Honesty Not Always the Best Policy

The other day, I argued that honesty was not the best policy for neo-Liberals like Matthew Yglesias because reality disproves their ideological commitment to freer markets, fewer unions, and it gets in the way of their war on humanity. For decades, the doodlebug contingent have provided cover for a managerial class determined to destroy unions, the economy, and the environment in search of a short term financial gain for an ever decreasing percentage of the world's population by insisting that if we all just deregulate harder the magical fairy dust of unfetter market capitalism will shower us all golden unicorns.  This hasn't happened and, not only does it continue not happening everyday, it isn't happening with increased violence against the vast majority of the world's population

Recently, Yglesias made the mistake of making the point that workers jobs are only safe to the extent that workers are willing to work for less than robots. It would be nice if recognizing this Yglesias decided to weigh in on the advantages of increasing the number and kind of people making decisions on automation to include those whose livelihoods, as opposed to profit margins, were directly involved. Instead,  he argues

I’m not sure exactly why that is, but I guess there’s a perception that this kind of “caring” work is less manly than working in a factory. But the various forms of nurse (or advanced nurse) and physician assistant type jobs out there are precisely the type of middle class work for which there’s certain to be growing demand in aging, increasingly wealthy societies. Someday probably someone will come up with a way to build robot nurses, but that seems a ways off at this point.

What's wrong with his picture? Leaving aside the his refusal to think through the effects on wages of increased competition for jobs, or the already strained educational/vocational systems leading to these kinds of jobs, he ignores his eager and endless support for an economic system that pits workers against robots in the search for their daily bread, there are already robot medical assistants and more every day. Indeed, in a move guaranteed to warm the cockles of Glenn Reynolds heart, there are now sex robots for brothel owners looking to cut their labor costs. Keep in mind as well that folks like Rhee and Yglesias see semi-robotic teachers in our future.

I find it hard to believe that even a dim bulb cannot be swayed by the light he casts on the errors, misery, and commitment to emiseration inherent to his preferred economic system.

P.S. He wants union organizers to be more like the NRA, seriously.  I mention this because I cannot go back there today.