Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots • Hacker News Board

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#131

Post by brbrodude » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 2:58 PM UTC

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #105

nabla9 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's similar to the argument that luddites have always made and they have always been wrong. Industrial revolution resulted malnutrition and deterioration of absolute living standards. It took almost hundred years from the start of the industrial revolution before real wages started to grow. You can see it from the historical records. The height of enlisted men in Britain decreased. Luddites were mostly right. The…

> Industrial revolution resulted malnutrition and deterioration of absolute living standards. What? Capitalism did not create poverty or famine - it inherited it, and then swiftly solved it. The industrial revolution, if anything, obliterated it from the Western world. Compared to the centuries of pre-capitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the p…

You should study more history dude, that's a very broad point to be making for a period of 300 years against 5000 years that comes before, it's quite clear you haven't given the rest much thought. Stop being shallow, please. From yesterday: http://quillette.com/2016/02/15/the-unbearable-asymmetry-of-...

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#132

Post by arethuza » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 2:58 PM UTC

balfirevic wrote: post #119

arethuza wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My extremely humble suggestion is merely that acknowledging that a "free market/capitalistic" approach works best for many things and a "collective/socialistic" approach works for other things and stop pretending that its all of one or all of the other.

I think the main difference between the moderate supporters of free market vs. moderate supporters of socialistic approach (who are not pure libertarians or pure socialists) is the question of the default . "Socialist" would say: "It looks like all-around outcome might be better if this thing is regulated or restricted - so let's do that". Free market supported would say "let's not mess with people's freedom unless i…

I'm interested that you associate socialism with regulation and restriction - I guess as I'm from the UK I tend to associate it with service provision, particularly the NHS which is an avowedly socialist endeavor (and a pretty successful one at that).

A free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan

NB I agree about your point about the default - I would very much go with the assumption that the free market should be left to provide services unless there is a really good reason why the state might be good at it.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#133

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #105

nabla9 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's similar to the argument that luddites have always made and they have always been wrong. Industrial revolution resulted malnutrition and deterioration of absolute living standards. It took almost hundred years from the start of the industrial revolution before real wages started to grow. You can see it from the historical records. The height of enlisted men in Britain decreased. Luddites were mostly right. The…

> Industrial revolution resulted malnutrition and deterioration of absolute living standards. What? Capitalism did not create poverty or famine - it inherited it, and then swiftly solved it. The industrial revolution, if anything, obliterated it from the Western world. Compared to the centuries of pre-capitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the p…

What greatly reduced Western poverty was not capitalism, which made it worse, but the 19th century reaction against capitalism which made it so that the modern mixed economy replaced capitalism everywhere in the West. (The industrial revolution provided the capacity for reducing poverty, but under capitalism that capacity was directed elsewhere.)

Conversely, the move in the last few decades years back toward capitalism in the US has pretty much killed improvent in conditions for most of the working class, while radically accelerating gains for the narrow set of hypercapitalists at the top of the system.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#134

Post by Houshalter » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 3:00 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #56

World Bank estimates that global poverty fell to less than 10% for the first time in history [0]. Perhaps this wasn't solely caused by capitalism and globalization, but considering those two idea were probably the driving forces of the last century, I believe they are instrumental in reducing global poverty. I just don't buy the argument that absolute livings standards have always been increasing due to capitalism bu…

There is absolutely no law of economics that says that wages can't decrease. Wages are based on the supply and demand of labor, and there is no question that robots will affect that. If the wages fall below minimum wage, or even what it is feasible to survive on, then you get unemployment.

Most human jobs for most of history have been unskilled work. Things anyone could be trained to do, not requiring high intelligence, and involving physical or repetitive work. The industrial revolution moved unskilled laborers from farms to factories, but there were still jobs.

But with near future tech, there will be very few things, if anything, unskilled humans can do that robots can't. We are just starting to see AI good enough that it can match humans in visual recognition tasks - which 10 years ago was unthinkable, and progress incredibly slow. This level of AI has been the main limitation to robots. We've had decent robots, but AI wasn't good enough to use them for anything interesting. Now it is.

Soon robots will take over almost all existing jobs. From truck drivers to shelf stockers to the mail man.

Of course there will be jobs that AI can't do (for now.) E.g. computer programmers or doctors. But realistically, what percent of the population can actually do those jobs? What percent of unemployed truck drivers are actually going to be able to retrain as computer programmers?

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#135

Post by Houshalter » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 3:03 PM UTC

wcummings wrote: post #60

arbuge wrote: post #2

With all due respect to Stephen Hawking, whose expertise in theoretical physics is undoubted, how would he be in a position to "confirm" this?

He's in his "telling other fields they're wrong about everything phrase" http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2556

Are physicists not allowed to have opinions on things? Someone asked him a question what he thought about robots, and he answered. He's not going out of his way to claim economists are all wrong and you should listen to him instead. HN is doing that.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#136

Post by ArkyBeagle » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 3:04 PM UTC

branchless wrote: post #103

nabla9 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's similar to the argument that luddites have always made and they have always been wrong. Industrial revolution resulted malnutrition and deterioration of absolute living standards. It took almost hundred years from the start of the industrial revolution before real wages started to grow. You can see it from the historical records. The height of enlisted men in Britain decreased. Luddites were mostly right. The…

The industrial revolution needs to be understood in the context of land enclosure laws. Workers had no choice. That is what allows employer exploitation: work for me or starve. This is why the USA had slavery - there was abundant land. In the UK the UK was the plantation with land enclosure. This is why now we feel exploited by "capitalism". Banks are flooding the world with fiat money as private debt primarily again…

The US inherited an existing slave regime from the Caribbean. It entailed exactly the same cognitive dissonance required of soldiers in the British Empire as described by Orwell in "Burmese Days". So it looks Mercantilist to me.

I don't hold that debt is inherent to what we consider capitalism. I run the risk of a "no true Scotsman" fallacy with this, but debt is something we have because of path dependence, not because it's shown to be inevitable or optimal.

The fact that debt cannot be easily retired indicates that we haven't finished this as an institution. At the level of a debt holder, of course you can't do this. At the level of a general person living in society, the un-retire-ability of debt creates a common, sort-of pubic goods problem because it slows growth.

Classical and pre-Classical societies held debt jubilees. Could we? I don't know.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#137

Post by mjfl » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

kolbe wrote: post #22

mjfl wrote: post #14

I've always found it ironic that these types of posts are popular on a news board for a venture capital group, arguably the pinnacle of capitalism. I see no reason why robots couldn't kickstart new REITs: Robot Estate Investment Trusts, that are open to investment from the middle class and others. I see no reason why they would be "hoarded" by: "the big banks", the "1%", and other boogeyman simply because they can af…

If you have a robust criticism of Piketty, then I'd rather you present that. You're going out on quite a limb calling the greatest living physicist "niave" while he's parroting one of the most highly-regarded economists, and your support for that insult thus far is rather flimsy.

The article makes no mention of Piketty. It does however mention the "new Dark Ages of modern Feudalism" and that societies "are still living inside the 'Matrix' of this culture" which is naive hyperbole; my reference was to the article not Professor Hawking. However, being a skilled physicist means nothing about one's understanding of economics, and any physicist could tell you this. It is very dangerous to just take someone's extrapolations as truth because they are "smart".

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#138

Post by alanwatts » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

asift wrote: post #84

saulrh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. As a demonstration, compare our current production situation to the production situation as of, I don't know, a thousand years ago. It used to be the case that 90% or more of the population was dedicated to food production. Right now, something like 2% of the population is dedicated to food production. By their standards, we've got machines producing everything we need.

>By their standards, we've got machines producing everything we need. Except we don't live by their standards -- we live by our standards. And even if they had lived to see today, their standards would have immediately readjusted to want more. That's why it's ridiculous to assume we will ever have "everything we need".

>And even if they had lived to see today, their standards would have immediately readjusted to want more.

This is not true of many tribal or "uncivilized" cultures. Conspicuous consumption, luxury, and economic advantage/inequality as moral value systems are taboo for close knit tribal communities.

>Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we didn't have any delinquents. Without a prison, there can't be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white man arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.

-Lame Deer

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#139

Post by Houshalter » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #29

Houshalter wrote: post #13

Hawking does believe that AI will be a danger to humanity long term. The short term problems caused by near future robots is a different subject. Capitalism isn't inherently the problem. We could have capitalism and tax capital owners at a high rate, and distribute the wealth much more evenly. It's possible everyone could become capital owners and it would be normal to live off interest instead of work. Like owning t…

It would be very hard to implement a capitalism with even distribution. By nature, this system leads to capital accumulation. Since no capital is infinite, accumulation in one place means removing it from somewhere else. So you need mechanisms to always redistribute the capital to avoid this problem and balance the system. But capitalists will battle these machanisms to gain efficiency, and you will be in a rate race…

Many countries have successfully implemented high taxes. Even the US had very high taxes at one time. Although there was lots of tax evasion, the distribution of wealth was much more even and CEOs were paid much less than they are today. A basic income is totally possible and would vastly level the distribution of wealth.

Re: Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots

#140

Post by branchless » Tue, Mar 01, 2016, 3:09 PM UTC

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #123

branchless wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main problem is workers lacked choice due to access to alternative means of employment due to land enclosure laws. Had they been able to choose between say farming and working 12 hour shifts in bad conditions they would have looked at the risk/reward. As it was the choice was work or starve. Wages are therefore set at subsistence levels rather than at the floor set by the alternative. Land enclosure creat…

Would that be a capitalistic move to suppress land prices?

Land value tax. It's actually extremely capitalistic in my opinion. It trims the fat of speculators, forces people to use land effectively or pay the price and in general cuts out dynastic wasters.

http://www.landvaluetax.org/what-is-lvt/

Can't reply to you - one of the mods has disabled my ability to post (haven't posted in an hour and get "you're submitting too fast").

Or perhaps the thread has been closed down. Who knows.