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The rapidly developing industry or robotics is quickly reaching commercial viability. Soon robots will be as common and necessary to everyday life as computers are today, but unlike computers, which are like brains in jars, and limited to purely computational work, robots are mobile and capable of doing physical labor. These machines are the ultimate beasts of burden, as long as we provide them with sufficient energy they can work endlessly to suit our needs. Eventually, as technology advances, robots could elevate humanity beyond physical mundane labor – to lives of luxury yet unknown.

Not everything about robots is bright and shiny though. There are social and economic hurdles that forestall robotic implementation in societies and as promising a future as robots can bring, their power if used unwisely could bring humanity to the brink of destruction. Like nuclear power, robots can be used for the benefit of humanity or as weapons of mass destruction. No one wants a robotic apocalypse, so what can be done to prevent it?

The first time humanity faced Armageddon was during the Cold War, a nuclear arms race between Communists lead by the USSR and Capitalists headed by the United States. These two economic systems had irreconcilable differences. Communism was expanding with the promise of government welfare and civil equality within the Iron Curtain, while Capitalism depended on international trade to maintain economic growth – something Communists wanted no part of. Many lives were lost in wars fought over economic policy, all the while the USSR and the United States developed increasingly more powerful nuclear weapons and stockpiled enough destructive force to destroy every man, woman, and child on Earth. The feud finally ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of the World Trade Organization, which secured Capitalism’s place as the worlds dominant economic system.

There is a new Cold War unfolding around sophisticated robotic technologies and the complex economic ramifications of their application in society. In this war Communists have an advantage because their economic model that leaves business and property ownership to the government in exchange for institutionalized public welfare programs and basic amenities like food, clothing, jobs and housing, is suitable for the implementation of a fully robotic workforce. But Communist nations aren’t nearly as technologically advanced as their Capitalist competitors who have been leading the way in scientific research and development since the end of the space race and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Over the last twenty years, however, China has undergone significant changes and rapidly advanced into a formidable world power. In 2004 China shipped over 30 percent of Asia's exports of electronic goods and slipped past Germany to become the world's second largest exporter, just behind the United States. China already produces two-thirds of the world's photo copiers, shoes, toys, and microwave ovens; half of its DVD players, digital cameras, cement, and textiles; a third of its DVD-ROM drives and desktop computers; and a fourth of its mobile phones, TV sets, PDAs, steel, and car stereos. Taiwan, though not officially a part of China, is the leader in outsourcing to mainland China. Its companies have over 50 percent of the world markets for keyboards, motherboards, monitors, and laptop computers, as well as a significant portion of the worlds silicon chip refineries.

Today, depending on whether you convert Chinese yuan into dollars at the market rate or in terms of its domestic purchasing power, it is either the world's seventh largest economy or the second largest. The International Monetary Fund believes China can easily maintain a 7-8 percent annual growth rate for another decade and perhaps longer. At that rate, China's GDP by the most conservative measure would pass Japan around 2016 and could be approaching the size of the United States as soon as 2040. If you look at this in terms of China's domestic purchasing power, however, its GDP could be effectively as large as America's by 2025.

No taxes for 20 years, labor for 30 cents on the dollar, and government grants covering up to half of the cost to build new factories. This is what China has to offer - this is the new Communist threat; China has provided economic incentives to high-tech industries that make it nearly impossible to open shop anyplace else. Though Capitalists are likely to produce the first intelligent robotic systems, if robots are to be mass-produced they will undoubtedly be made in China. Furthermore, once robotic systems are commercially viable there will be nothing stopping China from fully automating their existing manufacturing plants. All of the labor currently outsourced to China will be done by automated systems paid for by the Chinese government, American corporations will rent these fully automated facilities and pay taxes to China because it would be too expensive to build them anywhere else without the assistance of government aid.

The Capitalist economic model isn’t designed to support a robotic workforce. Capitalism relies on selling a dream to people; it survives because people believe that buying nice things will make their lives better. Like a carrot dangled in front of a mule man toils in pursuit of riches while driving progress that knows no bounds. As robots reach economic viability around 2025 will they be used as a carrot, like cars or homes – things people need to have and work endlessly to afford, or will they be the mule and work instead of man to free humanity from the drudgery of labor entirely.

To replace human labor requires a replacement of the entire Capitalist economic system, because if people don’t work, what will we pay them for? Underdeveloped countries wont be as burdened by this dilemma. A small robotic workforce could potentially sustain the basic needs of their entire population and free the people to enjoy luxuries never before possible. This is a new dream – one similar to the Marxist utopia envisioned by Communists of the past - and it posses a threat to the very foundation of Capitalism as it exists today.

During the first Cold War mans faith in the Capitalist dream was so strong that it ripped-apart Communism and the largest country in the world, the USSR. Without economic and political flexibility its possible this new dream will bring the same fate to modern Capitalism by mid-century.

As technology continues to rapidly develop we need to ask ourselves what are we making this for. Everyday when we go to work we need to know what are we working towards. If Capitalists develop economically viable robotic technologies before they are socially and economically ready to implement them it’s possible that Communist countries will piggyback similar technologies and implement them fully into their societies. The efficiency of robots used properly would bring significant leverage to the Communist countries operating under these conditions and reek havoc on Capitalist economic systems in place around the world. There is no telling how Capitalists would respond to a new Communist threat if it jeopardized their standing as world powers, but survivors of the Vietnam and Korean wars know full well that is could get rather ugly.

Ultimately there are many possibilities for what life may be like in the near future, all of which depend on the answer to a question you need to ask yourself today. As technology advances to bring unimaginably powerful machines into everyday life, how will we use them – as leverage against each other or to elevate humanity into a new age of classless freedom?

Communist Robot - Where do you stand on the future?

www.communistrobot.com

www.communistrobot.com

If not within our lifetime, than within the lifetime of our children there will be a revolution in robotics that will change every aspect of human society as we know it. Will we be ready for it? We are just now settling into the information age; enjoying the luxuries of the industrial revolution while sharing prosperity around the world, but in this age not everyone lives a life of luxury. Everyone can’t, because if everyone did who would clean the toilets? Who would do the farming? Who would make our Nike shoes? The prosperity of the modern world is dependent on the unfortunate unskilled workers living in poverty locally and throughout the world.

The rich of the world don’t physically labor; their work is to manage the resources they’ve attained that make them wealthy. Those resources, textiles or commodities are intrinsically dependent on the people paid to manufacture and distribute them. It is in the interest of the business owner to pay those people as little as possible to insure maximum returns and increase wealth. Obviously. Less obviously is the bare bones necessity of maintaining the monetary divide between wealth controlling business owners and the laboring masses. A business owner’s personal incentive for furthering financial growth is only a catalyst that preserves a more fundamentally important economic truth: The rich need the poor.

If you work out of necessity to support yourself you are poor. The middle class is just the fancy poor living in prosperous countries where even the poor are often richer than the richest of poor nations. The rich are dependent on the poor for their productive value, they need workers and the rich don’t labor so they need the poor to work for them. The poor spend their money buying the commodities the rich control, which means anything they were paid is just going back to their employer. Ultimately it’s not about the money; it’s about getting people to work for you.

Luckily for the rich, capitalism insures by design a margin of financial disproportion. This institutionalized economic disparity is known as the Pareto distribution or the 80–20 rule, which implies that a small fraction of the wealthiest people always possess a lions share of a countries riches. In the US, something approaching 80% of the wealth is held by 20% of the people, and the numbers are similar in Chile, Bolivia, Japan, South Africa and the nations of Western Europe. The margin of disparity is evident upon inspection of the United Nations 2005 Human Development Report which states that “The world’s richest 500 individuals have a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million. Beyond these extremes, the 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day—40% of the world’s population—account for 5% of global income. The richest 10%, almost all of whom live in high-income countries, account for 54%.”

This economic divide is inevitable because once a certain level of wealth is achieved economics ceases to be a measure of money and is instead a measure of people under your control. To the few wealth controlling individuals of the world money is used as an incentive to motivate the working class to fulfill their productive function, and by filling that roll of laborer the working class insures their financial standings will only ever reach the capitol ceiling established by their employer. This is the economic nature of the world in which we live, but change is in the winds.

Robots have been passively serving humanity and assisting the common laborer for over 40 years, but not until recently has the industry of robotics reached the point of viability for autonomous dynamically applicable automated production. Historically robots have worked behind the scenes as an extra hand on assembly lines, performing routine functions with greater efficiency than their human counterparts. Recently however, the robotics industry coupled with the powers of the rapidly developing computer industry is giving way to intelligent robots capable of performing complex tasks that involve direct human interaction. Robots are making their way from industrial to residential application, just as their computer counterparts did less than 30 years ago, and the potential ramifications of this transition are exponentially more momentous.

The dawn of autonomous robots is upon us! In 2004 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held a 100-mile autonomous robot race through the desert, no robots completed it. In 2005 five robots completed the DARPA Grand Challenge robot race. Since then autonomous robot technology has been developing at an extraordinary rate. Japan has several autonomous robots with functions ranging from personal entertainment to customer service. America is working on autonomous robotic supply trucks and reconnaissance vehicles, while China is aiming to apply autonomous robots to hazardous labor.

It is projected that by 2020 autonomous robots will reach the simulated intelligence of a monkey. That may not seem that smart, but it’s smart enough to do most labor intensive jobs when coupled with detailed routine programming. When robots are capable of mining their own resources and manufacturing their own parts the labor for their production will be free. When robots can ship and sell themselves their distribution will be free. The only charge required for their production would be the price of raw materials and the rent of the factory in which they were produced. From a capitalist prospective there is an enormous profit margin for business owners in an industry run this way, but it displaces countless workers.

When robots are capable of fulfilling all menial labor the divide between business owners and laborers will become outrageous. With business owners making total profit off every good produced by cutting out the cost of labor their wealth will sky-rocket while all of their former human laborers plummet into destitution as they find themselves unemployed. Yet the working class is also the consuming class, so if the working class looses its income the business owners loose their consumer market and the economy will collapse.

It is because of capitol incentive that industry has advanced as far as it has in the last one hundred years. The pursuit of the American dream has elevated Western society from the horse and carriage to sports cars and the space shuttle, all the while improving the local quality of living while outsourcing the unpleasant primary labor to underdeveloped countries. When robots become economically viable it will be due to the resourcefulness of modern industry and the driving power of Capitalism but the dilemma posed by fully implementing robots into every facet of industrial labor will prevent Capitalism from capitalizing on the true power of the robot revolution.

A Capitalist economy is not fit for autonomous robot industrialization. A Communist economy however is perfectly suited for the implementation of a fully robotic workforce. In a Communist economy the government controls industry and wealth distribution to insure that everyone is afforded basic amenities. Communism exists as a response to the disproportional wealth distribution of industrialized nations and functions better as an idealist philosophy than an actual economic system because it lacks the incentive of riches and glamour that compel development through Capitalism. Robots will change all of this.

Robots topple the infrastructure of Capitalism by displacing its most valuable asset: the common worker. Robots will empower Communist countries by lifting the burden of labor from their social structure and granting greater opportunities for education and scientific exploration.

The third world countries that conduct the outsourced labor of modern industrialized nations could potentially leapfrog the entire process of modern industry and implement autonomous robots with a Communist infrastructure, just as many underdeveloped countries skipped over implementing land-line phones in lieu of cell phones. Robots are the only means of industrialization capable of sustaining the world to allow everyone to live with the quality of living found in modern industrial nations, but modern industrial economic practices aren’t designed to handle an autonomous robot workforce.

In order for a Capitalist nation to survive the robot revolution two things need to happen. First, social and economic measures need to be taken immediately in preparation for autonomous robotic industrialization. Some form of compensation needs to be planned for workers displaced by robots to keep them from falling into total disparity and, conversely, steps need to be taken to insure that big businesses don’t have total control over the robotics industry. Robots aren’t simply an advanced form of computer, nor are they simply an evolution of the common machine. The significance of robots is of the same grandeur as nuclear energy. Robots can revolutionize industry beyond the need for human hands, but also possess the power if wielded unwisely to destroy mankind as we know it. That power should not be left for big business to handle unchecked, if at all.

The second thing a Capitalist nation needs to do to survive autonomous robots is develop them first. It is of the utmost importance that Capitalist nations develop autonomous robots before a Communist country does because if a Communist country implements a fully autonomous workforce before Capitalism is ready for it, the Capitalist economy will be flooded with goods manufactured for free by the Communist nation. This surplus of extremely cheap goods will wash away the Capitalist financial system making its economy crumble to the ground. A Capitalist human labor force is no match for Communist robots.

This is a warning. A warning that the economic system that affords the apathy to ignore it is in jeopardy. This article is not intended to persuade Capitalists to favor Communism. The Communist laborer of today is identical in many ways to the robots that will soon replace them. In it’s current state Communism demands a level of assimilation from its citizens that stifles creativity and limits civil liberties in a manor unbecoming of our modern age. The restrictions of religion and other personal beliefs as a form of social control imposed by modern Communism are not suitable for human-beings, though similar restrictions placed upon robots may prove necessary in the future to maintain control of our creations if their intelligence spawns insubordination. Ideally a robot labor force will lift the burden of intense assimilation from modern Communist nations as creativity will become significantly more valuable once manual labor is fully mechanized.

Though Communism has a better infrastructure for the implementation of an autonomous robot labor force it shares a common flaw with Capitalism in that it’s an economic model based on scarcity. Both Communism and Capitalism are modeled to deal with the economic problems of the past: supply and demand, the cost of labor, and the scarcity of resources. By assigning value to services and commodities based on the demand for their production and their difficulty to render modern economics has managed to get by, despite the surplus created by the efficiency of modern industry which nearly destroyed Capitalism during the Great Depression of the 1920’s. With the aid of government imposed economic regulations both Capitalism and Communism have managed to maintain acceptable levels of economic stability while grappling with the surplus created by modern industry, but neither system is designed to handle the extreme abundance afforded by robotic industrialization. An alternative form of economics designed to distribute abundance, something akin to the North American economic science of Technocracy, is better suited for a robot assisted future.

The entire world, all of humanity, can be elevated to live a life of luxury with robots doing all the industrial labor. With menial labor taken care of, education and creative endeavors would become precedent, freeing humanity to develop its greatest faculty: the human mind. This social reform into a utopian state is only possible with the proper implementation of robots. It should be the goal of every able minded individual to curve the world towards this robot revolution. Even before robotic technology reaches economic viability social reform is needed to insure that people know the benefits of robotic industrialization. This is a call for humanity to advance, just as we’ve advanced from caves to homes, as we’ve risen out of feudalism and forged Democracy, as we’ve gone from manpower to horse power to machine power. It is time for a new age, the culmination of everything learned and done before it, and the end of human labor. Oppression, inequity, war, poverty, these can be things of the past with the proper implementation of robotic industrialization. The full realization of humanity is upon us, it is time to advance!

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