Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Outline

I clarified my outline and now I'm posting it.

  • Introduce Topic - The relationship between technology an capitalism, and how this affects employment and could ultimately force a change in the economic system. 
  •  Background Information 
  1. Industrial Revolution 
  2. Current employment problems
  3. What is expected for the future

  • Introduce Argument - Technology may cause the end of capitalism. 
  • Thesis
  • Section 1: The effects technology and capitalism have had on each other and employment (and perhaps the world). 
  1. Technology and capitalism have been in a mutually beneficial relationship for a long time. 
  2. Technology has replaced many manual workers, but has also created new jobs. 
  • Section 2: The problems that technology has created for capitalism and the modern world. 
  1. Technology has fundamentally changed the way of life for most people in first world countries. 
  2. Technology has allowed the production of enough 'essential resources' (like food) for everyone. 
  3. The overproduction problem - 'enough for everyone' interferes with profit, and thus interferes with capitalism. Here capitalism's true problem is seen: it focuses only on profit in the end and has no care for society as a whole. Not to say all capitalists are like that; it's capitalism itself that is like that. 
  • Section 3: The possible outcomes. 
  1. World Destruction - Humans go extinct or the world population is severely reduced. Society effectively ends. 
  2. Technology regresses - We all go back to being farmers. The population would have to lower too. It would until balanced was reached. [Unlikely for this to happen?]
  3. Somehow nothing really happens and capitalism ends up alive and well while we're technologically advanced [like in Star Wars, though a logical explanation (yes, for a fictional universes) for that is that they hadn't hit the technological automation limit. But again, it's fiction and doesn't have to work in reality.]
  4. The system fundamentally changes with the world - some kind of distribution system. Communism is an option, not a necessity. [I might be able to write a new paper on this in a few years.]

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