The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
washingtonpost.com
The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
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Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#2What if people with jobs worked less ?
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#3What if people with jobs worked less ?
They will be paid less. Ultimately a company hire more people and it's harder to havve more workers for the same amount of work.
In france we have a 35h per week system, it's a basis but it's not really ideal either, many companies need to use "heure supplementaires" but they cost more.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#4Another one of these articles. It's almost like there is a robot somewhere writing them...
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#5What if people with jobs worked less ?
1) Why would you pay them the same for less work?
2) Once a machine can do the job, why would you hire a human at all?
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#6Simon Funk [1] makes a great point that in a mixed capitalist/welfare state, automation decreases efficiency.
Imagine a worker, earning the bare minimum to survive, who gets replaced by a robot with slightly lower operating cost. Now the robot is consuming slightly fewer resources that the worker would have, but the worker doesn't stop consuming resources in turn! Unless you're willing to kill the worker, he goes on welfare instead, and the economy as a whole is burning almost 2x more resources. Sure, the employer is spending slightly less, while screwing over the economy via prisoner's dilemma logic.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#7What if people with jobs worked less ?
You think through the eyes of idealism. Consider this
You are the owner of a fortune 500 company
You need to hire enough people to fullfill 1600 hours a day, 14 days per paycheck.
You want to hire the people as cheaply as possible.
If the individual knows they only have to work 20 hrs per week to survive, they have the power to negotiate. If the individual believes that they have to work two jobs for 60 hrs per week to survive, the company has the power to negotiate.
Why would you pay more money for same value and less negotiation power?
In your ideal world there are enough starving/superficial/ambitious people that you can pay pennies for exponential growth.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#8It appears like the logical conclusion of capitalism: the majority of people being made redundant due to AI/automation, and a small handful of corporations basically ruling the world.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#9My current theory is that this “automation bomb” won't really happen in the sense that 5 million Truckers are going to get laid off all of a sudden. Especially in the case of Truckers the average age is getting higher and higher every year because Millennials have said that is not a job they want.
So my theory is that as Baby Boomer/Early Gen Xers retire automation will step in and fill the employment gap. So there won't massive amounts of laid off Truckers sitting around. It will be under-employed Millennials, which is the same issue we have now.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#10Simon Funk [1] makes a great point that in a mixed capitalist/welfare state, automation decreases efficiency. Imagine a worker, earning the bare minimum to survive, who gets replaced by a robot with slightly lower operating cost. Now the robot is consuming slightly fewer resources that the worker would have, but the worker doesn't stop consuming resources in turn! Unless you're willing to kill the worker, he goes on…
Doesn't all of the money that was going into the operating cost of the robot still end up in human pockets? Instead of going to the worker it goes to robot developers, robot maintainers, and energy companies.
Then the argument it increases inequality, but that's been the case since industrial machinery happened, as Piketty showed.