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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says Labor Shouldn't Have To Fear Automation (techcrunch.com)
Munky101 tipped us off to some interesting comments from New York's activist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. TechCrunch reports:
It's impossible to discuss the seismic shift toward automation without a conversation about job loss. Opponents of these technologies criticize a displacement that could someday result in wide-scale unemployment among what is often considered "unskilled" roles. Advocates, meanwhile, tend to suggest that reports of that nature tend to be overstated. Workforces shift, as they have done for time immemorial. During a conversation at SXSW this week, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered another take entirely.
"We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work," she said in an answer reported by The Verge. "We should be excited by that. But the reason we're not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don't have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem... We should be excited about automation, because what it could potentially mean is more time educating ourselves, more time creating art, more time investing in and investigating the sciences, more time focused on invention, more time going to space, more time enjoying the world that we live in," The Verge quoted Ocasio-Cortez as saying. "Because not all creativity needs to be bonded by wage."
And Ocasio-Cortez cited Bill Gates' suggestion (first floated in a presentation on Quartz) that a robot tax might be a way to make that vision real. "What [Gates is] really talking about is taxing corporations," she reportedly said. "But it's easier to say: 'tax a robot.' "
Science fiction writer William Gibson called her comments "shockingly intelligent" for a politician. Fast Company adds that robots "have put half a million people out of work in the United States, and researchers estimate that bots could take 800 million jobs by 2030" -- then quotes Ocasio-Cortez's assessment of the unfair state of labor today.
"We should be working the least amount we've ever worked, if we were actually paid based on how much wealth we were producing, but we're not," she said. "We're paid by how little we're desperate enough to accept. And then the rest is skimmed off and given to a billionaire."
"We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work," she said in an answer reported by The Verge. "We should be excited by that. But the reason we're not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don't have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem... We should be excited about automation, because what it could potentially mean is more time educating ourselves, more time creating art, more time investing in and investigating the sciences, more time focused on invention, more time going to space, more time enjoying the world that we live in," The Verge quoted Ocasio-Cortez as saying. "Because not all creativity needs to be bonded by wage."
And Ocasio-Cortez cited Bill Gates' suggestion (first floated in a presentation on Quartz) that a robot tax might be a way to make that vision real. "What [Gates is] really talking about is taxing corporations," she reportedly said. "But it's easier to say: 'tax a robot.' "
Science fiction writer William Gibson called her comments "shockingly intelligent" for a politician. Fast Company adds that robots "have put half a million people out of work in the United States, and researchers estimate that bots could take 800 million jobs by 2030" -- then quotes Ocasio-Cortez's assessment of the unfair state of labor today.
"We should be working the least amount we've ever worked, if we were actually paid based on how much wealth we were producing, but we're not," she said. "We're paid by how little we're desperate enough to accept. And then the rest is skimmed off and given to a billionaire."
Automation vastly improved the lives of people who were previously toiling manually outdoors all day all year round, for example. At least, eventually. There was a difficult transition for them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Ok we get it. She thinks tax/redistribution is the answer. That just feels like half the solution. The other half is what will the people DO with their UBI or similar style income?
Oh and of course taxing the robots will slow down the inovation which seems to contradict her first point about welcoming the automation.
AOC impresses me more and more every day.
She has clearly done her homework and understands Socialist theory (as taught by the DSA).
Not only that -- she sticks to those principles and does not adapt to the popular wind direction of the day.
I have less confidence in the DSA and the Democrats, but so far, AOC is solid!
Now let the trolls pile on -- it does not change the fact that Capitalism is failing (and threatening to take the world with it).
Says the guy whose signature claims "Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power", despite the fact that the country where the 995 have guns is also the one where the 1% have the most power.
Between that and having to resort to bizarre Star Wars memes, satire really is dead.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A value added tax to fund a UBI/Universal Basic Services is another approach and one harder to circumvent with tax or production location loopholes. Say you wanted to implement a UBI of 12k per person per year for adults. That's roughly 3 trillion per year in the US given 250 million on the payroll. Projected US population and projected GDP show that the GDP is outpacing population growth by a large margin. Even if you take inflation into account, the price of goods and services is dropping as automation takes over. You can save money by cancelling other welfare programs, and all that cash would trickle up into the economy as well which has positive benefits. These alone could make a meager straight UBI doable in a 20-40 year timeframe, maybe even 12k/year, if the population and GDP keep growing roughly as expected.
Wait... won't automation and Weak AI/AI bring down the costs of goods and services? What would people absolutely have to spend that money on? Housing? Food? Child care? Education? Healthcare? Access to information? Given the lower future costs it may be best to give out 500 dollars today's equivelant per month and offer free basic housing around the nation, free basic food, free child care, free education, free healthcare, and free basic internet access. The costs of all of these could go quite low in the future and a regulated non profit market like Germany has health insurance or a government run solution could be quite efficient with low overhead if done right. That way the most needy benefit the most with the basic services, and everyone is lifted by the basic income while reasonably well off people will forgo their basic services and pay for better ones.
You know what else has failed? Socialism. Good luck with that!
The trend throughout the history of humanity has been towards less work. We've gone from small groups that had to keep watch 24/7, to tribes that had to leave their encampments for days on end hunting and gathering, to villagers having to work 7 days a week, 16 hours a day, to towns that work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, to cities that work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, and we're already seeing the rise of flexible working, home working, and talk of 4 day weeks.
It seems pretty clear that automation by robotics will merely continue this trend; workers will be just as productive supported by robots working 3 or 4 days a week as they were working 5 without those robots. As it has been since humanity first stopped swinging from trees this will inevitably not result in job losses; but simply people working for less time whilst achieving the same productivity.
But just as the trend has been towards people having to work less since humans first became humans, the complaints about how change will be the end of humanity have been constant, but also constantly wrong. Just as luddites who smashed up machinery in cotton mills 200 years ago believed that that machinery would put them out of work were completely wrong in that it merely meant they had to work less then, people who claim AI will put them out of work now are also wrong.
Everything changes and nothing changes, the world progresses, life gets better, but people still find things to get scared of, and moan and be wrong about as they always have done. Automation has only ever made it easier to be a worker, if you don't think so then go try living like a 17th century factory worker then come back and tell me people have it just as hard today. You're making the mistake of believing that because there are blips, because you don't see the benefits in your goldfish memory time frame, that it doesn't happen, but the entire history of humanity proves you wrong and there is zero evidence or reason to think this new technology will be in any way different.
Because it was a parody of the original exchange, which was almost equally as absurd.
If that was true, then somebody should post the original exchange, instead of some sort of Facebook Russian troll garbage.
I don't respond to AC's.
If they supplied their own tool, i.e. the digger, then yes they could get paid 50x more than what they were.
But the vast majority of them didn't supply their own tool - the employer did.
The employees job improved significantly, however, in that they no longer had to carry out back breaking manual labour, they could work in better comfort as most diggers have enclosed cabs, they can work longer hours due to less physical fatigue and they can do the same work at older ages.
My brother in law started his working life as a hod carrier at 16. He is completely screwed now physically as a result, and it's only automation that has allowed him to continue working in the building industry and earning a wage the only way he knows how.
But let's ignore all that, because "automation is bad".
If you're just showing up for a McJob, you're not producing wealth and you're not paid to produce wealth.
Bullshit! If you weren't producing wealth then why would the corporation pay you to show up.
The corporation is generating wealth and they're trading a portion of that wealth with you for your time and labor.
Bullshit! The corporation is not trading wealth for your time out of the badness of their hearts. They are paying you because you are generating more wealth for them than they are paying you.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No, but assuming that the productivity of other job positions around that person also improved about 50 times, the real value of their labor increased as a result of everything else being less expensive to produce. The amount of dollars you earn is utterly irrelevant when you fail to consider what you can purchase with them. Despite all of the people claiming the middle class is being destroyed, real median income has been slowly rising.
Automation is never going to significantly improve the wages of the people employing it in and of itself. The only possible way that can happen is if they are the only ones in possession of the improvements and no one else is capable of replicating those techniques and the workers can't be replaced by someone else who will accept less pay. As soon as anyone else figures out how to get the same improvements, competition drives prices back down. There's additional money to be made in the short term while that process occurs, but a rank and file worker isn't going to become extremely wealthy unless they own their own their own business.
Some people like to call this process a race to the bottom, but they only look at it from the perspective of the people racing downward. Everyone who's not involved in that particular race is the beneficiary of less expensive goods and services. As all industries undergo this continually (everyone is busy running in their own separate race) it produces more wealth. You can grumble that it isn't equally shared, but it's largely inconsequential.
The workforce gets indirect benefits by affordable goods. Imagine what good would cost if there was no automation. Most people would never own a car if all cars were manufactured without any automation. Your t-shirts would cost $100 each, because it would cost that much to collect and process cotton manually, then saw the t-shirt by hand with a needle and thread.
You do understand that no country is pure socialist or pure capitalist? Or are you trying to trying to ignore facts?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That's a myth, the reality is that peasants in ye olden dayes had enormous amounts of free time a majority of the year.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
AOC has a degree in economics. She knows damn well what reality is. There's been plenty of research on the subject and we've long since gotten to the point where we can feed, cloth, house and give healthcare to everyone and that's before the coming Automation Revolution.
OTOH I've got folks on the right who tell me they'll be new jobs but nobody'll say what those jobs are. Occasionally somebody will say "Bio-Tech", which is what I heard in the 90s. Or they list a bunch of service jobs nobody will be able to afford when they lose their jobs. Meanwhile the President of the United States is a climate change denier. And one way we know climate change is real is that it's been called out in SEC filings. You can lie to Congress, you can lie to your Priest, hell, you can even lie to yourself, but you do not lie to the SEC...
And don't get me started on the Evangelicals that make up the second wing of the GOP (the first being the wealthy plutocrats). There's a lot that wouldn't know reality if it bit 'em on the rear. They're still arguing that Evolution isn't a thing and that The Flood happened. I know it's not nice to call folks out for religious beliefs, but wrong is wrong, and I draw the line when they start trying to sneak it into schools and into laws, which they've been doing for ages (Abortion bans anyone?)
Fearing a bad thing doesn't make it worse if you stop it from happening. We're not animals at the whims of nature. We're thinking, reasoning beings.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Despite all of the people claiming the middle class is being destroyed, real median income has been slowly rising.
If the distribution of wealth wasn't so skewed in favor of the rich, median income should be dramatically rising instead of slowly rising. Compare it to GDP, which has more than doubled since 1990.
Never tried farming for a living, have you? No, it's not a matter of "work during planting season, goof off till harvest, work for a few weeks at harvest, goof off all winter, lather, rinse, repeat"....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yeah, the problem is that the current Medicare spending rates are ridiculous - thats the point that is trying to be made.
You don't just need to increase Medicare spending, you need to reform the entire thing.
You already spend more per head of *population* (and not per person actually covered) on Medicare and Medicaid than many western countries spend on socialised medicine for their entire populations - that signifies a problem that you aren't going to spend your way out of, and it also signifies a fundamental issue with the way healthcare is provided in your country.
And *thats* the fundamental problem - you are expecting for-profit entities to supply healthcare at reasonable cost, and they aren't. We have all read and heard about the ridiculous discussions that go on between care providers and insurance providers about costs and billing.
The government should run its own healthcare providers, and its own hospitals, and employ its own doctors, nurses and other staff.
But thats pretty unacceptable to Americans for some reason - apparently, only the military are allowed to be a massive government employer in such a manner.
Quite inaccurate, in fact the Jews in the 1930s were armed and it didn't really help them.
https://youtu.be/gfHXJRqq-qo
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC