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Please hear her views on an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy now in the link that follows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwxOxQ1AOEg
Its sad to see this good person who is a physicist, making so many good points, say something so stupid. The solution to our social, economic, environmental, political, etc... problems will only get worse if you turn people back into farmers. Only a privileged upper middle class person could advocate menial labor as a solution to individual freedom and happiness. It is obvious that she has not been forced to earn her living by menial labor. She confusing the pleasures of gardening with the mass production of food. Something we can never escape while still feeding billions of people.
Automation is not the problem. Capitalism is the problem. Going local is a common solution for anarchists who refuse to take responsibility for massive and complex societies. Who have no vision for the future, but to indulge in the superstitions and misunderstanding of the past.
Lets us be clear ALL WORK has to be automated away, for us to be truly free. There is no real happiness if we "have" to work. If we don't have to work, it is not work at all. It but a form of recreation. Thus Ms Shiva really has not done any work in her life. Peons are only convinced to work by middle class ideologists in the pay of a ruling class consciously or not as Ms Shiva, who wax poetically about the glories of work, with fanciful ideologies.
This is the fundamental difference between a Marxist Communist and a Anarchist Communist like Ms Shiva. What is shameful is that Ms Shiva has a great deal of education and should know better. It comes down to a lack of courage and character to research and fight for real solutions that are truly threatening to the status quo. Bill Gates does not stay up at night worrying about Ms Shiva program, because he knows that the vast majority of Humanity has no interest in returning to the land and becoming farmers. He knows that it is unproductive and unable to feed billions of people. That we have billions of people precisely because of the automation of agriculture and vast increases in production and growth of science resulting from people being freed from the drudgery of rural economy.
India stayed fixed in the feudal past for thousands of years, leaving itself open to dozens of genocidal invasions. It is a credit to the courage of the Indian people that they have survived the impact of many kinds of Imperialisms.
As much as I appreciate and agree with her analysis of monopoly or feudal capitalism of Gates, Bezos, etc.. I prefer India follow their path to hers. More anarchism is precisely what we don't need. The anarchism of a plutocrat like Gates is less dangerous then that of a petty bourgeis like Ms Shiva. At least there is someone to blame and someone in charge.
Ms Shiva being a good and civilized woman, fails to understand that this state of hers is far away from the average. That she herself needs far more education and personal growth before she can provide the leadership and wisdom necessary to take us through what is the most dangerous and most potentially revolutionary moment in Human history.
Full automation is coming whether we like or not. How it is implement will determine whether we conditioned into subservience like in the series West World or live in classless society that has escaped the boundaries of this small planet into wonderful infinity of the surrounding Universe.
Like Dolores of "West World" fame I don't want to play Cowboys and Indians for all eternity, no pun intended. Ms Shiva you will be welcomed in a Marxist Communist society and play in your garden to your hearts content, but stop spreading "pie in the sky" fantasies that only confused the masses and offers succor to the most evil ruling class in History!