Augmented Capital

What if capital owned the labor instead of the other way around?

In growth theory, it’s called augmented labor, when we invent technology that allows a worker to control/use more capital at the same time. The robot above is capital, and it needs augmenting.

In this comic strip, that might be something like a way for a bunch of humans to nap with a minimal number of robots watching over them. Gee … sort of like a more benevolent vision of The Matrix.

This also illustrates growth and level effects, of technology. If the robots invented a technology that allowed them to control more humans, that would be a level effect that’s good for the robots. But having to deal with all those extra humans needing their nap would be the negative growth effect.

From the December 5, 2015 issue of Dilbert.