I visited a small business that does party supplies today. Most of their stuff is made with paper, plastic, rubber, and glue, in various combinations.
I observed that almost all of the customers were a father with several daughters, or a mother and aunt with several daughters.
When I asked the business owner about this, she confirmed that almost 100% of her customers are female. It’s girls and women who want these type of party decorations.
Thoughts?
I thought a little more about the last part and disagree that automation is bad. Obviously you don’t want to be procrustean about it, and there is a priceless element to artisanship, but technology/tools just make the work less strenuous. It’s all about utilizing leverage, not replacing the human element with something predetermined. That’s what capitalism gets most wrong.
Well yeah, the achievements of the Soviet Union wouldn’t have been possible without automation. Capitalism, as you said, uses automation in its schemes to generate superprofits, rather than to benefit the laborers or decrease waste in the system.