>>795280
>And by pointing out early vs. modern industrial revolution, I hoped to point out that the effects are democratizing.
I understand what you were trying to do, but you failed.
You gave the example of the microcomputer and its near-ubiquity these days. There are lots of problems with your example, but here are two of the important ones.
>And now look at how many people use it as a means of production.
Very few, if we're talking about people who use computers for production on their own behalf. Computers are, indeed, in almost every cubicle, office, and home throughout the first world, but only for a very few people are they anything but a glorified typewriter, or filing cabinet, or presentation maker, or way to send out memos. The vast majority of computer users are still selling their labor to the capitalist class for a fraction of the value it generates. In terms of the economic relations in which they participate, they're no different than an assembly line worker operating a tool. The tool is merely a computer in this case.
Your point is invalidated on the basis of this alone. But let's tackle the second problem I wanted to point out.
Again using the example of the development of the microcomputer market, you insist that it is
>small, cheap, multi-purpose device[s]
that will enable your vision of the future. Much of the future automation that will disrupt labor so significantly in the coming decades, however, doesn't involve devices that are small, cheap, and multi-purpose. As in my example of the truck driver, a self-driving truck is not small, not cheap, and not meaningfully multi-purpose (unless you mean that it can deliver batteries and office chairs, instead of just batteries).
Automated factories are not small, not cheap, and are often highly specialized.
You seem to anticipate my point that not all of the coming automation will be cheap, so you drag out the idea that people will be able to access partial ownership of it through joint-stock companies or coops.
How, exactly, are people who currently have no significant capital supposed to make any meaningful investment in such a joint-stock company or coop? If you say "They'll take out a loan," you have very little idea of how lending works.
You assert that the coming automation will be democratized, and give as an example the evolution of the microcomputer market. But computers are cheap and ubiquitous *now* and have not fundamentally altered the fact that most people sell their labor in order to subsist. Joint-stock companies and coops exist *now*, but most people are not able to live off of dividends.
Indeed, one of the most important differences between the computer and the coming automation is that lots and lots of humans are still required to operate all of those computers. We can still sell our labor. That's exactly the problem with the impending automation: it will be much more extensive than before and will require many fewer humans to use and maintain. Huge numbers of people currently working will no longer be able to sell their labor, at least not at a wage high enough to subsist.