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Inferior Third Season
Jan 15, 2005

Talmonis posted:

Guillotines are bougie French poo poo. Machetes are all you need. Hatians had the right idea.
Maybe, but I find it more fitting to destroy the wealthy using technology that is ruthlessly efficient and dehumanizing.

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Lawman 0
Aug 17, 2010

Socialize the means of human enhancement.

Guavanaut
Nov 27, 2009

Looking At Them Tittys
1969 - 1998



Toilet Rascal
Guillotines are still centered around the individual, one at a time, lead them up the steps, etc.

There are methods that are both ruthlessly efficient and dehumanizing, but they have connotations. :hitler:

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Guavanaut posted:

Cancer and capital investors are both adherents to the growth at any cost ideology.

:psyboom:

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Tei posted:

I am not sure If I understand your logic. The way our societies work now if you are unemployed you have expenses but not income. You may have some money saved but it will not last forever. Once your bank account is empty, you will have expenses that you can't pay, and thats the problem.

If everything is cheap, thats something that will benefit people with money, you will be money-less. Things like a flat TV or a phone will be easy to buy, but buying a house will be a imposible dream. Living in a house will be too expensive. One way or another you will live out of wellfare.
I say having a smartphone will be doable because you may get (1) paycheck somewhere one. So instant buys are possible, is maintenance cost like food or rent that will be imposible.

I guess I just don't get this sci-fi story where everyone is unemployed because of machines but the machines can only be owned by a few people and those people are somehow using the machines to sell stuff to unemployed people? Like how is the guy making cellphones for 8 dollars each in a very cheap factory making money if no one has money? Why does he even need money if everything is made in factories that cost so little above raw material costs anyway? If the machines are actually expensive and actually cost a lot to run why isn't some sneaky capitalist getting rich hiring everyone to work in his factory and undercut everything?

Like this whole thing feels like a bad sci-fi story where something changes all of society in one aspect but then everything just stays the same in every other aspect for some reason?

Brainiac Five
Mar 28, 2016

by FactsAreUseless
You're right. In such a situation the majority of humanity would be starved to death by the rich and their mechanic class.

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Brainiac Five posted:

You're right. In such a situation the majority of humanity would be starved to death by the rich and their mechanic class.

Okay but what are the rich doing to get money and what are they spending that money on? Like this all reads as that D&D thing where magic and dragons exist and are common but somehow everything else is just a society of eternal medieval europe somehow because it's not fun to worry about how that stuff would change.

Like people are talking about a level of automation that changes the whole employment structure of the entire world but somehow still makes money selling to no one to support rich people that are buying apparently expensive things that are somehow made by extremely cheap machines? What are they buying? who are they buying from? Who builds the stuff they consume and what resources are the things they are buying taking that make their stuff so expensive for rich people?

Tei
Feb 19, 2011

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I guess I just don't get this sci-fi story where everyone is unemployed because of machines but the machines can only be owned by a few people and those people are somehow using the machines to sell stuff to unemployed people?

I think you understand it very well:

Is broken, thats why need fixing.
If we want capitalism to continue forward we need a patch in the event most jobs are destroyed.

The OP post explain it better than I could possibly do. Automation use to create more jobs than it destroy, now it destroy more jobs than it produce.

quote:

Like how is the guy making cellphones for 8 dollars each in a very cheap factory making money if no one has money?

Once most people is unemployeed, goods consumation has to die with our current system. So this dude too get fired because the industry close. We want to stop that.

Is a system crash.


quote:

Why does he even need money if everything is made in factories that cost so little above raw material costs anyway?

Even if a cellphone is 1$, you still need 1$ to buy, if you don't even have 1$ you can't buy it.

Cheap to make don't mean cheap to buy, anyway.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-30/daraprim-nsw-students-create-drug-martin-shkreli-sold/8078892

quote:

If the machines are actually expensive and actually cost a lot to run why isn't some sneaky capitalist getting rich hiring everyone to work in his factory and undercut everything?

Humans are always expensive. Will not get cheaper than people need to live.
Machines may get cheaper, but can also be a one time expense where you ask 1 million to the bank, and from that point you only pay for maintenance.

Care to explain your point better? I fear I may misunderstood it.

GABA ghoul
Oct 29, 2011

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Okay but what are the rich doing to get money and what are they spending that money on? Like this all reads as that D&D thing where magic and dragons exist and are common but somehow everything else is just a society of eternal medieval europe somehow because it's not fun to worry about how that stuff would change.

Like people are talking about a level of automation that changes the whole employment structure of the entire world but somehow still makes money selling to no one to support rich people that are buying apparently expensive things that are somehow made by extremely cheap machines? What are they buying? who are they buying from? Who builds the stuff they consume and what resources are the things they are buying taking that make their stuff so expensive for rich people?

As you asking how countries like Brazil, Kazakhstan or Saudi Arabia work?

My Linux Rig
Mar 27, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 6 years!
Eh automation or giving people back their manufacturing jobs, either way we're due for a major economic adjustment

I just hope it happens during a Republican administration

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Okay but what are the rich doing to get money and what are they spending that money on? Like this all reads as that D&D thing where magic and dragons exist and are common but somehow everything else is just a society of eternal medieval europe somehow because it's not fun to worry about how that stuff would change.

Like people are talking about a level of automation that changes the whole employment structure of the entire world but somehow still makes money selling to no one to support rich people that are buying apparently expensive things that are somehow made by extremely cheap machines? What are they buying? who are they buying from? Who builds the stuff they consume and what resources are the things they are buying taking that make their stuff so expensive for rich people?

The question you're asking is "in a world with incredibly cheap goods but no jobs, how does capitalism work" even though the actual point of the thread is.. that question.

As automation gets cheaper and better, production will go up while jobs and income for the working class will go down. The entire point of my post yesterday (that you misunderstood then, and seem to have forgotten?) is that this problem doesn't get fixed without lots of poverty and unnecessary deaths unless the system makes some pretty drastic changes to adapt to a reality where labor keeps going down and production keeps going up.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

Paradoxish posted:

People probably aren't going to become unemployable because of automation. Low-end jobs are always going to be around unless we start seriously raising the minimum wage, so what's more likely is a constant downward pressure on middle- and lower-end wages as the share of people qualified to work "good" jobs shrinks.

If wages drop, that endangers the service industry as well. The "would you like fries with that" industry relies on there being an ample number of people who feel that they have sufficient extra money to buy fries on a semi-regular basis.

Bhaal posted:

I have a question for when you encounter someone who smugly congratulates people fighting for 15 on causing fast food automation to come and replace them. You know, as though the automation is a punishment invented for them having the greed of wanting a living wage, rather than the automation having been unavoidable and the workers have always been completely and totally hosed.

When you encounter that person, when you break their body and begin openly feasting on the flesh as is the natural and civil response, should you include some grain or starch to balance your diet? Or just some root veggies, add light salt and save the blood for a gravy for later?

I mean I'm kind of joking but this might be a good thread to workshop on concise ways to tell these people they are wrong and/or why they should take their opinions, fold it 3x, roll it into a cone and jam it up their rear end until nobody has to ever see it again. Social media has been a complete poo poo show especially post election but nothing is more infuriating to argue against than people punching down on the poor harder than ever

The reason fast food jobs haven't been automated isn't because of cost, but rather because of versatility and because of the human element. There have been partially-automated fast food restaurants for years, it's just never caught on in a widespread fashion in the US or major European countries. A human worker can be moved to any job in the McDonalds or sent home, and can respond to arbitrary customer questions, while specialized robots are unitaskers that never go off-duty. You can't tell Burger Flipper 5000 to go clean the toilet after lunch rush ends, and it's helpless if someone wants a different toy in their Kids Meal. In real restaurant work, there's less flexibility but much more human interaction.

I once saw an article in which an Apple exec defended their offshoring practices by insisting that it wasn't because of the cost, but rather because of the flexibility it offered. As an example, he cited a situation where a last-minute design change had been put into play the night before production was due to start, and the factory supervisor was able to go around to all the worker dorms in the middle of the night, wake up the workers, and bring them all into the factory to start immediately training them on the change, so that they could begin production in the morning without any delays. With specialized, purpose-built manufacturing robots, it would have taken time to reprogram them or possibly even modify them; human workers just needed a quick talking-to.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I guess I just don't get this sci-fi story where everyone is unemployed because of machines but the machines can only be owned by a few people and those people are somehow using the machines to sell stuff to unemployed people? Like how is the guy making cellphones for 8 dollars each in a very cheap factory making money if no one has money? Why does he even need money if everything is made in factories that cost so little above raw material costs anyway? If the machines are actually expensive and actually cost a lot to run why isn't some sneaky capitalist getting rich hiring everyone to work in his factory and undercut everything?

Like this whole thing feels like a bad sci-fi story where something changes all of society in one aspect but then everything just stays the same in every other aspect for some reason?

The part you're missing is that everything doesn't stay the same - past a certain critical mass level, it means that the economy as we know it essentially ceases to be. Unfortunately, just like climate change, the enormity of the long-term consequences doesn't stop people from ignoring it completely in the pursuit of short-term profit, which is why we're discussing what needs to change and what the future economic paradigm will have to look like.

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Main Paineframe posted:

I once saw an article in which an Apple exec defended their offshoring practices by insisting that it wasn't because of the cost, but rather because of the flexibility it offered. As an example, he cited a situation where a last-minute design change had been put into play the night before production was due to start, and the factory supervisor was able to go around to all the worker dorms in the middle of the night, wake up the workers, and bring them all into the factory to start immediately training them on the change, so that they could begin production in the morning without any delays.

Yikes. This sounds kinda dystopic.

BobTheJanitor
Jun 28, 2003

Keep in mind, this isn't something that happens instantly. The workforce of America doesn't collectively walk into the office one morning to see Robbie the job stealing robot sitting at their desk. This is something that happens slowly over years, and is in fact already happening. Just refer back to that 'decoupling productivity and employment' image in the OP. Note how employment has been flattening out for the last bit of that graph, while productivity is still going up? That's how it happens. Fewer and fewer people are needed to do the work as more and more automated solutions take over. It's not going to be a sudden shock with headlines reading "ROBOTS TAKE ALL THE JOBS". It's going to be what we're already seeing, fewer jobs, stagnant wages, more and more of the profits moving to the richest members of society... sound familiar?

And we don't need all the jobs to go away for it to be a big problem. Ignore any even remotely futuristic ideas and just look at self-driving cars, which are at most 5 years away from being on the roads everywhere. Moving things on roads from point A to point B accounts for roughly 15% of all the jobs in the country. And that's ignoring other 'moving things around' jobs on smaller scales, like say warehouse work, which to a bot is just an easier version of the already solved self-driving car problem. The worst unemployment of the recent great recession was at 10%. The Great Depression peaked at 27%. From the video in the OP, if you look at all the jobs that could reasonably be expected to be automated in the near future, you get to about 45% unemployment. Without doing something to avert it, those are end-of-the-world, rioting in the streets kind of numbers.

Tei
Feb 19, 2011

Pollyanna posted:

Yikes. This sounds kinda dystopic.

Sounds like mismanagement to me. Last minute changes also means poorly tested changes that may result on exploding phones down the road.

Anyway, yea. Management are "Peoples people", management are like marketing, they like to talk to humans more than robots. You cant shout to robots, you can't put the blame on the robots (only on yourself). It make sense for management to want humans, if they make some economic sense. Until you replace management by a algorithm: instead of having a factory to produce FOO, you have a algorithm that order the production of FOO based on delivery date and quality index to other industries.

(Foto: last human with a job on earth)

Tei fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Dec 2, 2016

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Death Bot posted:

The question you're asking is "in a world with incredibly cheap goods but no jobs, how does capitalism work" even though the actual point of the thread is.. that question.

As automation gets cheaper and better, production will go up while jobs and income for the working class will go down. The entire point of my post yesterday (that you misunderstood then, and seem to have forgotten?) is that this problem doesn't get fixed without lots of poverty and unnecessary deaths unless the system makes some pretty drastic changes to adapt to a reality where labor keeps going down and production keeps going up.

I guess I am questioning the assumption that once automation happens the rich will have everything and the poor unemployed will not. If everything is truely so cheap to manufacture that everything costs less than minimum wage to make then why are the poor without? If everyone is poor who are the rich and what are they buying and selling? The whole story makes no sense.

Tei
Feb 19, 2011

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I guess I am questioning the assumption that once automation happens the rich will have everything and the poor unemployed will not. If everything is truely so cheap to manufacture that everything costs less than minimum wage to make then why are the poor without? If everyone is poor who are the rich and what are they buying and selling? The whole story makes no sense.

The poor are withouth a job, so they can't buy stuff.

How the system works them? It don't work, it crash.


What part of "Not having money, so they can't buy stuff" you don't understand? (I am honestly asking, not ill feels here).

BobTheJanitor
Jun 28, 2003

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

If everything is truely so cheap to manufacture that everything costs less than minimum wage to make then why are the poor without?

This is a world where a life-saving pill that costs pennies to manufacture can be sold for $750 per dose. Capitalism finds a way.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I guess I am questioning the assumption that once automation happens the rich will have everything and the poor unemployed will not. If everything is truely so cheap to manufacture that everything costs less than minimum wage to make then why are the poor without? If everyone is poor who are the rich and what are they buying and selling? The whole story makes no sense.

Yes, if literally everyone is unemployed then the economy probably implodes and we devolve into a post-apocalyptic society. Nobody is suggesting this ridiculous scenario and you seem to be intentionally ignoring the pile of states in between where we are now and complete economic meltdown. What happens when 10-15% of the population is permanently unemployed or underemployed? What about 25%? You can keep on being rich by selling to the people who still have jobs and money. Hell, you could probably do that right up until the point that things get so bad that society collapses.

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

Paradoxish posted:

Yes, if literally everyone is unemployed then the economy probably implodes and we devolve into a post-apocalyptic society. Nobody is suggesting this ridiculous scenario and you seem to be intentionally ignoring the pile of states in between where we are now and complete economic meltdown. What happens when 10-15% of the population is permanently unemployed or underemployed? What about 25%? You can keep on being rich by selling to the people who still have jobs and money. Hell, you could probably do that right up until the point that things get so bad that society collapses.

As more people are permanently unemplyoyed or underemployed the government will take up the slack by expanding social safety nets. A series of "emergency" measures will be rolled out that will tacitly become the status quo so and life will continue. Meanwhile, people will adapt and figure out how to cobble together a living like humans have been doing for the last 100,000 years while experiencing relative abundance of goods that can be priced to their budgets because production has brought costs down even as incomes have fallen.

Like...everyone looks at the wages vs productivity graph linked earlier and expresses HORROR and OUTRAGE but the reality is that except for a few categories of goods (housing, college, health care), almost anything you can name that existed when the graphs diverged is much cheaper and better in 2016. Even in those categories where prices have gone up, quality-adjusted prices paint a more nuanced picture.

Talmonis
Jun 24, 2012
The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

wateroverfire posted:


As more people are permanently unemplyoyed or underemployed the government will take up the slack by expanding social safety nets. A series of "emergency" measures will be rolled out that will tacitly become the status quo so and life will continue.
Meanwhile, people will adapt and figure out how to cobble together a living like humans have been doing for the last 100,000 years while experiencing relative abundance of goods that can be priced to their budgets because production has brought costs down even as incomes have fallen.

Like...everyone looks at the wages vs productivity graph linked earlier and expresses HORROR and OUTRAGE but the reality is that except for a few categories of goods (housing, college, health care), almost anything you can name that existed when the graphs diverged is much cheaper and better in 2016. Even in those categories where prices have gone up, quality-adjusted prices paint a more nuanced picture.

Republicans will not allow this. The sane ones have been mostly driven from the party during the primaries. Barring a few outliers, the Tea Party ultra conservatives will scream "Bootstraps!" until the moment they're all engulfed in the flames of a burning capitol building.

Talmonis fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Dec 2, 2016

bag em and tag em
Nov 4, 2008
"That literally can't happen because how will the rich stay rich without people to buy things," doesn't take into account how society has worked like that for plenty of periods of our history. The gilded age, slave economies, hell feudalism, all worked out just great for the powerful rich while the teeming masses all got to die in the streets or under labor conditions that equated to manslaughter.

BobTheJanitor
Jun 28, 2003

wateroverfire posted:

As more people are permanently unemplyoyed or underemployed the government will take up the slack by expanding social safety nets.

That's a nice idea. Which republican senators, congresspeople, or presidential candidates are going to support it?

Edit: I mean yeah, everyone basically agrees that the way to fix it is to legislate a standard of living below which we will not allow people to drop. But with decades of demonizing socialism and 'moochers' and the rhetoric of 'makers and takers' the prospects don't look good. At the moment it's much more likely that we'll have to steer the ship into the iceberg and start drowning before they admit that maybe we should change course.

BobTheJanitor fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Dec 2, 2016

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

BobTheJanitor posted:

That's a nice idea. Which republican senators, congresspeople, or presidential candidates are going to support it?

It's not a probem that's just going to suddenly happen that this congress will need to deal with. Probably the political landscape will change as the economic landscape changes, which is a thing that has happened in the past and will certainly happen again since we don't live at the end of history.

Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




Pollyanna posted:

Yikes. This sounds kinda dystopic.

Kanban.

The goal is to reduce inventories at all parts of the supply chain. The metaphor used to explain it is a boat on a lake. With high inventory the water level in the lake is high, it's easy to sail from one side to the other. When inventory is eliminated the water is low. One had to actively sail around the large rocks that were previously on the bottom under water.

When they say flexibility, it's basically that ability to sail around the rocks is what they are referring to.

And it is loving awful to work in that situation. And there is no going back. Firms make a poo poo load more money with lower inventories. They also act this way to survive the extreme shortening product life cycles, that is driven by consumer demand now.

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

BobTheJanitor posted:

Edit: I mean yeah, everyone basically agrees that the way to fix it is to legislate a standard of living below which we will not allow people to drop.

It doesn't have to be anything as explicit as that, really.

It might mean that each recession produces longer "emergency unemployment" extensions that eventually become de-facto mincome, for instance. Or a big crash produces a WPA style program that just sort of continues as the recovery is slower than expected and becomes an institution.

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Paradoxish posted:

What about 25%? You can keep on being rich by selling to the people who still have jobs and money. Hell, you could probably do that right up until the point that things get so bad that society collapses.

Okay, what is a world where 25% of adults have their jobs replaced by machines?

Your imagination of that sort of wild buck rodgers singularity is "I don't know, everyone is poor"

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

wateroverfire posted:

It doesn't have to be anything as explicit as that, really.

It might mean that each recession produces longer "emergency unemployment" extensions that eventually become de-facto mincome, for instance. Or a big crash produces a WPA style program that just sort of continues as the recovery is slower than expected and becomes an institution.

on the other hand, the current crop of republicans are discussing how best to voucherize medicare and dismantle social security, so

MaxxBot
Oct 6, 2003

you could have clapped

you should have clapped!!

Bhaal posted:

I have a question for when you encounter someone who smugly congratulates people fighting for 15 on causing fast food automation to come and replace them. You know, as though the automation is a punishment invented for them having the greed of wanting a living wage, rather than the automation having been unavoidable and the workers have always been completely and totally hosed.

When you encounter that person, when you break their body and begin openly feasting on the flesh as is the natural and civil response, should you include some grain or starch to balance your diet? Or just some root veggies, add light salt and save the blood for a gravy for later?

I mean I'm kind of joking but this might be a good thread to workshop on concise ways to tell these people they are wrong and/or why they should take their opinions, fold it 3x, roll it into a cone and jam it up their rear end until nobody has to ever see it again. Social media has been a complete poo poo show especially post election but nothing is more infuriating to argue against than people punching down on the poor harder than ever

This argument has never made sense to me, this automaton tech is still in pretty early stages and if it will soon be cheap enough to replace $15/hr workers it's only a matter of time before it's cheap enough to replace $5/hr workers. It seems like having no minimum wage even would just delay the inevitable for a decade or two.

Inferior Third Season
Jan 15, 2005

bag em and tag em posted:

"That literally can't happen because how will the rich stay rich without people to buy things," doesn't take into account how society has worked like that for plenty of periods of our history. The gilded age, slave economies, hell feudalism, all worked out just great for the powerful rich while the teeming masses all got to die in the streets or under labor conditions that equated to manslaughter.
Some people got mad at Krugman a while back because he calculated a few different possible equilibria for a stable economy, and one of the ways was for there to be a super rich class with practically all the money and resources, and a massive poor class that scrapes by building yachts and other frivolities for the rich people. In fact, that scenario is likely better than where we're headed, because the rich at least use their money for consumption in the economy rather than simply horde it.

BobTheJanitor
Jun 28, 2003

wateroverfire posted:

It doesn't have to be anything as explicit as that, really.

It might mean that each recession produces longer "emergency unemployment" extensions that eventually become de-facto mincome, for instance. Or a big crash produces a WPA style program that just sort of continues as the recovery is slower than expected and becomes an institution.

Noticing the problem and doing something about it is the preferred path, yeah, but I remain skeptical because it doesn't follow on from what we see in reality. The most likely response of governments around the world to the recent recession was 'austerity' and 'tighten your belt' and similar things that boil down to 'you get nothing, deal with it'. We may get to mincome eventually, but I think the path there is going to be a lot harder than it needs to be as long as we continue to fetishize hard work and bootstraps.

boner confessor posted:

on the other hand, the current crop of republicans are discussing how best to voucherize medicare and dismantle social security, so

Basically, this.

Feral Integral
Jun 6, 2006

YOSPOS

BobTheJanitor posted:

Edit: I mean yeah, everyone basically agrees that the way to fix it is to legislate a standard of living below which we will not allow people to drop.

Careful, though, because some people seem to take this as: we will not allow people to refuse to pay insurance companies no matter how usurious the rates of the choices, or what drug prices "cost". See: the ACA

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I guess I am questioning the assumption that once automation happens the rich will have everything and the poor unemployed will not. If everything is truely so cheap to manufacture that everything costs less than minimum wage to make then why are the poor without? If everyone is poor who are the rich and what are they buying and selling? The whole story makes no sense.

You are right, that scenario doesn't hold forever, but that is the trend: production and big business is up, while middle and lower class income and jobs aren't keeping up.

You're literally completely right that this is an untenable situation without some crazy dystopia poo poo happening, and it's already having negative effects and will only get worse.

The thing is, it won't be like a switch getting flipped, it will just get slowly worse over decades as companies realize that automation is cheaper or easier in this industry or that, and the market will correct itself by feeding and sheltering less and less people. This already happens and will continue to happen, and yeah eventually it will probably reach a point where the whole thing implodes, but waiting for that instead of bring proactive is gonna leaf to a lot of suffering in the meantime (source: the real world, every study that says we already have enough houses and food to feed everyone but it's a "distribution problem")

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Death Bot posted:

You are right, that scenario doesn't hold forever, but that is the trend: production and big business is up, while middle and lower class income and jobs aren't keeping up.

You're literally completely right that this is an untenable situation without some crazy dystopia poo poo happening, and it's already having negative effects and will only get worse.

The thing is, it won't be like a switch getting flipped, it will just get slowly worse over decades as companies realize that automation is cheaper or easier in this industry or that, and the market will correct itself by feeding and sheltering less and less people. This already happens and will continue to happen, and yeah eventually it will probably reach a point where the whole thing implodes, but waiting for that instead of bring proactive is gonna leaf to a lot of suffering in the meantime (source: the real world, every study that says we already have enough houses and food to feed everyone but it's a "distribution problem")


I agree very strongly that the poor and middle class are in economic trouble. Stuff is getting worse and will get worse and economic inequality is a major issue right now.

I just don't buy the "robots takin our jerbs" idea. It's a sci-fi story that doesn't add up. It's a fantasy. But a weird one where everyone is displaced by automation enough to reshape society but the products of this automation apparently vanishes into the sea or something and doesn't also affect society. Like people can imagine the part a heart surgeon loses his job because a robot does it cheaper and better, but somehow that sci-fi story never also has the part where everyone now can get cheap heart surgery. And like the knee jerk is the rich will keep the money for themselves, but the whole premise was about how amazingly cheap this machine would have to be to displace the dude. So why can only the rich afford to have or run them? Why can't the community hospital buy one?

Owlofcreamcheese fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Dec 2, 2016

silence_kit
Jul 14, 2011

by the sex ghost

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

But this sci-fi scenario is also one where someone has an autodoc that costs less than 90,000 a year to run.

Lol, doctors make way more than that. You need to at least double that number.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

If everything is automated why are my expenses also not going down a huge amount? only my income?

Consumer goods can be and have been produced more cheaply due to automation, but people don't spend most of their money on consumer goods.

People spend a lot of money on things like housing and medical care in which there is a lot of government influence to maintain scarcity of those types of goods/services and keep prices high.

You are correctly pointing out though that people in these discussions tend to underestimate the maintenance cost of mechanical systems. The maintenance cost of 'digital systems' which automate away semi-skilled white collar jobs can be really low though.

silence_kit fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Dec 2, 2016

BobTheJanitor
Jun 28, 2003

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Like people can imagine the part a heart surgeon loses his job because a robot does it cheaper and better, but somehow that sci-fi story never also has the part where everyone now can get cheap heart surgery.

Picking a medical example is undercutting your point a bit here, since that's probably the most egregious example of a field in which prices are insanely bloated and yet people have no choice but to pay them or die.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

So why can only the rich afford to have or run them? Why can't the community hospital buy one?

The same reason you can't formulate Daraprim in your basement and sell it on the street corner for its actual value instead of the 5,000% increased cost that Turing sells it for.

bag em and tag em
Nov 4, 2008

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I agree very strongly that the poor and middle class are in economic trouble. Stuff is getting worse and will get worse and economic inequality is a major issue right now.

I just don't buy the "robots takin our jerbs" idea. It's a sci-fi story that doesn't add up. It's a fantasy. But a weird one where everyone is displaced by automation enough to reshape society but the products of this automation apparently vanishes into the sea or something and doesn't also affect society. Like people can imagine the part a heart surgeon loses his job because a robot does it cheaper and better, but somehow that sci-fi story never also has the part where everyone now can get cheap heart surgery. And like the knee jerk is the rich will keep the money for themselves, but the whole premise was about how amazingly cheap this machine would have to be to displace the dude. So why can only the rich afford to have or run them? Why can't the community hospital buy one?

We already have medicines that are pennies per pill to produce but hundreds of dollars to purchase. There might be decent examples of what you're saying but artificially expensive health care is a real thing and pharmaceutical companies and health care companies response is always "sorry lol we have no choice it's totally required, die if you don't like it."

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

BobTheJanitor posted:

The same reason you can't formulate Daraprim in your basement and sell it on the street corner for its actual value instead of the 5,000% increased cost that Turing sells it for.

To be fair, entire countries seem that they ARE doing that. Manufacturing generics.

Like america being a poo poo country that does bad things seems like a separate issue than worrying about robots. Robots don't seem to help or hurt america's ability to gently caress people.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I guess I am questioning the assumption that once automation happens the rich will have everything and the poor unemployed will not. If everything is truely so cheap to manufacture that everything costs less than minimum wage to make then why are the poor without? If everyone is poor who are the rich and what are they buying and selling? The whole story makes no sense.

Labor is not the only cost or even the primary cost in most businesses. Even if a Car-O-Matic 3000 costs five bucks, you still have to be able to afford raw materials, designs, testing facilities, and regulatory requirements, not to mention having the space to run it and to store inventory. Infrastructure, raw materials, and availability of skilled workers to handle the few un-automatable jobs gives a major advantage to large manufacturers.

And the Car-O-Matic 3000 doesn't cost five bucks. Over the long run it might be cheaper than human laborers, but unlike human laborers, the machine requires a large up-front investment. It's easier for Joe Schmoe to hire a set of workers that cost $10,000 a month than it is for him to buy a machine that costs $100,000 up-front and costs $500 a month to run; the machine will pay for itself in a couple of years and be much cheaper than the workers in the long run, but it requires the buyer to be much richer at the beginning.

When the poor are too poor to buy things, what are the rich selling? Well, in the short-term, they shift production to luxury stuff to compensate for flagging consumer demand, but as you guess, that's unsustainable and before long all their businesses would collapse as the entire economy melted down around them. The thing is, just because it's unsustainable and would eventually lead to a nonfunctional economy doesn't mean it won't happen anyway. Just like with climate change, it will happen, because we're not going to see a meaningful number of companies nobly sacrificing their own profit margins for the sake of everyone else.

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Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Main Paineframe posted:

Labor is not the only cost or even the primary cost in most businesses. Even if a Car-O-Matic 3000 costs five bucks, you still have to be able to afford raw materials, designs, testing facilities, and regulatory requirements, not to mention having the space to run it and to store inventory. Infrastructure, raw materials, and availability of skilled workers to handle the few un-automatable jobs gives a major advantage to large manufacturers.

If labor was such a teeny tiny part of the economy already right now how is it a big deal for the economy to lose it then?

It's this constant playing it both ways I'm not buying. Automation is going to reshape everything but also everything will stay exactly the same in every way.

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