E. Michael Jones

There is a big difference between a screwdriver and a cnc machine.

What he said was that screwdrivers don't labor. Only humans can labor. If a robot (automation) does a task, it's not labor and thus does not have value (deserves a wage).

What? That doesn't make much sense. It's rather that the labour done by humans is of a different quality when robots do most of the work. Human labour then becomes making sure these robots are produced, maintained, repaired, so that the rest of mankind is out of work.

No, labor is a strickily human act. Everything else is measured in work (see physics).

That definition obscures the fact that the same work previously done by humans is now often being done by machinery — and barely anybody cares except for the workers who lost their job to automation, nor could people tell the difference when looking at the product.

You don't understand value or labor. Labor has value BECAUSE humans do it. It has nothing to do with the quality of the product. Humans are self aware, sentient and finite. Machines are tools. Tools DO NOT labor.

Screwdrivers need an operator. Robots can work autonomously, apart from the one or two techs needed to maintain the robot

Correct, but as entry level jobs become increasingly complex a larger and larger percentage of the country lacks the requisite intelligence to enter the workforce at all. Simultaneously we're importing low iq populations en masse. It's gonna be disastrous

The coming wave of automation will take a lot more jobs than it will create. Not to mention that the continuing wave of third worlders coming into the West will for the most part, not be able for anything other than the kind of low skilled work that automation will get rid of.

The robot is a tool and tools are essentially labour multiplier. At some point someone has to build the tool with his initial labour

The first dude who can create a self-replicating tool is therefore worth $infinity in the labour-theory-of-value school.

Well not infinite since that would violate physical laws but yeah a machine like that would break any economy only based on labour theory of value.

Supply and demand will always dictate value. The Soviets produced warehouses full of unused hula hoops. There is no value in the labor to produce things where there is no demand.

You are conflating price with value