The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
91–100 of 245 posts
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#92Earlier 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.
Businesses have been doing everything in their power to reduce the cost of programmers. Offshoring, lobbying the H1B system, Agile, get everyone to code initiatives, overly broad non-competes, etc. One day they will get it, but they haven't figured it out yet.
Imagine how much programmers would make if they were unionized. I would imagine at least double.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#93Simon 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…
If the worker now gets to stay at home and pursue a hobby they enjoy, while the economy is still producing the same amount of goods, isn't that a net win? The problem is (a) people feel bad about being on welfare, and (b) we stop paying welfare again the moment that worker makes any money, creating a disincentive to engage in any form of small scale productive activity.
People feel bad about being on welfare because they want to work. They want to be productive. They want to have a purpose.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it's more of an argument for a universal wage subsidy, but I'd be happy with UBI as well.
I've been thinking about UBI a lot. Who's going to pay for it? Certainly not the big tech companies. They barely pay any taxes now, and they're the ones who stand to gain the most with automation.
Don't forget that if nobody gets paid then they can't consume all the wonderful output the robots produce.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#95[deleted]
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#96"Job insecurity is a central theme of the 2016 campaign, fueling popular anger about trade deals and immigration. But economists warn that much bigger job losses are ahead in the United States — driven not by foreign competition but by advancing technology."
Technology in and of itself destroys and creates jobs and it will keep doing so until all human wants and needs are satisfied (i.e. never). While automation of manual farm work in the 19th/20th century eliminated farming jobs - which accounted for a huge majority of jobs; it didn't eliminate jobs.
The main thrust of this argument isn't even This Time It's Different, because reasons, it's just "pay no attention to the history of automation".
Why would David Ignatius lie about this? Because the popular anger about trade deals isn't misplaced at all. It's absolutely accurate. That is what is driving job losses, income losses and poverty - not technology.
The rhetoric from 'elite' economists about the robotjobpocaplyse is simply an instance of the 1% trying to dodge pitchforks.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
>2) Once a machine can do the job, why would you hire a human at all? Because we need a point in our lives, otherwise we will make up some gods and start killing each other. Jobs keep us busy, keep revolts down. Most frustrated and aggressive people are those without jobs and daily schedules.
True in theory, but Spain has been in a state of mass unemployment (>20% unemployment rate, >40% youth unemployment rate) since 2010, and it still is among the top 25 safest countries in the world ( http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/safest-countries-in-the-w... ). Portugal has been over 13% unemployment rate since 2011, and it's the 5th country in the world by that same index.
I would imagine they have much better social safety nets than in the US. In the US, if you are unable to work, for whatever reason, you are pretty much on your own.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the original argument assumes that the welfare is equivalent to their salary (otherwise they'd be consuming less resources), so yes they'd probably be happier.
That assumes that all the worker cares about is money. However, not having a job has psychological consequences, and the chances for being able to switch to another job are reduced dramatically the longer one is unemployed. Humans are more concerned about their outlook than their current condition, and the outlook for the unemployed worker is worse than for the employed one.
If the person knows they will reliably receive the same salary as when they were working, their outlook is at least as good as it was before. And should they wish to improve it, they have plenty of time to explore ways to do so.
And certainly people want to feel valued, but there are far better ways to achieve this than doing pointless repetitive work, and not all of them require employment.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#99Simon 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…
I think the counterargument here is that if you don't need to move humans to work and back home again every day, and if you don't need to optimize workplace conditions for humans - by providing creature comforts and safety equipment - your unemployed human is using much less resources than a working human, and the robot is also using much less resources than a working human, so the sum of unemployed human + working r…
We the unemployed are just warehoused at home? In that case, they consume less resources from lack of commuting, but they still eat and do everything else they would have.
Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/consum…
I don't think the existence of jobs you could quickly retrain to is an eternal law of nature :-(
No, but at the moment there are many such jobs. Maid, cook, child care, a significant amount of construction labor, etc.
I blogged about this a while back. Until robots do all the jobs that are actually done in India (e.g. robot cooks, robot maids, robot cigarette walas), there still exist jobs people can do. Americans just refuse to do them, since it's easier to not work.
https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou...
That may happen one day, but at the moment we have a scarcity of labor rather than a surplus.