A correct Catholic approach to AI becomes clearer, I think, if we approach a foundational text in Catholic Social Teaching, Rerum novarum, not as about structural issues in political economy, but rather as about claims on time and claims of authority.
The workhouses of the Industrial Revolution, by paying only a subsistence wage to the father, forced wives and children into the factories too, destroying time for the family, the parish, and worship. And making each member of a household directly dependent upon the owner, not the father. This configuration, moreover, appeared fixed; the members of a household seemed to have no way to escape their plight as “wage slaves.”
A “living wage” busts this up. Pay the father enough so that he can support a family and so that they, if they live thriftily, can acquire capital over time, and the result is that the family is restored as the basic cell of society. And the father’s authority too is restored.
Workhouses absorbed nearly all leisure time and took authority away from parents and clerics. The living wage, when honored, returned remunerative work to its proper position of being for the sake of the family, not the family for
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