Reading the thread again won't make an argument appear where there is none. The fact remains that making it cheaper and less labor intensive to produce goods is universally good; there is simply no downside to it. None.
How would you feel if tomorrow a Prop 9. would be introduced that would prohibit inter-racial marriage? And if Brendan Eich would donate from his private bank account to Prop 9? Would you still be comfortable that he represents Mozilla as the new CEO?
As a customer, I can decide who I do business with. As an employee, I can decide to quit and work for someone else. And as customer or employee, I can announce my intentions. But the final decision of who is CEO rests with the owners of Mozilla Corp.
I wonder why Eich would want to stay in the Bay Area if he believes in Prop 8; there are plenty of socially conservative nice places around the US where he could live and work easily.
(Of course, I also wonder why anybody would still want to work for Mozilla, or why anybody would want to work for the creator of JavaScript...)
It's what you said. "Most optimists, by contrast, believe that living standards were rising by the 1810s or 1820s, or even earlier."
That doesn't say that the industrial revolution "actually resulted in a half century of record unemployment and massively widespread poverty". All it says is that it took about 50 years for people to benefit widely from the industrial revolution; before that, the costs and benefits were simply too localized and small to make much of a difference.
So, even by optimistic standards, the industrial revolution actually resulted in a half century of record unemployment and massively widespread poverty.
You're delusional; that is not what the article said.
We will not have this conversation if the service and white collar jobs DID offset the loss of manufacturing jobs and any losses due to automation. That was the whole thread/post/page about.
In the past, they always have. And you have made no plausible argument why they won't in the future.
The standard-of-living debate today is not about whether the industrial revolution made people better off, but about when. The pessimists claim no marked improvement in standards of living until the 1840s or 1850s. Most optimists, by contrast, believe that living standards were rising by the 1810s or 1820s, or even earlier.
But there is little evidence that "the intermediate period" is rough either. Automation is a steady, gradual process, if not for any other reasons than that it's expensive and complex. Workers generally don't lose their jobs due to automation.
When automation leads to job loss, it's usually whe companies are prevented from introducing automation gradually themselves. What happens then is that competitors start up and drive the inefficient older companies out of business, and when those businesses fail, that does cause major disruption.
I was only making a larger point. Automation will result in reduction of number of hours, but unless some type of allowance makes up the deficit in income
There is no "deficit in income". If stuff can be produced with half as much labor, then it will become correspondingly cheaper, so you need less income.
20th century was an exception...rapid industrialization happened which employed millions. Now that phase is over...no need for more factories to produce widgets, and existing factories are getting automated. Look around yourself.
Good! Material goods are being produced with less and less labor input and getting cheaper and cheaper. And instead of dirty and dangerous manufacturing jobs, people are moving to service and white collar jobs in a big way.
The burden of evidence is on the extraordinary claim - which is, in this case, that none of the massive changes in our society over the past decades could possibly cause the event to have a different outcome than it had before.
I haven't said that "it couldn't possibly have a different outcome". I have asked why you think that it will have a different outcome. You have failed to provide a reasoned argument.
Economics is quite clear: automation generally improves the standard of living and makes society better off, No it isn't. That's just not true. What would be a true statement is: "Economics is quite clear that up until now automation has generally improved the standard of living and made society better off and has not hitherto caused mass unemployment"
Yes, it is clear: automation reduces the need for labor to produce the same amount of goods, therefore it reduces costs and increases our standard of living. That isn't a question of "up to now" or untested theories, it is what "increasing the standard of living" means.
I gave you no less than two examples of aspects of the context which may very well cause the outcome this time to be different - your unwillingness to consider even the possibility that they may change the outcome is narrow-minded to say the least.
You pointed out that we have global mass communication but failed to make an argument why that would worsen the effect of automation; I think whatever short term disruptions automation may cause are lessened by fast global communications.
You also said that jobs created by maintaining machinery "will go to India". I don't know where those jobs will go and it has no bearing on anything. Indians get jobs for which they have a comparative advantage, and Americans get jobs for which Americans have a comparative advantage. There is no relationship between the jobs that automation eliminates, that automation creates, other jobs, and who fills those jobs here or abroad.
I'm telling you that you don't know what the theory actually says.
Well, and you obviously don't know what you're talking about.
I think the burden of evidence should be on *you* to show that every contextual dependency of this pattern holds
Well, you can think that all you want, but that's not how arguments or reasoning work. Economics is quite clear: automation generally improves the standard of living and makes society better off, and it does not cause mass unemployment. Furthermore, that's not just theory, it has worked that way in the past, again and again.
If you want to convince people that a theory that has been empirically tested time and time again doesn't apply this time, you need to come up with some pretty good reasons and data. So far, you're only handwaving.
You're right, Student of History. Nothing will change - ever.
Automation and new technology will cause lots of changes: it will allow us to work less and retire earlier, while enjoying a higher standard of living.
I for one look forward to the infinite, consequence free growth and increase in our standard of living that we will enjoy,
Oh, our standard of living and growth may well stop at some point. In fact, they will do so when we stop automating and stop developing new technologies. Automation and new technologies are the very mechanisms by which our standard of living increases and our economy grows.
The above can be possible, but you may not get full time work even if you wanted.
You started with the premise that our standard of living is near optimal. If that is true, automation will result in a reduction of the number of hours to maintain that standard of living. If you say that you want full time employment even though with increased productivity, half time employment would be sufficient, you are contradicting your own premise.
That's why a growing acceptance or realization that some type of guaranteed allowance will have to be given to a majority when the jobs vanish.
You got it exactly backwards. The lavish retirement benefits European nations have been bestowing on their senior citizens have been a generational transfer in which seniors got far more than they saved. Now that the population is aging, they are less and less able to afford it. That is not something we can adopt, and it solve absolutely nothing.
"Mass employment" happens with manufacturing or may be Walmart (not only employment at their stores, but building the stores to the driving the trucks), not with the new products or services you have in mind.
You pull your statement out of thin air, and it is bogus. Labor participation rate steadily increased throughout the 20th century despite the supposed decline of the kinds of "mass employment" job categories you imagine.
However, we now have a situation where many full time jobs for unskilled workers don't pay a living wage.
Those are b.s. vague generalities. What is an "unskilled worker" supposed to be? What's a "living wage" supposed to be?
These people are the modern version of share-croppers. Companies profit from their labor,
If companies didn't "profit from their labor", they wouldn't hire these workers; neither companies nor investors nor private business owners can afford to do something unprofitable.
yet the workers themselves never make enough money to improve their own circumstances.
Because automation in the past created as many unskilled jobs as it destroyed. I'm not sure that is still true.
That's never been true.
Because our economy is dependent on a continuously growing population and that is not a sustainable model in the long run.
That's precisely why we need automation.
Because companies are willing to spend less and less on training.
Evidence? None. And even if it were true, what difference does it make whether you pay for training or your company?
Because there is no longer a social contract. Companies making money will still lay off workers to satisfy Wallstreet
That isn't what "social contract" means. And companies have always hired and fired to maximize profit. Furthermore, since your and my retirement and savings are "on Wallstreet", I certainly hope they "satisfy Wallstreet".
Because higher education is becoming an enormous financial burden
You don't need higher education to get a good job. And $50000 student debt is not an "enormous financial burden".
Because the unions that used to protect workers in the past have been decimated
They haven't been "decimated", workers simply don't find them necessary anymore.
Because more and more of the money companies earn goes to the C-level executives
As someone who puts his 401k on Wall St., do I care how much a CEO makes? No, I don't, as long as the company does well.
Because a larger percentage of our population is too old to work
Good reason for why we need automation.
Because it's has become cheaper and cheaper to move jobs and manufacturing overseas
And automation will allow manufacturing to be done increasingly in the US. Of course, US manufacturing is actually doing just fine anyway.
So, the next level of mechanization and automation is not going to push the "standard of living" higher by a greater margin.
Even if that were true, it would simply mean that people have to work less and less for the same standard of living. That is, if automation makes things twice as efficient, it means everybody can work half time and enjoy 20 more hours of leisure a week.
Of course, it's not actually true because people have an amazing capacity to come up with new products and services.
Automation and mechanization have never produced mass unemployment and they have always resulted in great increases of standards of living. Why should it be different this time?
From the point of view of the application processor, the baseband processor and its software can simply be treated as part of the communications infrastructure: closed source and inherently untrustworthy. All that is necessary is that the application processor is sufficiently isolated from the baseband processor. That isolation has been lacking in some phones, but Ubuntu and Firefox phones could easily provide it.
It has nothing to do with "scale"; the analogy is simply wrong.
A corporation with billions of dollars, thousands of employees, and politicians beholden to it offers you a wage to work for it.
Most corporations are small businesses.
Having corporations and government melded into one isn't capitalism,
Of course it isn't. Unfortunately, that's exactly what our government delivers, foremost the Democrats.
And Democrats deliver cronyism and rent seeking by demonizing business and individuals.
Workers are allowed to form unions as a counter to corporate power. This creates, paradoxically, stronger corporations, since they are no longer coddled by government and allowed to suppress wages, they have to actually be clever and productive to profit.
Unions have gone far beyond merely collective bargaining and have little to do with countering the power of corporations. Instead, they turned into massive special interest groups, foremost public sector unions.
Fascism isn't just a nasty name; it's an inferior system ultimately, even from the corporate point of view.
Fascism was strongly anti-capitalist and anti-free market; that's why fascists blamed all the bankers and entrepreneurs for economic woes, who they happened to identify with Jews. These days, fascists are still anti-capitalist and anti-free market, and they still blame bankers and entrepreneurs, they've just given up on the anti-Semitism because it's become unfashionable.
The economic system of fasicm is what Democrats are advocating: privately owned businesses, heavily regulated by government to supposedly promote the welfare of the common man and to work for the public benefit. It doesn't work. History has shown that.
You need to discount money over time. Combating something that happens 70 years from now would be about 1000 times more expensive than combating it in 70 years even if it were completely predictable. But climate change is not at all predictable and certain, so in addition to this enormous cost, you also have the enormous uncertainty in the predictions.
The gentlemen's agreement (which is anything but. A crony capitalists agreement is a better name for it) is simply their by-laws.
You are mixing up things. "Crony capitalism" is when government hands out favors to private parties. The Obama administration has been heavily engaged in crony capitalism, even more so than the Bush administration.
You also don't understand what this agreement is about. It's not an agreemen not-to-hire, it's merely an agreement not-to-cold-call. If you work for Google and want to get hired by Apple, give Apple a call; they will be happy to talk to you and nothing in this agreements keeps them from doing so.
Slashdot Mirror
Reading the thread again won't make an argument appear where there is none. The fact remains that making it cheaper and less labor intensive to produce goods is universally good; there is simply no downside to it. None.
As a customer, I can decide who I do business with. As an employee, I can decide to quit and work for someone else. And as customer or employee, I can announce my intentions. But the final decision of who is CEO rests with the owners of Mozilla Corp.
I wonder why Eich would want to stay in the Bay Area if he believes in Prop 8; there are plenty of socially conservative nice places around the US where he could live and work easily.
(Of course, I also wonder why anybody would still want to work for Mozilla, or why anybody would want to work for the creator of JavaScript...)
That doesn't say that the industrial revolution "actually resulted in a half century of record unemployment and massively widespread poverty". All it says is that it took about 50 years for people to benefit widely from the industrial revolution; before that, the costs and benefits were simply too localized and small to make much of a difference.
You're delusional; that is not what the article said.
In the past, they always have. And you have made no plausible argument why they won't in the future.
Instead of a short, one-sided view from Wikipedia, here is a careful discussion:
http://www.econlib.org/library...
Not on this planet.
But there is little evidence that "the intermediate period" is rough either. Automation is a steady, gradual process, if not for any other reasons than that it's expensive and complex. Workers generally don't lose their jobs due to automation.
When automation leads to job loss, it's usually whe companies are prevented from introducing automation gradually themselves. What happens then is that competitors start up and drive the inefficient older companies out of business, and when those businesses fail, that does cause major disruption.
There is no "deficit in income". If stuff can be produced with half as much labor, then it will become correspondingly cheaper, so you need less income.
Good! Material goods are being produced with less and less labor input and getting cheaper and cheaper. And instead of dirty and dangerous manufacturing jobs, people are moving to service and white collar jobs in a big way.
I haven't said that "it couldn't possibly have a different outcome". I have asked why you think that it will have a different outcome. You have failed to provide a reasoned argument.
Yes, it is clear: automation reduces the need for labor to produce the same amount of goods, therefore it reduces costs and increases our standard of living. That isn't a question of "up to now" or untested theories, it is what "increasing the standard of living" means.
You pointed out that we have global mass communication but failed to make an argument why that would worsen the effect of automation; I think whatever short term disruptions automation may cause are lessened by fast global communications.
You also said that jobs created by maintaining machinery "will go to India". I don't know where those jobs will go and it has no bearing on anything. Indians get jobs for which they have a comparative advantage, and Americans get jobs for which Americans have a comparative advantage. There is no relationship between the jobs that automation eliminates, that automation creates, other jobs, and who fills those jobs here or abroad.
Well, and you obviously don't know what you're talking about.
It's not "logic", it's a question.
Well, you can think that all you want, but that's not how arguments or reasoning work. Economics is quite clear: automation generally improves the standard of living and makes society better off, and it does not cause mass unemployment. Furthermore, that's not just theory, it has worked that way in the past, again and again.
If you want to convince people that a theory that has been empirically tested time and time again doesn't apply this time, you need to come up with some pretty good reasons and data. So far, you're only handwaving.
In different words, you have no meaningful, sound definitions for "unskilled worker" or "living wage".
Primary conclusion from your link: "America is no less socially mobile than it was a generation ago"
Nothing in that article supports your statement "yet the workers themselves never make enough money to improve their own circumstances."
Automation and new technology will cause lots of changes: it will allow us to work less and retire earlier, while enjoying a higher standard of living.
Oh, our standard of living and growth may well stop at some point. In fact, they will do so when we stop automating and stop developing new technologies. Automation and new technologies are the very mechanisms by which our standard of living increases and our economy grows.
You started with the premise that our standard of living is near optimal. If that is true, automation will result in a reduction of the number of hours to maintain that standard of living. If you say that you want full time employment even though with increased productivity, half time employment would be sufficient, you are contradicting your own premise.
You got it exactly backwards. The lavish retirement benefits European nations have been bestowing on their senior citizens have been a generational transfer in which seniors got far more than they saved. Now that the population is aging, they are less and less able to afford it. That is not something we can adopt, and it solve absolutely nothing.
You pull your statement out of thin air, and it is bogus. Labor participation rate steadily increased throughout the 20th century despite the supposed decline of the kinds of "mass employment" job categories you imagine.
Yes, I do. You obviously don't, otherwise you wouldn't be spewing such b.s.
Those are b.s. vague generalities. What is an "unskilled worker" supposed to be? What's a "living wage" supposed to be?
If companies didn't "profit from their labor", they wouldn't hire these workers; neither companies nor investors nor private business owners can afford to do something unprofitable.
Evidence? None.
That's never been true.
That's precisely why we need automation.
Evidence? None. And even if it were true, what difference does it make whether you pay for training or your company?
That isn't what "social contract" means. And companies have always hired and fired to maximize profit. Furthermore, since your and my retirement and savings are "on Wallstreet", I certainly hope they "satisfy Wallstreet".
You don't need higher education to get a good job. And $50000 student debt is not an "enormous financial burden".
They haven't been "decimated", workers simply don't find them necessary anymore.
As someone who puts his 401k on Wall St., do I care how much a CEO makes? No, I don't, as long as the company does well.
Good reason for why we need automation.
And automation will allow manufacturing to be done increasingly in the US. Of course, US manufacturing is actually doing just fine anyway.
Even if that were true, it would simply mean that people have to work less and less for the same standard of living. That is, if automation makes things twice as efficient, it means everybody can work half time and enjoy 20 more hours of leisure a week.
Of course, it's not actually true because people have an amazing capacity to come up with new products and services.
Evidence?
And that leads to problems... how?
No, I don't.
You're saying that a larger population means that automation will cause harm when it has never done so before?
You make no sense.
Automation and mechanization have never produced mass unemployment and they have always resulted in great increases of standards of living. Why should it be different this time?
From the point of view of the application processor, the baseband processor and its software can simply be treated as part of the communications infrastructure: closed source and inherently untrustworthy. All that is necessary is that the application processor is sufficiently isolated from the baseband processor. That isolation has been lacking in some phones, but Ubuntu and Firefox phones could easily provide it.
It has nothing to do with "scale"; the analogy is simply wrong.
Most corporations are small businesses.
Of course it isn't. Unfortunately, that's exactly what our government delivers, foremost the Democrats.
And Democrats deliver cronyism and rent seeking by demonizing business and individuals.
Unions have gone far beyond merely collective bargaining and have little to do with countering the power of corporations. Instead, they turned into massive special interest groups, foremost public sector unions.
Fascism was strongly anti-capitalist and anti-free market; that's why fascists blamed all the bankers and entrepreneurs for economic woes, who they happened to identify with Jews. These days, fascists are still anti-capitalist and anti-free market, and they still blame bankers and entrepreneurs, they've just given up on the anti-Semitism because it's become unfashionable.
The economic system of fasicm is what Democrats are advocating: privately owned businesses, heavily regulated by government to supposedly promote the welfare of the common man and to work for the public benefit. It doesn't work. History has shown that.
You need to discount money over time. Combating something that happens 70 years from now would be about 1000 times more expensive than combating it in 70 years even if it were completely predictable. But climate change is not at all predictable and certain, so in addition to this enormous cost, you also have the enormous uncertainty in the predictions.
You are mixing up things. "Crony capitalism" is when government hands out favors to private parties. The Obama administration has been heavily engaged in crony capitalism, even more so than the Bush administration.
You also don't understand what this agreement is about. It's not an agreemen not-to-hire, it's merely an agreement not-to-cold-call. If you work for Google and want to get hired by Apple, give Apple a call; they will be happy to talk to you and nothing in this agreements keeps them from doing so.