Topic: Technological unemployment is (almost) here - page 4. (Read 88284 times)

You're definitely right and I agree. I do not understand how some of us see some weird magical world in 50 years. Anyone will rather spend a certain sum of money for a robot that is equal to a yearly payment of a worker. Probably event more, because after that point (you've reached ROI), you just pay for the electricity. At first there will be new jobs, indeed. There will be a larger demand for people putting those robots together, designing them and maintaining them, however only for a certain period of time.
Once we actually pass the Turing, there won't be a coming back. What happens when robots start maintaining and fixing other robots? What happens when robots start building robots?
The majority of jobs will be lost. I'm pretty sure that IT personnel, doctors and a few other titles will remain intact for a longer period of time.
However in the future, society needs to adapt. Working to survive will no longer be feasible.

Please don't go deeply into futuristic economies, that's rather for the speculation sub forum.

You need to stop treating Milton Friedman as some sort of godsent know it all guy that defined the be all end all of economics. It's over. Repeat with me: It's over. Automation will reach a point of no return, where it will be simply unnecessary for the majority of people to work, because you'll have an higher quality of life accepting welfare/supply from the machines than trying to pick up a job, ANY job, even if it's unnecessary. No one will pay you to do an unnecessary job. Entrepreneurs are a minority. And the majority of workforce are simple tasks and those will be the first ones that disappear. There will be a time when we don't even need more machines, so "trying to compete with your own machines so to speak", will be just silly.

What we need to end this "the rich will own all the machines" bullshit is simply have decentralized, open source machines that supply people with what they need, and everyone is free to improve upon them. Automation and technology will make any monetary based system deprecated in the following 1000 years.

If we are still half retarded uneducated monkeys bashing each other in 1000 years, we'll be fucked.

Sorry, I misunderstood you, I was searching for arguments in your points.

"Can sustain everyone at a higher living standard" might not stay true, it depends on population growth and of the productive growth.
Forcing people to take care of the poor will impact negatively productive growth. Because there is less incentives to work then people just prefer to stay above water. (well, hope some french people passing by here, since we are mostly on this situation today)
I am in some sense, in this condition : not earning more than I need to eat so I don't pay too much taxes.
"Above water" being relative to the economic progress of the country. (meaning having a television might be today considered the base line, but it was not yesterday)

The living standard will degrade if you impair productive growth by forcing it to work for special interests. (be it for poors, politicians or cronies)


The cost of training don't have to be on the poor's shoulder, because it is also in the interest of the owner to get qualified labor. (don't forget, that before minimum welfare, immigration (aka. unqualified labor) was welcomed in the US, as explained by Milton Friedman at 1:15, why can't that be the case now ?)
If it is not in the owner's interest to train people for the job, then it only mean that the particular skill market is blocked (ironically often because of imposed quota, mandatory exam contest, subsidies which flooded student to wrong skills, or simply because the skill is too easy), but there is lot of different skills market as division of labor is ever increasing and field of knowledge expanding in all directions.

One of my activity is to train people to become developers, and one of my "everybody can find a job" point of view comes from the situation I live everyday.
Businesses are so desperate to find developers that they take care themselves for the training of their employees to development, whatever their background.
I teached to students above 50 years old HTML and Javascript, paid by their business. (And corporate training is not cheap, and HTML/Javascript is a basic skill which can be self learned)

Sadly, it does, because it requires force for someone to work against his will for someone else without his wanted compensation. I don't believe socialism can work without a strong government. (Hayek, in the Road to Serfdom explains it, Hayek is not completely libertarian though)

That would be the best since it does not promote any special interests. But you can't print money and hope that the price does not raise in consequence without using force (and thus destroying productive growth). I don't remember where I've seen it, but I think remembering that Milton Friedman was not so opposed to that either.
I think this would have no impact at all for this reason, the price will be programmed to rise as a consequence.
In the worse case, people controlling the amount of "unconditional income", might use it for pressuring some businesses who suffers from monetary inflation. (those who needs high cash reserves)

"We only need". You remind me when the US government protected Bell's monopoly because "competition was wasteful", then later congratulated themselves for "fixing the free market" by breaking with anti trust laws the monopoly they themselves created. You NEED competition if you don't want abuses.
The only weapon for a business man is another business man, certainly not a government nor a regulation.
All monopoly the state found inviolable have been broken by healthy competition, to which I will point Patrick Bryne at 21:10 would explained that better than me.
Those who where not were monopolies built by the government with regulations or protected by patent. (A poor can't defend his patent at all, thus making a barrier of entry to competition to those who can)

Not all rich people got there by working hard. Some just inherited their money. Closing loopholes in that tax should help too. Then make sure corporations can't evade their taxes.


Not that I want to defend the current system. But that only happens if money doesn't circulate right? If it is taxed as he proposes it could help. Maybe even work.


I'm all for celebrating technological unemployment. If it is work that can be done more efficiently by machines it frees people to do other things. Hopefully better things. That's great. But if most people will have worse living conditions because of it something will need to change to help them. Maybe unconditional income. Maybe something else. Btw, socialism doesn't necessarily depend on government.

Wealth is non-linear because inflationary monetary systems inevitably lead to exponential-like distributions from the underlying compounding interest equation. They get to their extremes of non-linearity as they get closest to their point of obsolescence/collapse.

Technological 'unemployment' should be celebrated but I see the socialists have found a new 'cause celebre' for their inner control-freak fantastical projections onto the lives of others. Malthus and global climate control have been dropped and now we have technological abundance as the new 'problem' that only government can solve. I suppose when your political ideology depends on government-only solutions the pool of government-only non-problems starts to look rather infinite?

Recently, wrote something similar to another discussion thread. income should be completely tax free. But, there should be a higher tax for gains on stocks larger than a particular amount -- let's say 1 million. The most rich people had worked hard to get rich but then they get richer just for letting there money work.

Most people are actually on food stamps, and no into this whole tech scene with bitcoin.

I just actually asked not long ago a twitch streamer, and some do and some dont even know about it. But, I can imagine people trading food stamps for bitcoin which would be breaking the system.

Alright. But I don't see how poor people would have a chance to improve their condition. Like I said, most would eventually be working all available time just to eat. Automation will displace most people of their work. So they wouldn't have time to spend improving themselves. Too much competition for the jobs still available, or jobs in an alternative economy they try to create. And that alternative economy will provide much worse living conditions for people caught in it.


No. My argument is that living conditions would worsen a lot for those not already rich. Maybe poor people would be able to create an alternative economy. Maybe not. But I don't see why they should be forced to do it in a society that can sustain everyone at a higher living standard.


Concentrating people in cities has advantages. Makes some things more efficient. That is lost when you force them to disperse like that. But most people would be out of work. And not everyone would be able to buy their plot of land. Most people would always have a landlord. And even if land and other resources could be found to make an alternative economy work I think pawel7777 is right: the same problems would happen again forcing people to move elsewhere. And if this is a system that doesn't take care of most people, why should they support it? There must be a better way to organize society. I think eizh made a good point too:

Are you seriously asking me to 'prove' that people need food/clothes/shelter to function? Or that this shit ain't free?

How the hell do you expect calligrapher to out-compete even cheap $40 printer in both cost and efficiency? Working 2400 hours a day for $5/week? <this is just an example, so don't try to escape with "he can find different job", same can be applied to any profession>


Fuck current economy, let's focus on free market Vs automation.
There will be no alternative economy for multiple reasons, but that's not even a point. How the hell can you suggest that marginalising vast % of population and forcing them to move to countryside (to a magical country of free land and free seeds/tools/livestock growing overnight with no effort) in order to start from the scratch their own economy is natural or desirable? Not to mention that, if they succeeded, soon they'd have to face the same problem again.

Doesn't constant need of restarting the system sound like a massive flaw to you at all? Maybe, just maybe, taking advantage of technology to benefit the humanity by using different distribution models would be a better idea?


It wasn't an argument, it was an opinion.

I think as long as governments exist, such like IRS provides a good sum of revenue to the system everythings going to be taxed.

Its something uncontrolled and out of your hands, since there is a existing system, and fall into the category as same as stocks or other forms of investment will fall under.

So takes the time to explain me why what you say is true. And if you say "look around you", as I explained what is around me is the result of granted special interests and minimum wage.
So try to explain me, why in the hell, from premises we both can't deny you reached this conclusion. It is the base of rational discussion.
Gronthaing, raised some good objection instead on tagging people as illusional, which would remove both the ability to communicate and to learn from one another. (I don't forget I not replied to some of his points yet, which made the need to look back at my libertarian books)

The alternative economy I am describing IS free market, not a separate thing. Our current economy is not free market.

Read that, and come together with better argument.

@Nicolas Dorier - sorry mate but your post is shit. It's scary how an adult person can detach himself from reality and common sense just to be able to carry on wearing his libertarian label for a bit longer.

On top of other things you absolutely fail to acknowledge that every human has inherent costs of living and cannot go with their wage requirements below certain level.

But what strikes me the most is that you're pointing at 'alternative economy' as a solution to automation and yet you believe in 'free market'. For anyone in the right mind moving backwards to less effective solutions and having to build alternative economy (with all the related unrest) is something extremely undesirable and a clear sign that the free market model simply doesn't work.

Entrepreneurship as a solution is bogus anyway. Thanks to economies of scale, we only need a handful of successful businesses for any particular good or service. That's the inevitable steady state. What will the other 99% do? Will each and every person operate successfully in a niche? No, because only a few ideas (relative to the total set of money-making ideas) are viable as a primary source of income.

To be clear, the goal of libertarian society is not to assure the same standard of living to everyone, but to provide the room to people who wants to improve their conditions to do it. (Mostly by removing any state sponsored protections/entitlement of any special interests be it cronies or unions)

My point is that the poor will not starve because they are unemployed, because unemployment can't exist in a free world, only the price of labor would vary.
Making it, at some point, competitive with machines.
I also want to debunk the idea that anyone has "to take care" on their behalf. If only they are authorized to work for one another, they can develop their own economy (which still exist today... outlawed).

Your general argument is that without having access to production goods for making their own goods through work, there can be no economy at all.
I would say that it will mainly change the domains in which they will work, they will develop an economy around product that do not need large amount of capital. (Personal services to each other, agriculture)

Agriculture still needs land though, which would, I suspect, make them migrate from city to country side where the price of land is lower. (Don't forget that we are concentrated on cities, because there is work, if they can't work, then they will stop concentrating in cities)
I have not read again what smith said about rent/labor/capital, I will and come back with his arguments, I had too much things to code lately.


I only care about being coherent with the ideas I hold, and it seems you did not took time to read my logic about why, in a free world, the 45 yo guy would be still be able to find a job, and why, if you consider it a priority to protect it by force, then you will get the inverse consequence of what you want.
You are also oblivious to the fact that "big company provide jobs" is a really new concept which came from industrial revolution. Before that most people where self employed, without the need of big corporation.

If you get into a state where poor people can't buy what the market provide through automation, why do you think they will starve and not just work for each other as they did in the past ? Why do you think that "a big company HAS to provide jobs" ? Why do you think the price of food will not drop out ?

No, in a free world, I would not fire him in the first place, because a man can always be more economical than a machine, at a certain wage. I will tell him : now your wage will be as high as what the robot cost me, do you want to stay ?

Ask yourself the question about why men get fired by robots : because regulation prevent us to employ someone at a lesser wage than a robot.

At a time where most work are based solely on knowledge available for free on the internet ? (average Joe has internet isn it ?)
I work in IT, and I can tell you that 2 months of self learning on internet is enough to find a job, it has never been so easy in ages to find a job. But yes, you have to adapt to the market condition. The market is just the aggregate of what people think is your value. If you are average Joe working in factory and getting paid shit, then you are not valuable to the market place.
2 months of training in web development, and suddenly, you'll make more than the shitty job in factory that you did.

If you don't want to train yourself, and claim what you think is your just value by force, then you are basically searching special entitlement to the state, as cronies do. What I think is the most despicable way of stealing people who does not search to be entitled by leveraging force.
In the case of the 45yo Joe you talked about, if state protects his jobs, it will actually prevent "Poor Joe 2" to get a job at a factory, who was willing to be less costly than a robot.

Thanks for taking the time to look into it. But it isn't just rent right? What about rare materials that are needed for production and that you can't get everywhere? I don't know, maybe like rare earth elements that don't have many large deposits to make them usable. Poor people won't be able to own these sites or import from elsewhere easily. Doesn't that mean they will always be limited in what they can do by themselves? And be dependent on richer people that can do it?


Don't think that can happen. A lot of people will be competing for the same jobs. Won't a minimum subsistence job mean people will eventually spend all their time working for food? If someone spends it trying to improve himself, someone else will be more desperate and work more for less. That is why I said it was a race to the bottom.


Many types of jobs can be automated already. More will be in a few years. Some programs can even do some creative work like shown in the other video. Maybe people will create other areas to work in. But automation will always follow. And people need time to learn and adapt to new areas. What happens if it reaches a point when they need to jump to a new area every few years to avoid automation? People can't adapt that fast.


Still a lot less jobs of that kind are available. Not as many as needed for production. And not everyone can shift to new jobs that quickly.

Please, stop being this delusional. As time goes on, there are LESS things to do by the average joe, and most are average joes, and guess what, the biggest impact in automation will be all the jobs made by the vast majority, which are average joes.

As time goes on its more and more complicated to be creative in a way that would make you money, simply because more things are already invented, let alone create something that would be able to employ a ton of people in an ever increasingly automated reality.

Again, are you seriously going to tell to the average 45 year old guy with a family that has been working on factories for life to "man up and become a creative entrepeneur?" Jesus fucking Christ, do you live on a bubble?
This man is FUCKED beyond belief if his job gets automated, unless, guess what, a state helps him with basic income so he doesn't have to start stealing and getting in risky business to feed their godamn family and himself, that's if he doesn't goes nuts and crashes a car full of gas bottles or something forced by the desperate situation.
Get a grip on reality buddy.

Unemployment is an ill-defined concept, as with most of the jargon in economics and the other humanities-side of soft sciences.

So it is easy to have endless debates about nothingness. People are still free to be as lazy or as productive as they choose, generally speaking.

My guess is, there will be a higher tax on machines in the future. On the other hand, the more machines are producing products the higher will be the maintanance and management overhead which creates new jobs. Jobs shift from production to management.

Before coming with better arguments about the other stuff you said, which made it clear I need to include rent in the picture, I can respond to the following:

Yes. Labor being like any good, the price of it is ultimately equals to its cost.

It is not, but it assure minimum subsistence, while allowing the individual to develop his capacities to increase his salary.

"Labor market" is an erroneous term.
I work in IT, and technically speaking, even if I am labor, I'm not in the same market than a cashier. (we are not competing each other)
We should talk of labor markets with a "s", rather than 1 market.

So it gives appropriate incentives for people to move into other markets where robot are not present or too costly.
It is an incentive for individual development.

The current way of doing it is though subsidies to innovation, which only goes to the pocket of the well politically connected rather than the poor.

Thanks, at least there are some arguments worth debating.
In fact I spent lots of time replying to it, but then I have seen that I did not included the impact of rent you mentioned. (I assumed wrongly that in highly competitive unhampered market, the cost of any product is equals to the cost of labor -which is true for knowledge jobs though-)
I'll get back after some rothbard/mises/smith reading, remember seeing some stuff about rents, I don't remember their rational though.