Eliminating the Worker
Channel: churchofstfu
Date: 03/08/2011

One way or the other, the goal of Capitalist enterprises has always been to eliminate the worker. Sure, when "human resources" are in short supply it becomes temporarily necessary to (grudgingly) grant workers better pay and conditions, but the optimal state for any business is always to completely eliminate the human workforce and replace it with cheaper alternatives (that complain and jump from buildings less) like machines. In the short term, while machines are expensive and workers comparatively cheap, that may even lead to rising wages like in many developing countries. In the long run, with worker costs steady and machine costs decreasing, the human worker's days are numbered.

And with intelligent systems advancing in leaps and bounds, few white-collar jobs are safe. So industry will create more high-tech jobs? Of course not, the whole idea behind high-tech is to replace many low-skilled workers with an increasingly small elite of high-tech workers that control the networks of the new and willing robotic/computational working class.

In a humanist system with a measure of equitable distribution, the decreasing need for a workforce would lead to decreasing workloads.

In a system where humans are mere resources on the other hand, their decreasing value will lead to worse and worse working conditions. While robotic and intelligent computational systems go down in price in terms of the effort and resources it takes to manufacture them, human beings are static in this respect; the resources to manufacture and keep a human being happy do not decline relative to those required to produce artificial systems. 

The result is a world in which the human resource's value, both to the economic system and, if that is the only measure, to society at large will degenerate. 
Unless we implement a new value system based on the intrinsic value of human beings, the amoral sociopathy of the "free" market will devour and defile that majority of humanity that is or will soon be part of the unneeded labour pool.

P.S: News update. Some analysts believe that replacing workers with machines is too expensive and this is merely a ploy to blackmail workers into accepting poorer working conditions. 
This just validates my theory. While costs for robotic replacements are still too high, they are used to blackmail workers and reduce their wages and conditions, until they are finally replaced once the cost of machines matches the minimum required to provide subsistence wages to workers.

Some links on the Foxconn factories:

Robot solution to Chinese suicides
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/robot-solution-to-chinese-suicides-20110802-1i9u1.html

Foxconn workers treated like 'machines': labour group:
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-technology/foxconn-workers-treated-like-machines-labour-group-20110504-1e71f.html

Dell, HP look into suicides at Foxconn China plant:
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-technology/dell-hp-look-into-suicides-at-foxconn-china-plant-20100527-whh1.html