101–110 of 245 posts
* They require high tech manufacturing to maintain
* They require a power source (electrical, hydraulic, etc)
Humans while not maintenance free... or power source free (food is a powersource) don't require a ton of technology to get working. While the quality is probably not as good as a robot due to an inability to be perfectly consistent it can be good enough.
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…
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.
Earlier 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 :-(
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/consum…
I hear that argument all the time, but I wonder if it takes into account the ever increasing pace of technological advancement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/robo…
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…
I fail to see how it's the employer screwing anyone over. Should automation be outlawed? What kinds of automation? It's a problem that society needs to deal with, sure, and some of that might involve some regulation of automation, or some social support for manual jobs, but there's nothing inherently immoral about automation. If a company reduces it's work force through automation there's nothing immoral about that.…
I would look to the automation in scheduling in the service sector over the last couple decades for a pretty clear example of employers screwing over labor. Sure, you can make a good argument, as you do, that it's probably more amoral than immoral and the inevitable result of a race condition among the competition. But it's hard not to read articles like these articles in the New York Times[0][1][2][3] and not feel like employees are getting screwed pretty hard and that it's only the plausible deniability that the appeal to market forces offers that allows executives in these organization and politicians in the communities where these people live not to see the pernicious effects of their policies.
I know some politicians have begun to take note and offer some sympathy and protections.[4] But I think that now that full automation is gaining more steam, finding that balanced and sustainable solution most of us would probably like to see is only going to get harder. In the meantime, we're seeing in this election very clearly how the some (many?) of the displaced have decided to articulate their solution to the problem.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/starbucks-w... [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/business/late-to-bed-early... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/opinion/manipulating-the-w... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/business/starbucks-falls-s... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/business/retailers-scrutin...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the existence of jobs you could quickly retrain to is an eternal law of nature :-(
I think if you're going to reject 200 years of historical trends you ought to have a pretty good justification for why this time it's different.
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…
I fail to see how it's the employer screwing anyone over. Should automation be outlawed? What kinds of automation? It's a problem that society needs to deal with, sure, and some of that might involve some regulation of automation, or some social support for manual jobs, but there's nothing inherently immoral about automation. If a company reduces it's work force through automation there's nothing immoral about that.…
No, that's just what French employers like to whinge about the most in the business press.
French labour laws are unique to France. France isn't the only country in Europe suffering from economic malaise - most of them are. The unifying feature is EU budgetary rules - austerity - not the fact that French employers can't use the threat of firing as a terror tactic against their workers.
Earlier 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…
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'. I hear that argument all the time, but I wonder if it takes into account the ever increasing pace of technological advancement.
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…
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…
what an incredible argument to make.