Last night, whilst traipsing around Capitol Hill with my friend, posting flyers for my other friend’s meme coin, I visited a kombucha shop that was entirely unmanned (which is a sentence I never thought I’d write.)
You walked up to the locked door, scanned the code, created an account, and let it know you were there. The door unlocked and you walked inside. There was a multitude of different kombuchas on tap, as well as a few little sitting areas, a restroom, some swag, a little red light therapy trial box; the whole thing was very modern and kitsch, but the really amazing part, was that there were no employees. Now, there were an inordinate amount of cameras, so surely someone was watching to make sure we didn’t make a mess, or steal anything, but it was surreal. My friend poured a medium ‘booch out of the tap, paid on the app, we used the bathroom, visited the downstairs yoga lounge, then were on our way.
The really interesting part is how seamless it all was. At the time we visited, there was no one else in the shop, so I had to imagine that if it had been staffed by a human, that person would have been bored to tears, busying themselves with menial tasks, or truly doing nothing and idly doom-scrolling. My initial reaction to this was “wow, someone could have been paid to be here, but instead the whole job is done, essentially, by a robot,” which then made me realize no one needs to do this job.
The fact that I even had that thought tells you how infectious and pervasive our participation in capitalism is. Sure, the company that runs that shop could have paid someone minimum wage to be bored to death working there, or, they can make it completely self service. Not only does it make sense from a business perspective, as labor is always a huge part of overhead, but when you view this from the lens not of “they’re taking our jobs” but from “they’re freeing us from labor” you see how great of an idea it is.
With the rise of AI and how much that technology is being leverage in creative spaces, then it makes sense to be angry with technology. Creative pursuits are exactly what humans should be doing. Throughout time technological advances have led to more leisure time that has been followed by more creative endeavors. Technology should always be welcomed when it frees us from doing menial tasks. With the rise of agriculture, more humans could take up other occupations, and thus art, science, and a million other industries were created.
Freeing labor is exactly what technology should be for, but when labor is free, and the people have time to themselves to think, to work together, to look around at the world rather than focus on survival, then the institutions that control that labor begin to feel their foundations quaking. Your boss, your government, and the corporations that they serve do not want you to be free. They do not want you to find a better way. If it were up to them, we would all still toil daily, hunting and gathering, while they tithe us for “safety and protection.”
Marx himself wrote extensively on how advancements in technology would one day culminate in truly freeing the proletariat from all forms of grunt work. Even despite the push back, the slow march of progress continues on. We are seeing a time where the current clandestine “rulers of the world” are shaking in their nickers trying desperately to keep us in line. They force us to toil in the dust while they leverage inventions created because of the liberation of labor against us. They show us that our pursuits of art and literature, of leisure, can never compete with the efficiency of their machines, all while the fruits of our creativity command even higher respect despite it.
Those who seek to control you fight a losing battle to history and the inexorable march of time. Progress will continue, and they have thrown in their lot with the losing side. They have artificially created tragedy just to maintain their control, but it will never work. Through all of the chaos in politics, and racism, and bigotry, and all of the rivers of blood and ruined cities and lives, we, the meek, the down-trodden, the great driving force of progress, will eventually be free of their machinations.
If there can be fully autonomous kombucha bars in Seattle, and robots can build cars, and make food, and even a small group of people can then take the time to truly live rather than sweat, then those that seek to hold us in the dirt with a boot have already lost, and that, in a very small way, is giving me hope.
Sans Seraph 