One overlooked aspect of this debate is a critical one that I suppose is lost in the bowels of faceless economic models has to do with the effects of competition in an actual capitalist economy. Ours is not a capitalism in the way that Adam Smith had described it.
In his vision, and the one that I think most folks identify, competition drove up innovations and drove out inefficient, inferior, or defective products. In our economy, for example, home builders can build unsafe or generally crappy homes and sell them for a massive profit because they have more money in their coffers to buy properties and build houses. In other words, the concentration of - and restricted circulation of - wealth has contorted the mechanisms of capitalism just as it has in the gilded age.
With a system so lopsided and rigged to siphon wealth from others and to restrict competition, I'm not sure how anyone can make any categorical claims as to what technology is doing or not doing. The fact is that technology and other tools are used just as mightily to keep the pumps running that keep the flow of cash up to the 1% as they are to run an assembly line or execute precision welding.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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