• helenslunch
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    Workers already are the ones who design and build machines

    Engineers design machines, not sewer cleaners.

    You are attacking a straw man.

    I don’t know what you meant by this if not to imply that it’s not profitable:

    Business owners are bound by the profit motive, not by a motive to improve the experience of workers.

    • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Engineers are workers.

      Sewer cleaners are workers.

      Neither are business owners, who make the decisions within enterprise, about how workers use enterprise.

      If business owners decide that engineers would design machines, that factory workers would then build, and that sewer cleaners would then utilize, then the events may occur. Otherwise, not, and the determining force is the profit motive, not the will of workers.

      The straw man you attacked was my alleged claim that no automation is ever profitable.

      In fact, at any particular time, some automation may be profitable, and some automation may not be profitable.

      • helenslunch
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        Yes but sewer cleaners do not have the capacity to create automations…that’s why they clean sewers. That’s what we were discussing.

        • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          We are discussing the reasons certain workers may be prevented from having better experiences through automation, even if development, manufacturing, and utilization of relevant automated systems are possible in principle, through the collective capacities of workers as a class.

          You asserted the premise that the nonexistence of certain systems of automation is sufficient evidence for us to conclude the impossibility of their being caused to exist.

          The premise is obviously false.

          • helenslunch
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            8 months ago

            No, we are discussing why people choose to work cleaning sewers. Then someone suggested we could automate the jobs. Then I suggested if we could, we would have already (because profits). Then you suggested that only sewer workers could automate those kind of jobs because it wasn’t profitable for companies to do so.

            • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              I have observed that workers as a class (inclusive of engineers, factory workers, and all others) may have the capacities to provide automated systems either that improve the experience of those working to clean sewers, or that may obviate the social need of anyone to be working as such.

              I also have observed that utilization of enterprise, and direction of worker capacities, is currently controlled by business owners, bound by the profit motive.

              Your premise is false, that all automation always is supported by the profit motive, and my alleged premise is a straw man, that no automation ever is supported by the profit motive.

              Your suggestion, that “if we could, we would have already” “automate[d] the jobs”, is false.

              Its flaw is that it erases the conflict of interest between workers and owners. subsuming both beneath an imaginary monolithic “we”, who would all share the same interests.

              In fact, workers and owners have mutually antagonistic interests.

              Owners seek to extract the maximal possible value from workers at the minimal possible cost.

              Workers seek better conditions, higher wages, and greater freedom and enjoyment in their lives.