Robots providing better shareholder value than CdM

[The Minsky Moment]

You don't consider earning a subsistence to keep yourself alive earning a living?

I don't think that is a meaningful distinction in respects to what we are talking about.

I don't consider non-market activities to be market activities.  That is a fundamental distinction if the subject in question is the demand for market labor, which is eactly what we are talking about.

[The Minsky Moment]

OK, check this.  Consider automation not as capital, but as labor.  Labor is, after all, only distinct from other inputs because it is human.

Imagine if you introduced a labor force into the American economy, over the course of fifty years, a hundred million strong, that worked for a buck an hour and was ten to a hundred times as productive.

Consider that the cost of bringing someone from this new labor force into any given labor market was ten times less than the cost of bringing someone from the old labor force into any given labor market, and took a tenth the time.  Consider that, as a result, the superior labor force is multiplying more quickly.

Forgive the crude placefiller numbers, but what do you expect the results to be for the old labor force?

Your hypothetical is incoherent to the extent it postulates wage as a fixed parameter, as opposed to something determined by market forces.

Let's raise a more coherent example: let's say you added 100,000,000 people to the US population in a 50 year period and at the same time vastly increased their productivity (lets say tenfold).

That is pretty much exactly what happened in the US from 1900-1950.
And then again from 1950-2000.

[Ideologue]

Your hypothetical assumes a largely undifferentiated labor force, which is about as far from my point as possible.

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't know what to tell you Ide.
The question you are raising - the effect on employment of mechanization of production - is hardly a new one, either analytically or empirically.  It has been debated and discussed since the days of Ricardo and Marx.

We have 200 years of history of industrial capitalism where mechanization has gone hand-in-hand with higher levels of compensated employment.

Now maybe Berkut is right and "this time is different" but given that history it seems the burden of persuasion weighs very heavily on your side to prove that.

[Berkut]

You don't consider earning a subsistence to keep yourself alive earning a living?

I don't think that is a meaningful distinction in respects to what we are talking about.

I don't consider non-market activities to be market activities.  That is a fundamental distinction if the subject in question is the demand for market labor, which is eactly what we are talking about.

Meh, not at all what I am talking about, or rather you are artificially restricting my argument in a manner that makes my point out of context. Nothing really to discuss.

[Neil]

I agree with Joan here.  The problem isn't that current events are special in the market.  The problem is the existence of a global market.  Automation has historically taken people out of subsistence and into compensated employment, and that's worked out.  The problem this time is that the people who are benefiting are the people who provide absolutely no useful benefits to the first world:  The inhabitants of the developing world and (to a much lesser extent) the super-rich.

It turns out that all those anti-globalization types were right. 

[PJL]

The irony of globalised capitalism is that it is doing what communism failed to do well, equalise wages on a global scale (at least those with similar occupations), and leveling everyone down into a race to the bottom generally (thanks largely due to Moore's Law). While it was mitigated for a while by the credit boom of the 80's through to 2008, the crisis has finally laid bare the start reality of the situation.

The situation is likely to last until everyone has similar wages for similar occupations. In reality what this means is that the first world will have third world blackspots and the third world will have first world areas, unless there are polices in the developed world that can mitigate those effects. Ultimately there will be a greater redistribution of income and or wealth for, either from above, or from below.

[Valmy]

The irony of globalised capitalism is that it is doing what communism failed to do well, equalise wages on a global scale

I am not sure why that is an irony.  That was the plan: to bring the third world into the global system and we would all benefit and stuff.

[Neil]

The irony of globalised capitalism is that it is doing what communism failed to do well, equalise wages on a global scale

I am not sure why that is an irony.  That was the plan: to bring the third world into the global system and we would all benefit and stuff.

Sort of.  The idea (which was probably rather naive) was that it could be done without resulting in a decline in the First World.

[Valmy]

Sort of.  The idea (which was probably rather naive) was that it could be done without resulting in a decline in the First World.

Did people really think that?  The liars and the spin-doctors in the Clinton Administration were trying to sell that crap.  I thought we all knew it would be painful but in the end it would be worth it.  I figured our mighty welfare states would see us through and show that they could actually do something good.  In the end, as standards of living in the third world grew, the jobs would return...or so I thought.

[Neil]

It's not actually going to be worth it, you know?

[Valmy]

It's not actually going to be worth it, you know?

It was the only way.  The Third World had to be integrated somehow.  It was either this or they were all just going to move to first world countries  or something far worse.  I would rather they take our jobs back in their own countries.

[PJL]

Ultimately the global corporation monoculture is destroying Western culture just as much as it's destroying all the other cultures in the world. Hence the popularity of reactionary forces in general.

[Valmy]

Ultimately the global corporation monoculture is destroying Western culture just as much as it's destroying all the other cultures in the world. Hence the popularity of reactionary forces in general.

True.  But how could it be otherwise?  A globalized economy was going to be tremendously disruptive.  And without it how could the wealth inequality between the First and Third Worlds ever be addressed?

[Neil]

There were other ways, provided one was willing to disregard the untold human suffering that would take place in the Third World.