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'Robots Won't Just Take Our Jobs -- They'll Make the Rich Even Richer' (theguardian.com)
Robotics and artificial intelligence will continue to improve -- but without political change such as a tax, the outcome will range from bad to apocalyptic, writes technology and politics journalist Ben Tarnoff, citing experts and studies, for The Guardian. From the article, shared by six anonymous readers: Despite a steady stream of alarming headlines about clever computers gobbling up our jobs, the economic data suggests that automation isn't happening on a large scale. The bad news is that if it does, it will produce a level of inequality that will make present-day America look like an egalitarian utopia by comparison. The real threat posed by robots isn't that they will become evil and kill us all, which is what keeps Elon Musk up at night -- it's that they will amplify economic disparities to such an extreme that life will become, quite literally, unlivable for the vast majority. A robot tax may or may not be a useful policy tool for averting this scenario. But it's a good starting point for an important conversation. Mass automation presents a serious political problem -- one that demands a serious political solution. Automation isn't new. In the late 16th century, an English inventor developed a knitting machine known as the stocking frame. By hand, workers averaged 100 stitches per minute; with the stocking frame, they averaged 1,000. This is the basic pattern, repeated through centuries: as technology improves, it reduces the amount of labor required to produce a certain number of goods. So far, however, this phenomenon hasn't produced extreme unemployment. That's because automation can create jobs as well as destroy them. What's different this time is the possibility that technology will become so sophisticated that there won't be anything left for humans to do. What if your ATM could not only give you a hundred bucks, but sell you an adjustable-rate mortgage?
Or we could just up corporate taxes and accept that full-time long-term employment in many sectors is a thing of the past.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
will mean our city will be ten foot deep in manure in less than a quarter century!
Alarmists need to stop thinking any one thing can be extrapolated to the future without society and technology changing and adapting. And no, tax as an attempt to slow or stall inevitable progress is not a solution at all.
That's the problem: That doesn't work this time around.
Back when agriculture was modernized so that we didn't need 70+ percent of the workforce in the production of food anymore, the people that worked on the fields before moved to the towns and worked in factories, and farmhands became factory workers. When factories started to modernize and automatize, people went into services and factory workers became waiters and salespeople.
The problem is that now we're replacing these people and there isn't anything they could move towards. There is no new sector opening that would hoover up that free workforce this time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If the vast majority of humanity becomes unemployed (which is what this apocalyptic scenario implies), then no one will be buying the products that these robots make. Without customers and the money/purchasing they bring, businesses tend to collapse fairly quickly. You could counter with "well, the rich will just buy stuff from each other", but 1) the scale won't be there to justify the automation in most cases, and 2) in economics, just like in biology, when the genetic pool gets too small for a species, the result eventually becomes extinction.
Look, I get it, but honestly, this is the same argument that was being advanced 100 years ago when electricity was automating things (and 'OMG that Westinghouse guy is going to have more money than a god while the rest of us starve!'), 200 years ago when steam was automating things, etc etc. People have always adapted, shifted their career focus, and created new industries which are not as easily automated. Unless someone can come up with an argument showing how this time will be different (hint: it probably won't), then this is just a rehash of an old argument.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The rich are spending billions to kill off unions by a combination of (legally) bribing politicians, and propping up plutocrat-kissing pundits like Fox News, Rush, and Breitbart to convince the voting population that unions kill jobs and the economy.
The rich are winning the class war because they can buy more and bigger weapons.
Table-ized A.I.
Only in this scenario you are the ox...
Here's the evidence: nobody can identify the new fields that are replacing the old ones, unlike the past. Sure, there are new fields, but they not appearing in sufficient quantity to replace those lost. And even those fields are being offshored to cheap-labor countries.
For example, craigslist employs about 60 people, but has probably killed tens or hundreds of thousands of newspaper-related jobs in the process.
Table-ized A.I.
...thinking you are entitled to be the one to sell me an adjustable-rate mortgage. It doesn't need selling if I already know what I want. It is not enough to produce something... you must produce something of value. Full stop. Articles like this give me the sense that the author is irritated by the fact that status quo isn't good enough. There is plenty of work to do, it just might not be the work you are accustomed to doing, and arguments like this have been debunked over and over again. The cotton gin obviated a lot of jobs, but people rose up and did more sophisticated work. Computers obviated a lot of jobs, but people rose up and did more sophisticated work. Robots and AI will obviate a lot of jobs, and people will still rise up and do more sophisticated work. The moral of the story here is get up off your lazy ass and do more sophisticated work. We've not yet begun to reach our potential as a race.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
I see plenty of trash to pick up on the roadsides, landscaping that could be better tended, public spaces that could use more frequent cleaning and maintenance, infrastructure that could be better maintained, planets that need exploring and colonization... I don't think we actually lack for things to do, just the will to do them.
One problem with your theory. The rich can't get richer if the masses can't afford to buy the shiny new toys being made by the robots.
Technological advancements can't result in long-term widescale job loss. Because if it does, the masses wouldn't be able to buy as much stuff, and it would reduce the country's net productivity, meaning a smaller pie for the rich to take their disproportionate slice from. Free market economics views reduced productivity as an inefficiency, and tries to get rid of it (actually it simply offers greater rewards for higher-productivity activity, which has the side-effect of strangling low-productivity activity). Either the robot-produced products need to be lowered in price to just as or more affordable to the masses than before they were produced by robots (meaning poor people's standard of living stays the same or increases - i.e. they become richer), or the wages of the masses have to increase so they can afford to buy as many or more toys as before (meaning poor people become richer).
That's why historically in developed nations, the rich have gotten richer, and the poor have also gotten richer. That the rich have gotten richer than the poor have gotten richer is certainly a valid complaint. And you can also complain that the changes are happening too quickly for the masses to retrain for new jobs. But casting it as a doom and gloom scenario where 1% control all the wealth and the rest of the population is jobless and lives on a starvation diet is simply unrealistic. Long before that happens, a free poor people would create a black market doing jobs for and trading with each other using an alternate currency, essentially invalidating the non-material wealth of the 1%. So any way to keep the masses employed, productive, and being paid results in a better outcome for both poor people and rich people. There is no us vs them here.
The only thing that can ruin an entire economy is a government on a misguided quest for economic equality - because only a government can deprive people of freedom to make their own economic decisions. That freedom is what allows people to increase their standard of living - by individually choosing more productive activities over less.
What you're missing is that AI and automation is advancing to be GENERALLY more effective and more cost-effective than people's labour, GENERALLY, as in, across very wide swaths of potential tasks. That implies a profoundly changed game, and as far as automation vs humans, it will be zero-sum, because for just about any job category, the automation/AI will be the more effective and cost-effective hence market-selected option.
A lot of people don't seem to get that this crossing point (automation > human capability) is coming soon (and in many sectors has already come).
Individually, and in society and political culture, we have to GROK this, then go through the usual stages of grief:
Denial – The first reaction is denial. In this stage individuals believe the diagnosis is somehow mistaken, and cling to a false, preferable reality.
Anger – When the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue, they become frustrated, especially at proximate individuals.
Bargaining – The third stage involves the hope that the individual can avoid a cause of grief.
Depression – "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?";
Acceptance
And then, after not too long a grieving pause, we need to come up with real solutions (as contrasted with keeping the Mexicans, Chinese, and Indians out, which are misguided FAKE solutions.)
At the core of a real solution will be us reconceptualizing what people are here for and where we should get our self-worth.
At the core of a real solution needs to be fair and adequate ways of distributing the proceeds of a substantially automated economy.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
There is a new Sector emerging, the Unemployed and Underemployed. What could possibly go wrong?
Numbers mean nothing.
Let's make it where people can spend their time tending public spaces, working basic infrastructure projects, or maintenance, or interesting high tech endeavors and have assurance of a decent place to live, raise a family, food and medical care. I don't give a damn what numbers you put on the scenario - provide for shelter, security, and well-being in exchange for tending to something that needs doing. If nothing needs doing, great - just don't take away people's shelter, security and well-being because somebody fucked up the quarterly forecast again.
If there's stuff that needs doing that nobody is interested in or apparently qualified to do, break out the incentives - higher pay, better benefits, lower working hour demands, whatever floats the boats to get qualified people to pick up those tasks instead of tending the local park garden.
Technological advancements can't result in long-term widescale job loss. Because if it does, the masses wouldn't be able to buy as much stuff, and it would reduce the country's net productivity, meaning a smaller pie for the rich to take their disproportionate slice from.
That seems like an argument for why it would be bad for technological advancements to result in job loss -- which is a very different thing than an argument for why they can't result in job loss.
If you think the individually-rational decisions of various companies will always guarantee a universally-positive outcome for the market as a whole, then you've never experienced a market crash or a tragedy-of-the-commons. The "invisible hand" is not an infallible guide.
because only a government can deprive people of freedom to make their own economic decisions
Another canard -- there's nothing particularly unique about governments in that respect. Any sufficiently powerful entity can deprive people of freedom to make their own economic choices, and private corporations also do it all the time. Read about the "company store" for miners, or the conditions in which migrant agricultural workers were (and are) held. It's no good to say "well, they're technically free to walk away whenever they want" if, as a practical matter, they do not have the economic resources to do so.
That freedom is what allows people to increase their standard of living - by individually choosing more productive activities over less.
And what do you do when there is no activity that you are capable of that is economically productive, because anything you could do, a machine can do better and more cheaply? Hope that other people will buy your (inferior and more expensive) products/services out of sympathy for your plight?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Do correct me if I have a glaring misconception, but it seems to me that if robots are doing enough of the work, the rich can use their power to obviate the poor. Of what use are the poor if there's no demand for their work, and you have nothing to gain by trading with them because automation can create whatever is most valuable to you? What is the point of personal economic liberty if most people have no wealth to make decisions about?
At some point though, the rich won't need money from the masses. They will be able to just directly order their robo-factories to directly build their yachts and mega-mansions, using robo-manufactured components built from robo-harvested raw materials. If they don't personally own robo-companies that have what they need, they can just trade with other 1%ers who do own the right robo-resources.
They probably will need a few lesser humans (at least in the beginning) to fill in the gaps that robots can't (yet) do. But that will just be an issue of enticing the best of the best non-1%ers with the opportunity to live in the servants' wing of their robo-built mansion and eat the leftovers of their robo-harvested food.
Right now they only need money from the masses so they can use that money to employee the masses. That dependancy goes away of you already own vast armies of robots that serve you for free.
There was once a visionary, all the way back in 1848, who foresaw that this day would come. He witnessed the the early attempts at farm automation and realized that machines would someday make human labor redundant, and knew that a new economic system would be required to handle it.
Unfortunately, over the following century, other people would co-opt and distort his ideals for the sake of personal gain and public suppression, giving his system an unfair and undeserved bad reputation.
His name was Karl Marx.
Just like how a malnourished serf couldn't stand up to a well fed Knight in armor.
Ask the leaders of the malnourished French of yesteryear how that went.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I see a flaw:
What happens when you pay your workers the same wage and have them work the same hours, but you only employ 50% as many workers? ...Mind you, because that stove is only $1,673, the households which historically bought the $1,800 models can now buy your previously-$3,200 model in the same budget (although the $1,800 models will also be cheaper). Most likely, you'll move more product
But now, only 50% of the people have jobs. So there are fewer households that can afford the $1,800 models.
Consider this scenario, then let me tie it into your scenario:
There are 4 farmers. The farmers share their grazing land, but each one keeps the profits from shearing their own sheep. Each farmer starts with 10 sheep. Each farmer asks "should I buy another sheep?" Well, since they keep the profits from the sheep they buy, but share the costs, each farmer decides it is economical to buy another sheep. But now, each farmer found their cost increased by 1 full sheep, not 1/4 of a sheep, but it increased by 1/4 of a sheep for the sheep they bought and 3/4 for the 3 sheep the other farmers bought. Lesson: "Local optimization does not lead to global optimization."
Now in your scenario, the product price dropped because one company cut its labor by 50%. That resulted in fewer households who can afford $1,800. But this is just one employer out of millions. So the resulting reduction from the layoffs does not significantly reduce the number of total households that can afford the $1,800 models. However, what if all the other factories do the same thing? This problem starts to look a lot like the sheep scenario. Each factory saves money by reducing their own labor pool, but they share the customers pool. But if all factories do this same labor and cost reduction, it starts to impact the pool of customers. The short-term winner is the company that can cut costs faster than other companies. But eventually, everyone loses.