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The Second Machine Age

Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
Apr 28, 2014StarGladiator rated this title 1 out of 5 stars
[Update #2: I'm pretty sure that the commenter, 2295..., if they read the book, certainly didn't comprehend it. W/phase 2, automating jobs, offshoring being phase 1, production won't exist for humans!] [Update: It is now becoming obvious the fat cats are beginning to run scared: witness the spate of books, this one and another by Simon Head, and still others, claiming that their offshoring of jobs was insignificant, it was because of the computers, et cetera. Plus the Rockefeller family keeps hiring people to claim that they have no money left!] Back in 1978, at an international convention of engineers and computer scientists in Switzerland, the one conclusion which won unananimous approval was that automation would lead to job loss. This book is a repeat of that mundane conclusion, but the author spins more fiction, more dishonesty (Oh, he's at MIT - - that figures!) to support his pathetic and relatively obvious thesis. No, the author is wrong when stating that jobs offshoring had nothing to do with the growth in unemployment in America. Most definitely wrong! Yes, present and future automation will lead to fewer jobs in certain countries: they continue to offshore jobs, those jobs which would be created by the increase in automation are further done overseas, leading to exponential increases in automation. This is the way of a predatory capitalism as practised in the Corporate Fascist State, where the Rentier Class, or Global Elites or Transnational Capitalist Class, which is far wealthier thant Thomas Piketty's most limited research into INCOMES, not wealth generated from capital gains, will ever explain.