The “robots will replace slave work if the slaves were to be paid accordingly” shit is so infuriating at so many fucking levels and I don’t even read theory.
This situation really is a great example of how much open contempt capitalists have for workers. “We won’t raise wages, we won’t automate, we want the government to pressure people to accept the wages we’re offering. This is the free market to me.”
That technically isn’t the free market just as the army and police cracking down on unions isn’t a free market. It’s what I refer to as a fuck you market
They’ve figured they can just wait for the next economic crisis instead of raising wages because they know the government will just bail them out and then go back to cracking the whip over the workers when it’s over
We literally watched this happen last year
It really is deeply ironic that the neoliberal consensus is that a social safety net for individuals is some combination of too expensive, difficult, and inefficient, while at the same time propping up businesses during economic downturns on the basis that it would cause too many people to lose their jobs. Either let the market decide what’s an efficient capital distribution, or stop pretending and just guarantee people a standard of living. That’s essentially what’s happening anyway, it’s just expensive, difficult, and inefficient.
The hypocrites literally always do Keynesianism when the economy goes into crisis despite railing against it at all times. When the time comes they don’t necessarily need to keep doing Keynesianism they launch a propaganda offensive against Keynesianism hoping no one notices.
