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Jeb! Repetition posted:Yeah but there's way less people involve in maintenance and management than there would be as janitors. Otherwise the roombas would have no point. That's why it's gonna cause unemployment. Right, and with less variable capital involved, profit falls as competition catches up.
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Jun 6, 2017 18:57
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Oberleutnant posted:You don't seem to be arguing the point you think you're arguing here. Some industries are threatened by automation. That's nothing new or exceptional. The industries are predominantly service based (as your post indicates) but this is just a product of western economies being service economies. What new industries could possibly move in at that point though? You seem to be taking it as an article of faith this will happen based on historical precedent, but AI ultimately has no historical precedent because it sets the denominator of the worker productivity fraction to zero. Thug Lessons posted:To a certain extent you can see this as just an extension of Marx's economic theories, specifically the tendency to replace living labor with dead labor. But it has enormous implications for Marx's political theories because it moves the proletariat from being the source of all value, (and therefore possessing immense political power as a result of the ability to withhold their labor), to being surplus people who live and die at the whim of the bourgeoisie. Yeah, this is a much better Marxist take on it than "oh well capitalism is being capitalism and nothing will really change."
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Jun 6, 2017 18:57
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Ruzihm posted:Right, and with less variable capital involved, profit falls as competition catches up. What does that have to do with unemployment.
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Jun 6, 2017 18:58
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Oberleutnant posted:Something that many people (even marxists) always, always forget is that the relationship between the costs of industrialisation vs mass human labour is not a fixed ratio but does and will vary constantly. Increased mechanisation and industrialisation devalues (through deskilling) human labour until it's so badly paid and menial that it's profitable again (this process also depowers the labouring class through temporary mass unemployment, leading to a race to the bottom for workers' rights as people accept worse and worse conditions in order to get any work at all). The reason this doesn't apply here is because it's never actually more profitable to hire a wage laborer than to use a self-driving car. You would literally have to pay them starvation wages, in the sense that you're not paying them enough to afford food and they eventually starve to death. It's true that everyone is going to see their wages plummet but there's also going to be a large proportion of people that are now permanently unemployed.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:04
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Jeb! Repetition posted:What does that have to do with unemployment. if 99.9% of necessary things are automated, and you aren't employed doing the .1% of other things, life might really suck for you because the capitalists have even less money to spend on things like charity or get taxed towards welfare. Basically the more things get automated, the less useful welfare becomes.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:08
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Thug Lessons posted:The reason this doesn't apply here is because it's never actually more profitable to hire a wage laborer than to use a self-driving car. You would literally have to pay them starvation wages, in the sense that you're not paying them enough to afford food and they eventually starve to death. It's true that everyone is going to see their wages plummet but there's also going to be a large proportion of people that are now permanently unemployed. You may as well say it's never profitable to hire a pinmaker (a job which, if I remember correctly marx analyses in detail in Capital) after inventing a machine that makes pins. It's a meaningless starement because of course some tasks get automated away. The fact that this time it might be your job is (im sorry to say) meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Your labour will be devalued and you'll have to find worse work doing something else. If you're talking about some hypothetical magic machine which automates literally every single production and distribution-oriented task globally, making it impossible for a single human to ever work again then i'm sorry but in any timescale which will matter to you or your grandchikdren's grabdchildren you're a fantasist, and anyway i counter it with my imaginary proletarian AI that immediately destroys it.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:14
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Oberleutnant posted:You may as well say it's never profitable to hire a pinmaker (a job which, if I remember correctly marx analyses in detail in Capital) after inventing a machine that makes pins. It's a meaningless starement because of course some tasks get automated away. The fact that this time it might be your job is (im sorry to say) meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Your labour will be devalued and you'll have to find worse work doing something else. The pin factory example is actually Wealth of Nations, though maybe Marx references it. It's also total horseshit, whole cloth, but whatever. Anyway, you're mistaken, because there is a difference between producing more pins per labor input and excluding humans entirely from pin-making. You're right that capital will always try to exploit labor, but the fact remains that there will be less ways that labor can be exploited if most tasks are automated, and that less labor will be required for the economy to operate in toto. That said, you're of course right that not literally everything will be automated, but for example the Great Depression was just 25% unemployment. We're looking at much higher levels, upwards of 50%, maybe closer to 90%.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:21
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Ruzihm posted:if 99.9% of necessary things are automated, and you aren't employed doing the .1% of other things, life might really suck for you because the capitalists have even less money to spend on things like charity or get taxed towards welfare. Basically the more things get automated, the less useful welfare becomes. You're making some big implications about how welfare, demand and capital would work in an automated economy, and I'd counter them with the fact that a combination of need for aggregate demand and civil unrest would probably get us a UBI or equivalent and it wouldn't hurt capital accumulation all that much. At least that's the scenario where civilization doesn't collapse, which could also happen if neoliberalism tries to continue unabated. Oberleutnant posted:You may as well say it's never profitable to hire a pinmaker (a job which, if I remember correctly marx analyses in detail in Capital) after inventing a machine that makes pins. It's a meaningless starement because of course some tasks get automated away. The fact that this time it might be your job is (im sorry to say) meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Your labour will be devalued and you'll have to find worse work doing something else. The point is that there won't be enough things left in 1st-world countries that anyone's willing to pay minimum wage for that we can achieve a reasonable level of employment. It's not about any specific job, it's about gigantic sector's disappearing with nothing to replace them. The response of "capitalism uh... finds a way" is way more fantasist.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:27
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Thug Lessons posted:Anyway, you're mistaken, because there is a difference between producing more pins per labor input and excluding humans entirely from pin-making. Yeah this is what I meant by automation making the denominator of the worker productivity fraction into zero. Thug Lessons posted:That said, you're of course right that not literally everything will be automated, but for example the Great Depression was just 25% unemployment. We're looking at much higher levels, upwards of 50%, maybe closer to 90%. Now, 90%, that's something that I do see as being fairly far off but it doesn't have to get even half that high for an enormous crisis.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:29
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Prior to capitalism, most people just scraped by as subsistence farmers. Once industrialization began, it became profitable to exploit their labor, so they were brought in to work in factories. Eventually automation expanded enough and better markets opened, so they were thrown out of the factories and sent to work in retail, or driving trucks, or whatever. Where exactly are the supposed to go when they're kicked out of the last, lowest-paid professions? Again, it is never going to be profitable to hire them for those old jobs, no matter how little you pay them. Where will they work?
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Jun 6, 2017 19:31
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A cyclical temporary growth in unemployment while production recalibrates to increased automation is exactly what I just said would happen. Masses of people would be unemployed, their collective labour price would bottom out. You'll probably see a regrowth in manufacturing in presently advanced western countries as it becomes profitable again. This would also be able to capitalise on your driverless trucks which would avoid the international shipping that currently predominates with manufacturing concentrated in places like China and India. Capital is not evenly spread globally, it doesn't develop globally at a uniform rate. It sloshes around the globe in a constant effort to minimise expenses and shorten the production and consumption chain. Nothing exceptional is happening. The future of total unemployment is nowhere in sight and is wildly hypothetical.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:35
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Jeb! Repetition posted:The response of "capitalism uh... finds a way" is way more fantasist. And anywsy, leaving aside new commodities if you think that everybody in the world has their current needs and desires met then lol okay buddy.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:41
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Not to be spiteful or anything but all i see in this discussion is a bunch of westerners (and i'm one too) who can't see past their own immediate futures abd interests, as if anything that threatens them is an unprecedented paradigm shift.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:44
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Oberleutnant posted:A cyclical temporary growth in unemployment while production recalibrates to increased automation is exactly what I just said would happen. There will probably be more manufacturing in the US, but with less people working in it than there are currently. You should look at the automation of industrial and service work as being like the automation of agriculture, where we once had most of the population working on farms and now we have almost none. Now imagine that happening to to like half of the economy. There is no law of economics that says a given sector needs to employ x people.
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Jun 6, 2017 19:53
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Thug Lessons posted:There will probably be more manufacturing in the US, but with less people working in it than there are currently. You should look at the automation of industrial and service work as being like the automation of agriculture, where we once had most of the population working on farms and now we have almost none. Now imagine that happening to to like half of the economy. There is no law of economics that says a given sector needs to employ x people. Again, look beyond the borders of America at what happens elsewhere, working conditions are very different, and many people live without basic necessities. Global production could probably expand many times over (absorbing suplus workers) and still fail to meet even the necessities that westerners take for granted, let alone the luxuries. We curreny have a situation where relatively small segment of the global population lives in matetial comfort while large populations are still not fully proletarianised where they live on the margins of capital in the developing world. These places need to be fully proletarianised and reach a comparable standard of industrial development and commodity consumption before you start worrying about everybody being superceded by the terminator. All that's happening at the moment is shift in the global status quo.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:02
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Oberleutnant posted:Not to be spiteful or anything but all i see in this discussion is a bunch of westerners (and i'm one too) who can't see past their own immediate futures abd interests, as if anything that threatens them is an unprecedented paradigm shift. That's a particularly asinine way to look at it.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:03
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Oberleutnant posted:Again, look beyond the borders of America at what happens elsewhere, working conditions are very different, and many people live without basic necessities. Global production could probably expand many times over (absorbing suplus workers) and still fail to meet even the necessities that westerners take for granted, let alone the luxuries. I look at this as an economic issue, not a moral one. But you'd be wrong to assume this is only going to to affect the West and that people in developing countries will be insulated from its effects. Weren't you just predicting that manufacturing was going to migrate out of China? What do you think that's going to do to the Chinese economy, and Chinese labor? How will farmers in Uttar Pradesh be affected by the falling price of crops? Yes, we can even automate agriculture, and have already started doing so. Thug Lessons has issued a correction as of 20:11 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 20:09
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Oberleutnant posted:A cyclical temporary growth in unemployment while production recalibrates to increased automation is exactly what I just said would happen. For their for the labor price to bottom out as much as is necessary for this scenario basically every worker protection in the 1st world would have to be repealed. I don't see that as likely when populism is rampant and the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate is talking about UBIs. Oberleutnant posted:Capital is not evenly spread globally, it doesn't develop globally at a uniform rate. It sloshes around the globe in a constant effort to minimise expenses and shorten the production and consumption chain. Nothing exceptional is happening. No one serious is saying there'll be total unemployment. Again, it doesn't have to be total for a crisis. Oberleutnant posted:Well you'll have to take that one up with Marx, because one of the core arguments of Capital is that Capitalists find new desires and new commodities to soak up unused labour. I have absolutely no doubt that there'll be new desires and commodities, but for them to fulfill that purpose they'd have to be things that couldn't be provided by automation, which is unlikely. Even prostitution can be automated (thanks Japan), and not everyone is an artist even if there was a sudden huge increase in patronage. Oberleutnant posted:Not to be spiteful or anything but all i see in this discussion is a bunch of westerners (and i'm one too) who can't see past their own immediate futures abd interests, as if anything that threatens them is an unprecedented paradigm shift. I don't have a job that's in danger of being lost to automation, but the fact that you see some kind of bias explains a little about how recalcitrant you are to listen to why these things are gonna happen.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:14
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Thug Lessons posted:I look at this as an economic issue, not a moral one. But you'd be wrong to assume this is only going to to effect the West and that people in developing countries will be insulated from its effects. Weren't you just predicting that manufacturing was going to migrate out of China? What do you think that's going to do to the Chinese economy, and Chinese labor? How will farmers in Uttar Pradesh be affected by the falling price of crops? Yes, we can even automate agriculture, and have already started doing so. I'm not predicting that they're insulated because the basis of my argument is that the current process of automation is a natural development of capitalism, and not out of the ordinary, and they are part of the global capitalist sytem. Other populations are in the process of being integrated into that system. Almost every industry can be automated to some extent, and this will free up more labour to be exploited at a lower cost elsewhere in the system - either in the expansion of existing industries ir the creation if new ones. The future of total or near total unemployment is not on the horizon. I think you're focusing on this or that specific industry, and i'm talking about the global capitalist system of production generally.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:18
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Oberleutnant posted:I'm not predicting that they're insulated because the basis of my argument is that the current process of automation is a natural development of capitalism, and not out of the ordinary, and they are part of the global capitalist sytem. Other populations are in the process of being integrated into that system. When I say employment I'm talking about in a given country because that's usually how it's measured. And the way you're repeating all of this stuff about AI somehow being a "natural development of capitalism" and there'll simply be new automation-free industries and niches in existing industries makes me think it's an article of faith for you and it's pointless to argue.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:24
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Jeb! Repetition posted:For their for the labor price to bottom out as much as is necessary for this scenario basically every worker protection in the 1st world would have to be repealed. I don't see that as likely when populism is rampant and the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate is talking about UBIs. Repeal of worker protections - why do you think this won't be attempted? I live in the UK where our government is looking to repeal the EU's working time directive, just as an example. Capital constantly pushes back against worker protection everywhere. it's inherent. I never denied that automation causes temporary mass unemployment so there's nothing to address there. I already said that every industry can be automated to some extent - the entirety of Capital vol.1 is an analysis of this process and its ramifications. communism bitch has issued a correction as of 20:31 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 20:26
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Jeb! Repetition posted:When I say employment I'm talking about in a given country because that's usually how it's measured. And the way you're repeating all of this stuff about AI somehow being a "natural development of capitalism" and there'll simply be new automation-free industries and niches in existing industries makes me think it's an article of faith for you and it's pointless to argue.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:30
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Oberleutnant posted:I'm not predicting that they're insulated because the basis of my argument is that the current process of automation is a natural development of capitalism, and not out of the ordinary, and they are part of the global capitalist sytem. Other populations are in the process of being integrated into that system. You can't expand industries indefinitely because you get into overproduction. This applies both in terms of iterative growth and the creation of new industries. What you can do, however, is have societies where most people aren't wage laborers, and those societies have existed both historical and today.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:31
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Thug Lessons posted:You can't expand industries indefinitely because you get into overproduction. You seem to not be accounting for population growth. Automation insn't expanding against a fixed and constant need for commodities - it's very likely outpacing the rate of growth, but (and this is my core point) there is enough global unsatisfied need for commodities to keep absorbing cheap labour for a very long time. Yes we may see surges of unemployment, but these are a natural, predicted, and observed trend in capitalism and industrial development.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:36
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Oberleutnant posted:I'm phone posting so i'm not going to tormet myself by separating your points out as you did mine but. Again though, we'd all have to become China in terms of worker protections and minimum wage for that to happen, and if automation eventually becomes cheap enough there'd be no point in working because the wage would literally be less than you need to stay alive. Also you're completely ignoring how loss of aggregate demand would make the surplus value extracted worthless. The world can't all be Singapore because you can't have Singapore without The West. Oberleutnant posted:I haven't once said there'll be completely automation-free industries, however many industries which can be almost entirely automated in the west still use masses of cheap labour elsewhere because it's more profitable to work this way where labour is weak and unprotected. This is what will happen with increased automation in the west. You implied the new industries that arise to exploit western labor would be non-automated, because otherwise how would the exploitation happen and how would there not be the unemployment?
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Jun 6, 2017 20:38
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Oberleutnant posted:Thehistoryofcapitalism.txt You've already made a great case for why this won't happen when you underlined that people will be making a lot less money if they're working at all. You can't sell people more things while you're simultaneously reducing their wages.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:40
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Oberleutnant posted:Thehistoryofcapitalism.txt Well at least now you're acknowledging the unemployment will happen, even if you still can't quite bring yourself to face the magnitude of it.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:40
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Thug Lessons posted:You've already made a great case for why this won't happen when you underlined that people will be making a lot less money if they're working at all. You can't sell people more things while you're simultaneously reducing their wages. Yep, this is what I mean by the aggregate demand problem and needing a US for your Singapore.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:41
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Jeb! Repetition posted:Again though, we'd all have to become China in terms of worker protections and minimum wage for that to happen, and if automation eventually becomes cheap enough there'd be no point in working because the wage would literally be less than you need to stay alive. Also you're completely ignoring how loss of aggregate demand would make the surplus value extracted worthless. The world can't all be Singapore because you can't have Singapore without The West. No, i've implied (well explicitly stated) an expansion of productive capacity to capitalise on cheap labour and efficient distribution through automation of services. Those industries don't need to be completely or even mostly manual. This is the ideal for capital, but they won't be fully automated to the extent of total (or even majority) unemployment in any timescale that is relevant to a practical discussion because the demand for even basic necessities is not met in many places, and the provision of those commodities is a route to increased profit for capital.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:47
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Thug Lessons posted:You've already made a great case for why this won't happen when you underlined that people will be making a lot less money if they're working at all. You can't sell people more things while you're simultaneously reducing their wages.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:49
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Oberleutnant posted:No, i've implied (well explicitly stated) an expansion of productive capacity to capitalise on cheap labour and efficient distribution through automation of services. Those industries don't need to be completely or even mostly manual. This is the ideal for capital, but they won't be fully automated to the extent of total (or even majority) unemployment in any timescale that is relevant to a practical discussion because the demand for even basic necessities is not met in many places, and the provision of those commodities is a route to increased profit for capital. Capital doesn't care at all about whether basic necessities are met, and that's the root of the problem.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:49
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Oberleutnant posted:Workers are both producers and consumers, the price of commodities is affected by production costs. This is a fairly elementary point addressed in the book which this thread exists to discuss. No poo poo. Doesn't address my point at all.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:51
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Thug Lessons posted:Capital doesn't care at all about whether basic necessities are met, and that's the root of the problem. If you want to talk about a scenario where literally all production from raw materials to finished commodities is handled with no input from workers you can, but it's not relevant to a discussion of capitalism as a system.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:53
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Thug Lessons posted:No poo poo. Doesn't address my point at all. Yes it does.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:54
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Oberleutnant posted:Capital extracts surplus value from the production of commoditie. The definition of a commodity is given (iirc) on the first page of vol.1 as a thing which people are prepared to buy because it fulfils some need. If it's not necessary or desired people will not buy it. You seem fond of quoting Capital. Can you remind me what Marx said happens when the organic composition of capital rises too high and dead labor predominates over living labor? Thug Lessons has issued a correction as of 21:00 on Jun 6, 2017 |
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Jun 6, 2017 20:58
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Oberleutnant posted:No, i've implied (well explicitly stated) an expansion of productive capacity to capitalise on cheap labour and efficient distribution through automation of services. Those industries don't need to be completely or even mostly manual. This is the ideal for capital, but they won't be fully automated to the extent of total (or even majority) unemployment in any timescale that is relevant to a practical discussion because the demand for even basic necessities is not met in many places, and the provision of those commodities is a route to increased profit for capital. That logic doesn't make sense though. Why does demand for necessities mean automation won't be employed to meet them? And that still doesn't say anything specifically about what's gonna replace the Western jobs lost to automation. Oberleutnant posted:Capital extracts surplus value from the production of commoditie. The definition of a commodity is given (iirc) on the first page of vol.1 as a thing which people are prepared to buy because it fulfils some need. If it's not necessary or desired people will not buy it. It's pretty drat relevant to capitalism in practical terms and also to Marxism.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:58
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Oberleutnant I really, really hope you reconsider this attitude for your own sake, because taking advantage of the upcoming crisis would be a way better strategy for Marxists than pretending it doesn't exist.
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Jun 6, 2017 20:59
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Jeb! Repetition posted:You're making some big implications about how welfare, demand and capital would work in an automated economy, and I'd counter them with the fact that a combination of need for aggregate demand and civil unrest would probably get us a UBI or equivalent and it wouldn't hurt capital accumulation all that much. In my capitalist dystopia, UBI exists but only to pay off the interest on oxygen loans.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:01
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Thug Lessons posted:You seem fond of quoting Capital. Can you remind me what Marx said happens when the organic composition of capital rises too high and dead labor predominates over living labor? Very relevant here: look at the labor participation rate in Saudi Arabia, where this is happening today. That's a possible future for us.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:07
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Jeb! Repetition posted:Oberleutnant I really, really hope you reconsider this attitude for your own sake, because taking advantage of the upcoming crisis would be a way better strategy for Marxists than pretending it doesn't exist. To my mind the unhealthiest thing is the infatuation that many leftists have with the idea that capitalism will finally destoy itself any day now. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny if you look beyond the limited horizon of western economies towards places where capitalism and industrial development are still comparativelu underdeveloped with massive scope for growth. it's wishful thinking.
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Jun 6, 2017 21:08
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