Grave New World

With quickly advancing robotics technology and artificial intelligence coming on in leaps and bounds, it seems likely that in the foreseeable future most human employment will disappear. It isn’t difficult to envisage a world where the only human role in industry and commerce is that of decision making. It sounds great; no more will anyone have to work for a living, just leisure from the cradle to the grave. But when we no longer have to work for a living, what exactly will ‘a living’ consist of? Or perhaps more to the point, who will provide us with it?

If the technology is in private hands, one has to wonder what incentive those hands have to share its benefits with the masses. What reason would the elite controllers have for not creating a new aristocracy among themselves, and consigning the rest of us back to peasantry? Because peasantry would be of no use to them, that’s the reason. They wouldn’t even need us for the hard labour and menial work that used to be the lot of the peasant. Far more likely they would just exclude us altogether and leave us to fend for ourselves. Back to the Stone Age for us, I fear.

If, however, governments had the foresight to take control of the development and application of all super technology before the opportunity is lost to them, we might be in with a chance of being its beneficiaries after all, because then it would belong to us all. Of course, it would depend on the complexion of any particular government how and what benefits actually were allowed to be enjoyed by the general public. A political philosophy based on the individual and his ability to get on in life wouldn’t really work for anybody in this scenario; after all, no matter how enterprising you were, there would simply be no opportunity to express it. Your talents, no matter how profitable they might once have been, would be required by no one now. In a social sense, we all really would be equal.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that the political decisions we make now will have a bigger impact on our future than has ever before been the case. We need to be putting politicians with a strong social conscience in place now.

Vote Socialist, before it’s too late.