http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-rich-and-their-robots-are-about-to-make-half-the-worlds-jobs-disappear
QuoteTwo hugely important statistics concerning the future of employment as we know it made waves recently:
1. 85 people alone command as much wealth as the poorest half of the world.
2. 47 percent of the world's currently existing jobs are likely to be automated over the next two decades.
Combined, those two stats portend a quickly-exacerbating dystopia. As more and more automated machinery (robots, if you like) are brought in to generate efficiency gains for companies, more and more jobs will be displaced, and more and more income will accumulate higher up the corporate ladder. The inequality gulf will widen as jobs grow permanently scarce—there are only so many service sector jobs to replace manufacturing ones as it is—and the latest wave of automation will hijack not just factory workers but accountants, telemarketers, and real estate agents.
That's according to a 2013 Oxford study, which was highlighted in this week's Economist cover story. That study attempted to tally up the number of jobs that were susceptible to automization, and, surprise, a huge number were. Creative and skilled jobs done by humans were the most secure—think pastors, editors, and dentists—but just about any rote task at all is now up for automation. Machinists, typists, even retail jobs, are predicted to disappear.
And, as is historically the case, the capitalists eat the benefits. The Economist explains:
QuoteThe prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution has gone overwhelmingly to the owners of capital and the highest-skilled workers. Over the past three decades, labour's share of output has shrunk globally from 64% to 59%. Meanwhile, the share of income going to the top 1% in America has risen from around 9% in the 1970s to 22% today. Unemployment is at alarming levels in much of the rich world, and not just for cyclical reasons. In 2000, 65% of working-age Americans were in work; since then the proportion has fallen, during good years as well as bad, to the current level of 59%.
Those trends aren't just occurring in the US, either. That second stat up there is from an Oxfam report entitled Working for the Few, just out this week. It was launched in tandem with the beginning of the World Economic Forum in Davos, in an effort to get the gazillionaires attending it to consider the gravity of their wealth. It finds that "those richest 85 people across the globe share a combined wealth of £1 [trillion], as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world's population." Yes, you read that correctly: The 85 richest people have $1.64 trillion between them, the same amount of money as 3.5 billion of the world's less fortunate souls.
The trend extends beyond a few handfuls of the planet's most mega-tycoons, of course: "The wealth of the 1% richest people in the world amounts to $110tn (£60.88tn), or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world." And they and their corporations are building robots that will have the net effect of letting them keep even more of that capital concentrated in their hands.
As the Economist piece notes, there's typically a disruptive cycle when new technologies displace old ones, and replace old jobs with new ones. But this time, that cycle is one-sided—so far, there are a lot fewer jobs being created in the new information-based economy than the old manufacturing-based one: Last year, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook were worth over $1 trillion combined, but employed just 150,000 people.
All of this points towards an uncomfortable prospect: in our globalizing, technologically advanced, and inequality-laden world, we risk becoming the cyber-peasants tending (or loitering on, more likely) the feudal lawn of the machine-owning rich. Oxfam predicts incoming class struggles and social strife, and it's not hard to see why—to ensure that the 99 percent of tomorrow benefit from still-accelerating technology, we're going to have to push for policy adjustments that adapt to our mechanized world. Radical income redistribution is probably in order, even a minimum guaranteed income; ideas unlikely to prove popular to the corporate titans used to reaping outsized rewards.
We already have the agricultural, energy, and consumer technology necessary to recalibrate the world's income scheme and resource distribution to make it more equitable. So as the rich and their robots start vacuuming up the world's jobs, it's social innovation we need now, far more than any technological gain.
Fortunately Communism will save us all! I guess we all need to get training in building and repairing robots.
Meri and I will be investigating bra construction bots for our new evil corporation.
So let's speed up the process by increasing minimum wage!
It's all be great for shareholder value & whatnot until the damned robots unionize :angry:
Quote from: derspiess on June 24, 2014, 09:19:03 AM
So let's speed up the process by increasing minimum wage!
Or you know, just take more money away from rich people.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rjgeib.com%2Fthoughts%2Ffrench%2Fliberty.jpg&hash=41f6c5df053238e784f18d79cfafc53c3744a304)
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 24, 2014, 09:21:56 AM
Quote from: derspiess on June 24, 2014, 09:19:03 AM
So let's speed up the process by increasing minimum wage!
Or you know, just take more money away from rich people.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rjgeib.com%2Fthoughts%2Ffrench%2Fliberty.jpg&hash=41f6c5df053238e784f18d79cfafc53c3744a304)
Or sterilize the non-working poor.
I think I posted about this on the OTT a few days ago.
I am increasingly coming around to the theory that Japanese companies purposfully employ more office workers than they need in an attempt to make up for the automisation of factory work.
Its a sort of social-contract thing. Perhaps of the company's own conscience, perhaps, with conspiracy hats on, agreed with the government behind closed doors.
As terrible as sitting around in an office and doing nothing all day is (to say nothing about overtime doing nothing), it is perhaps better than being unemployed; so long as nobody figures out a way to seperate real workers from these paper workers.
I wonder whether it could be the way of the future....
But sadly western companies tend not to take social responsibility so seriously. They will out efficientise those who follow this route.
I've never understood why the woman in that picture is topless.
Quote from: alfred russel on June 24, 2014, 11:23:42 AM
I've never understood why the woman in that picture is topless.
Really?
Quote from: alfred russel on June 24, 2014, 11:23:42 AM
I've never understood why the woman in that picture is topless.
The artist was making a concession to the future me for reasons known only to them.
Quote from: alfred russel on June 24, 2014, 11:35:52 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 24, 2014, 11:28:08 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 24, 2014, 11:23:42 AM
I've never understood why the woman in that picture is topless.
Really?
:yes:
I am not sure why Brain thinks she is barebreasted but iirc she is a Goddess figure of Liberty and the style was to paint Goddesses barebreasted. Also, it was a painting meant to inspire and nothing would inspire men like Cal more (at least in that time period) than a painting like that. :D
Then it needs to be modernized with bigger juggs.
This was before the invention of both implants and HFCS. :(
Quote from: Valmy on June 24, 2014, 08:37:51 AM
Fortunately Communism will save us all! I guess we all need to get training in building and repairing robots.
We desperately need competent roboticians. There seems to be a sort of mini-boom in the automotive industry going on right now and people with the right skills are ridiculously hard to find (ironic in a country with >25% unemployment).
With a bit of luck my employers will see that as an opportunity to pay to train me in the ways of robot-fu, but I'm not holding my breath.
In my current job I'm participating in the ultimate examples of automation. I'm overseeing the commissioning of a high-powered laser worth almost a million bucks. Other than engineers and maintenance folk, just one person is needed to load and unload parts. It can do in minutes a better job than what took a team of experienced welders hours.
My next project involves a press worth probably tens of millions (perhaps over a hundred), that again only one dude operates.
Quote from: Iormlund on June 24, 2014, 03:39:37 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 24, 2014, 08:37:51 AM
Fortunately Communism will save us all! I guess we all need to get training in building and repairing robots.
We desperately need competent roboticians. There seems to be a sort of mini-boom in the automotive industry going on right now and people with the right skills are ridiculously hard to find (ironic in a country with >25% unemployment).
With a bit of luck my employers will see that as an opportunity to pay to train me in the ways of robot-fu, but I'm not holding my breath.
In my current job I'm participating in the ultimate examples of automation. I'm overseeing the commissioning of a high-powered laser worth almost a million bucks. Other than engineers and maintenance folk, just one person is needed to load and unload parts. It can do in minutes a better job than what took a team of experienced welders hours.
My next project involves a press worth probably tens of millions (perhaps over a hundred), that again only one dude operates.
We need robot HR. :D
Quote from: Iormlund on June 24, 2014, 03:39:37 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 24, 2014, 08:37:51 AM
Fortunately Communism will save us all! I guess we all need to get training in building and repairing robots.
We desperately need competent roboticians. There seems to be a sort of mini-boom in the automotive industry going on right now and people with the right skills are ridiculously hard to find (ironic in a country with >25% unemployment).
With a bit of luck my employers will see that as an opportunity to pay to train me in the ways of robot-fu, but I'm not holding my breath.
In my current job I'm participating in the ultimate examples of automation. I'm overseeing the commissioning of a high-powered laser worth almost a million bucks. Other than engineers and maintenance folk, just one person is needed to load and unload parts. It can do in minutes a better job than what took a team of experienced welders hours.
My next project involves a press worth probably tens of millions (perhaps over a hundred), that again only one dude operates.
[favorable comment about STEM, negative comment about liberal arts]
If you extrapolate the trend of human history out, how does it end somewhere other than humans simply not being needed to produce "stuff" anymore?
The number of humans needed to make things has gone down per unit of stuff made consistently since humans learned how to start thinking. Industrial revolution, computers, automation - the long term result must be that human labor as a means of powering anything (whether that be mechanical power or brain power) will forever be a diminishing value.
For a long time (although not that long at all in historical terms) we were able to use the increased productivity to make more stuff to sell to the people helping make more stuff. But at some point, everyone has enough stuff for the most part. The number one health problem of the poor in America is obesity. I think we've reached the point where we have enough stuff, and the ability to produce stuff with less labor isn't going to be handled simply by making yet more stuff, rather it will be used to make the same amount of stuff with less expensive labor.
At some point human labor, in most cases, will simply cease to be valuable.
I think we are starting to see the beginnings of that stage in human social evolution. It will be interesting to see how humans manage the changing realities of human labor becoming nearly valueless, while at the same time we've depleted the bulk of the easily obtainable natural resources on the planet.
I would not all be shocked that this is at least part of the answer to Fermi's paradox - intelligence demands certain traits that result in a social model that has a very difficult time transitioning out of a scarce labor model.
Quote from: Berkut on June 24, 2014, 08:01:25 PM
I think we are starting to see the beginnings of that stage in human social evolution. It will be interesting to see how humans manage the changing realities of human labor becoming nearly valueless, while at the same time we've depleted the bulk of the easily obtainable natural resources on the planet.
Mine the asteroids! :contract:
Berkut's got a pretty great point there. There's going to come a point where the wealth of society is going to have to be nationalized, or you're going to have to exterminate eight or nine billion people--who will fight back.
Sometimes I don't really care which. Whether that point is ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years from now, I'll probably have been dead for a while, and even if I'm not, having a distant satisfaction that I was right and most the people I know are blindered idiots would be truly cold comfort.
Ide's smug ghost haunting our descendants. Truly a nightmare.
"Movies were better when I was alive." "I can't believe 180 pounds is now considered 'thin.' " "There aren't many jobs for ghosts..."
Edit: and so forth.
:lol:
Helots can always be culled. A meatbag surplus doesn't really worry me.
Quote from: Ideologue on June 24, 2014, 09:01:13 PM
you're going to have to exterminate eight or nine billion people--who will fight back.
That will be no problem for the army of cheaply made Freedom Defense Robots.
Quote from: Iormlund on June 24, 2014, 03:39:37 PM
We desperately need competent roboticians.
Damnit I should have been a mechanical engineer. Oh well too late now.
Quote from: Valmy on June 25, 2014, 11:41:18 AM
Quote from: Iormlund on June 24, 2014, 03:39:37 PM
We desperately need competent roboticians.
Damnit I should have been a mechanical engineer. Oh well too late now.
Engineers who work with robots over here tend to have degrees in Electronics (or Automation if available). You don't really need an engineering degree though, vocational training might suffice. It's one of those skills you can only acquire on the job (awfully hard to get a robot to tinker with otherwise).
However, some knowledge of mechanics comes handy if you want to become a welding expert as well. Someone who is both a good robotician
and welder, is the kind of thing that's really hard to find.
If the chick in Flashdance took some robot courses she would swing seven figures?
Quote from: Valmy on June 24, 2014, 08:37:51 AM
1. 85 people alone command as much wealth as the poorest half of the world.
This is kind of a silly stat. There are a lot of people in the world that have zero or negative net worth. So one could also accurately say that "Valmy commands as much wealth as the poorest 35% of the world" or something like that.
We already knew he's a monster.
Well duh, he does like the French.
Quote from: Iormlund on June 25, 2014, 01:00:36 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 25, 2014, 11:41:18 AM
Quote from: Iormlund on June 24, 2014, 03:39:37 PM
We desperately need competent roboticians.
Damnit I should have been a mechanical engineer. Oh well too late now.
Engineers who work with robots over here tend to have degrees in Electronics (or Automation if available). You don't really need an engineering degree though, vocational training might suffice. It's one of those skills you can only acquire on the job (awfully hard to get a robot to tinker with otherwise).
However, some knowledge of mechanics comes handy if you want to become a welding expert as well. Someone who is both a good robotician and welder, is the kind of thing that's really hard to find.
Electronics. Now there's something I should have studied. Those electrical engineering guys have it made
Yep. Or welding.
I've talked to some guys who said welders don't command the premium they used to, and that a lot of the super high paying underwater welding jobs these days are done by robots.
Robots eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Quote from: derspiess on June 25, 2014, 07:37:33 PM
Robots eat old people's medicine for fuel.
MAH MAXIDE
Quote from: Iormlund on June 25, 2014, 03:36:31 PM
Well duh, he does like the French.
They have style, they have class, they failed to kick Ecuador's ass :weep:
Quote from: derspiess on June 25, 2014, 07:37:33 PM
Robots eat old people's medicine for fuel.
And you can't stop them, because robots are strong, and made of metal. :(
Quote from: Ideologue on June 24, 2014, 09:01:13 PM
Berkut's got a pretty great point there. There's going to come a point where the wealth of society is going to have to be nationalized, or you're going to have to exterminate eight or nine billion people--who will fight back.
Sometimes I don't really care which. Whether that point is ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years from now, I'll probably have been dead for a while, and even if I'm not, having a distant satisfaction that I was right and most the people I know are blindered idiots would be truly cold comfort.
I can't believe that you think that you invented this concept! Did you invent the internet, too?
He doesn't have to be the first person to believe something to be right about it...
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 26, 2014, 09:11:32 AM
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...
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 26, 2014, 09:18:28 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 26, 2014, 09:11:32 AM
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...
I'm not saying Ide is right; I'm saying grumbler's criticism is inapplicable to the post he quoted.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 26, 2014, 09:11:32 AM
He doesn't have to be the first person to believe something to be right about it...
He would be if the alternative to believing as he does is to be one of the "blindered idiots." Not even the (uncredited by him) people who really invented the proposition that he is using proposed that. Hyperbolic use of someone else's ideas without acknowledging them appears like it is supposed to be an original proposal.
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 26, 2014, 09:18:28 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 26, 2014, 09:11:32 AM
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...
Lots of people have predicted lots of "similar economic outcomes" about all kinds of things and have been right.
But I am not sure what your point is here.
Are you arguing that the theoretical idea that at some point the value of human labor in the overall production of goods and services will eventually extremely low as a ratio of the total resources necessary to produce those goods and services?
That seems tautologically obvious to me, in that the advance of technology and automation has seen a incredible rise in efficiency around almost all the resources needed to produce things, including human labor. At some point surely it is the case that overall human labor will become largely irrelevant on the macro scale for the production of goods. I mean, if that were not true, then why have spent the last couple hundred of years successfully investing in productivity advances?
Alternatively, you could be arguing that the above is true in theory, but it just isn't happening yet. But I don't understand that argument either, since the basis of this discussion is the observation that it is in fact happening right now, and that is based on measurable critiera.
Just because this isn't a new idea (how could it be, it is kind of obvious really) doesn't mean it is wrong.
Right now the world largely operates on a model that human being work to produce things, and are in turn compensated with the things they need to survive and thrive in return for the things their labor produces. This has been true in one fashion or another throughout all human history, whether it be being compensated by getting the things they actually produce, or some more advanced system where they get paid and then exchange that pay for the things they want.
But the fundamental system has not really changed.
What has changed are the variables of how much the human labor is worth compared to the things that labor produces. That has been declining consistently of course, but it used to be the case that human never really produced as much as they wanted to consume, so we made up the declining value of labor by simply making more stuff for people to get, and that has mostly worked out. But over the last 50 years we have seen an explosive growth in productivity from a labor perspective. US manufacturing efficiency as a function of labor is something like 100 times what is was at the end of WW2.
But just because that system has worked for a long time doesn't mean it can always work, and it is trivial to show that at some point it can no longer work. Your argument is like someone arguing that since we've never run out oil throughout all human history, even though people have argued that we are going to some day, we cannot ever run out of oil, and observations that Oh Shit, We Are Running Out Of Oil can be dismissed, even if they are based on clear facts, like, we are running out of oil.
You can argue that perhaps it isn't anything to worry about yet (although the current economic crisis seems to argue against that), but I cannot see how you can make a credible argument that this is simply something that we should not even worry about, ever.
I, personally, will stress very emphatically to my children that they need to be very aware of this as they decide how they want to support themselves, and make sure they do something that can put them into that shrinking fraction of the labor force that still has something worth selling.
I was responding to Ide's prediction that either there would have to be a world wide communist order or Billions of people would have to be killed in his glorious fantasy of class warfare. Such apocalyptic predictions have been made before and all have been wrong. The best known person to make such a prediction (although not the first) was Marx who thought that industrialization would inevitably progress to the point where the ownership of the means of production (ownership of industry) would concentrate into an increasingly smaller elite and the proletariate's labour would have increasingly little value which would force a transition to a communist society (Ide's fantasy).
50 years or so before Marx, Ricardo made a similar prediction only he lived before the industrial revolution and so his prediction involved the plight of tenant farmers who had to pay increasingly high rents to an increasingly affluent land owning class. He predicted that as the trend inevitably continued the system must necessarily collapse on itself.
Both of course were wrong because neither could have anticipated the changes in society that would undermine the underlying assumptions in their theory. Ricardo could not have anticipated the decline of agriculture as the primary source of wealth in society and the technological changes that would usher in new forms of wealth creation. Marx was wrong about a lot of things but one of them was he did not forsee the wages of workers increasing.
Your prediction suffers from the same problem as Ricardo. You assume that as the value of labour for present purposes is reduced that other uses for labour will not take their place. You are right about one thing. Your idea is not new. It has been around since at least the early 1800s. But it has always been proved wrong even though the idea seemed obvious in the context of historical snap shot in which it is presented.
But think of just a few examples within your own life time. Thirty years ago who would have thought so many jobs would have been created by something called an "internet".
By the way, you should pick up Piketty's book. This is one of the concepts he discusses at some length.
I don't think his book comes in DVD form for Ide.
B
The bottom line is is that robots will soon allow us all live wealthy lives devoted to creativity and the maximization of human potential instead of toiling away at menial tasks like beasts of burden.
Then synthetic life will rebel and kill us all necessitating the creation of reapers to preserve organic live in the form of giant cybernetic space dreadnoughts. Much melodrama and many plot holes will follow.
I just wish I could be there to see it.
Actually, thirty years ago I predicted that lots of jobs would be created by advanced technology. It isn't a difficult prediction to make.
But I also predicted that a lot more jobs would simply go away due to advanced technology, and that was correct as well. That also was not a difficult prediction to make.
The "internet" did not result in any kind of net increase in jobs, quite the opposite in fact. You can't say "See, look at Amazon.com! They employ 120,000 people! Yeah internet for creating jobs" without noting that the reason Amazon sells stuff cheaply is because they put a vastly larger number of people in traditional retail OUT of work.
I am not arguing that this is a bad thing - but I am arguing that it is A thing, and we should be thinking about it, and not simply rely on "Oh, it it has always worked out before! So it will always work out in the future". For one, that is simply not true - it has NOT always worked out before, and there are plenty of examples of wars and suffering as a result of shifting economic realities. Arguing that those previous examples on a more local scale can somehow simply not apply on a global scale makes no rational sense, especially given the obvious reality of globalization, which is in fact new.
The world is changing, and in a manner that is not unprecedented in the process, but is, I think, unprecedented in the scale.
It is easy, IMO, to step back and think about human history over the very long run and see that always continuing increases in per person/per labor hour productivity cannot simply just go on forever - at some point human labor just becomes to cheap to matter for the masses. At some point, there simply isn't enough work to be done compared to the number of people there are - the amount of work needed per person always goes down, the amount of people is always going up.
Of course as labor becomes cheaper, maybe we find other uses for it that are not currently viable. But that doesn't strike me as a very pleasant alternative, and we are still looking at those people who are trying to make a life on their very low value labor. This has always been true of course, those without useful skills struggle, but there is a difference between 20% of the population not having useful skills and 50% of the population not having useful skills. Or 70%. Or 90%. And that number can go nowhere but up, and has gone nowhere but up since we hit the point where we had enough resources to pretty much educate everyone to the extent of their ability.
So what next? I am skeptical that the basic capitalist system can handle this issue. I don't think that means we revert back to some other already failed system, that is no solution.
Quote from: Valmy on June 27, 2014, 09:55:22 AM
The bottom line is is that robots will soon allow us all live wealthy lives devoted to creativity and the maximization of human potential instead of toiling away at menial tasks like beasts of burden.
Then synthetic life will rebel and kill us all necessitating the creation of reapers to preserve organic live in the form of giant cybernetic space dreadnoughts. Much melodrama and many plot holes will follow.
Well, now there's company that offers coverage against the unfortunate event of a robot attack: Old Glory Insurance.
Quote from: Ed Anger on June 27, 2014, 09:50:56 AM
I don't think his book comes in DVD form for Ide.
B
And so we will enjoy his fantasies of class warfare for years to come.
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 10:10:47 AM
So what next? I am skeptical that the basic capitalist system can handle this issue.
The other part you are missing, and which is a large part of Piketty's book, is that one cannot separate economics from politics. There is no such thing as a "basic capitalist system". All modern economic systems are influenced by the policies enacted by governments.
QuoteI don't think that means we revert back to some other already failed system, that is no solution
Who is suggesting that?
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 09:13:18 AM
But just because that system has worked for a long time doesn't mean it can always work, and it is trivial to show that at some point it can no longer work. Your argument is like someone arguing that since we've never run out oil throughout all human history, even though people have argued that we are going to some day, we cannot ever run out of oil, and observations that Oh Shit, We Are Running Out Of Oil can be dismissed, even if they are based on clear facts, like, we are running out of oil.
That is a pretty bad example, both because:
The core prediction of peak oil theory - that US production was doomed to steady decline - turned out to be spectacularly wrong for exactly the reason its critics said it was wrong
and more importantly
Oil is a physical commodity and thus there is an actual finite quantity of it - so that at some point we could theoretically "run out" (although in reality that would not happen just like we never "ran out" of wood or peat and will not run out of coal). Human desires on the other hand are not a bounded commodity. There is no necessary limit to them.
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.
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 10:10:47 AM
The world is changing, and in a manner that is not unprecedented in the process, but is, I think, unprecedented in the scale.
The scale is very much precedented.
In fact, the debate on innovation and growth today is centered around Robert Gordon's thesis that productivity gains from innovation are slowing and can be expected to be at a permantently lower level. The reasoning is that the biggest, lowest hanging fruit of innovation has already been picked and what is left is just incremental improvement. I.e. the movement from a world where the fastest form of communication is by very costly post riders to one where communications can be made cheaply and instanteously by telegraph and telephone is much more significant than the technological development of how to monetize ad revenue from "tweets". Where as before we went from clipper ships to jet aircraft, now we are figuring out ways for the same jets to use less fuel and stick TV's on the back of the seats.
I don't totally buy the thesis but it does have a lot of backers and even itscritics aren't really saying we are experiencing an unprecedented acceleration of innovation, just that we are still on track as before.
As an anecdote, one of the pressing issues for the economy here in BC, and nationally to some extent, is a signficant shortage of skilled labour. Both because the boomers (the demographic in which most of our tradesmen are located) are retiring and because new industries and projects require a greater number then in decades past.
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2014, 10:18:50 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 10:10:47 AM
So what next? I am skeptical that the basic capitalist system can handle this issue.
The other part you are missing, and which is a large part of Piketty's book, is that one cannot separate economics from politics. There is no such thing as a "basic capitalist system". All modern economic systems are influenced by the policies enacted by governments.
Why would you assume I am missing it? 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.
This is the part where the argument starts with you telling me what I mean, rather than just accepting that I mean what *I* think I mean, and is blindingly obvious, isn't it?
Quote
QuoteI don't think that means we revert back to some other already failed system, that is no solution
Who is suggesting that?
Ide.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 27, 2014, 11:07:17 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 10:10:47 AM
The world is changing, and in a manner that is not unprecedented in the process, but is, I think, unprecedented in the scale.
The scale is very much precedented.
In fact, the debate on innovation and growth today is centered around Robert Gordon's thesis that productivity gains from innovation are slowing and can be expected to be at a permantently lower level. The reasoning is that the biggest, lowest hanging fruit of innovation has already been picked and what is left is just incremental improvement. I.e. the movement from a world where the fastest form of communication is by very costly post riders to one where communications can be made cheaply and instanteously by telegraph and telephone is much more significant than the technological development of how to monetize ad revenue from "tweets". Where as before we went from clipper ships to jet aircraft, now we are figuring out ways for the same jets to use less fuel and stick TV's on the back of the seats.
I don't totally buy the thesis but it does have a lot of backers and even itscritics aren't really saying we are experiencing an unprecedented acceleration of innovation, just that we are still on track as before.
You aren't disagreeing with anything I said.
I am talking about the scale of productivity increases we have seen over the last 50-100 years. Is it slowing now? I guess it could be...although I am skeptical. Sure, in some ways it reaches a diminshing return, but there are other ways we find out new ways to be more efficient we hadn't even thought of before. The "end of innovation" is a much more oft-disproven meme. Excuse me while I go quit my job at the patent office, because everything has been invented already.
Really, my point actually aligns nicely with your observation in any case - we have in fact done something different if we've reached a point where in many cases increases in productivity have met up with physical limitations on further increases. But we seem to keep finding even better ways, and not just in physical improvements, but in process improvements.
Look at something like shipping - container ships dropped the cost of moving goods by an order of magnitude while at the same time putting hundreds of thousands of dock workers out of a job across the world. And we make those more and more efficient, with compuerized controls, automated ships that take a tiny fraction of the previous crew, etc., etc. I could certainly imagine that for some particular industry, you can reach a point where it cannot really get much better...but who can really say?
The point is that I *can* certainly imagine that there is a serious decline in the number of people required to build things, sell those things, and move those things around. I don't have to make that argument, the facts speak for themselves.
And I don't need to postulate a world where NOTHING is done by humans anymore, that is a complete strawman. Just a world where there simply isn't enough need for human labor to be able to use human labor as a reasonable way to allocate the output of societies production of goods. And if in fact this concern is real, then isn't what we are seeing right now exactly what we would expect to see? Stagnant or declining real world wages while total output continues to climb, and the wealth that comes as a result no longer is distributed to the human labor because the human labor simply is not necessary?
Of course, it isn't a sustainable model - it cannot go on that as a society we produce more and more stuff while fewer and fewer people can actually buy any of it.
Quote from: Ideologue on June 24, 2014, 07:43:37 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on June 24, 2014, 03:39:37 PM
Quote from: Valmy on June 24, 2014, 08:37:51 AM
Fortunately Communism will save us all! I guess we all need to get training in building and repairing robots.
We desperately need competent roboticians. There seems to be a sort of mini-boom in the automotive industry going on right now and people with the right skills are ridiculously hard to find (ironic in a country with >25% unemployment).
With a bit of luck my employers will see that as an opportunity to pay to train me in the ways of robot-fu, but I'm not holding my breath.
In my current job I'm participating in the ultimate examples of automation. I'm overseeing the commissioning of a high-powered laser worth almost a million bucks. Other than engineers and maintenance folk, just one person is needed to load and unload parts. It can do in minutes a better job than what took a team of experienced welders hours.
My next project involves a press worth probably tens of millions (perhaps over a hundred), that again only one dude operates.
[favorable comment about STEM, negative comment about liberal arts]
Don't diss liberal arts. What do you think the guy loading and unloading the parts studied to be able to get his job? ;)
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.
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.
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 01:03:08 PM
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. :hmm:
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2014, 04:03:24 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 01:03:08 PM
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. :hmm:
Yes, it is very complex. Congratulations?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 27, 2014, 02:58:57 PM
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.
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 04:21:19 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2014, 04:03:24 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 01:03:08 PM
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. :hmm:
Yes, it is very complex. Congratulations?
What is a complex capitalist system if a basic capitalist system is complex.
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 26, 2014, 09:18:28 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 26, 2014, 09:11:32 AM
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.
We find it very difficult to hire programmers and construction workers. Meanwhile, there are 700 people applying for every generic executive assistant job.
Quote from: Monoriu on June 27, 2014, 07:24:18 PM
We find it very difficult to hire programmers
You can import them from India, like America does.
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.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 27, 2014, 10:56:20 AM
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.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 27, 2014, 07:44:40 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on June 27, 2014, 07:24:18 PM
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.
Quote from: Monoriu on June 27, 2014, 07:24:18 PM
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.
Or settle for grammers.
Quote from: Tyr on June 28, 2014, 02:34:02 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on June 27, 2014, 07:24:18 PM
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?
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2014, 04:38:46 PM
What is a complex capitalist system if a basic capitalist system is complex.
Are you under the impression that "basic" and "complex" are antonyms? If you are not, then this question is gibberish. :hmm:
Quote from: Ideologue on June 27, 2014, 07:59:53 PM
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.
So unless we adopt Communism (state control of the means of production) there will be class warfare. Gotcha. You dont think it is inevitable at all. :rolleyes:
Quote from: grumbler on June 28, 2014, 12:43:10 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 27, 2014, 04:38:46 PM
What is a complex capitalist system if a basic capitalist system is complex.
Are you under the impression that "basic" and "complex" are antonyms? If you are not, then this question is gibberish. :hmm:
I was wondering what he meant by the word "basic" in his term "basic capitalist system". He later said that he meant the capitalist system we now have with all its complexity. So what does "basic" mean in that context. As usual you prefer not to understand the point to make a silly argument.
Carry on.
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 29, 2014, 09:17:50 AM
I was wondering what he meant by the word "basic" in his term "basic capitalist system". He later said that he meant the capitalist system we now have with all its complexity. So what does "basic" mean in that context. As usual you prefer not to understand the point to make a silly argument.
Carry on.
I understood perfectly what he meant: there is a basic capitalist system that pretty much the entire world uses, and then there are the additional tweaks that various societies add to that basic system. By adding the adjective "basic" Berkut was (vainly) trying to avoid the kind of nitnoid arguments you specialize in.
"Basic" is a pretty common word in the English language. I'm kinda surprised that someone who claims to be a lawyer doesn't know what it means. But, at least you are belligerent in your ignorance, and that's always funny.
Carry on.
Quote from: grumbler on June 29, 2014, 10:16:39 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 29, 2014, 09:17:50 AM
I was wondering what he meant by the word "basic" in his term "basic capitalist system". He later said that he meant the capitalist system we now have with all its complexity. So what does "basic" mean in that context. As usual you prefer not to understand the point to make a silly argument.
Carry on.
I understood perfectly what he meant: there is a basic capitalist system that pretty much the entire world uses, and then there are the additional tweaks that various societies add to that basic system. By adding the adjective "basic" Berkut was (vainly) trying to avoid the kind of nitnoid arguments you specialize in.
"Basic" is a pretty common word in the English language. I'm kinda surprised that someone who claims to be a lawyer doesn't know what it means. But, at least you are belligerent in your ignorance, and that's always funny.
Carry on.
I actually wrote up a post explaining just this, but realized it was pointless. What I meant was obvious, even to canuck.
Quote from: The Brain on June 28, 2014, 02:36:44 AM
Or settle for grammers.
Yeah, it's time to give semi-programmers, or even amateurgrammers, a chance.
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 29, 2014, 09:15:07 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on June 27, 2014, 07:59:53 PM
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.
So unless we adopt Communism (state control of the means of production) there will be class warfare. Gotcha. You dont think it is inevitable at all. :rolleyes:
Wealth can be nationalized without nationalizing capital. Perhaps this is a confusion of terms. Wealth is nationalized in every country that exists, even this one; but communism is the confiscation of capital, not wealth.
wut?
Capital is means of production. Wealth includes capital but also includes income. Am I using the terminology wrong?
Anyway, fuck: I meant higher taxes and more redistribution. JEEZ.
I would say so. Means of production is fixed capital or capital goods. Income is a flow, wealth is a stock.
I am shocked that Ide wants America to go all Pol Potty and didn't even bother to get basic facts right.
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 04:23:22 PM
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.
Depends what you mean by "labor hours."
Certainly people in the early 1800s had to spend a lot of hours producing, moving, storing and preparing food, but the vast bulk of this was uncompensated.
This thread is about effects on paid employment in a market economy.
As of now there are about 17 million or so people employed in food service and production, not including distribution and ancillary services.
There weren't even 17 million human beings in the US until about 1840.
A lot of those people probably were spending a lot of time on food prep but as a subsistence activity, not as a way of earning a living.
Historically, technology transforms the nature of work - while the raw amount of labor (drudgery) may decrease relatively, the absolute amount of opportunities for market-based employment tends to rise.
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?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 29, 2014, 08:48:34 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 27, 2014, 04:23:22 PM
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.
Depends what you mean by "labor hours."
Certainly people in the early 1800s had to spend a lot of hours producing, moving, storing and preparing food, but the vast bulk of this was uncompensated.
This thread is about effects on paid employment in a market economy.
As of now there are about 17 million or so people employed in food service and production, not including distribution and ancillary services.
There weren't even 17 million human beings in the US until about 1840.
A lot of those people probably were spending a lot of time on food prep but as a subsistence activity, not as a way of earning a living.
Historically, technology transforms the nature of work - while the raw amount of labor (drudgery) may decrease relatively, the absolute amount of opportunities for market-based employment tends to rise.
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.
Quote from: Ideologue on June 29, 2014, 09:33:54 PM
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?
I expect they would be out of a job.
Now what?
Quote from: Berkut on June 30, 2014, 08:12:32 AM
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.
Quote from: Ideologue on June 29, 2014, 09:33:54 PM
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.
Your hypothetical assumes a largely undifferentiated labor force, which is about as far from my point as possible. :P
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.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 30, 2014, 09:42:24 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 30, 2014, 08:12:32 AM
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.
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. :(
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.
Quote from: PJL on June 30, 2014, 12:13:06 PM
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.
Quote from: Valmy on June 30, 2014, 12:18:34 PM
Quote from: PJL on June 30, 2014, 12:13:06 PM
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.
Quote from: Neil on June 30, 2014, 12:22:43 PMSort 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.
It's not actually going to be worth it, you know?
Quote from: Neil on June 30, 2014, 12:29:05 PM
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.
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.
Quote from: PJL on June 30, 2014, 12:54:59 PM
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?
There were other ways, provided one was willing to disregard the untold human suffering that would take place in the Third World.