Yes, value can be created without people. For example, nature produces fruit trees and vegetables as well as fish that people harvest for food. These are intrinsic values that enable our survival and can be produced without human intervention.
Automation generally creates value and that is why we have access to many more goods than before the First Industrial Revolution that began in the mid-eighteenth century. At that time, there were no cars, no airplanes and no computers. Imagine how expensive it would be if a car had to be built by hand, one part at a time. The cost would be prohibitive for all but the wealthiest citizens. That’s why Henry Ford established mass production through assembly lines, and the Japanese ultimately placed robots in their car plants. Even our crops are planted and harvested by machines that were mass-produced.
The impression that automation cheapens value, may come from the observation that automation standardizes the output of production. The mass market demands low prices, so any uniquely ornate designs in clothing, cars or computers will not appear in the mass market unless they can be automated. Consequently, specially-designed products that cannot be produced entirely through automation will require more work-hours and will be more expensive.
To see the effect of automation from the perspective of personal goods, merely compare the possessions of people in First World Countries with those in Third World Countries. Our greater economic well-being is mainly a consequence of automation. While the fact that automation expands economic wealth exponentially is indisputable, some might argue that wealth in the existential form of personal life satisfaction is depleted by automation. That, of course depends on a person’s perspective. Einstein once cautioned, “Every possession is a stone around your leg,” indicating that many of those things of greatest value are not a consequence of automation.
