"The neo-Luddism or doomerism in some left circles today risks missing the procedurally generated forest for the trees. Thinking through changes to the economy and work brought about by automation, we ought to ask ourselves a series of questions while we prepare to pass judgment: Who controls and benefits from these changes and could the public put such technologies to good use? Are these developments aimed at supporting or enhancing our individual and shared humanity, or do they diminish it? Do we need this or that change? And above all, can we responsibly plan for and control these developments in a way that maintains social, political, and cultural standards, expectations, and needs?

With technological development, the details matter. The Left should not be reflexively anti-technology, but rather skeptical of how technologies are developed, deployed, and controlled — and for whose benefit. An automated society in which states and worker-owned enterprises harness the marvels and wonders of technology to serve public ends while meeting individual needs is entirely consistent with the good life. Indeed, carefully constructed, this society could be far closer to utopia than dystopia — and far better than the world we inhabit today.

But getting there requires structural changes in how we organize the economy, which requires the hard work of organizing, mobilizing, setting political priorities, reforming institutions, and winning political power. That work, machines will never be able to do. That work is, and will remain, ours."

https://jacobin.com/2026/05/robots-ai-automation-workers-planning

#Robots #Automation #Robotics #AI #EconomicDemocracy #Capitalism

Its #mayday today, which is a European festival of ancient origins (Roman?) marking the beginning of North hemisphere summer 🌞

But it is also a day to celebrate and think about #economicdemocracy and how we could transition towards more future proof modes of socioeconomic organization 🤝

A digital society does not have to be worse than the pre-digital versions. It offers unlimited possibilities for something better, but somehow we need to make them real 🙏

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy

This is such a straw man and false dilemma fallacy. People don’t have to work for either private capitalists or the state/collective/society. There is another alternative where people work for themselves individually or jointly: #EconomicDemocracy. This position isn’t justified with appeals to collective authority, but rather liberal individual inalienable #HumanRights theory.

https://youtube.com/shorts/x-lIb2MGQ2w

#politics #individualism #individualist #socialism #capitalism #communism #liberty #mutualism

"This is why labour law belongs at the centre of these debates. Labour law is not merely a technical field regulating wages, contracts and dismissal. It is one of the principal ways in which the rule of law enters the workplace. Employers are granted legal powers to direct, monitor and discipline workers. Those powers are not natural facts. They are constituted and structured by law. Labour law exists, in part, to ensure that these powers do not become arbitrary and all-encompassing, and that workers do not cease to be citizens the moment they enter the workplace. Workers’ rights, in that sense, are not just social entitlements. They are democratic safeguards.

The urgency of this becomes clearer still once we turn to artificial intelligence and algorithmic management at work. These technologies are usually discussed in the language of innovation, efficiency and competitiveness. But they also reorganise and reinforce authority. Employers increasingly use digital systems to hire, direct, evaluate and discipline workers, while collecting immense quantities of data about productivity, pace, location, communications and behaviour. The point is not simply that privacy is endangered, though it is. The point is that managerial command is being intensified through technology."

https://www.socialeurope.eu/silicon-valleys-anti-democratic-turn-begins-at-work

#SiliconValley #EconomicDemocracy #Authoritarianism #Surveillance #AI