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Comment on Intel introduces its newest employee, Chip the robotic inspector, just after announcing mass human layoffs

partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

If Intel had trotted out Chip and then announced it would be creating a universal basic income scheme based on the savings the company was amassing by using Chip, then I’d be clapping along with the audience. As it stands, it just seems like bad taste during a difficult time.

I’m not sure the author of the article has a realistic understanding of Intel’s role or ability to affect change public policy.

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Daggity@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s not a great place to be. Intel and other major corporations buy political influence. Politicians act in the best interests of their benefactors, and for most, that’s not the voters. I don’t think it’s practical either, but maybe there’s some use in including these kinds of political ideas when these things happen, as a reminder that they wield political influence.

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aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s true that Intel probably shouldn’t be handing out UBI, but if companies want to promote how much they don’t need people’s labor anymore, than that should be taken into consideration in policy making.

Somewhere along the line we lost one of the basic things underpinning our current economic structure – that corporations are supposedly better at allocating, distributing, and utilizing resources than a centrally planned economy with a governmental overlord – it sure sounds to me like Intel and other companies that are handing out pink slips for every bit of thing they automate cannot find anything to do with the human resources they’ve been allowed.

To put it much more simply, corporations aren’t allowed to exist purely because they “make money”. One of their primary functions is to employ people.

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- partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  It’s true that Intel probably shouldn’t be handing out UBI, but if companies want to promote how much they don’t need people’s labor anymore, then that should be taken into consideration in policy making.
  
  Yes exactly, policy making at the government level, not at the corporate level as the author was suggesting.
  
  To put it more simply, corporations aren’t allowed to exist purely because they “make money”.
  
  Under capitalism, yes they are.
  
  One of their primary functions is to employ people.
  
  I’d argue under capitalism, that isn’t even a secondary function. Employing people may be tertiary at best.
  
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  - aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    If you look at what many consider to be the golden age of American corporations after the second world war, the notion of a “company man” was a celebrated one, and companies bragged about how they treated their employees. In that era, unlike today’s, shedding employees was not seen as an achievement but rather either a necessary evil, or a sign that the company was going down the tubes.
    
    Over time and with complacency, we’ve ceded the territory on these things. We can say that is inevitable under capitalism that this happens if it makes you happy, but either way at one point it was a major part of the stated purpose of corporations to employ people and help them live productive lives.
    
    The platonic ideal of a corporation that owns everything, builds everything, controls everything, and employs nobody will never be fully realized, because the people it is harming will eventually rise to destroy it, or die trying.
    
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    partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    If you look at what many consider to be the golden age of American corporations after the second world war, the notion of a “company man” was a celebrated one, and companies bragged about how they treated their employees. In that era, unlike today’s, shedding employees was not seen as an achievement but rather either a necessary evil, or a sign that the company was going down the tubes.
    
    You’ve got rose colored glasses on. This was only true if you were white, male, and a white collar worker.
    
    At the same time for everyone else, employers were increasing working hours, reducing workplace safety, in exchange for higher worker wages:
    
    “During the years when wages were rising, working conditions were deteriorating. Employers made up for higher wages by negotiating higher levels of output into union contracts. And the labor leaders–seasoned veterans of business unionism by the 1960s–were all too willing to comply. Time off in the form of vacations, coffee breaks and sick leave all fell victim to new work standards negotiated in the 1950s and 1960s, while automation, forced overtime and speedups allowed management to more than compensate for high wages. During the period from 1955 to 1967, non-farm employees’ average work hours rose by 18 percent, while manufacturing workers’ increased by 14 percent. In the same period, labor costs in non-farm business rose 26 percent, while after-tax corporate profits soared 108 percent. And during the period between 1950 and 1968, while the number of manufacturing workers grew by 28.8 percent, manufacturing output increased by some 91 percent.”
    
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  - Reverendender@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Employing humans is a bug, not a feature
    
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    partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m not sure I’d call it a “bug”. It can be exploited to obtain tax breaks, which benefits the “make money” primary goal.
    
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