or hurt the public's ability to get jobs?
Before the 1500s it was unheard of to be unemployed unless it was temporary or you were too old or sick to work. Now find one developed country where that's the case today. I'd wager you can't. And what could possibly be responsible for that? Is it the increased population? Globalization? I don't think so. More people means more mouths to feed and more jobs. Globalization didn't take away the jobs in Britain between 1500-1900. The most reasonable explanation is that technology and efficiency improvements have caused the lack of jobs by taking over more and more of the productive work, leaving humans with pointless jobs or no work at all. And what good are efficient systems if they put us out of work so we can't afford anything? Maybe efficiency can be bad and sometimes it's good to do things the hard way?
When you're so deep into capitalism-brain, it's easy to forget that technology has never been about creating jobs, it's been about efficiency—you know, removing jobs. Because only under capitalism would "less work" be considered a bad thing.
Scarcity is manufactured. We have more than enough resources to eliminate poverty entirely, forever.
It's just the natural state of humans that they have to work to survive or rely on their family/friends to look after them if they're unable to work. There could potentially be a society where hardly anybody needs to do anything productive, but this would be a completely unnatural society that would have widespread mental illness due to many people lacking goals or productive things to do. Most people would also get physically unhealthy and lazy (both physically and intellectually) - like they already in developed countries.
The western business world has promoted the idea that humans are naturally lazy and unproductive unless compelled. I don't believe this at all. There's some interesting reading to be done on UBI pilots that suggest that humans will naturally be productive if they don't have to worry about their basic needs. And contrary to your statement, the UBI studies that have been done generally show that both physical and mental health improve with UBI. This seems far more "natural" than the society we live in today.
The propaganda about humans being lazy derives from the wealth class, and they truly believe it. But consider yourself--if you had enough income to buy food and have a roof over your head, would you sit around and do nothing for your whole life? If you would have physical or mental health issues in a world where there are fewer stressors, you probably have it worse right now.
Anyone who's had kids or worked with kids knows that people will be lazy if they are allowed to be. If you don't think this applies to adults (who are basically big kids with only slightly more self-awareness) then consider this. Most people in developed countries have all their basic needs (food, water, shelter, sleep, physical safety, social stability and so on) easily met and do fewer hours of work than the vast majority of humans in recorded history. Yet they still frequently complain about not having enough money or too much work or their other responsibilities and they still want to retire early and go on lots of vacations. Their mental health and happiness is way worse than their grandparents' and worse than those of less developed countries. This is not only obvious from every day experience but confirmed by just about every study.
So it's very obvious to me that people want to be lazy, but being lazy actually makes people unfulfilled and unhappy. I have seen this process at work with numerous people I am closely acquainted with. They can have all the important things in life yet still be unhappy. They can blame it on not having the right looks, not having enough vacation, the people they work with or whatever, but they obviously wouldn't be so stressed about those things if they had real problems like ensuring the family has food. And when people do have real problems instead of focusing on inconveniences they are happier.