I just encountered a Slashdot article headlined Hostess Saves Twinkies By Automating, Fires 94% Of Their Workforce. The general spin of the Slashdot summary is that evil corporate overlords are destroying valuable, life-giving jobs by replacing helpless workers with robots. Neither the summary nor the articles state this outright, but the summary clearly has a bias toward this perspective.
I reject this perspective wholesale, but I needed a moment to ponder exactly what is wrong with it. I think the issue here is that it views these twinkie-making factory workers as inert matter -- valuable resources which, although useless on their own, still ought to be put to good use by placing these inert workers into jobs. Like so many batteries sitting in a drawer, worthless until they're placed into some electronic device which enables them to realize their potential. But they aren't batteries. They are human beings, with hopes and dreams every bit as important as ours.
It's no wonder that society has adopted this view of humanity, since mandatory public schooling was designed to create a "nation of workers," not "a nation of thinkers." This education system effectively trains creativity out of children, attempting to render them as this inert industrial goo to be activated and controlled by Employers.
Nevertheless, in spite of the mandatory education system which attempts to mold children into this model of humanity, this model is simply wrong. It is fundamentally opposed to human nature. Human nature is not to view the world as something that happens to me, but rather to view myself as something that happens to the world.
And it's a good thing, too.
The vast majority of people who experience some of the finer things in life want others who have not experienced those things to have a chance to experience them as well. But too seldom do we ask, exactly how does that happen? How does an individual whose current role in society does not afford them these finer things transition to a role which does? And more importantly, how does this happen without becoming a zero-sum game? If one individual vacates a less desirable role for a better one, the previous role is still necessary for the new one to exist, therefore someone else must fill it instead and society as a whole is no better off.
The answer to this question is automation. Automation breaks the zero-sum property. Thanks to automation, unrewarding roles in society are eliminated entirely, thus empowering those who previously filled them to move to better positions without requiring anyone else to move back. It is the engine by which all people can eventually enjoy the best things available to humanity.
For this system to work, however, we must discard this diseased mindset, that humans are merely batteries, to be used by industry and discarded, replaced by a fresh batch off the conveyor of public education. We must remember that humans are creative beings. When one role of low value is destroyed, we can invent a new one of higher value to replace it.
There is no limit to human creativity (the root word being 'create' -- to make that which did not previously exist), thus there is no limit to the roles humans will find valuable. And by automating the roles which were once highly valuable, but have now been outmoded by higher value roles, we compromise in nothing, allowing all humans to enjoy the good afforded by those roles without having to dedicate their time and creative capacity to filling those roles.
So if you want a world where everyone has equal access to the best things life can offer, then be happy when you read a headline announcing that 94% of a factory's workers have just been freed up to contribute to society in new and more valuable ways without any loss in the good things life has to offer. By this mechanism, the best things life can offer become cheaper, and the people who had the least to offer can now offer more.