tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post3124355548754844582..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: "Jobs, automation, Engels’ pause and the limits of history"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-81379988950677313672015-03-10T11:07:45.397-04:002015-03-10T11:07:45.397-04:00My reading of The Making of the English Working Cl...My reading of <i>The Making of the English Working Class</i> is that individual weavers selling their wares to individual sellers made a decent living. When the steam looms came operators were 10X to 100X more productive than the individual weavers. Yet they and their children were reduced to eating rice cakes three times a day because they couldn't afford wheat bread. Forget meat.<br /><br />This because they had lost the equal to equal bargaining power balance that the weavers enjoyed with their buyers.<br /><br />If we are worried about the humane impact of robots on employees -- better we make the society we have now as humanitarian as possible as a starting point (like German, Denmark). That can only mean effective labor unionization (in particular, centralized bargaining).Denis Drewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11833367196756465896noreply@blogger.com