Gary Sutton

Okay, okay.

But Mark said that capitalists had an incentive or capitalists were incentivized to reduce their operating costs, right?

And a big part of that was through automation, right?

Not the kind of automation we're now talking about.

Back then it was industrial machinery, right?

And machinery would displace

low-paying, low-skilled jobs, many of which were, quite frankly, unsafe and unhealthy.

But capitalists were incentivized to do that.

And so they would introduce automation and reduce headcount.

But he made the point that workers are also consumers.

So if everyone is automating and reducing their head count, then you're actually reducing the demand for your products and services.

And that's what these researchers said in this paper.

And I think there's a lot of truth to that.

It's more around, well, is that like a permanent condition or is it temporary?

I think that's really more of a question.

Marx made the argument that...

he called it a contradiction of capitalism.

And he said that capitalism eventually would collapse on that contradiction and it would then be replaced by communism.

And in fact, Marx,

consistently said that capitalism needed to precede communism for that very reason.