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The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#61

Post by zigzigzag »

fsloth wrote: post #19
formula1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry, I don't understand your point in the historical context. Original labour conditions in factories were horrible. The conditions did not improve through economic rationalization but because society recognized it as wrong and forced factory owners to employ better working conditions.

Working conditions for programmers though have become amazingly good without unions or government intervention, just through competition for workers. See the perk inflation in Silicon Valley in the Google years, or just wage inflation in general.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#62

Post by oli5679 »

cousin_it wrote: post #6

Simon 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…

You've got the 1st order effects completely right, but there would be several second-order effects that would undermine this result.

(1) There would be a fall in non-skilled wages, increasing demand for non-skilled labour output.

(2) The reduction in marginal costs would increase supply of the good and reduce its price.

(3) The increased profits earned by the firm/robot inventor would increase demand or saving/consumption of other goods.

(4) The change in relative wages would encourage workers to retrain and switch industries.

In 1850, 60%+ of the American labour force were farmers and over the next 100 years their jobs were automated out of existence by range of more efficient 'robots'. This was no-doubt harmful for many specific farm labourers, but didn't 'screw over the economy'.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#63

Post by aninhumer »

cousin_it wrote: post #6

Simon 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…

You're not factoring in the utility created by freeing up the worker to enjoy themselves. They're consuming the same amount of resources, but they're much happier as well.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#64

Post by cousin_it »

grondilu wrote: post #53
cousin_it wrote: post #6

Simon 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…

> Unless you're willing to kill the worker Talk about black and white reasoning. The loss of his job is supposed to reduce his income, making him poorer, thus forcing him to consume less resources. But you're right in the sense that being poor increases chances of dying, thus contributing to solving the problem of dealing with useless workforce.

> Imagine a worker, earning the bare minimum to survive

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#65

Post by cousin_it »

aninhumer wrote: post #63
cousin_it wrote: post #6

Simon 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…

You're not factoring in the utility created by freeing up the worker to enjoy themselves. They're consuming the same amount of resources, but they're much happier as well.

Yeah, that's a good point. Though work could be both positive and negative utility-wise. I guess that depends on the job.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#67

Post by tarpherder »

cousin_it wrote: post #12
ppod wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't think about money, that only confuses things. Think about resources instead. Imagine that the worker burns oil to survive, and the robot also burns oil to function. Now replacing the worker with the robot makes the economy burn twice as much oil for the same amount of production (assuming the worker goes on welfare). If you think in terms of money and pockets, the picture will be more complicated, but the end r…

But doesn't this rest on the assumption that a working worker uses the exact same amount of oil as a worker not working? I don't think that assumption always true. Or am I missing something?

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#68

Post by [deleted] »

aninhumer wrote: post #63
cousin_it wrote: post #6

Simon 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…

You're not factoring in the utility created by freeing up the worker to enjoy themselves. They're consuming the same amount of resources, but they're much happier as well.

[deleted]

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#69

Post by formula1 »

zigzigzag wrote: post #61
fsloth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't understand your point in the historical context. Original labour conditions in factories were horrible. The conditions did not improve through economic rationalization but because society recognized it as wrong and forced factory owners to employ better working conditions.

Working conditions for programmers though have become amazingly good without unions or government intervention, just through competition for workers. See the perk inflation in Silicon Valley in the Google years, or just wage inflation in general.

Thats a supply and demand issue though. If disney has taught us anything its that an entire IT team can be replaced by H1-B. Silicon Valley tends to hire mit grads or savants. As those skills become more prevelent however, the demand for those individuals will be driven down. Right now a very small portion of the world cam program and even smaller are good at it. If it becomes more common though, these good wages will no longer be necessary

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#70

Post by usrusr »

cousin_it wrote: post #43
usrusr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more for the huge but reliably fruitless pile of good arguments for an unconditional basic income: with an UBI, it becomes possible for the worker to outprice the robot even at a rate below the survival minimum. E.g. to consume 1.5x resources total compared to bare survival, which would still be less than the nearly 2x of unemployed+robot. (edit:typo)

I guess it's more of an argument for a universal wage subsidy, but I'd be happy with UBI as well.

A sufficiently low UBI (survival, not comfortable survival with all kinds of nice-to-haves) would be wage subsidy (or microentrepreneurship subsidy, or subsistence farming subsidy) in all but the most extreme cases of zealous frugality combined with a heavy disinclination to work. Excess money beyond survival is a very strong incentive, much stronger at least than replacing survival level welfare with survival level earning, which is what existing systems routinely expect to happen.
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