It's Time to Shift the Economy into Fourth Gear Capitalism with Basic Income
(On the road to Fifth Gear Postcapitalism!)
Source: Medium, by Scott Santens
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The Gears of Capitalism
First gear was made possible by the invention of the steam engine which allowed for the beginnings of industry and the bridging of great distances with trains and steam-powered ships.
Second gear was made possible by the invention of electricity which allowed for industrialization to go into overdrive while bridging even greater distances with the telegraph and telephones.
Third gear was made possible by the invention of the computer which allowed for full globalization and the connection of everyone to each other all over the world with information technology and the internet.
So what is fourth gear?
Fourth gear is the handing over of labor to machines, and that does not only include muscle labor as was already true in lower gears, but mental labor. It is the long awaited freeing of humanity to pursue human interests, paid or unpaid, as payment is of less concern when machines are working for us
that is as long as we humans are earning the machines paychecks to purchase what theyre producing.
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Read it all at: https://medium.com/basic-income/its-time-to-shift-the-economy-into-fourth-gear-capitalism-with-basic-income-f13e0d6ec057
Nobody ever said on their death bed, "I wish I could have worked more."
CrispyQ
(36,231 posts)The ruling class is just fine with the masses having no leisure time in their lives.
BigmanPigman
(51,432 posts)yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)Known now as the Great Decoupling, our productivity entirely detached from our earned incomes in the mid 1970s, skyrocketing upwards with the advance of technology while the great majority was left behind. Where all incomes once rose with productivity, now only the incomes of those at the top do. For the rest, there is instead an increasingly dangerous cocktail of growing inequality, falling security, increasing precariousness, and an anger whose source cant quite be pinpointed.
BigmanPigman
(51,432 posts)yurbud
(39,405 posts)Our work produces far more wealth than work a hundred years ago, but we don't reap the rewards.
If we did we would have far more leisure time, more civic engagement, and for those worried about depleting our resources, those with a higher standard of living have fewer kids, so it would even slow population growth.
Instead, we have been funneling more money upward to the already wealthy than they could spend in a dozen generations, and screwing everyone else.
It can't hold for much longer.