if robots are the foundation of society, then we should all benefit equally from them.
Says who? We didn't all benefit equally from the domestication of cows. Some people are lactose intolerant. I really don't understand this obsession with equality that is unheard of in nature. It's completely subjective. Equality in outcomes or equality in opportunity? Equal rewards for effort or for productivity? The former produce what economists call "perverse incentives".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentiveYou really should read this:
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.htmlok, personally I dont like the word 'should' either. but you are proposing a system that must both destroy work (innovation) and create work (capitalism) at the same time. that is not an answer.
either we share work and hoard money, or we share money and hoard work. they work equally.
what doesnt work is when you hoard work and money - then the french revolution happens all over again and the skilled and educated lose.
Technology doesn't destroy work! Displaced autoworkers become robot builders and technicians and the pool boys at the gated communities of the wealthier GM executives and stockholders! That extra margin that automakers gain by automation is spent back into the economy. That provides jobs for service industry workers, etc. Would you rather be an assembly line worker with repetitive stress injuries or a golf caddy? I honestly don't think that you've thought this through.
..... technologies sole purpose is to destroy work.
I do NOT agree that technology is a sole purpose to destroy work. We should NOT necessarily be hostile to technology.
One of the central problems with technology, though is that frequently it is used to distract labor from unionization and solidarity and thereby the capitalists frequently become able to use and abuse technology in such a way that they extract nearly all of the surplus for themselves and use technology to divide and conquer, workers, labor and community. In the end, workers become more and more exploited by this b/c frequently if there are NOT strong governments and/or strong unions, they are NOT allowed to reap(enjoy) the benefits of the technological innovations.
People who believe in no government and/or no unions also seem to believe in trickle down economics, as if giving the money to the capitalists and the rich, that some how, miraculously, that money will trickle down to the people and somehow suggesting that the capitalists deserve to take all the surplus value.. so they can be rainmakers. Frequently, however, we have seen that trickle down does NOT work and there are failures to invest in infrastructure, and running away with the capital and even capitalists who engage in behavior to accumulate much more capital than they need or want... and the situation with these filthy rich is NO longer about the accumulation of capital but a form of keeping the capital away from the masses b/c they want to control and exploit the masses and they want to insist that capital is NOT distributed to regular people... b/c of desires to keep an exploitable group willing to work for anything..
Billy, look it up in the dictionary, that is the definition of technology. technology makes things easier, it saves us work.
But I am not at all hostile to technology or innovation, I think they are both brilliant and absolutely necessary. There no good reason why someone should be doing a job that a machine can do better. we should all celebrate that our jobs have been taken from us by robots and machines. but when there are fewer and fewer jobs, why should this entail that the unemployed should suffer?
we should recieve credit from the machines that displace us.