Slashdot Mirror
Is Technology Eroding Employment?
First time accepted submitter Idontpostmuch writes "The idea that technology cannot cause unemployment has long been taken as a simple fact of economics. Lately, some economists have been changing their tune. MIT research scientist Andrew Mcaffee writes, 'As computers and robots get more and more powerful while simultaneously getting cheaper and more widespread this phenomenon spreads, to the point where economically rational employers prefer buying more technology over hiring more workers. In other words, they prefer capital over labor. This preference affects both wages and job volumes. And the situation will only accelerate as robots and computers learn to do more and more, and to take over jobs that we currently think of not as "routine," but as requiring a lot of skill and/or education.'" Note: Certainly not all economists agree "that technology cannot cause unemployment," especially in the short term. From a certain perspective, displacing labor is a, if not the, central advantage of technology in general.
Pay those whom support the technology exorbitantly , and we'll buy big houses and hire gardeners, maids, butlers etc. Problem solved.
wha'? where am i?
This debate occurred in the 19th century. It's over. The answer is a resounding no. As in not at at all. Forget it. Give it up.
The only rational questions in the foreseeable future are whether or not we should reduce the work week's duration and increase paid vacation time.
. . .is what's eroding employment.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
... sooner or later we're going to have to deal with the fact that humans are just machines made of meat that were designed for no specific purpose besides propagate genes/have kids. Whereas robots/AI can be specialized to a particular task and all the energy/resources dedicated to full specialization and be safely chucked/destroyed/replaced when new models come online. This will easily make huge swaths of humanity redundant/unemployable and everyone who believes that humans have an infinite employment landscape are idiots. We already have technological unemployment NOW we just haven't noticed it because we moved on to other "low hanging fruit" of work that only humans could perform, but that low hanging fruit is going to be gone sooner or later.
This reminds of 'player piano' by Kurt Vonnegut. It was his first book published and one of the best.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
What utter moron thinks that technology can't cause unemployment. Throughout history, technology has repeatedly caused unemployment. Fortunately, in the past, other positions opened and there was some balance. However, as this article is showing, the imbalance is growing as it is tipping towards more rapid technology growth and other positions not opening fast enough to compensate for the losses.
What we are seeing today is technology creating permanent unemployment. Cue the experts stating how clueless I am.
No.
[Posted by the Betteridge autobot.]
Have gnu, will travel.
>pick a job in which you can't be replaced by a computer.
Like designing computers.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You're assuming a whole bunch of things in that.
Primarily that the number of people needed to service the machine is equal to the number of staff replaced.
This seems at best extremely questionable.
Secondly - half of people are not as smart as the average. ...
They are unlikely to be able to get employment designing robots, or
Instead of facilitating full employment with calls of "jobs, jobs, jobs!", the goal should be 100% total UNemployment using technology (specifically self-repairing robots or "cybermation"). A very low percentage of humans (say, 1% of the world population) can act as overseers on rotating teams of volunteers who do the remaining creative and design work that AI-guided machines cannot. The rest of the population can take the day off to pursue their own interests....
We have an article still on the front page in which Eric Schmidt of Google is saying we're going to have to compete with robots for our jobs.
Globalization is trying to move everything to the cheapest possible labor source, and robots and technology is next in line. Sure, your startup costs are high, but your robot won't need to take the day off because its kid is home sick.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I can't help but notice that as of late, MIT has a *load* of content coming out of the place revolving around the general concept of automation displacing humans. I think they're, perhaps, a little too fixated on it to look at the big picture clearly? (Don't get me wrong. I think MIT is doing a lot of excellent research work - and they're on the cutting edge month after month with interesting tech. developments. I just see how they'd get sucked into the "robots will displace us" idea in the midst of all of that.)
The bottom line is, humans are social creatures. There's WAY too much that gets lost when you get close to full automation of any business. The workplace isn't only about the work that's done. You're still selling your services or products to other human beings on the opposite end of the chain, and they want to interact with other people. At best, artificial intelligence is still just that; "faking it". Maybe, *maybe* we'll eventually reach a point where a robot can think, reason and interact with humans to the point where it's effectively the same as another person. But it's far too early to suggest that will be the case in any of our lifetimes.
What you do (and will continue) to see is automation replacing any workplace roles where humans act like "artificial robots", performing repetitive manual tasks that don't require any real thought. That still amounts to only a certain percentage of the work at hand in any given factory, and if it helps make production more profitable, it leads to more factories being built, who employ humans in all of the roles that aren't just assembly-related on the production floor. (And yes, it also creates a few more jobs for people who do repair, sales of and setup of those robots and machines.)
Look no further than in agriculture. Just a century ago, what percentage of people used to work in the farms? What's that percentage now? People then moved into the manufacturing industries, but work there has also been replaced by machines to a great extent, and cheaper labor in other countries.
It doesn't take a lot of human labor to fulfill our basic needs anymore, and so people have been trying to create needs we didn't think we had. This is why so much rides on advertisement these days. Is there a point where the incremental improvement in our comfort is no longer worth the money we'd spend to get it? That's when we'll probably face major unemployment issues...
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
The problem is that those people are only employed for a short time in respect to each machine.
For example: 2 assembly line workera are employed for 40 hrs / 50 wks a year at $6/hr = $12,000 / yr * 2 = $24,000. A robot can be built for $48,000 with $6,000 / yr maintenance. Over 3 years the robot has paid for itself. It only employed a design engineer for 4 weeks to design it, a crew of 2 for 1 week to build it and on average one tech for at most 1 week to maintain it.
The robot company needs to sell 50 robots to keep everyone working all the time, so that's 100 line workers it can replace while only employing 4 people plus a few support staff.
I call that a net loss.
I've been in manufacturing for years and have seen it happen too many times. It's not new but a fact of life. As an IT guy I've personally created systems that have replaced 10 people without spending anything other then 3 months of my time, simply by automating data entry. Doing that saved a company from going under, but that's 10 people that will not be rehired.
Employment is down because of technology. Systems are getting better, more complex and more reliable, so the trend will only increase.
...this is either the start of the post-scarcity future so cleverly portrayed by Ian M Banks in his Culture novels. In this future we are freed from the need to work and instead choose to work, and play.
I'm hoping for the Banksian future ;-)
Wasn't eroding employment supposed to be the *point* of technology? The biggest problem with this debate seems to be that everyone is assuming a lack of employment is a _bad_ thing.
If we can, at a relatively trivial cost, build machines to replace all menial drudgery, why is this a problem? Isn't it The Glorious Future?
We need to adjust our social, economic and political systems for the new reality, of course, but that's hardly impossible. It's not like we haven't changed them before. 150 years ago domestic service was one of the largest employment categories and only those who employed the domestics got the vote, after all. (Thinking of the U.K. here).
Hell, looked at from a certain perspective, we're already halfway *through* this change. 150 years ago a large majority of the population of any 'civilized' country had to work - whether actual paid employment, or some form of domestic labour - probably 72+ hours a week to give the country as a whole a standard of living quite a long way below what we enjoy today. I know there are still substantial numbers of people in some 'civilized' countries who have to work two jobs to keep the wolf from the door, but still, there's a hell of a lot more people who get by perfectly well on 40 hour working weeks and then don't have to hand wash their clothes or dishes when they get home.
Look at it that way and technology has _already_ reduced the amount of actual labour humans have to do by, say, 50%, and the world does not appear to have ended. What's terrible about getting rid of the other 50%?
Until today, corporations are ruled by managers who are good at manipulating people. The CEO is the guy who has the ability to get a lot of people working together to reach a goal.
In the future, when more and more things are done by machines, people skills will not matter.
The rulers of the future will be people who are good at manipulating machines, they will be programmers.
Factory worker... what could possibly go wrong there?
I guess we'll find out soon enough...
Once upon a time, people generated most of their value with their muscles. When machines replaced muscles, people could still generate value with their brains because machines could not replace brains. So the original Luddite scenario never materialized.
Now that machines are starting to replace brains, a growing portion of the population has a rapidly dwindling ability to generate significant economic value relative to the machines. As time passes, machines can effectively replace both the muscles and brains of more of the population.
This is also why forcing people to work fewer hours will not help. The problem is not the number of jobs available; it is the number of people who can generate more positive value in that position relative to a machine. Eventually we will all be in the position of no longer being able to be a productive member of a modern economy; everyone believes their contribution to be indispensable until the technology catches up and it isn't.
Some tech actually erodes employment. There's no question about there. In fact, nearly any kind of system that decreases human input or actions has the specific INTENT of incurring savings through reduced human employment and increased process precision:
--Manufacturing automation
--Community Self-Assistance (Forums, FAQs, etc.)
--Self-driving taxi cabs
--Etc.
Some tech on the other hand creates employment need. This tech usually involved the addition of a product or service to a market.
--Cellular Telephones
--New websites that offer services in new niches
--Etc.
The problem comes when business, entrepreneurs, and economic theory suggests that the first grouping is more important than the second. With that scenario, tech has a net-negative effect on employment.
The question then arises, "What do we do when the machines are capable of doing our work?". The answer is simple, but not easy: move the general global philosophy from working for the ability to survive and progress financially to a socialistic and humanistic expectations on how one receives what s/he needs to live and how s/he spends her/his time. Yes, the "Start Trek" switch.
Unfortunately, tech advances by the day and hour while philosophy changes by the generation... and even then only slightly.
Quis manipulet ipsos manipulens?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's not a fantasy or even a theory, it's historical fact for the last four hundred years. A guy who can run a combine harvesting tons of cotton per day makes more, and works fewer hours, than someone picking by hand. An accountant running a computer is more productive and higher paid than one with a quill pen. Assume a company was NOT willing to pay you more for programming robots than it did for assembling toasters. (Or equalivently, give you more time off.) You'd simply get a job at another company which will pay programmers operators of robots more than the assembly low workers the robots replace. The fact is, 98% of Slashdot readers earn more and get more time off than our grandparents precisely because we use the technology that replaced pur grandparents' jobs.
...pick a job in which you can't be replaced by a computer.
Hmm. . .Well. . .how long do you figure before they let Watson loose on law libraries and medical databases?
Considering the complete lack of compassion or shame exhibited by most CEOs, my guess is that that's already happened. But I for one welcome our new flesh covered robot overlords.
Biorobots only cost a few dollars per day to run. They require no capital to aquire as they naturally self replicating, thus there will always be a constant supply. Biorobots do not require a programmer or engineer to put on task. They are also cordless and self propelled allowing them to easily change tasks. Should a biorobot not do a task correctly a unit can be debugged by the use of a cellulose based rod, or by withholding the carbohydrate,protein, lipid, and water based energy supplies they require. Should production needs change, biorobots automatically remove themselves from the factory floor and return to the pool of available units. Biorobots are not chemically resistant. Should one malfunction due to overexposure to toxic chemicals, disposal is easily accomplished by placing the biorobot into a zippered polymer bag and disposing it as normal biohazardous waste, preferably by incineration. Grossly defective or worn out biorobots are easily dealt with by means of a lead projectile launched a high speed by expanding gasses in metal cylinder striking the biorobots central processing unit. Regular disposal procedures apply. Some biorobots may self propel themselves out of windows of the upper floors of the factory. This may be remedied by the strategic placement of nets if needed. Most factory owners have found that biorobots are color coded for their convenience. Biorobots are expected to remain a vital role in industrial production due to their cheapness, versatility and disposability.
We're seeing the return of the Iron Law of Wages: real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker. That had been the case for most of history. For most of the 20th century, the Iron Law of Wages was viewed by economists as being obsolete. That may have just been a historical anomaly in capitalism. The period during which wages substantially exceeded survival level in the US was the period in which labor unions had enough power to push wages up. That's over.
"Machines should think, people should work". Humans just do the dumb manipulation jobs that still cost more to do with robots. Kiva Robotics video: "Training for a human picker on the system takes a minute or so." The end result is that most new jobs pay about $10.25 per hour. It's now cheaper to put the smarts in the software rather than train skilled workers. Computers are so cheap, and copying software is even cheaper.
As retail goes online, whole sectors of the economy disappear, buildings go vacant, and jobs go away forever. One (1) new indoor mall has been built in the US in the last decade. (We don't count the New Jersey Meadowlands debacle; they're not open after a decade and the roof collapsed.) Many, many malls are dead. First, order processing and payment went online. Then warehouse operation and order fulfillment. Ordered from Staples, the Gap, Walgreens, Saks Fifth Avenue, Toys "R" Us, Follett, Timberland, Diapers.com, or Dillard's? Mobile robots did most of the work. Amazon just bought Kiva Robotics. Coming up next, Google same-day delivery service. (Not with automatic truck driving. Yet.)
We have an economic system which optimizes for lowest costs, including labor costs. It's working as designed. Do you want fries with that?
"The idea that technology cannot cause unemployment has long been taken as a simple fact of economics"
By who? it has clearly eroded employment. The only people saying that where corporate factory owners.
If technology produced more jobs then it replaced, then we really wouldn't need it.
Lets loko at some clasicc examples.
Garment industry. The first automated garment company produced for more product with fewer people need per hour, including the people keeping the automation system running. And this was pre-computer.
The number of people it took to build and maintain robotic auto systems has always been for lower then the people it replaces.
I right reports that can be generated in seconds that would have required 5 people 3 months to do.
I was on a team of 50 people that wrote some very sophisticated loan automation software that replaced over 1000 positions over a period of 2 years.
This is happening all over the world. What do you think will happen when robot appear to reliable do menial tasks? when fastfood places start replacing employees with 'robots'? Million will be out of work. Do you think it will take millions to build robots?
And when automated system write software? when robots repair other robots?
The real question is: How wisely are we willing to mvoe economically?
If you just replace people and leave then on there own in an environment where most jobs can be done better by machines, you will have riots, starvation, war. So what do you do? ONly let people own one robot and chose to work themselves, or hire out the robot? Do you have the government own the robots and pay people a monthly stipend*? Tax the work robots do, and divy that up among all the people?
Now, the price will come down,and efficiency will go up dramatically. And we will most likely have the technology to replace the people in these systems that would screw them up.
And eventually computers and robots will be able to make what you want on demand, including exotic features.
Could we become like the people in Wally?
The only thing of value will be land. So do we pay people with land?
*yes communism, but with out the pesky problem that a person will do less work for the same pay. I argue this is the only way communism can thrive without having to use force.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think you got it. Machines will end up with all the dreary drudgery repetitive mindless work which supports our infrastructure. This was done by the "proletariat" of old days, leaving the enjoyment of the efforts of their labor to the bourgeoisie.
The machines become the proletariat, producing our food, making our things, cleaning up after us, getting rid of our trash. We just tell the men who design the machines anything we desire, and those of us proficient in machinery describe to CAD machines the instructions for making it.
This opens up a whole new realm of leisure for us. We get to spend our days socializing and doing pleasant things, hopefully enjoying what few days our biological systems are designed to last.
Being I just came off the flu ( a four-roll special, if measured in spools of toilet paper ), I for one was very thankful for the comforts of electric blankets, flush toilets, and machines which toiled through the night making cans of chicken soup and rolls of TP.
I can guiltlessly assign work to a machine I would have a hard time justifying I ask a living, breathing, feeling human being to do. I would not even ask an animal to do it. I see all sorts of stuff in history books ( and the Bible ) of people being required to perform all sorts of unthinkable labors, of which they reaped no benefit. Being I am in technology myself - and deal regularly with embedded processing - it is my goal to make some device with the sole purpose of making life easier for us. I think everyone who designs this stuff has the same intention.
But like anything else, technology, like fire, can be used to warm the house or destroy the building, but its not the fault of the fire.
I do not fear technology, but I do fear the misuse of technology.
We seem to be looking for something to blame the current economic malaise on. Its not technology causing this one folks... its Tax Law. In computer parlance, we have a bunch of legal short-circuits in the system. This system can work a helluva lot better than it is as soon as we patch the program to produce desired outputs rather than enriching a few by crony capitalism. Right now, the law incentivizes hoarding and greed. A few changes in tax law is all that is needed to fix this. There is nothing wrong with the hardware, but some of the software is poorly written, causing resource hogging..
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Marx talks how capital's need to grow lead to technological innovation to make production more efficient. This in principle could allow for people to work much less and still maintain very high standards of living. However, our production is oriented toward maximizing profits, not human needs, therefore we work longer hours in spite of the mechanization of most of production.
OTOH, the labor theory of value also shows that this mechanization also causes a decrease in the RATE of profit, which has lead to a decline of labor intensive industry in the US and a financialization of capital.
So yea, mechanization not only displaces jobs, but I contend that it is more relevant than outsourcing to the loss of American manufacturing and tech jobs. In fact, there was a Slashdot post not too long ago talking about how rising wages in Asia is causing manufacturing to move back to the US but in the form of robot factories, so the jobs still don't come back.
These effects don't make themselves readily apparent because capitalism shifting these problems in space and time so they show up as problems elsewhere in the economy. Markets also further obscure these problems as consumers arrive at the market place theoretically as "equals" making mutual exchanges while hiding inequalities in labor and production.
No, because they're not doing anything, they're just owning stuff. Technology can only replace labour, it cannot help someone getting the fruits of someone else's work without doing anything.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
That's the idea with more technology of course. But in reality, we seem to be experiencing the reverse. Collectively we spend more hours at work today than we did 50 years ago and many more than we did 200 years ago. It may be more cushier jobs sitting in front of a computer for 8-9 hours per day than digging ditches or cutting trees or whatever manual labour they did. Less risk of getting hurt in an accident, higher risk of getting fat and having a heart attack I guess.
Football Odds
The real Terminator won't come from the rise of the machines. It will be sociopathic CEOs commanding robot armies.
Unemployment won't ever stay that high. The US punishes the "unemployed" to get them to not be "unemployed" so they stop screwing up statistics. A person who has no job and has looked for one for 5 straight years who just decides to "retire" and move back home with Mom and Dad is no longer "unemployed" and so the statistics get better. The guy at 55 who loses his job and can't find another is encouraged to stop looking, call it an early retirement, and boost the unemployment numbers. Job creation and job loss are better metrics, as they are gamed less than "unemployment".
Learn to love Alaska
> He single handedly does the work of 50 or more laborers who now do? You get the cheap cotton goods with money you make from your web site or whatever. You're missing that fact that this has been going on for hundreds of years - you ARE the guy who is not picking. If you make more than $2 / day because you're not picking cotton, putting lids on jars, or weaving cloth, the automation of those repetitive jobs has been good to you. Imagone the power went out at your workplace. How much could you produce with no automation? Remember no automatic word processor - if you mess up you have to rewrite it. Your productovity minus overhead and marketing is your maximum salary. I thank God I'm not picking cotton or weaving cloth because machines have replaced me in those roles.
We "technology guys" ( and our patrons ) have been the enabler for our generation to escape the situations described in the Bible and other history texts. I do not mean to intone religious themes here, but look at this book as a history text of living conditions of generations past. Life has NOT been comfortable for most of us.
I look at even the kings of antiquity, and even they - as royalty - have nowhere near, and I mean nowhere near, the level of creature comforts I have, and I am not a rich guy. My dollar-store glass beer mug would have been considered a crystal chalice of great value. Even kings did not have as much as a proper toilet and paper. No electricity. No refrigeration. No motors. Even the lowest of us live better than royalty of antiquity as far as I can tell... ( except for social standing ). The only thing separating our conditions is the application of technology.
History books show us having to do all sorts of unthinkable things and live through much very unpleasant adversity and misery.
I believe I have lived through the pivotal generations which have transformed human existence from pure animalistic survivalism to the ability for each of us to enjoy and savor life. My fathers had the worst of it, laying the foundation ( industrial revolution ).
I hear what you are saying about longer days. But then, how long was my grandfather's "farm day" where all the work on the farm was manual, no electricity, no refrigeration, and all the work was done by man and mule?
Technology has freed us from a lot of the drudgery where we no longer need to grow our own food, rather we can play our guitar and fight over rights over who gets to hear it. We can now afford leagues of lawyers to hear our endless bickering over the most trivial of issues. We as a human race are finally getting to the point of each of us being able to do whatever it is we want to do... be creative in whatever way we create. Nothing says that creativity has to be technically inclined - it can be music, art, ( or my favorite art, cuisine ), architecture, landscaping. Each of us seems to have a burning desire to do something. The application of technology frees our time so we can do our dream.
This knowledge of technology and how to apply it is the crown jewel of human accomplishment.
Cherish it and teach it to your children, lest ye return to the days of history.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
technology cannot cause unemployment
Yeah? Tell that to the fine people working in the grocery stores I visit, slowly being replaced by machines. Tell that to all the people who would have worked in banks and offices before the days of punch cards. Tell that to the guys who gandy-danced rails into place, and the diggers, and the guys who carried bricks on their backs all day long, and the guys who built cars and machined millions of parts all day long for decades.
Of course economists would say that, they've never left the Ivory Tower to labor in the mills and fields and tunnels and streets. That's the kind of disconnect that got Murka where it's got today, that got our space program where it's got, that creates the 'nutrition' that got us where we are.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
and won't have to pay nuthin' to nobody. Big factories making goods to sell to a large number of people will become unnecessary too. The only function of the army of robots will be exactly that -- be an army. Protect the 7,000 from the 7,000,000,000. They will fail.
And just how do these other economists define that phrase? Is it thirty years... in which case that's when you kids are my age.
In the late seventies, before many of you were born, and into the early eighties, there was a *lot* of talk in the media and by talking heads, about how, in the US, well, yes, manufacturing was going away, but it was going to be replaced by better, less soul-deadening, and better-paying jobs in the "Information Economy".
Yup. And for the majority of the US (that's > 50%, for those playing with statistics), their paychecks have been stagnant or gone down; the majority of newly created jobs involve burgers, pizza, and low-level healthcare.
This time around, they claim that the economy will Really Move, and more new jobs will be created... not one is saying *where* those jobs will come from.
And do you *really* think many people are capable of doing college, and adding to the economy, rather than them preferring lower education jobs, and more time at life, not at work?
There were a number of stories a couple of months ago, about new manufacturing jobs here.. all of which require extensive training, and there aren't a lot of them.
The conversation I've been trying to get started for about 15 years is what happens when 90% of manufacturing is automated, and construction is heavily prefab? Where will the jobs be? What will happen to three-quarters of the population - will it be like what used to be called the Third World, with 50%-80% unemployment?
Just to offer a suggestion, how about government ownership of major industries, and a reverse income tax... the way they have in Alaska?
What you do with your life after that is, of course, a separate conversation.
mark
In the design of operating systems, there is a notion of policy vs. mechanism. A good mechanism in an operating system is one that enables a number of different policies to be implemented. One such mechanism, found in most modern operating system, is the scheduling of threads by priority. At first glance, this might seem to be a policy rather than a mechanism. But we haven't specified how priorities are assigned to threads. In fact, by assigning priorities in various ways, a number of different policies can be implemented, such as increasing the priority of interactive threads, or ensuring the priority of threads that have real-time requirements.
This mechanism is very flexible and powerful, but it is not without some problems. For example, if locking is supported between threads to control access to shared data, there is a potential for a higher priority thread to be stalled while a thread of intermediate priority continues to run. This can happen if a lower priority thread holds a lock that the higher priority thread needs to acquire in order to continue. As long as the intermediate priority thread continues to run, the lower priority thread will not run, and the lock will not be released.
There are ways to fix that particular problem, such as by dynamic adjustments to thread priorities when an attempt is made to acquire a lock. But the points I really want to make are that priority scheduling, however much it may appear to be a policy, is actually a mechanism, and that it has dysfunctional edge cases that may not be obvious. I claim that capitalism is actually a mechanism, not a policy, and also has dysfunctional edge cases.
I make this claim because arguments about capitalism often seem to assume that it is a policy. In my mind, a policy is a statement of what you want to achieve, and not of the mechanism by which you plan to do it. In fact, when we have arguments about capitalism vs. socialism, for example, those are really arguing about the merits of different mechanisms, and often never touch on what we consider to be good policy. There seems to be an implicit assumption that we all agree on the policies, so the discussion is just about how to implement them. I don't believe there is general agreement on the policies, because any attempt to discuss them is usually sidetracked by discussions of mechanisms.
Even if you're sure in your gut that capitalism is the right mechanism, there is much left unspecified, and edge cases to handle. So there still needs to be a discussion about the desired policies. The basis of those discussions are our values, which in the US are largely shaped by mass media, with many people just accepting certain sets of values uncritically. As it seems that capitalism has reached (or soon will) one of its dysfunctional edge cases, it might be a good time to start discussing values, then move from there to policies, and finally decide what mechanisms to use to implement the policies.