Detroit's Collapse Reveals the Awful Dystopia that the United States Is Becoming [View all]

[grahamhgreen]

From 1950 until now, two big things happened to ruin
the city with regard to industry. The first was robotification. The
automation of many processes in the factories led to fewer workers
being needed, and produced unemployment. Then, the auto industry began locating
elsewhere, along with its support industries, to save money on labor
or production costs or to escape regulation.....

It seems to me that we need to abandon capitalism as production
becomes detached from human labor. I think all robot labor should be
nationalized and put in the public sector, and all citizens should
receive a basic stipend from it. Then, if robots make an automobile,
the profits will not go solely to a corporation that owns the robots,
but rather to all the citizens. It wouldn’t be practical anyway for
the robots to be making things for unemployed, penniless humans.
Perhaps we need a 21st century version of ‘from all according to their
abilities, to all according to their needs.’

Communally-owned mechanized/ computerized forms of production would
also help resolve the problem of increasing income inequality in the
United States.

More: http://www.alternet.org/economy/detroits-collapse-reveals-awful-dystopia-united-states-becoming