The New York Times reports that Amazon is planning to eventually replace 600,000 jobs with robots. Executives expect that by 2027, automation can save them from hiring 160,000 people in the United States, while their robotics team has a goal of being able to automate 75% of its operations.
If Amazon is successful in automating away blue-collar jobs, other companies such as Walmart and UPS are likely to do the same in order to remain competitive.
Amazon’s executives know that automation will hurt people, because it’s already planning greater corporate participation in community events to wash its reputation in communities that would be most impacted by job losses.
Why should workers be hurt by increased efficiency? What if instead of becoming unemployed, workers could benefit from this increased productivity by working less and having more free time, or by getting paid more, or by no longer having to do dangerous or unhealthy jobs?
Under capitalism, the benefits of better technology go first to the company owners, because they own the productivity gains and the associated increased profits. Sometimes the increased productivity might allow executives to afford to throw some scraps to the workers in the form of higher wages, as long as market conditions permit further growth for that company. Eventually though, they will feel the pressure to maximize profits, which means cutting what they call unnecessary jobs or trying to decrease wages. Any harm to real people in the process simply isn’t their problem.
Bill Gates, former CEO of Microsoft and once the richest person, recognized that better technology might reduce the amount of work people need to do and that something would need to change. In March 2025, he suggested that within 10 years, people could work “2 or 3 days a week” thanks to artificial intelligence. Thinking as a working person that’s obviously true. Artificial intelligence could make our lives easier. But as a capitalist, he surely knows that this can’t happen under capitalism. If necessary labor can really be automated away this effectively, then instead of everybody getting more free time, what is more likely to happen is that half of the workers, now unnecessary to the system, will simply be lose their jobs. They can then starve to death for all the system cares about them.
If we want labor-saving technology to benefit us, we need to change the system. We need to rid ourselves of capitalism and build a new world in which workers are empowered to make decisions about our own workplaces and our own needs.
