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Call Me Charlie posted:New York Post ran an article about Amazon's physical store ambitions. Yup. I'm also concerned about this. Though according to economic ideas like Creative Destruction, something will destroy Jeff Bezos' wealth so one or two generations later his grandchildren will be poor. Most rich families, even the ones with dynastic wealth, lose it by the third generation. I'm more concerned about a system where the rat race is so intense for the remaining jobs that life just sucks.
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Feb 12, 2017 23:05
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Carvana sells used cars online. They were doing home delivery, but recently introduced vending machines for cars.quote:"We can do four deliveries per day, and there's a cost of doing that," says Keeton. An employee devotes work time to be on the road, and the company must purchase larger delivery vehicles as necessary. But the vending machine sites remove the delivery logistics, and they need less staff and infrastructure than traditional dealerships. Keeton says customers save an average of $1,500 on a used car thanks to such aspects of Carvana's smaller overhead.
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Feb 12, 2017 23:21
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Teal posted:This gonna end in some weird not-so-horror future where nobody knows for sure if their job still has a genuine purpose or if they are one of the 95% people kept working a fake job while the robots do the real work, isn't it? This is the premise of a Chinese sci-fi story called "Folding Beijing", although in that story it's China that adopted this method of social organization, whereas Europe decided to just let everybody be on a permanent vacation. lol
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Feb 13, 2017 02:12
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:What does 'the public' bring to the table when they don't actually contribute anything of value themselves, just inefficiently shuffle the billionaires' money around for them? Why bother with people if bank transfers alone were the wellspring material wealth came from? The rich could much more efficiently set up a computer to shift money between a few million of their own accounts thousands of times a second and light the products of their factories on fire without bothering loop you in. There's a reason nobody's offering to pay you right now to just consume. This is primarily one of my issues with UBI, how can you have a currency be worth anything when its value is determined by mere consumption of resources rather than trade? DnD wants to make real life paddy's dollars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyxxE1AcUSM
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Feb 13, 2017 18:06
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Wouldn't the logical endgame for any full automatization scenario be that a single person owns literally everything? Namely, the person that controls the food production. Even if it's impossible for single person to own all food production and even if there's some other absolutely vital industries that, don't you end up with just about handful of people who own everything? Because when all unwashed masses have been forced into subsistence farming, all those companies producing cellphones and whatnot no longer have any sell their products to, they don't make any money either. They still have whatever they amassed before but there's nothing preventing the food producers from jacking up the price of tomato to one million dollars. And what the hell are they going to do with their billion tons of food that they have nobody to sell to because they own all the money?
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Feb 13, 2017 19:20
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throw to first drat IT posted:Wouldn't the logical endgame for any full automatization scenario be that a single person owns literally everything? Namely, the person that controls the food production. It doesn't really matter what answer they choose because at that point they own everything. They can employ retainers that maintain the machinery and infrastructure necessary to allow them & their cohort to enjoy a decadent lifestyle utterly alien to the vast majority of mankind, simply by offering the scraps from their table. This has been the state of affairs for most of human history, after all. Improving manufacturing technology and artificial intelligence offer the possibility of reducing the status of everyone who does not control them to the status of pets or livestock. Think of it like this: in Star Trek, the invention of the replicator, a device that could build basically anything if given access to power and raw materials, ushers in utopia. In real life, the invention of such a device would cause an immediate fracture between those who could afford to own and run a replicator, and everyone else, whose labor has been rendered obsolete.
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Feb 13, 2017 19:56
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throw to first drat IT posted:Wouldn't the logical endgame for any full automatization scenario be that a single person owns literally everything? Namely, the person that controls the food production. Scale back production to what's necessary to keep them plush? There's already hundreds of millions of people in the world going hungry that modern industry easily has the capacity to feed, but won't because there's just not any money in it. It's not like we can't extrapolate what'd happen to us if we developed a meaningful permanently-unemployed class, that's a done experiment, it's something that is already the case in much of the world and the end result is families subsisting off whatever they can find in landfills while el presidente's friends and sycophants are sequestered in their palaces, not Scrooge discovering the true meaning of Christmas is other people. What I think isn't getting through is we're not talking about some impossible hypothetical slippery-slope endpoint of 'one person owns everything', or even 'a few hundred people own everything'. We're already here and now living in a world with an immense and growing divide between haves and have-nots and anyone reading this is perched on the sloughing-off perhiphery of the haves; a difference of a few percentage points will mean an utter transformation of your life and capacity to steer it, and the end of your modernized existence won't be the point that suddenly inspires the capitalist class to start making their responsibility the good of all mankind. Societies where the currently alive population is in excess of the population useful to the elites who control the flow of wealth aren't some out-there sci-fi hypothetical internet debate clubbers need to write YA novels about the NEET Star Federation over, that's just fuckin' Haiti. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Feb 13, 2017 |
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Feb 13, 2017 20:20
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Dead Reckoning posted:Think of it like this: in Star Trek, the invention of the replicator, a device that could build basically anything if given access to power and raw materials, ushers in utopia. In real life, the invention of such a device would cause an immediate fracture between those who could afford to own and run a replicator, and everyone else, whose labor has been rendered obsolete. If they still exist, they can still fight. That's when you enter revolution territory. And a government could own a replicator. It depends on what system is organized around this technology.
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Feb 13, 2017 22:17
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Ccs posted:If they still exist, they can still fight. That's when you enter revolution territory. The people without replicators cannot hope to resist the people who have them.
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Feb 14, 2017 00:30
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ColoradoCleric posted:This is primarily one of my issues with UBI, how can you have a currency be worth anything when its value is determined by mere consumption of resources rather than trade? What does this even mean? The value of a nation's currency would be subject to the same market forces whether a UBI exists or not.
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Feb 14, 2017 00:49
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Paradoxish posted:What does this even mean? The value of a nation's currency would be subject to the same market forces whether a UBI exists or not. How does a currency have any value when you're just giving it away to burn through resources? According to market forces you're going to end up in a vicious cycle of inflation and then printing/taxing money from the rich to pay for more and more UBI. This video does a pretty good articulating the problems with a UBI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxUzTW5dM4o ColoradoCleric fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 07:17
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Dead Reckoning posted:Except the same technologies which are making human labor obsolete are making it ever easier for a small minority and their enforcers to maintain control over large numbers of people. I'm quite serious when I say that someone with access to, say, an AI that uses psychometric data to help its owner influence things like buying preferences and election results, would be able to treat the rest of the population as irrelevant. Plus the fact that it is impossible to live and organize in 21st century society without going online and leaving a digital trail means that the owners of the infrastructure can use the same tools to marginalize any effective resistance and strangle it in the crib. Try to take over Facebook by organizing on a Facebook group. Peasants without swords and armor cannot hope to resist feudals who have them.
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Feb 14, 2017 10:03
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ColoradoCleric posted:How does a currency have any value when you're just giving it away to burn through resources? The value of currency doesn't depend on whether you are giving it in exchange for work or in exchange for nothing. And economy is more complicated than this guy's interpretation. In Nordic countries welfare is strong and cost the state a lot and taxes are high and so are the prices, but that didn't push them into any vicious circle. Also not all prices are high. Services and alcohol yes but food no. He also says stuff like "UBI would cost X$ but since there are cases where people currently receive more than they would with UBI, it means that it would be increased and cost XY$ instead" which he just made up on the spot. Why wouldn't some people receive less? In short, for UBI discussion I would suggest you look for economists and not a historian/men's rights/family advice radio personality.
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Feb 14, 2017 11:09
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ColoradoCleric posted:How does a currency have any value when you're just giving it away to burn through resources? What a dumb argument. Currently you get currency in exchange for productivity, that wont change with a UBI, you just get part of societies total output as a UBI.
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Feb 14, 2017 13:26
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Doctor Malaver posted:The value of currency doesn't depend on whether you are giving it in exchange for work or in exchange for nothing. 45% of Sweden's GDP is in exports (mostly traditional heavy industry) and they've got a 6.5% unemployment rate; the population as a whole is massively economically productive (that is, they produce things of value, not that they consume a lot, which is not productive) and the welfare state diverts a small percentage of their productivity to maintain them as such. This is completely unlike a situation where welfare is primarily directed towards supporting a large and growing class that produces nothing of value, ever. Rich people have lots of money, but its value ultimately derives from their stake in actual industry making things and providing services, that doesn't mean you can write yourself a check for a billion dollars and become rich too. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 16:18
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Weird to argue that basic income would cause hyperinflation and, like all social welfare schemes, will be rendered irrelevant without a communist revolution. I mean, it's in line with a vision of the future where the greater part of humanity are contemptible parasites, but the whole package, as it were, is extremely weird.
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Feb 14, 2017 16:23
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:45% of Sweden's GDP is in exports (mostly traditional heavy industry) and they've got a 6.5% unemployment rate; the population as a whole is massively economically productive (that is, they produce things of value, not that they consume a lot, which is not productive) and the welfare state diverts a small percentage of their productivity to maintain them as such. This is completely unlike a situation where welfare is primarily directed towards supporting a large and growing class that produces nothing of value, ever. Rich people have lots of money, but its value ultimately derives from their stake in actual industry making things and providing services, that doesn't mean you can write yourself a check for a billion dollars and become rich too. It doesnt matter if is 1 person/computer producing everything or 100 million people. Its not about how many people are productive, but about the total amount produced. If that stays the same with less people than yes, you can give those people who now do nothing the same amount of money as they got before without any wealth loss for society (well except for the capitalist i guess). In fact it might be better to give it to those people so they can continue to consume.
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Feb 14, 2017 16:40
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9-Volt Assault posted:It doesnt matter if is 1 person/computer producing everything or 100 million people. Its not about how many people are productive, but about the total amount produced. If that stays the same with less people than yes, you can give those people who now do nothing the same amount of money as they got before without any wealth loss for society (well except for the capitalist i guess). In fact it might be better to give it to those people so they can continue to consume. It sure as poo poo is about that for the people who own the wealth, dogg you are not the player in Sid Meier's Civilization tweaking the 'social welfare' slider to get your 'happiness' bar up for a nation; "you", internet-debater somewhere on the lower-to-middle-class spectrum whose political relevance amounts to roughly a vote in the general, are not giving the people anything. It makes rather a lot of difference to the capitalist class, who are the ones who'd actually be making that call in a system where they continue to own the means of production, whether they get to keep their money for themselves or whether it's redistributed to a bunch of people who as far as they're concerned basically just light it on fire. Your consumption is not a valuable service you provide them, it is worth nothing to anyone but you except as a means of capturing the wealth you produce through labor, as expressed in your paycheck. These are matters of pretty immediate concern for someone involved with ensuring that real physical people in the real physical world will continue to receive the stuff of life instead of sinking into the misery that already awaits anyone the capitalists do not need, but instead you keep glossing over stuff like the basic word-salad nonsense of raw consumption producing value in what's evidently the world's only non-automatable service to arrive at the same conclusion that you don't need to make any fundamental changes and everything will turn out fine and it's the part where you offer anything in exchange for your comfort that's optional. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 18:10
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I enjoy this argument that capitalist economics would continue functioning in a situation where there is no one to sell to. What's an overproduction crisis, precious?
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Feb 14, 2017 18:18
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Step 1: Tax rich Step 2: Give money to poor Step 3: poor buy assets from the rich Step 4: rich now have the cash they previously had and are now asset poorer Somehow this results in a net benefit
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Feb 14, 2017 18:27
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Wealth doesn't need capitalist economics. Actual wealth, e.g. owning the means of production, has value irrespective of the economic system it exists under. That's the problem with UBI.
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Feb 14, 2017 18:28
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I really appreciate the Brooks Brothers fuckfaces insisting that a society where everyone is totally self-sufficient due to their army of robots and handful of slaves is one that will just naturally emerge with ease. Really plausible.
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Feb 14, 2017 18:31
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If you replace "robots" with militia and "slaves" with retainers/serfs, it's pretty much the state of affairs that persisted for most of human history, and still persists in places today, so it's not exactly science fiction.Doctor Malaver posted:Peasants without swords and armor cannot hope to resist feudals who have them.
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Feb 14, 2017 18:41
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There is no society in existence or history where the elite has been able to survive without extracting labor from the mass of people. To think that there is is contemptible.
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Feb 14, 2017 18:45
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Brainiac Five posted:I enjoy this argument that capitalist economics would continue functioning in a situation where there is no one to sell to. What's an overproduction crisis, precious? There'll always be a class of non-aristocrats useful to the aristocracy, they just don't nearly have to include everyone (and, in fact, don't right now). Is your gameplan to be Warren Buffett's majordomo, or wine steward? A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 18:51
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:There'll always be a class of non-aristocrats useful to the aristocracy, they just don't nearly have to include everyone (and, in fact, don't right now). Is your gameplan to be Warren Buffett's majordomo, or wine steward? The objection is to your fantasy proceeding smoothly, the capitalists apparently being able to coordinate perfectly as the rate of profit hits zero. Your beliefs are simply an intellectualization of learned helplessness, with a feeling of superiority because you perceive yourself to alone be viewing objective reality. Your desire to lay down and die is repugnant to pass off as intellectual discourse, but you can't help doing so so there's not much point in trying to change it.
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Feb 14, 2017 18:59
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Dead Reckoning posted:Wealth doesn't need capitalist economics. Actual wealth, e.g. owning the means of production, has value irrespective of the economic system it exists under. That's the problem with UBI. This is a interesting point. Maybe instead countries printing money, we can use "participations in public companies" has money.
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Feb 14, 2017 19:22
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Brainiac Five posted:There is no society in existence or history where the elite has been able to survive without extracting labor from the mass of people. To think that there is is contemptible. Historically, the masses in such a situation still had their bodies and physical access to the means of production, which they could use to force the owner class to take notice of them. Unfortunately, the last few decades of our fiscal policy have moved much of the means of production to third world free trade zones, where people who read Somethingawful dot com don't have realistic access to it. Now, you could try to revive the murdered corpse of the international labor movement, except 1) that would require accepting the same standard of living for you and yours as people in third world FTZs, you will lose while they gain, 2) the owner class now also owns all the platforms and means of communication that you could realistically use to organize such a thing, and 3) it still doesn't address the long term problem of surplus labor force. Tei posted:This is a interesting point. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 20:50
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Dead Reckoning posted:1) that would require accepting the same standard of living for you and yours as people in third world FTZs, you will lose while they gain Interesting that unfettered globalization and the reincarnation of international organized labor as a concept lead to the exact same conclusion, isn't it?
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Feb 14, 2017 20:51
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I would argue it's because the problem of an increasing surplus labor force exists under either one.
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Feb 14, 2017 20:53
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call to action posted:Interesting that unfettered globalization and the reincarnation of international organized labor as a concept lead to the exact same conclusion, isn't it? Well, technically, one drives us all more equally towards the global mean income of around $10k/yr, while the other drives us all less equally towards less than half of that, another half of everything being reserved for literally eight people. First-world workers are absolutely net beneficiaries of global capital right now regardless of the tremendous wealth inequity even within the first world, but their position is a temporary one hard-won in the face of capitalism, not some universal constant, and the gains of the past century are being actively chipped away even now. It is not a judgement from God or the patriotic instincts of multinational corporations that keep you from living like a Bangladeshi shirtweaver or Brazillian landfill picker, you're not just special. Tei posted:This is a interesting point. I'm having a little trouble parsing this but nationalizing industry and distributing the profits among the people from that point is, as ever, the whole premise of communism, which is the terrible spectre D&D lolberts are trying to avoid by weaving fantasies of the private industry barons just giving them stuff for taking on the onerous burden of owning 20 pairs of shoes for them. If there's not a distinct class of oligarchs who actually own all the stuff and decide whether it serves them personally that you get to eat every day, a whole lot of issues change fundamentally. They're not super inclined to just forfeit their ownership of everything to their employees, or the people of the world generally, but they're not any more inclined to keep their dominance of everything and just forfeit their money instead. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 21:37
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The whole premise of communism isn't about redistributing profits from nationalizing industries. That's not a description of theoretical or practical communism or socialism or anarchism. Your constant sneering from a position of ignorance is repulsive, and your presentation of yourself as a real worker unlike those lazy slobs when you work in loving IT deserves a prison term, to be completely honest.
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Feb 14, 2017 21:56
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:It is not a judgement from God or the patriotic instincts of multinational corporations that keep you from living like a Bangladeshi shirtweaver or Brazillian landfill picker, you're not just special. Completely agreed, which is why we should be protectionist and close our borders (but only after offering full amnesty to any illegal immigrants that are here). Every force imaginable wants to grind us into dust otherwise. It's the racist and classist belief that Americans are inherently somehow superior and must inevitably win out in some global competition for jobs that helps perpetuate the belief in free trade - fact is, we're not special and we need protection if we don't want wages to hit the global mean.
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Feb 14, 2017 22:11
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Rip Testes posted:Automation is going to eliminate a substantial number of jobs. Ownership of stuff seems like it will decline for a good many folks which seems problematic for a consumer driven society. Maybe good for the environment, but I dunno the how the economics shakes out for everyone involved. Presumably we move to more and more rent based services such as automated cars and the like and this will greatly enrich a handful of corporations, but they depend on folks being able to pay those rents. What happens when they can no longer sell to consumers simply because they have no funds? And what does this mean for government dependent on income based tax revenues? I'm not an economist and I'd be grateful for anyone with reputable studies on economics of automation. To me the only way any of this works is if, *gasp* the government becomes a shareholder in the means of production and uses the divedends to fund a basic income or some sort of vast jobs program so that capital can circulate. It could also turn into a fascist sort of structure where individuals are provided stipends, working toward the national struggle, Hitler reveled at the idea of people working for the national interest rather than for capital too. oocc's rationale is bananas, I much prefer when they defend identity politics with insults. Personally idk, I'm investing a lot of my income into tech firms that I think will be kings of this new world. Sethex fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 06:53
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Brainiac Five posted:There is no society in existence or history where the elite has been able to survive without extracting labor from the mass of people. To think that there is is contemptible. "There is no society in existence" describes a lot of the things we can do now; your entire argument is bad given what current science and innovation can and has accomplished. Yeah well, lots of regimes were capable of many terrible things by bribing a minority of the population. Technology will make this even easier. I've seen you scoffing at these inevitable outcomes of innovation. Anyone notice a pattern with the social justice types rejecting the troubles that automation will create? 9-Volt Assault posted:It doesnt matter if is 1 person/computer producing everything or 100 million people. Its not about how many people are productive, but about the total amount produced. If that stays the same with less people than yes, you can give those people who now do nothing the same amount of money as they got before without any wealth loss for society (well except for the capitalist i guess). In fact it might be better to give it to those people so they can continue to consume. That doesn't work in capitalism. Sethex fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 07:27
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quote:Anyone notice a pattern with the social justice types rejecting the troubles that automation will create?
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Feb 16, 2017 08:19
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Sethex posted:That doesn't work in capitalism.
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Feb 16, 2017 09:38
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Uhhh well we have a fascist regime in which all white men are working for the national struggle, problem solved thread closed pack it up automailures
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Feb 16, 2017 16:26
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SwissCM posted:Sort of like ignoring the litany of problems that already exist within the current hegemony? Power has already been consolidated to a select few, the most powerful government in the world is massively corrupt and billions live in disease and poverty. Mass automation could make things marginally worse but at this point I don't blame people for being hopeful for the chance that massively reducing the burden of human work could press society into a more positive direction if applied correctly. p much, future technology could potentially eliminate human drudgery but technology we've had for your entire lifetime could factually eliminate human hunger. What's supposed to change with the same system and the same basic guys deciding how it's utilized, are real people starving just... less motivational? Does poverty only 'count' insasmuch as it personally affects Americans/Europeans who post a lot on the Internet, or is their Counterstrike-honed keyboard rage just going to cow the heads of multinationals into giving back to society in ways that millions in an actual struggle for survival here and now couldn't
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Feb 16, 2017 18:56
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Whoa, people care more about the situations of people they've encountered vs. ones they haven't, very startling revelations going on here
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Feb 17, 2017 19:31
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