Let me take a step back and highlight part of the problem. The article that was posted was a Labor Day piece, about American workers.
Freepers have turned it into a "I love old cars!" thread.
The problem is that labor is losing its value -- automation does some of it, foreign workers do some of it. Standard of living is going down in this country. We are absolutely going in the direction of people who do no work at all, and people who have a part-time job. The number of people with solid careers demanding lots of time and effort is shrinking. In a society in which personal productivity seems to have no reason to increase, we seem likely to become a society in which fewer and fewer people can really support themselves. Voila! Government checks! EBT cards! Government healthcare! Government schools! It's a socialist's dream, because labor is no longer necessary, and everyone has (at best) a part-time job at McDonald's! Now we really need a strong central government redistributing all the wealth! Yee-Haaa!
But, we might as well turn it into a "I love old cars!" thread. I guess that's less depressing.
1. What socialists/communists fail to acknowledge is that basic human nature pushes us to want to better ourselves, to achieve, to distinguish ourselves. If this weren't true, we would not have made the advances we've made as a species - especially in the time frame in which we've made them.
2. When the ability of individual human beings to better themselves is suppressed, demotivation occurs - often along with depression and a variety of self-destructive behaviors (e.g. alcoholism in the USSR as one of a large number of examples).
3. Ironically, socialism/communism are generally pushed forward by ‘leaders’ who are narcissistic and who are in essence distinguishing themselves apart from the rest of us by being ‘leaders’ of these movements. Progressives are very often identified by a ‘save the world’ mentality - that features them as the special few who are the chosen ones to ‘save the world’. In essence, they are exhibiting behaviors consistent with item number 1 above, while pushing a world construct that denies the rest of us the right to distinguish ourselves.
4. The Utopian concept that we can technologically advance to the point at which human input is no longer needed, and we can all just ‘chill’ and enjoy the fruits of utopia - while ‘automation’ etc. takes care of business for us is terribly flawed for an extensive number of reasons. Among them:
A. Someone needs to invent, perfect, build, and maintain the automation. It will not just come into being on its own.
B. Even if one evokes the ‘ultimate’ automated society, in which ‘smart machines’ invent the automation, build it, perfect it, and maintain it, someone will have to invent and fabricate these ‘smart machines’. You could argue that ‘smarter machines’ will invent the ‘smart machines’, but this begins to get a little ridiculous and way too futuristic to be considered seriously in the current or foreseeable future context. Yes, all things are possible, but if one believes this scenario of machine begets machine begets machine, then I have Escher drawings you'd probably love to have hanging on your wall.
To me, the part of the human spirit that led us to go into space, to walk on the moon, and for many to die trying to reach the summit of Everest, is so intrinsic, basic, and intensely human that to deny these things essentially is to deny our humanity. Interestingly, on another thread today there was reference to the behavior of Russian athletes - including rudeness and hypercompetitiveness. In my view, it was inevitable that Russian athletes would be hypercompetitive, since for years and years athletic competition was the only way one could legitimately distinguish oneself in the USSR.
Lots to think about, and I'd love to hear other opinions.