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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

#111

Post by eli_gottlieb »

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…

I mean, just to point out, if the way to avoid a doubled usage of resources is to kill a guy, you can always kill the employer and sack the management.

Or to be less flippant, this kind of reasoning only makes sense if you assume that the split of revenues between the state, the worker, and the employer overwhelmingly favors the worker and the state. That doesn't seem like a situation in which the employer chooses to hire someone at all, actually, so I'd consider it somewhat unlikely.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#112

Post by leereeves »

cousin_it wrote: post #105
yummyfajitas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting. It seems like a big culprit is high cost of living, which makes many jobs no longer worthwhile. Any ideas why it's so much higher in the US than in India? Is it due to landlords?

Americans expect and demand a lifestyle most Indians only dream of.

For example, electric power consumption per capita is 765 kWh in India, 12,988 kWh in the USA. [1]

1: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#113

Post by eli_gottlieb »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #100
cousin_it wrote: post #73

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…

>That may happen one day, but at the moment we have a scarcity of labor rather than a surplus.

Then why have real wages dropped for much of the population, and why is the labor share of GDP at an all-time low?

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#114

Post by Broken_Hippo »

d4nt wrote: post #59
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…

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.

I do believe it is a win all around. It isn't just that folks will stay home, but it makes it easier to have a better educated population, easier to work fewer hours if you decide to work, easier to exercise and eat well and be healthy. All around, I think society will improve.

Some of the pro-basic income folks (and myself) believe that a basic income helps with both of these points. There isn't much stigma to getting welfare that everyone gets, though possibly the extra that those that need it get.

And since it doesn't stop, there isn't that sort of disincentive towards going to work as work simply enhances it - folks might actually be more inclined to work, albeit fewer total hours.

Even with current welfare systems, there are ways to minimize these things. Creating a tapering system so that folks are Always better off working, more trust in the welfare system itself, and not treating recipients like criminals or second-class citizens.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#115

Post by yummyfajitas »

cousin_it wrote: post #105
yummyfajitas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting. It seems like a big culprit is high cost of living, which makes many jobs no longer worthwhile. Any ideas why it's so much higher in the US than in India? Is it due to landlords?

I discuss in the article a bit. India is more capitalistic than the US, at least in this regard.

Their safety net is a job guarantee rather than the US's ragbag of free money programs (welfare, disability fraud [1], etc), so you don't get to enjoy a life of leisure under any circumstance. In the US, it's pretty easy to get free money and play video games all day.

Second, their regulatory structure doesn't destroy as many low skill jobs as ours does (e.g. in the US, a cigarette wala like Eric Garner gets executed, and the cops shut down many food trucks).

[1] NPR did an expose a while back on the massive levels of disability fraud in the US. Apparently it's now a shadow welfare system, significantly larger than actual welfare: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#116

Post by eli_gottlieb »

leereeves wrote: post #112
cousin_it wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. It seems like a big culprit is high cost of living, which makes many jobs no longer worthwhile. Any ideas why it's so much higher in the US than in India? Is it due to landlords?

Americans expect and demand a lifestyle most Indians only dream of. For example, electric power consumption per capita is 765 kWh in India, 12,988 kWh in the USA. [1] 1: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC

Admittedly, the vast majority of India is nowhere near as cold as the vast majority of America. Americans have to spend energy avoiding death by frost much of the year.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#117

Post by aninhumer »

sverige wrote: post #89
aninhumer wrote: post #79

Earlier 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.

I'm not sure that this widespread assumption on HN that most people would continue their education or pursue interesting hobbies if they had sufficient income to not work is correct. Most people would sit around the house, get high and watch the tube. Work provides much more than the goods produced and services rendered. For many or most, it also provides a sense of identity and purpose and well-being. When there's n…

I think the people sitting around the house will probably notice that they're not happy, and seek out other things to do. I think the main reason people on welfare don't currently do much is that they can't afford the alternatives. There are also class cultural differences that can make it difficult for them, but I think there are ways to address this.

More generally, I think in the absence of material problems, we will have many more resources freed up to address the problem of purposelessness. I do think it's easy to succumb to depression-inducing laziness in the absence of necessity to work (I have experienced this myself), but I think this is a psychological problem that should be addressed directly.

>while their children entertain themselves by hacking robot-driven trucks to make them crash into each other.

And then those children age in a world where they never have to stop being children.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#118

Post by TeMPOraL »

e40 wrote: post #99
TeMPOraL wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having to maintain human-comfortable conditions at workplaces consumes a lot of resources.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#119

Post by TeMPOraL »

unprepare wrote: post #110
TeMPOraL wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>That, and also resources are here to be burned for our comfort. what an incredible argument to make.

Why exactly? It's what we do, since we first tamed fire.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#120

Post by hamilyon2 »

The obvious solution is more labour-intensive non easily automatable jobs i.e. service economy. There is a limit of how much laptops and trucks economy wants. But there is no obvious limit in demand of quality services like education, health and leisure.

I want to be surrounded by caring people and care for others. That's natural.

Question is how to re-orient, re-train and re-educate people to both provide those services and consume them.

For each advertisement of yoga lessons and massage sessions I see hundreds of ads on new smartphone or car. That is ridiculous, because I need single car and smartphone, but could go to yoga and massage every day.

edit: typos

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