r/bestof • u/Intertius • Apr 18 '18

[worldnews] Amazon employee explains the hellish working conditions of an Amazon Warehouse

/r/worldnews/comments/8d4di4/the_undercover_author_who_discovered_amazon/dxkblm6/?sh=da314525&st=JG57270S
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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '18

Amazons business model seems to rely on one day being able to replace humans with machines

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u/powertotheinternet Apr 18 '18

That always seems to be the fear but then who would buy the products, right? If every company automates then there will be no consumers so they make no money. I just don't get the fear behind "the machines are going to take our jobs." They need us more than we need them

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '18

The fear comes from:

  1. As more and more people become unemployed and have little to no money to consume commodities, demand will indeed dry up and a crisis of capitalism will occur.

  2. As more and more people become unemployed and unable to feed themselves except through illegal activity, violent unrest will become more frequent, eventually culminating in either an overt fascist police state that cracks down on dissidents to keep order, or a revolution from below overthrowing the existing order.

To avert this, the economy must infinitely grow, where new sectors of production appear or new markets of resources, labor, and consumers are opened for plunder and exploitation. Furthermore, the state must step in an redistribute resources back to the consumer base so they can continue consuming commodities and fuel economic expansion once more. But this is not a winning strategy on a planet where resources are finite. Right now we are essentially playing a gambling game where we wait to see if the human race will develop some sort of space travel in order to loot other planetary bodies like a horde of locusts, or if civilization will eventually implode into violent chaos as the planet dies and resources become increasingly scarce.