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Objectivist view on automation?

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Rory98

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I don't think there's an official Objectivist view on something so specific as automation. But, automation has already greatly improved our lives as implemented in business activity (to answer your second question). Since that I plementaion was done voluntarily by the businesses owners, to their benefit and their customers' alike, I'd say automation fits with Objectivism's promotion of capitalism.

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Not sure what you mean.  Technology tends to improve over time, more so in capitalistic economies.  Objectivism has no problem with that.  Rand's speech "The Anti-Industrial Revolution", anthologized in the book of the same name, is a good source.

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What I mean really is mass automation to the point whereby human labor becomes unneeded, and a large amount of jobs are automated. What effect would this have on capitalism? 

 

 

Check out Luddite Fallacy - "The Luddite fallacy is the simple observation that new technology does not lead to higher overall unemployment in the economy. New technology doesn't destroy jobs – it only changes the composition of jobs in the economy."

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I would not be a Safety Manager working on a computer in the trucking industry if someone did not invent the automation many times over to remove me from the need of tilling a farm by hand until I dropped at 36.  For science and automation I am very thankful. 

 

Cursing automation is a luxury of citizens in wealthy countries who  benefit from it - Ask a Cambodian how much he enjoys his so called full employment.  

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Second in the Luddite Falacy, or the "curse of machines," and the great Hazlitt book, "Economics in One Lesson." There is a mistaken way of looking at the economy has having a static amount of "work" to be done, that has to be divided evenly amongst people, but so long as the world is not transformed into the Garden of Eden, there will always be work to be done. Having some work automated increases productivity and frees up human labor for more productive ends.

Also see free online, the great French economist Bastiat's "Candlemakers Peition"

http://mises.org/library/candlemakers-petition

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