Robots providing better shareholder value than CdM

[Valmy]

I liked the journalism major in Dilbert whose job was to walk around the office waving his arms during the work day to ensure the motion sensitive lights did not go out.

[The Minsky Moment]

Berkut: from the 19th century to today, agricultural productivity measured in labor hours increased by 200-300 times, such that the input of labor hours into producing say a bushel of wheat is now negligible.

Yet more human labor hours then ever before are spent producing, preparing and distributing foodstuffs.    Whereas before a typical person would be happy with enough basic grains to keep starvation at bay, now such a person expects and demands to be able to get wide varieties of food unimaginable to even the richest people of just a century ago, and to be able to get multi-course meals served to them at least once a week.  Desire creates more demand, pure and simple.  Mechanize those processes and you just push up on the hierarchy of desires and create more demand.

[crazy canuck]

Of course there is such a thing as a "basic capitalst system" - it is the system the world lives under right now. And yes, of course it is not a simply economic system, but involved politics, demographics, social norms, etc., etc.

A "basic" system exists that is actually very complex.   

[Berkut]

Of course there is such a thing as a "basic capitalst system" - it is the system the world lives under right now. And yes, of course it is not a simply economic system, but involved politics, demographics, social norms, etc., etc.

A "basic" system exists that is actually very complex.   

Yes, it is very complex. Congratulations?

[Berkut]

Berkut: from the 19th century to today, agricultural productivity measured in labor hours increased by 200-300 times, such that the input of labor hours into producing say a bushel of wheat is now negligible.

Yet more human labor hours then ever before are spent producing, preparing and distributing foodstuffs.   

I bet that is not true at all - I suspect that since the 1800s the number of labor hours out of total available hours of labor that are spent producing food are a small fraction of what they used to be population wide.

The fact that people want more and better food is obvious, certainly, but that doesn't mean that it takes more people to provide that more and better food.

[crazy canuck]

Of course there is such a thing as a "basic capitalst system" - it is the system the world lives under right now. And yes, of course it is not a simply economic system, but involved politics, demographics, social norms, etc., etc.

A "basic" system exists that is actually very complex.   

Yes, it is very complex. Congratulations?

What is a complex capitalist system if a basic capitalist system is complex.

[Neil]

He doesn't have to be the first person to believe something to be right about it...

Except that people have been predicting similar economic apocalyptic outcomes since the early 1800s and none of them have been right...

Well, some of them were.  But not often.

[Monoriu]

We find it very difficult to hire programmers and construction workers.  Meanwhile, there are 700 people applying for every generic executive assistant job.

[Eddie Teach]

We find it very difficult to hire programmers

You can import them from India, like America does.

[Neil]

I've been irritated lately by the sheer number of times that the word 'innovation' has been thrown at me, usually by people trying to sell me something.  No GMC, changing the body styling of your economy sedan and adding a feature or two  from their luxury model is not innovation.  And tech companies who engage in patent-trolling.

[Ideologue]

As long as: (1) human beings response to satiation of certain wants by developing other wants, and (2) some proportion of human labor is required for the efficient production and distribution of goods or services that human beings want, then the conditions for the perpetuation of traditional systems of production and distribution are satisfied.  So for the transformation you are talking about to occur, either (1) or (2) must cease to hold.

As to (1), a lot of very smart people have predicted satiation of want.  Marx did.  Keynes did as well, and you all know how much I respect him.  But the last 80 years have not been kind to that prediction.  of course, it is possible that human desire could be abated.  But if that were to happen , it could only be as a consequence of a massive change in cultural and social arrangements.  It is not a technological parameter and it certainly is not analogous to fixed stocks of commodities because human desires are neither fixed nor a commodity.

As to (2) I suppose it is theoretically possible as  technological matter that automotons could be developed that could perform every single creative, administrative and strategic function performed by every human being and that some future human society could agree to delegate all those functions to their robots.  But that is still very far off.

1 has a lot more legs than 2.

CC, you seem to be under the impression that I think revolutionary class war is inevitable.  What I said was that unless wealth is nationalized, people will be forced to revolt because people will starve and be homeless otherwise.  But perhaps I ought to have specified "wealth is nationalized to a far greater degree than it is now, to provide for at least the basic and needs and wants for the coming army of the unemployable," though it seemed unnecessary at the time since Berkut more than adequately described what we both think is the likeliest result of technological progress.

I think that capitalists will permit this to the most minimal possible degree that avoids serious violent instability.  Despite a current vogue of outright delusionality on the part of the .001%, amongst others--the kind of blindered idiocy I referred to--I reckon that this will pass like any fashion.

On the other hand, like I said, if they permit the wider economy to degenerate without a sense of self-preservation, I would be okay with that too.

[Ideologue]

We find it very difficult to hire programmers

You can import them from India, like America does.

I'd bet you import construction workers from America if you tried.

[Josquius]

We find it very difficult to hire programmers and construction workers. 

If companies stopped demanding 2 years of experience for entry level positions then that would really help with the programmer shortage.

[The Brain]

Or settle for grammers.

[garbon]

We find it very difficult to hire programmers and construction workers. 

If companies stopped demanding 2 years of experience for entry level positions then that would really help with the programmer shortage.

While they will list criteria, often you don't have to match many of them. In fact, most of the type when I look at the desired experience - it matches someone who already has that job and who takes a lateral unless they are unemployed, just have to get out of their current job, or are moving somewhere?