Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 05:56:50 -0500
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
From: kirez-AT-cornell.edu (Kirez Korgan)
Subject: Re: kirez korgan


Hi folks,
        I'm in the middle of a polymer conference this week and it's quite
hectic, but I'll try to answer what I remember of the responses.
        My statement on toxins in the silicon chip process was poor; I mean
to say that the environmental output is not toxic.  I've got people in the
labs around me doing similar processes; I happen to be in the same building
as the electronic packaging research facility, where silicon chip processes
are explored, and next to the National Nanofabrication Facility, with same
processes.  Of course we do this in jeans and t-shirt and rubber gloves. 
Many of the solvents used in this process are highly toxic and even deadly,
but as I'm aware there is no danger to the factory workers who work in
these processes, and toxins are not *produced* by the process.
        I personally work with highly toxic substances, including cyanide
and bdma, etc.  Who's crying for me?
        But no worries, because it's no substantial argument anyway.  The
example was about the poor asian women and the evil corporation employing
them - it's always been called "foreign imperialism" and "exploitation",
it's always been damned as evil - by others than those who are benefitting
from it- and it's always improved the quality of life of those whom it
employs (that's why they flock from around the country to the industrial
regions!).  (I'm talking macroscale here, there are individual cases in
which it certainly didn't improve conditions, and there were even cases in
which it was outright damaging and in violation of people's rights.  People
do make poor choices of employer, and there have been ugly factory owners
and processes[but those get improved by technology!].)

        Just as the wage of the data entry folk is no argument.  What are
you getting so pissy about?  I'm making arguments about the broad
principle, that the human capacity to reason and thus make tools evolved
because it proved to be beneficial, and that it is still beneficial, and
that in fact humans can't be truly human, and live as humans, unless they
employ their distinctive means of survival: science.  You guys are haggling
about the wage of the data entry clerks.  I'm suspecting you'd like to
drive the whole industry into the ground, make them _really_ unemployed, by
using coercive gov't regulation to raise their wages.  Else what's your
point?  That people should strive to get better jobs?  I agree!  

        Now, when I say I can demonstrate with hard numbers, I'm not
referring to some pithy economic or case study by somthing like the Rand
corp. or anything.  You want the *real* data?  Look around you.  An
improved technology enables a factory to produce more with less cost,
including labor cost.  This brings in more money.  Where does that money
go?  Unless people are burning it, they have to spend it.  So it goes back
into the economy, or better, it goes to expand current operations.  This
results in greater employment, either way.  If initially people were laid
off, because a new technology enabled the factory to produce a product with
(let's be extreme) half the original work force, there are less workers
there.  But costs have decreased, and profits have soared.  Maybe some
greedy bastard of an executive is getting rich.  What does he do with it? 
He buys products, and the money goes to increased sales and work elsewhere,
increasing demand and absorbing more labor.  Price of the factory's product
will also drop.  So all the consumers out there, who previously might have
spent $50 for some shoes from this factory, now spend $45, and the extra $5
goes elsewhere in the economy; increasing total consumer demand.  Hence net
increase in jobs.  That's why the population keeps increasing but
unemployment doesn't.  
        (Reference:  Henry Hazlitt, _Economics in One Lesson_; I don't have
a copy of it anymore, but he gives far better, more specific examples than
I.)
        But need we be so short sighted?  The real data, the hard numbers,
are all around you.  The economy has necessarily steadily grown; quality of
life is far better than it was 50 years ago, and there are more people
employed; if the economy hadn't grown, the 30% of the population that was
not around 30 years ago would be totally unemployed, right?.  Not only are
they not unemployed, they are earning more money per capita.  What's the
difference?  the technological advances of this century!  
        While a new technology may replace a whole sector of workers, why
is the technology employed?  Because it produces more for less cost.  So
what does that mean? Profits up, means more spending elsewhere in the
economy, and thus more demand for labor;  and prices down, meaning more
money in the pockets of the consumer, to be spent elsewhere in the economy
= demand up, employment up.
        Meanwhile the nature of most technological innovations is that
machines do the rigorous, monotonous, repetitious jobs.  So those are the
jobs that are getting replaced, and the workers replaced must (god forbid)
improve their skills and learn a new job or an advanced one with a machine
doing the monotonous work they previously did.  Overall the economy
improves (that's why the machine was desired and installed) and the workers
benefit.
        
        "What is meant by the 'interest of capital?'" was a rhetorical
question.  I'm the bastard son of a single mother who worked in a sawmill,
she had a brutal, man's job and a man's shoulders.  I declared myself a
socialist when I was 9 years old.  ("in sweden everyone gets a vacation,
school is guaranteed through college, and health care too";   "-Sounds
great to me! " (at 9yrs old))  You can be sure that the philosopher I cut
my teeth on was Marx.    (Per Malgosia's suggestion, I've included some
dirt on the person whose name appears in the subject line!)

        I was pointing at a number of problems:  1) the capitalist vs.
worker distinction was false; there is a continuum of levels of ability,
with those at the top conferring the greatest benefit to society and
especially to those below;   2) their interests are in total harmony, what
is best for the "capitalists" also being best for the workers.

        Notice this whole subject is dismissing broader principles, like
the fact that it is the right of the entrepreneur to take her factory
elsewhere, or to close it, or never to open it if she so pleases.  Notice
the whole subject revolves around Marxist whining for the worker and the
fallacies of class struggle, a very short sighted focus, for the workers'
interests are harmonious with those of the whole economy.  Which of course
is constantly improved by constant innovation in technology.
      
        Notice that my argument still stands.  While some have tried to
make qualifications to it or little digs at it (focusing on the aspects
their small marxist paradigm points them to) it is still true:  technology
is good for each and every one of us.  houses and skyscrapers are superior
to caves and huts.  An industrial society is better than an agrarian one,
because its products are better than the ones that people gratefully
replace with them.  And as we shall see, a computerized society is better
than an industrial one.  Genetic engineering will be better than the
diseases it replaces.  Prosthetics will be better than limblessness. 
Nuclear and solar energy will be better than petroleum.  Molecular
engineering will be better than "bulk" technology. Cyberspace will continue
to unite the world and the value of communication will be clear.  Health
sciences will continue to make us more aware of our bodies and more
knowledgeable about keeping them healthy, and the value of exercise and
bodily enjoyment of the world we live in. 
        The march of the creative energy of man goes on.  The scientists,
entrepreneurs and engineers lead us to greater and greater standards of
living.  Life is good, and getting better, for more and more of us.  Cause
for celebration; eager anticipation; and respect and appreciation for the
innovation that's taking us there.   Enjoy!!

        I bet the next step the anti-technologists take is to declare that,
in fact everything I've said is true, and that's why we face a population
crisis - so we have to contain, control and perhaps halt innovation in
technology because it just keeps on allowing more people to live by
constantly expanding the economy and thus the goods which keep us all alive
and provide for the lives of yet more.  But, alas, they're evaluation will
still be wrong; nonetheless it will display their hostilities nicely.
        

        
        
        

        
___________________________________________
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data."
                                                - Sherlock Holmes

Kirez Korgan, hardcore technophile
kirez-AT-cornell.edu