Machines

Figure 1. A poem about cogs in a machine.

A machine is a collection of parts that uses energy to produce output. This may be as simple as cogs in a drill press making holes in wood or employees working in a corporation to make profit.

As automation increases with the rise of robotisation, deunionisation and digital internal governance systems, corporate machines are becoming less human and more mechanised in their pursuit of output.

Machines often have a purpose, where a drill press in a factory makes holes, a corporation as per their incorporation statement has a fiduciary duty to make money for shareholder profit or wages. Since the ecological crisis, we’ve been told that the machine can change. Benevolent investors would simply reroute capital away from dirty energy sectors and toward the green industries of the future. But the promise of “socially responsible finance” has proven to be illusory greenwashing. For instance, despite pledges to do otherwise, Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, has continued to invest in fossil fuel companies, and the production of coal—the dirtiest fossil fuel—is now on the rise.

There is no-one to blame here. It is not an evil genius pulling the strings in order to destroy the planet. It is simply a machine whose primary purpose is making money irrelevant of negative externalities.