51–60 of 74 posts
If automation is providing all your needs, you won't need a job. [Edit] Spotted this after reading the article: "Technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed, says 140 years of data" ( http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/17/technology-c...
Hint: they are the same people who own your employers, buildings and machines that currently let you do your job
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That assumes it's possible to automate everything that creates wealth (I'm using "wealth" in the author's extremely broad sense; it does not mean "money"). It sounds like you're saying it isn't, and I agree. That is, the optimal human population will never be zero.
"Optimal human population of zero" seems like a contradiction-in-terms. For whom is it optimal to have a human population of zero? Surely not for the humans, and since we're the ones who exist, we draw up the criteria.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How old are you? The social unrest is going to come way before people are walled off in ghettoes. If, like me, you are a programmer earning 6 figures, you may not feel rich,but you are certainly perceived that way by the increasing number who are struggling.
Are these the same people who ignored all the warnings? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O_TjBNjc9Bo Bought cheap stuff from Walmart so middle class manufacturing jobs were sent overseas? Refused to get a STEM education so we're required to import 100,000 engineers ever year? Didn't develop a better immigration plan so now we have 11 million undocumented people, many who will work for far less because life is better here…
Professionals are routinely wrong about predicting economic trends. Random teenage kids from average high schools should not be expected to be better than, say, the Fed chairman in this regard.
I think the whole question shows that people are thinking wrong. Think of a society/civilization spending people. Oh, we can automate much of agriculture? Great; we don't have to spend 90% of our people on growing food. Now we can spend them on factory jobs, and our society becomes better off. Now we don't have to spend so many people in factories? That's a good thing, too - we can spend those people on more producti…
But human idleness is the goal! Working, for most people, is a bunch of miserable drudgery.
We'd need to see changes in human nature or society to ensure that misplaced labor can still have a quality of life if idle, because profit optimization says you won't see a cent if I don't have to give it to you.
Let's suppose for a moment that we accept the thesis that due to automation, there won't be much work for humans in the future. Instead of taking wealth from the smaller number of humans who are creating that wealth and giving it to those who are not, why don't we just accept that we don't need so many of us any more? Let the extras die off naturally (note to angry skimmers: I SAID NATURALLY) and migrate to a new low…
I think the whole question shows that people are thinking wrong. Think of a society/civilization spending people. Oh, we can automate much of agriculture? Great; we don't have to spend 90% of our people on growing food. Now we can spend them on factory jobs, and our society becomes better off. Now we don't have to spend so many people in factories? That's a good thing, too - we can spend those people on more producti…
But human idleness is the goal! Working, for most people, is a bunch of miserable drudgery.
Let's suppose for a moment that we accept the thesis that due to automation, there won't be much work for humans in the future. Instead of taking wealth from the smaller number of humans who are creating that wealth and giving it to those who are not, why don't we just accept that we don't need so many of us any more? Let the extras die off naturally (note to angry skimmers: I SAID NATURALLY) and migrate to a new low…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you recommend any further reading for in-deflation?
It's largely a concept I've encountered online, with varying degrees of precision in discussions. There will be books about it in 20 years once the academics notice, sort of like stagflation (which was "impossible"). It really strikes me as an exact description of today's economic reality -- stagnant wages, deflation in manufactured goods and anything tech, and crazy inflation in areas like housing, rent, health care…
Required reading anytime someone invokes the word "Luddite": http://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Against-The-Future-Industrial/d... Enclosure ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure ) is suspiciously never mentioned whenever the Luddites are invoked. It's not as simple as "technology took muh job, rar!" -- it's more like "hey, this common land that used to belong to all of us has been forcibly taken away and given to this…
Good point - here in Scotland there were the Clearances in the 18th and 19th centuries forcing peoples off lands - either to the cities or to emigrate or to simply starve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances There is a lot of very murky history to land ownership in Scotland - one of the reasons I'm so pleased with the "right to roam" that we have now as well as Scottish Government policies favouring com…
[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That assumes it's possible to automate everything that creates wealth (I'm using "wealth" in the author's extremely broad sense; it does not mean "money"). It sounds like you're saying it isn't, and I agree. That is, the optimal human population will never be zero.
"Optimal human population of zero" seems like a contradiction-in-terms. For whom is it optimal to have a human population of zero? Surely not for the humans, and since we're the ones who exist, we draw up the criteria.
Well, I also noted that it wouldn't occur, so... ok?
> For whom is it optimal to have a human population of zero?
While this is moot given the above, the sad reality is "probably most species other than humans". But that really wasn't the point here at all. Even if an ecosystem is a zero-sum game and the success (or anything less than total extinction) of humans means the failure of something else, that's not a reason to voluntarily go extinct. Nor did I say otherwise. The point isn't there should be zero humans but rather that there's probably a need for far fewer than 8 billion, and that not only would every individual human be better off if there were fewer, humanity as a whole would likely be better off, too. The fact that most other species would have a much better chance of survival in a world with a few million humans than with tens of billions is a great bonus, and one that also adds value to those humans' lives, but was not really the main point.