An Introduction to the Need for Socialism, And One Proposal

When I was in college back in the late 80s, I wrote a paper on the coming robotics revolution and its potential social impact.  My conclusion was that the revolution would require changes in how our society distributes the rewards of production.  Robotics enthusiasts and classical capitalist economists all enthused that robotics would bring productivity boosts like prior technological revolutions in the means of production.  But my contention was that unlike those earlier technological revolutions, the robotics revolution (and the high-tech information revolution along with it) would not just make workers more productive, it would replace workers.  What would those workers do instead?

We are seeing these results.  Peter Huber over at Forbes (it was the only decent choice in the waiting room of the ER when Kylie was seen there) wrote a little piece recently that whimsically illustrates the phenomenon.  He talks about all the things his new domestic robots do, and how these robots have caused a drastic reduction in the utilization of human housekeeping labor.  First, robots replaced factory workers.  Instead of having a few thousand workers manning machines to kick out a car, four guys sitting in a control room oversee a factory full of robots.  Now robots are moving into our homes, like in the Jetsons.  What are the workers to do instead?

But at the end of his piece, he hits the nub.  "Washington's choice now is between a jobless recovery and no U.S. recovery at all."  Now, this jobless recovery is fine for Peter Huber.  He is writing for corporate hotshots and rich guys.  What do they fucking care if the recovery produces no new jobs?  Good for them!  If economic activity goes up, and wages can stay where they were at the depth of the recession, their profits go even higher, and they get richer.  So yeah, a jobless recovery is fine for the Peter Hubers of the world -- just as the jobless boom was.  That's the secret: the US economy was not creating jobs during the boom, either.

The answer is always glib: education and retraining.  OK, but there are millions of people who are simply not able to learn what it takes to perform high tech jobs.  There are brain people and muscle people.  In every preceding age of human history, society needed muscle people every bit as much as it needed brain people.  But in the new age, that is no longer the case.  The muscle jobs are being replaced.  What are the muscle people to do?  Heck, even police and army robots are being developed!

I keep asking this question, and nobody gives me an answer.

I now turn to corporations.  The corporate form was a great invention for producing wealth.  By externalizing the risks of capital ventures, the corporation allows guys with money to invest that money with little fear of ruin.  The consequences of their risks are not borne  by their personal assets, they are borne by the people who did business willingly or unwillingly with the corporation.  In the beginning, corporations were required to return some benefit to society, because the lawmakers recognized what they were doing.  Down the years, however, the requirements on corporations have gradually been shed, to the point now where they are able to move their offices and capital around the globe in such a way as to not have to return even taxes to the society.  And an army of talking heads has produced an ideology that society has bought into that says a corporation's ONLY duty is to maximize the income of its shareholders.

Do we see how robotics and corporations interact with each other?  What is the inevitable result?  It is what we are seeing: an ever-increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth and income.  Fewer and fewer people own more and more of the wealth, and monopolize more and more of the income.  Women entering the labor force (drove down wages) and easy credit masked the effects for thirty years.  Household income remained pretty much the same, but now two people were producing that income instead of one.  Borrowing allowed people to continue to increase consumption even though wages were stagnating.

All that crashed down on a lot of people.  But now the recovery is here.  But it is widely recognized as a "jobless recovery."  And nobody in policy-making positions seems to care.  Those who own corporations will see their incomes and wealth recover.  Those who relied on a paycheck will not.  They are still fucked.  Those who can turn to an intellectual pursuit, or something needed by rich people, will be able to regain an income.  Probably most of them will see a lower income than they had before.  But people who have to rely on their muscles because they either did not or could not get a (real) higher education are well and truly fucked.  The Roomba has seen to that.

So what do we do?  I'm not really sure, but I have one idea, and it involves socialism.  Let's call it partial socialism.  Every corporation that does business in America is required to issue the US government 10% of its stock.  Every class.  Every type.  Voting and non-voting.  In that way, corporations will benefit society by benefiting their shareholders.  They can maintain their "maximize return to the shareholders" ethic and thereby serve society.  The US government is then required by law to put its dividend payments into a social welfare fund.  I prefer that every U.S. citizen get a dividend payment every year.  Pro rata, divvy them up and send every CITIZEN a check.  Those who are under 18, their checks go into trust.  Adults can do whatever they damn well please with their checks.

So that's my big socialist idea.