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I'm not an academic scholar, nor do I have easy access to academic materials, so please forgive me in advance if I am uninformed in the field of labor economics, unemployment, and current trends in business and technology. I'm just a public librarian, so I have lots of time on my hands at the computer and lots of books to read. One of the books I read recently was Martin Ford's Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. That set me on a kick of reading books about technology, automation, and its impact on jobs. The best of them was Ford's, as the others struck me as a bit too breathlessly optimistic / libertarian with their faith in capitalism. Nevertheless, I feel the topic has come up often enough in discussions on minimum wage in D&D, so it might merit some discussion on its own right. Here's a very long, but interesting, article by the Economist to get us started. I'll take some key background and quotes from it. http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21594264-previous-technological-innovation-has-always-delivered-more-long-run-employment-not-less quote:The future of jobs In fact, one of the reasons posited for the "jobless recovery" of the economy after the recession was that capital simply invested more in automation software, algorithms, and machinery, rather than rehiring workers who were laid off during the recession. Capital has replaced labor, which means lower costs for companies and soaring profits for owners. Yet what many of these authors seem to elide over is that this state of affairs is unsustainable in the long-term. They seem to believe that we'll all become entrepreneurs , personal trainers, and caregivers. But not everyone has the temperament or desire to become a nurse or businessperson. What will happen to the economy when it passes a tipping point where demand has fallen low enough such that companies can no longer sell their products? What will happen to the economy in the future as this continues? I know personally that when I watched footage of Watson beating the contestants in Jeopardy! in trivia, I realized that one day I might be seeing a Watson replacing my job as a librarian. We've already replaced most of our circulation and checkout desks with self-checkout machines. So I'm certain that automation is definitely going to encroach on my job in the future. When the time comes, we may be forced to institute a basic minimum income, a solution apparently favored by many on the right, but does it really make sense to pay a substantial number of the population just so they can continue to consume so that capitalism remains profitable? This seems like circular logic. Alternatively, the wealthy may just choose to wall themselves in from the restless, unemployed masses, defending themselves with drones and robots. In the more optimistic scenario, perhaps the automation of most (if not all) jobs will usher in a post-scarcity society where toil is a long-forgotten memory. Either way, it seems to me that technological unemployment is becoming a serious issue, one that merits debate and awareness. I am highly suspicious of the conclusions of the liberal and utopian (Singularitarian) authors who've written on this subject -- it doesn't seem likely to me that capitalism can continue to exist if steadily growing numbers of people are being made unemployed. What do you think? Books
Articles
Informative Videos CGP Grey, "Humans Need Not Apply" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU VSauce, "Will Robots Make Us More Human?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsACeAkvFLY DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Nov 26, 2015 |
# ? Nov 25, 2015 22:37 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:51 |
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Realtalk: is there any reason at all people whining about THE ROBOTS ARE TAKING OUR JERBS should be humored? I most frequently seem to notice it in the context of various ports that can't upgrade to more modern equipment because it would cause the longshoremans unions to pitch a fit.
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# ? Nov 25, 2015 23:23 |
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-Troika- posted:Realtalk: is there any reason at all people whining about THE ROBOTS ARE TAKING OUR JERBS should be humored? I most frequently seem to notice it in the context of various ports that can't upgrade to more modern equipment because it would cause the longshoremans unions to pitch a fit. If future automation will make a portion of humanity essentially unable to find employment, then the question of what to do with those people might become a defining ethical and sociopolitical issue in the 21st century. Especially since economic policymakers are currently expected to implement policies that, among many other things, maximize employment.
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# ? Nov 25, 2015 23:41 |
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The transition to automatonic labor will be brutal on employment. However the end result is very good.
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# ? Nov 25, 2015 23:42 |
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-Troika- posted:Realtalk: is there any reason at all people whining about THE ROBOTS ARE TAKING OUR JERBS should be humored? I most frequently seem to notice it in the context of various ports that can't upgrade to more modern equipment because it would cause the longshoremans unions to pitch a fit. Yeah it's crazy those assholes don't want their jobs to be replaced by machines.
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# ? Nov 25, 2015 23:42 |
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Please tell me more about how it's a good idea to economically displace large groups of people and replace them with robots.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 00:01 |
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Automation is a good thing provided we have the right institutions in place to deal with the disruptive social impact. Right now we don't and as a result automation is creating serious political and economic problems, and there's every reason to think that these problems will get worse before they get better.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 00:11 |
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The Atlantic has an article from August on this as well: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 00:23 |
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I've been doing a fair bit of automation of previously white collar positions. It's inevitable, but there will be a small rise in jobs for those making the algorithms and that's also more use for server farms in supporting the work. I also think there will be a growth in Mechanical Turk-style drudgery, the new data entry type jobs, where you're creating massive training sets for these algorithms.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 00:26 |
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I like when Marco Rubio said a higher minimum wage is bad because it makes automation more attractive. Automate it all, Marco - make Marx right.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 00:29 |
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Kim Jong Il posted:I've been doing a fair bit of automation of previously white collar positions. It's inevitable, but there will be a small rise in jobs for those making the algorithms and that's also more use for server farms in supporting the work. Oh to be certain. There will be plenty of jobs for those who mind the machines -- technicians and the like -- as well as people engaged in creative labor to take advantage of machinery, or develop new automation technology. But will the jobs created in these industries, and small/self-owned business models like Uber, Lyft and AirBNB, and work-from-home systems like the Mechanical Turk, be enough to replace the ones that are lost? The greater concern, I think, is the erosion of jobs (and consequent decrease in national per-capita-GDP) to the level where demand is insufficient to keep the economy going. EDIT: BabelFish posted:The Atlantic has an article from August on this as well: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/ Interesting article! Easier to read than The Economist's too. I liked this quote here: quote:One of the first things we might expect to see in a period of technological displacement is the diminishment of human labor as a driver of economic growth. In fact, signs that this is happening have been present for quite some time. The share of U.S. economic output that’s paid out in wages fell steadily in the 1980s, reversed some of its losses in the ’90s, and then continued falling after 2000, accelerating during the Great Recession. It now stands at its lowest level since the government started keeping track in the mid‑20th century. v- -v DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Nov 26, 2015 |
# ? Nov 26, 2015 00:32 |
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I mostly discuss this topic at a low level, in Facebook discussions and the like, but one thing that people often fail to take into consideration is that jobs that are suited for automation are not necessarily low skill jobs. You see lots of memes acting like food workers asking for $15 are prime candidates, but I think that the real money is in automating or outsourcing skilled labor. Suppose you're lucky enough to have a safe job, you're going to have to compete with unemployed people who are educated, intelligent and motivated, and they may be willing to take a pay cut to stay out of poverty. In the short run, I think you'll see professional drivers early on the chopping block. Self driving cars could potentially put millions of people out of work. I don't think there are any plans to adapt to that change. Edit: Nice job on the thread. You did good.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 00:35 |
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Automation is inevitable. Eventually humans will be unable to fill the cogs to keep our society turning. Look at China in the 19th century as a great example of what happens when you don't accept the reality of industrial progress. Dr. Abitrary made a great reference to a potentially dangerous automation which is Professional Drivers. Look at Uber and the displacement of Taxi drivers just by the ability to call a taxi in whatever city They currently operate you want to. Imagine what happens when we can 3d print an entire house from foundation to completion. The advent of E-Mail has ruined the postal service.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 00:41 |
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LeoMarr posted:Please tell me more about how it's a good idea to economically displace large groups of people and replace them with robots. Reduce the cost of goods and reduce the legal working hours in a week to something like 25h. Make life enjoyable. That's the end-all of automation, isn't it? The promise? That one day wage slavery will be a thing of the past and all that. Let's start somewhere and profit from automation.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 00:50 |
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We've have this discussion a couple times and we generally agree it's going to happen and we're definitely not prepared, but it still attracts some people who miss the forest for the trees or devolve into arguments that have nothing to do with automation. Here's a study I like to whip out: The Future of Employment. Up 47% of US jobs automated in the next 20 years, with a list of which jobs are most affected. It seems like a long way out, but several car manufacturers believe they'll have fully automated (level 4) vehicles in 5 years. If they actually work and cause less accidents, that means over 3 million transportation jobs are at risk with no other industry for them to fall back on... unless they can get a college education. Which as we've seen, is having a bit of a cost and job placement problem themselves. I still think the biggest hurtle is the existential crisis inherent in the current system. People in the US worship jobs, to the point that they ascribe social darwinism to it. Hard workers are rewarded with their next meal and the lazy die a slow, miserable death. They cannot conceive of a hard worker not being rewarded, so when someone claims they are hard working and being screwed by whatever reason, they instead assume they are actually lazy and deserve what they get. This makes the discussion of automation very difficult to spread outside this forum. Also, need to get that CGP Grey video out of the way! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 01:32 |
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This is a good book: http://www.amazon.com/Our-Robots-Ourselves-Robotics-Autonomy/dp/B00SI02AWK
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 01:43 |
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As someone who works in government tech and process improvement I'm very sure about vehicle automation and not much else. Anecdotal experience tells me that market forces are ripe for the destruction of the transportation industry and how that will change culture but I have a hard time believing that this is really a "we won't have enough jobs" problem, I've got work enough to keep the entire population busy, I just don't have the means to capitalize it. Robots aren't the problem, its the economic social structure. Your choices are Cyberpunk, Jetsons, The Culture and Mad Max, select two.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 01:45 |
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Freakazoid_ posted:Also, need to get that CGP Grey video out of the way! drat I was gonna link that. Anyway, lately I've seen people on the internet claim we should boycott companies that automate their businesses or that we should create regulations that keep people from being replaced by robots, and I think that poo poo is utterly moronic. Mass automation isn't a bad thing, in fact it's a great thing as long as we properly prepare for the effects it's going to have on the workforce and our society. It's incredibly short sighted to rail against technologies that are going to make our lives better just because the guy at your local McDonald's might lose his job.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 01:45 |
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Freakazoid_ posted:People in the US worship jobs, to the point that they ascribe social darwinism to it. Hard workers are rewarded with their next meal and the lazy die a slow, miserable death. They cannot conceive of a hard worker not being rewarded, so when someone claims they are hard working and being screwed by whatever reason, they instead assume they are actually lazy and deserve what they get. This makes the discussion of automation very difficult to spread outside this forum. The weird part is that you see this sort of mindset even within the forum. During discussions of climate change, it's brought up every so often that large parts of the country still do rely on coal mining and would have to be taken care of as we transition off of it. The response to the latter is quite often some form of "they should just suck it up and move to a not lovely part of the country", which is baffling from people who otherwise support a strong safety net. e: This is relevant to the topic at hand too since automation has been a primary driver of unemployment in the region. computer parts fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Nov 26, 2015 |
# ? Nov 26, 2015 01:46 |
Freakazoid_ posted:We've have this discussion a couple times and we generally agree it's going to happen and we're definitely not prepared, but it still attracts some people who miss the forest for the trees or devolve into arguments that have nothing to do with automation. Americans have been successfully convinced that the economy is uncontrollable - the only option for our society is to bend to the whims of market forces, because gee, what else could we do? After all, if the government could actually positively affect the economy and buffer individuals from market oscillations, wouldn't it have done it some time in the last 40 years?
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 02:03 |
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Freakazoid_ posted:It seems like a long way out, but several car manufacturers believe they'll have fully automated (level 4) vehicles in 5 years. If they actually work and cause less accidents, that means over 3 million transportation jobs are at risk with no other industry for them to fall back on... unless they can get a college education. Which as we've seen, is having a bit of a cost and job placement problem themselves. Just because they can automate cars doesn't mean that they will. We've had the technology to fully automate planes for decades. It's long been a common joke among airline pilots that the standard flight crew will soon be reduced to a man and a dog: the man to feed the dog, and the dog to bite the man's hand when he tries to touch the controls. Yet the vast majority of planes still have pilots, even freight planes and small single engine planes. We've had the technology to fully automate trains for even longer. The first driverless train was built in 1963. Yet more than 50 years later, the vast majority of trains still have drivers. The reasons seem obvious: fully automating a vehicle opens the maker of the vehicle up to a lawsuit every time one of their units runs someone over. This is clear when you look at the examples of trains and planes that have been fully automated. Some subway and elevated trains have been automated (though they still have emergency brake buttons inside that staff can use). That is, the trains run on tracks that members of the general public aren't allowed to walk on, meaning that if someone gets hit by one of these trains it is 100% their own fault. With planes, the only UAVs that are large enough to do a significant amount of damage if they crash into anything are military drones, which are inevitably going to cause large amounts of "collateral damage" anyway. There is every indication that "self-driving cars" are going to follow the same pattern. Right now, there is a self-driving truck legally operating on Nevada highways, but the truck has a driver at all times who can take over if anything goes wrong. I expect the future of "self-driving cars" to end up being much like the current situation with planes: we'll get increasingly advanced "accident avoidance systems," and eventually autopilot systems that can be used on highways, but the law will require a sober and awake person to be in the driver's seat at all times to take over in the event that there is a problem with the computer. If we aren't willing to let a computer drive a train that moves on fixed rails with warning signs, flashing lights, and barriers at every intersection with a road, then there is no way that we're going to let a computer drive a car on streets that kids regularly play in anytime in the foreseeable future. Though this likely still won't be that good for professional drivers, since once the job description becomes "sit there watching the computer, and pull over and contact headquarters if something goes wrong," the hiring standards and by extension wages will probably drop quite a bit. INH5 fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Nov 26, 2015 |
# ? Nov 26, 2015 02:13 |
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I think the difference is that all those things involve professional drivers getting paid to drive/fly. Self driving cars can remove the drudgery of the daily commute, it can improve people's lives in a very tangible way. I've seen it in Facebook discussions of what a car should do if it's speeding down the highway and there's pedestrians in the way. Plow through them or drive into the median, killing the driver. People tend to argue in favor of "gently caress those assholes for being in the road" I think there's political will to make the legal changes necessary to permit automation.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 03:09 |
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Why bother investing in robotics when there's an ample supply of third world slaves to do most manufacturing?
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 03:17 |
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I wrote an academic paper on this that essentially concludes that traditional justifications for the existence of private property break down in a system where large groups of people are replaced by autonomous units of productivity. There is currently no definition of justified ownership that can reasonably survive such a scenario.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 03:54 |
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Thug Lessons posted:Why bother investing in robotics when there's an ample supply of third world slaves to do most manufacturing? At a certain point, slaves are more expensive than robots.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 03:58 |
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Ocrassus posted:I wrote an academic paper on this that essentially concludes that traditional justifications for the existence of private property break down in a system where large groups of people are replaced by autonomous units of productivity. Would it be possible to get a link to it? I'd be interested in reading it, if it's available to read somewhere.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 04:12 |
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The problem here is not that robots are coming, it's that the current economic and political structures will only use them to enrich the few at the expense of all the rest. We can choose to have utopia if we're prepared to tear down the final aristocracy of the rich and overly influential. Because once the robots come, having the ability to deploy them regardless of the consequences to society are the real issue. Further, service workers aren't going away. The McDonald's which is used as the bottom rung of employment for some reason is much more likely to last than most other labor work, service industries are the most safe, which is all the more imperative that we pay people a living wage to do them. We can start by uplifting our most vulnerable, the coal miners, the taxi and UPS drivers. Our choice is who the masters will be, the 1% or everyone.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 04:31 |
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RuanGacho posted:Further, service workers aren't going away. The McDonald's which is used as the bottom rung of employment for some reason is much more likely to last than most other labor work, service industries are the most safe, which is all the more imperative that we pay people a living wage to do them. Front counters, maybe, but anyone in the back is entirely disposable. The "security" (if one can call it that) which they enjoy right now is only a consequence of the price of a burger flipping machine not being low enough. Get the technology to the point where you can assemble a hamburger in 15 seconds at a high rate of accuracy and they're toast.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 04:37 |
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INH5 posted:
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 04:44 |
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Personally I think there is a huge amount of uncertainty here. On the one hand it's possible that automation will upend society as we know it and the risk here is huge. Society isn't close to being equipped to deal with mass unemployment from from any angle - ethical, economic, political or personal and the transition would be painful under even the best case scenarios (peaceful socialist revolution in this case). Capitalism, though clearly containing feedback mechanisms has no guarantee of full human employment. On the other hand it might not be a problem for another century or three or ever. Technology has been relentlessly destroying jobs for centuries and that destruction has been the main driver growth which has delivered our modern standards of living and at every step you could find people terrified of that destruction. No one knew what people would do if they weren't all tilling the fields but the answer turned out to be lots of things.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 04:48 |
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So, how about that Jaque Fresco eh? Isn't this kinda his whole schtic? https://www.thevenusproject.com/en/
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 04:55 |
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Re:driverless cars This can't be put simply enough - driverless cars are a fantasy that are decades away at a minimum. The google car is basically a joke that can't drive in the rain or above 30 miles per hour and gets frequently rear-ended or pulled over for driving so slow and cautiously. The initial foray into hands-free driving from Tesla and a couple others is one dead child away from a large setback. Things that might happen in the near future are things like long haul trucks driving on special lanes on stretches of open highways in places like Kansas. But this has limited implications for basically anything. A driverless uber picking you up from the bar downtown or replacing your daily commute on existing roads might as well be a dream. It's sometimes fun to talk about fantasies, but not too much, and that's what driverless cars, with all their interesting implications, still are today. Robots are a real thing with real implications, just in places like Amazon warehouses where they have carefully controlled environments and do boring things like move racks of bins around.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 04:56 |
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The problem though is that it's easy to see how to go from Agricultural Jobs -> Manufacturing -> Services, but what comes after the service and manufacturing jobs are displaced? Is there a fourth type of job sector that humans can do that will provide gainful employment for billions of people?
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 04:57 |
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DrSunshine posted:The problem though is that it's easy to see how to go from Agricultural Jobs -> Manufacturing -> Services, but what comes after the service and manufacturing jobs are displaced? Is there a fourth type of job sector that humans can do that will provide gainful employment for billions of people? Tech support? Art?
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 04:58 |
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DrSunshine posted:Yet what many of these authors seem to elide over is that this state of affairs is unsustainable in the long-term. They seem to believe that we'll all become entrepreneurs , personal trainers, and caregivers. But not everyone has the temperament or desire to become a nurse or businessperson. What will happen to the economy when it passes a tipping point where demand has fallen low enough such that companies can no longer sell their products? It won't work this way, because this hypothetical robot economy will no longer be capitalism as we know it, but an automated slave economy. Robots will function as slave machines that contribute unpaid labor, the capital owners take their products and use them for themselves and kick a bit down to the "supermanagers" and technicians entrusted with overseeing and maintaining robotized production facilities. A class of servants (healthcare workers, caregivers, entertainers, "concubines", housekeepers, etc.) will serve the classes above them and live barely above poverty, or perhaps even in bondage. The rest of humanity would be reduced to human refuse, left to fend for themselves any way they can unless they can display some talent with which they can get into the servant class. There will no longer be a need for the current market system; the owners will consume the products directly and the "unproductives" will receive nothing (except for mass killings to keep them down or even annihilate them altogether). The only real markets will be luxury-goods markets with which the ownership class trade excess production among themselves, and barter "markets" for the poors below. Perhaps there might be some very basic welfare to keep the poors alive and prevent rebellions but their actual participation in the economy would no longer be necessary. It would be absolute hell on earth and worse than ancient Sparta. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Nov 26, 2015 |
# ? Nov 26, 2015 05:03 |
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RuanGacho posted:We can start by uplifting our most vulnerable, the coal miners, the taxi and UPS drivers. I think UPS drivers are pretty safe, because even if you could fully automate driving the truck, somebody still has to walk up the front door of the house and deliver the package, and we're a long long way away from cheap robots that can reliably walk up stairs without falling over.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 05:04 |
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DrSunshine posted:The problem though is that it's easy to see how to go from Agricultural Jobs -> Manufacturing -> Services, but what comes after the service and manufacturing jobs are displaced? Is there a fourth type of job sector that humans can do that will provide gainful employment for billions of people? Well it's easy to see now...there was no way to be sure, say, a century ago when Ford was installing assembly lines in the Model T plants that it would work out.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 05:06 |
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DrSunshine posted:The problem though is that it's easy to see how to go from Agricultural Jobs -> Manufacturing -> Services, but what comes after the service and manufacturing jobs are displaced? Is there a fourth type of job sector that humans can do that will provide gainful employment for billions of people? How about we dispense with the stupid notion that everyone deserves a living. If someone can't make it, get rid of them. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 05:10 |
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TwoQuestions posted:How about we dispense with the stupid notion that everyone deserves a living. If someone can't make it, get rid of them. Alternatively, how about we dispense with the stupid notion that our economy correctly estimates people's potential value to society? Our current system assumes that, from birth on, the children of the very wealthy are valuable and useful and should be given a lot of resources. Furthermore, it assumes that the children of the very poor are probably worthless and shouldn't be given very many resources at all. Since 99.9% of people including 99.9% of the current upper class came from people that were once peasants, it's pretty safe to say that status at birth isn't a good indicator of eventual value. Once we get the robotic automation going, why not just give everyone a guaranteed minimum income, free healthcare, and free education, and then introduce a one-child policy if and when things get too crowded or the pace of innovation slows?
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 05:48 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:51 |
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INH5 posted:I think UPS drivers are pretty safe, because even if you could fully automate driving the truck, somebody still has to walk up the front door of the house and deliver the package, and we're a long long way away from cheap robots that can reliably walk up stairs without falling over. They aren't safe from lowered wages as their responsibilities are diminished. Or their workloads will increase since they now can focus on being prepared to dash out of the van while it drives itself.
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# ? Nov 26, 2015 05:51 |