Title: The Social Consequences of Automation
Description: This is an essay about the effect of Automation on the Capitalist System.  An overview of automation technology is provided.  Following this is a discussion of the real source of profit, and why increasing automation eventually decreases the rate of profit.  Many references, including live links to out of print books provide additional study material.  The discussion then goes on to describe additional effects of falling profits.  Examples are  monopoly formation, an increasing focus on finanical manipulations, and increasing debt to make up for profit short fall.  Then what is the answer to this set of problems?  If automation really makes Capitalism untenable, then what is the alternative?  The rest of the book is involved with this question.  A proposal for a possible alternative society is presented.  The Proposal is followed by a discussion of our current culture, and how it prevents from building such a new society.  In particular, the main obstacle within our culture is pervasive racism.  Since the propsal describes a classless society,  the question arises whether this proposal resemble Communism?  The history of the Soviet Union and China is  discussed briefly in order to argue that the proposal is significantly different.  It suggests a future society of small, decentralized, self-governing cooperatives which manage automated production in a direct demoocratic manner and coordinate with each other with a supply and demand network based on human needs, rather than corporate profits.  This leads to a long discussion of many issues that would arise in such a different form of society.  Finally, we consider how we might organize for such a new system.  An open problem which must be discussed, is how to organize a disciplined movement that can remain decentralized and remain truly democratic rather than become another form of centralized dictatorship.
An email adress is provided for contacting the author and critical comments are especially welcome.
Subjects: Automation, Capitalism, Communism, Democracy, Cooperatives, Human Nature
Places: Unites States, Russia, China
People: Adam Smith (1723-1790), Karl Marx (1818-1883), Friedrich A. von Hayek (1899-1992), James Buchanan, John Maynard Keynes, Edward O. Wilson (1929-)
Time periods: Current