Hi everyone, I am excited to send this newsletter about the intersection of left politics and technol

Fully Automated Luxury Communism Newsletter This newsletter is about fully automated luxury communism: how technology can help bring about a high-tech, post-work, post-capitalist society. Every two weeks you will receive technology stories from areas such as labour-saving technology, self-driving cars, space exploration, reproductive technologies and of course leftist shenanigans.

Hi everyone, I am excited to send this newsletter about the intersection of left politics and technology for the second time. If you have not done so yet, you can subscribe at the following link Every two weeks this newsletter brings links, snippets and interesting facts about technology from a left perspective. It hopes to spark a greater discussion among the left about the opportunities and threats that tech brings. This week I want to dig into two subjects: Elon Musk’s truck and tech-disaster-capitalism in Puerto Rico. This newsletter and my own thoughts are very much a work in progress, so any tips, comments, messages or corrections are strongly welcomed. Please let me know at: fullyalc@gmail.com or via Twitter @AutomatedFully

Credit: 9kand1

The Muskmeister builds a truck

Elon Musk announced that his company Tesla Motors will start making a truck. And not just any truck, a solar-powered, semi-automated one that looks like a space-ship, and which would be more aerodynamic than a Bugatti Veyron. If you are into that sort of thing, below you can find a highlight reel of the presentation.

Tesla Semi truck and Roadster event in 9 minutes - YouTube

So why is this relevant to the left? Besides the implications for more climate-friendly logistics these trucks include autopilot, which raises the spectre of automating trucking jobs. Truck driver is a relatively well paying job in the US, that is actually very common, in many US states it is the most common job.

This prompted a great testimony from a truck driver:

Maybe so, but guess what? You’re next. When automation starts displacing lawyers, accountants and bankers, then we might see some push-back about the social costs of technology. So long as it’s only truckers and factory workers getting sacked, well, there’s always Walmart, McDonald’s, or food stamps.

Truck drivers like me will soon be replaced by automation. You're next | Finn Murphy | Opinion | The Guardian www.theguardian.com Innovators like Elon Musk – who have long worked to get self-driving trucks on the road – are poised to remove the last humans left in the modern supply chain

What would Marx do? // fragments on machines

This of course raises a major contradiction in capitalism: it automates human labour, yet it makes labour the yardstick for compensating workers (and uses coercion to make humans work). Or as Marx said in his must-read Fragments on Machines from the Grundrise: Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition – question of life or death – for the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the already created value as value. He also offers a way out: reducing working time. Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual –appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high. ‘Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 12 hours. Wealth is not command over surplus labour time’ (real wealth), ‘but rather, disposable time outside that needed in direct production, for every individual and the whole society.’ Note: I am aware that there are a number of alternative interpretations of this piece of text, not the least by Paul Mason in his Postcapitalism , so if you think it should be interpreted differently (and why) let me know at: fullyalc@gmail.com or via Twitter @AutomatedFully

Platooning and tugboats

A Wired article goes into depth about some of the technological and social issues behind replacing trucking labour. Interestingly they explore partial automation of trucking, since we will most likely not see a sudden, complete replacement of human labour, but rather partial replacement where work is transformed for the drivers who are left.

Peloton Technology, a 6-year-old startup, envisions “platooning” trucks that can travel in packs and “talk” to each other via radio waves. Drivers in these trucks need only sit at the wheel if their vehicle leads the platoon; others can fill out paperwork, nap, or sit at a laptop and manage the fleet’s logistics network (though they’ll probably need more training for that). Autonomous startup Embark sees a future in which drivers are more like tug boat pilots, waiting at a highway’s exit ramp for self-driving trucks to arrive and driving them into “port”—in this case, a distribution center. The trucker doesn’t even need to be in the truck: Starsky Robotics—a Silicon Valley startup that employs six full-time truck drivers—would put the driver behind a screen, in a call center-like office. But yes, trucks that drive themselves are going to need fewer people to drive, and Goldman Sachs economists predict all driving industries could lose up to 300,000 jobs a year to automation. Still, those effects won’t kick in for decades. Not surprisingly, the Teamsters are skeptical. “It’s not just job loss,” Sam Loesche, a legislative representative for the Teamsters, told WIRED in September. “It’s also what happens to the working conditions of the person who remains in the cab. How do we protect the livelihood of the driver who may be pushed to operate on a 24-hour continual basis because the company is claiming he’s in the back of a cab?”

Puerto Rico & tech-disaster-capitalism

Puerto Rico is still a mess two months after Hurricane Maria hit the island. It reminds us that natural disasters are never natural, but are a reflection of inequalities embedded in society. Aid getting to the island has been hindered by colonial structures, and apparently corrupt dealings. Some snippets:

He immediately came under withering criticism and congressional and federal review for awarding a $300 million contract to a small private company from Montana, Whitefish Energy Holdings, to help repair the grid. Prepa had agreed to pay $319 an hour for electrical linemen; the average salary in Puerto Rico for that work is $19 an hour. Mr. Ramos told lawmakers that there had been no kickbacks, but acknowledged that the company had long been rife with political patronage, and that up to half of the employees were the family members of politicians.

What are they doing down there?

Less explored is the role of tech companies on the island, they have been using the hurricane as a way to roll-out some of their new technologies. Partly this seems to be marketing, but partly we can see that in the context of disaster capitalism: using the destruction of existing societal structures to test changes it could otherwise not. Or as Naomi Klein explains it: This strategy has been a silent partner to the imposition of neoliberalism for more than 40 years. Shock tactics follow a clear pattern: wait for a crisis (or even, in some instances, as in Chile or Russia, help foment one), declare a moment of what is sometimes called “extraordinary politics”, suspend some or all democratic norms – and then ram the corporate wishlist through as quickly as possible.

Naomi Klein: how power profits from disaster | US news | The Guardian www.theguardian.com The long read: After a crisis, private contractors move in and suck up funding for work done badly, if at all – then those billions get cut from government budgets. Like Grenfell Tower, Hurricane Katrina revealed a disdain for the poor

In this sense disaster zones can be a testing ground for new technologies, although the actions of tech companies do not, as of yet, seem to be full-on disaster capitalism. Tech companies do not seem to push through malicious regulation, or privatize everything (that I noticed), and simply are using the island as a testing ground. Some of the companies that entered the beleaguered island are:

Tesla entered Puerto Rico after a tweet by Musk to build solar installations in the country.

Alphabet’s (parent company of Google) Project Loon was deployed in Puerto Rico. Essentially they use balloons to get internet access to remote regions. The FCC granted Alphabet’s Project Loon, which delivers internet via balloons, an experimental license last month to help get Puerto Ricans online after Hurricane Maria decimated the island’s infrastructure. While the team cautiously tweeted that it would ‘explore of it was possible to help,’ Project Loon announced today that it has worked with AT&T and T-Mobile to successfully deliver basic internet to over 100,000 Puerto Ricans to the internet.

In a similar move, AT&T sent drones into the island to restore connectivity.



AT&T's 'Flying COW' drone provides cell service to Puerto Rico www.engadget.com These days, it’s just as important to have communication up and running after a major disaster as it is to have power, food and drinkable water. The FCC approve…

Less successfully Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg made a disastrous VR visit to Puerto Rico

“One of the things that’s really magical about VR is you can get the feeling you’re really in a place,” said Zuckerberg as his grinning avatar floated over scenes of flooding and destruction.

Miscellaneous links

The past two weeks also saw the publication of other interesting articles, to which I will not dedicate an entire section, but which I do want to bring to your attention.

Luxury socialized medicine

Great article about the insanity of the US healthcare system, and how socialism can offer a new type of luxury. Luxury socialism isn’t just a meme — it’s a working theory that holds that social care, among other things, isn’t a zero-sum game. Marx and Engels saw that a society divided by class and driven by the profit imperative produces an abundance of resources alongside an abundance of unmet needs. Socialism, if it’s about anything, is about matching our resources to our needs, to improve our collective quality of life. Socialized health insurance — and the comforts it provides — would be a pretty good start.

Luxury Socialized Medicine jacobinmag.com The standard case for a single-payer health insurance system is pretty well known. Anyone can get care without courting financial ruin.

Fully automated green communism

I do not want to give the feeling this newsletter is going to link to Aaron Bastani every issue, but the guy is writing a book about fully automated luxury communism. Given the timeframe within which we are now operating (we have around three decades to completely decarbonise global production while energy demand doubles), this won’t be easy. The answer is to emphasise each moment as part of a broader shift, with the need for new technologies, social relations, mental conceptions, work flows and conceptions of nature. No one sphere is sufficient.

Fully Automated Green Communism | Novara Media novaramedia.com The coming out party for climate change as an issue of global relevance was the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Since then, the relationship between energy and the economy has only become more political.

CRISPR

If successful, the new technique could give a major boost to the fledgling field of gene therapy. Scientists have edited people’s genes before, altering cells in the lab that are then returned to patients. There also are gene therapies that do not involve editing DNA.

Scientists make first ever attempt at gene editing inside the body | Science | The Guardian www.theguardian.com New therapy will permanently alter DNA, with no way to alter mistakes editing may cause – but offers chance to tackle currently incurable metabolic diseases

Amazon strike

Germany is Amazon’s second-biggest market globally after the U.S., and the strikes there took place in six major depots in Bad Hersfeld, Leipzig, Rheinberg, Werne, Graben and Koblenz, according to Verdi, a trade union in Germany. (And they actually first started earlier this week, and may go on through the weekend.) In Italy, workers associated with three different unions — CGIL, CISL, and UIL — have been striking in what appears to be only one location, in Piacenza.

Bai...

This was the second issue of the fully automated luxury communism newsletter. This newsletter and my own thoughts are very much a work in progress, so any tips, comments, messages or corrections are very much welcomed. Please let me know at: fullyalc@gmail.com or via Twitter @AutomatedFully

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