Industry and industrial production in the new age

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

I am going to play the Devil's Advocate here and will say that industry and industrial production will not, as it is being claimed, go over to total robotic production but will, in fact, cease and that in the not so distant future. And that regardless of what governments and industry and economists proclaim.

Why? Because it is dependent on a great deal of energy, especially of electricity and gas, and to all intents and purposes there is a very limited amount of oil and gas, upon which our energy production and on it industry depends, left to go around (despite the fact that the price of oil did fall quite significantly in the late part of 2014 and the early part of 2015 but that is a political ball game rather than oil and gas being abundant still) and renewable energies such as wind and sun just cannot provide the high voltages and wattage that are required by industrial production as we have now and the one that they are envisaging for the future.

The future of production will be small scale industry again – that is, at least, the way that I (and also others) – see it and much will be made more or less by hand again rather than by large machines, by production lines and robots. Without the power to do so it just cannot compute.

However, we keep being told that robots will take our jobs and that almost everything in the not so distant future will be performed by robots, many of them being what is referred to as “humanoid” robots. In the BBC Radio 4 program Analysis of March 2, 2015 entitled “When robots steal our jobs” this was very much being hinted at and also, it is claimed, that when this happens we all will have so much more free time to do what we want.

Hello! And what about money to live? Oh, some say, everyone will be given a basic universal income. Yes, sure, and pigs fly.

While the idea of a basic income is a great idea and one that should be supported and for which trial are now being carried out in some places, it will, probably, however, never come to pass in the capitalist system as we have it today. It will require a new system that has other ideals, a system where man and Nature are valued and stand in the center and not profit for corporations and shareholders. And one where no longer perpetual economic growth and the acquisition of wealth by business owners and others is the aim and name of the game.

This system will come about when capitalism collapses, as it must and will, and we return to a different way of production when also, as it must be, the means of production will be in the hands of the workers and not of the state. True socialism is not state capitalism and is the only system that abolishes and eliminates the distinction between the bosses and the workers.

But it has to be said here that in the post-industrial age production will be of a different kind and conducted in a different way than most of us have come to know and understand over the last century or more. The kind of production that we have known for so long ever since the “Industrial Revolution” will become a thing of the past and, like the motorcar, will be seen, later, as but a blip in human history.

Does anyone really believe that those robots, that are claimed to be taking jobs, can be made and run in a world where non-renewable resources are becoming scarce and where we need to get away from fossil fuel derived energy? I, for one, do not and that simply because of the fact that due to the restraints that will be forced upon us if we do not want the Planet to be destroyed entirely neither their manufacture nor their use will be feasible in due course. They will just remain ideas in the heads of the capitalists.

The new world will be very much like the old world before the industrial revolution and production (and other work) will be performed again in the ways of old. Sounds dreadful to many, I know, as the consumer goods will neither be abundant anymore nor cheap, cheap, cheap, as they are presently and as the consumers today demand them to be. That those products, that are so very cheap, come too us at a very high cost of exploitation of people and the Planet no one seems to want to know about. In addition to that those goods are not cheap in other ways as they are designed to break down in a very short space of time resulting in the fact that we have to buy new again, and again. But that is the way this present capitalist system has been set up, especially ever since the Second World War.

Before that time, and even for a while thereafter, especially in certain countries, products were made in a way that they lasted and that they could easily be repaired. However, the capitalist saw there profits disappear if they were to create new products that were better and learned from what had happened during the war where they were suppliers to the military. Products that get destroyed all the time would have to be replaced with the same products again and again and they basically put a self-destruct mechanism into the goods they made and sold. This mechanism is built-in obsolescence and non-repairability. If something breaks down after a short while, designed actually to do so, and then made in such a way that it cannot be repaired you do not have to invest all too much in research and development of new products; you can just sell your “old” ones over and over again. A total win-win situation for the capitalist and a total lose-lose situation for the consumer.

Years ago, and that will be the way again that things will be produced in the future, products, today often referred to as “durable goods” and given a lifespan of about three years, used to last for decades for they were made to last, and they were repairable and that is why they did last, for when something did break it could be fixed, often by the owner him- or herself. Those durable goods of today are not fit the name durable as they are rather the opposite. While that means that such products, like we once had, will be more expensive initially this cost, spread over the years that the product will actually last, coupled with repairability, will make them cheaper in the long run.

In the German Democratic Republic an entire repair sector existed in the economy, from small shops to industrial complexes almost that were geared to repair whatever the customer might bring along, from clothes and other textiles as well as, obviously, shoes and boots, over household appliances and such to vehicles. You could even get your knives, scissors and other cutting tools sharpened, reset and such, and all at a reasonable cost. But, to some extent, I digressed a little.

Industrial production in the new age of no-fossil fuels to power everything will, nay must, by virtue of lack of the amount of power required by the large-scale production we know today, return to much small scale and thus products will be made in a different way and must be made to last and be repairable as they will be more expensive.

But to be perfectly honest the cheap goods that come to us today more often that not are not made in a sustainable way and the fact that they are – predominantly – non-repairable makes them, in the long run, more expensive than the kind of products and goods that we had before that we, although more expensive, repairable. Personally, I don't think that such a change is a bad thing at all.

© 2017

Keeping the industrial economy and stopping climate change is an illusion

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

To think we can keep the industrial economy and stop climate change is an illusion. It would require more than simple magic. It would require a miracle.

The powers-that-be keep harping on that we need to get the economy growing again after the recession the world went through – what do you mean after the recession? – despite the fact that the constant growth economy is simply impossible in a world that if finite and the non-renewable resources of which are finite and almost exhausted. It is simply not possible and stopping climate change at the same time, as they think they can do while growing the economy is more than wishful thinking; it is an illusion.

The very notion of stopping and reversing climate change, as the proponents often talk about, is an illusion in itself, as may scientists also begin to agree. We will, as I have said for many years by now, learn to adapt to the fact that changes are happening which could, however, in the end, lead us to a new ice age rather than a hotter Planet.

However, we need to stop the pollution and stop talking about carbon and carbon credits. The substance nowadays referred to as brown or black carbon and which is responsible for most of the glacial melt once was simply called what is it, namely soot and it comes from the chimneys of industry.

Furthermore, as foresters already for ages and now forest and climate scientists have stated, an increase in CO2 will actually benefit trees and plants by increasing growth. This is not to say, however, that the stuff in the atmosphere may not have some other, yet unknown, serious side effects. Thus we have to reduce pollution and CO2 emissions are but part of our industrial pollution.

And how do we do that?

The answer is simple but also rather complicated for it calls for serious changes in the way we live and work and travel, and much more.

Another problem is that we have waited for many decades. We knew already in the late 1960s and in the 1970s that pollution was causing problems to the environment, and not just air pollution, and the Hippies in those days warned us about the throwaway society that we were becoming also. It was in those days when the word recycling was invented though the act has existed for generations and generations and reuse even more so.

The eightieth arrived, however, with Thatcher in the UK, and for some reason all the lessons that were being learned in the two decades before we thrown out like the proverbial baby with the bathwater in the pursuit of more and more material things and the wholesale murder of the Earth was ratcheted up a couple of hundred notches and the rest, as they say, is history.

We still have not woken up really even now as governments still believe that the economy must continue to grow and that we will find a way of getting the Planet back on track. The term “dream on” comes to mind here or “cloud cuckoo land”.

Even among people in the so-called green movement the talk is about a need to grow the green economy and to look for continual growth. This is fine if we can make products, etc., from waste materials only, and without the use of energy, or much of it, which all too often still is generated from non-renewable fuels. Greensumption has taken over from ordinary consumption and far too many believe that if they buy recycled goods and chuck their recyclables into the appropriate bins they can continue the status quo.

All too often we see that those who claim to be “green” cannot think further than the recycling bin and then going to the shops (or on the Internet) purchasing something recycled that they could have, very simply and easily, made from what they have tossed minutes ago into the recycling bin.

Very few seem to realize this and seem to realize that we are being conjured up a reality of an economy that is simply unsustainable and that a total U-turn is required if we and the Earth are to live and thrive.

In the first instance we will have to get the corporations out of the picture and then we need to change the system not the government. We do not need a (new) government, we need a new system. A system where the Earth and all Her children, humans, animals and plants, live together in harmony and where our interdependence upon the rest of the Planet is considered.

One of the first thing that need to change is the economy. From a permanent growth economy to a constant resource based one. Products need to be made again that last and that can be repaired by simple means and after their life has truly come to an end can be dismantled, easily into their components which can then be used to make new things.

Then, or may be parallel to that, our system needs to change from one that exploits man and Earth to one were that is a thing of the past and where people and the Planet are considered.

All of this, however, will mean a total change in what we have been used to over the last G-d only knows how many decades and centuries and it will not be an easy change for many.

However, the alternative is that of a Planet that can no longer support (human) life and thus the end of us all. We have only one Earth and there is no other Planet like it to which we can all escape (sorry, Prof, Hawkins, but you are wrong and a moron in that field). We either change or we all die, and this could be sooner than we think. The Earth – Gaia – will survive but we will not. Simple as that, unless we change and change now!

© 2013