--- contentType: annotation title: Welcome to Systemland — note 7 annotationTarget: /essays/welcome-to-systemland#footnote-anchor-7 newsletterUrl: https://chaosmap.substack.com/p/welcome-to-systemland#footnote-7 search: false image: /images/chaos-map-share.jpg --- [@layout]: ../../../layouts/reference.layout.md [@page]: ../../../design/page.components.md **REDUCE**: The dark side of MECHANIZE. Well-designed systems increasingly split into independent parts that form a greater whole. But over time, any mature system trends towards using humans as fleshy machines to fill the gap in what can’t yet be automated: using our dexterous fingers to create thousands of the same part on an assembly line, to deliver goods from A to B, or to serve up mostly scripted knowledge again and again. Work feels robotic for so many because they’re only employed because it’s cheaper or more viable to hire a human as a cog in the wheel than to train a robot or AI… for now. Once it’s not, the robots will be hired, no doubt. Unchecked Capitalism is an amazing system that also tends to reduce humans to substitutes for robots when left unchecked. Marxism recognizes this and offers a counter-system that reduces humans to cogs even more quickly and painfully. Systems serve people; people should never be forced to serve systems. [Return to passage](/essays/welcome-to-systemland/index.md#footnote-anchor-7)