In the “Terminator” movies the machines via Skynet take over and try to exterminate the extraneous human race.
But what if the machines take over in a different way, and merely exterminate the need for some humans just as the automobile eliminated the jobs of buggy whip makers.
That is a premise being posited by The Daily Caller’s Christopher Bedford, who ticks off a number of jobs disappearing due to technology. The automobile assembly line is being automated — more cars rolling out with fewer workers. And more and more of those cars and trucks and buses will someday be self-driving. Uber and Tesla are working on it. McDonald’s plans to install automated ordering machines in all its outlets. Why not burgerbots?
In today’s Las Vegas newspaper a Bloomberg columnist says America can forget about Trump bringing those iPhone jobs to the U.S. After first citing the hundreds of thousands of “skilled” workers needed to manufacture iPhones and noting U.S. workers don’t have those skills, the writer concludes all those tedious, low-paid jobs are becoming increasingly obsolete as industrial robots improve.
Resistance is futile. It did not work for the Luddites. It will not work for the low-skilled workers, who, as Bedford notes, have not seen wages grow in decades.
Toyota assembly line
4TH ST8 
Marx was right. Again.
I’d forgotten that I used that Terminator analogy before: https://4thst8.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/i-have-seen-the-future-and-it-aint-pretty-for-newspaper-reporters/
Marx was a neo-Luddite.
I don’t think Marx had a preference though like Luddites did and his recognition of what capitalism led to wasn’t based on anything but being able to see it.
Luddites just wanted to keep their jobs mostly.
At what point will the machines be able to buy what they make?
Today’s second amendment moment…a police officer shot and killed a Somali refugee student at Ohio State University who had driven his car into a crowd of students and then jumped out of the car and began slashing them with a butcher knife. 11 students were injured, some severely. A tip of the hat to Officer Alan Horujko for interceding and neutralizing the threat.
Marx wasn’t quite the idiot that some would believe. Capitalism may have indeed self destructed except for forces Marx did not foresee, including anti-trust legislation, the formation of unions, the foresight of Henry Ford in paying his employees generously and a huge, sustained advancement in technology. The formation of a dominant middle class was not inevitable. Rather, it resulted from a fortunate confluence of circumstances. This time around, I don’t think we’re likely to be as lucky.
No one with any sense would believe Marx was anything but a genius. Not that he was always right, or right about everything, but he understood things that no one could, at a time when even the ideas weren’t understood.
Marx didn’t foresee that capitalism was going to be so impacted by the people so as to smooth out it’s hard edges. Funny that the capitalists so hate the very things that “save” the good parts of an incentive based market system.
Spoken like a true Marxist…but then we pretty much knew that.
HFB:
Interesting HFB, but did you disagree with it?
I can think of a number of adjectives to describe Marx…genius isn’t one of them.
All then maybe the issue is your definition of genius? Got one?
Who cares if Marx was a genius or not? I am much more impressed with “deleted’s” last comment: “Marx didn’t foresee that capitalism was going to be so impacted by the people so as to smooth out it’s hard edges. Funny that the capitalists so hate the very things that “save” the good parts of an incentive based market system.” Hard to deny, although I’m sure it will be easier for conservative types.