The brave new world of robots and lost jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#141

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #132

yummyfajitas wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, this is a non-sequitur. Market prices can go up or down while scarcity still exists. Scarcity is simply a situation where a lot of people want a good or service, but not all of them can have it. Secondly, your claims about market prices are not even directionally correct. Real wages have dropped because compensation has shifted from wages to benefits. (This effect is larger at the bottom, since non-wage…

If we're talking about economics, I'd say that a 'scarcity' which isn't pushing wages up isn't a scarcity worth thinking about. Money talks.

Compensation per hour is being pushed up. What's so special about taxable wages as opposed to non-taxable benefits?

If taxable wages are preferable to non-taxable benefits, should we eliminate the various laws (e.g. Obamacare, 401k) that push employers to provide benefits rather than wages?

Also, there are many market distortions that won't push wages up but will still create scarcity. For example, we could simply ban food vendors/cigarette walas/etc, or we could impose various occupational licensing rules that raise wages for some while lowering them for others. Why are those not worth thinking about?

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#142

Post by ohnomrbill » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

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…

Anyone can cook. Will people pay me a living wage to cook? Will that wage cover lost income from being on government programs? Does cooking (given the relative difficulty of becoming wealthy doing so) provide an income ceiling higher than getting paid via welfare/Social Security?

There is plenty of work to be done. It's just not paid work. How do you propose to coerce people to pay for this work?

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#143

Post by sverige » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

aninhumer wrote: post #117

sverige wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

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

That is a truly horrific thought.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#144

Post by Drakim » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 2:06 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #123

sverige wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People feel bad about being on welfare because they want to work. They want to be productive. They want to have a purpose.

beep beep I. am. a. person. I want... prooo ductive. I want... puur pose. I will. Take the orders. From a capital-supplier. To prooo duce economic vallll-ue. I. am. Totally. Not. a robot. beep beep /s Seriously, though? People want to be exploited because they need a wage-paying employer to give them purpose ? Then where are all the people who don't work for someone else getting this much-vaunted "purpose", eh? Whate…

Does humans have any value outside of what they can offer to corporations? Would there even be any point to keeping humans around?

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#145

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

ohnomrbill wrote: post #142

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…

Anyone can cook. Will people pay me a living wage to cook? Will that wage cover lost income from being on government programs? Does cooking (given the relative difficulty of becoming wealthy doing so) provide an income ceiling higher than getting paid via welfare/Social Security? There is plenty of work to be done. It's just not paid work. How do you propose to coerce people to pay for this work?

I propose to replace welfare/disability fraud/etc with a guarantee job (FDR style) that pays in-kind benefits. I.e., if you claim you can't find a job, the government will give you a job fixing our crumbling infrastructure, providing child care for working women, or similar things. In return you get a room in a government dormitory, a healthy meal from the government cafeteria, a government track suit, etc.

Now the "sit at home playing video games and get free money" choice has been removed. You'll still have a minimum standard of living, but you must contribute to the world rather than simply living a life of leisure. I.e. shared responsibility.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#146

Post by tarpherder » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

alanwatts wrote: post #133

_yosefk wrote: post #90

"If computers can be programmed to understand speech as well as humans do, 66 percent of jobs in finance and insurance could be replaced, the most recent report says." If computers can be programmed to understand speech as well as humans do, probably >99% of all jobs could be replaced, 'cause it's pretty close to passing the Turing test. I'm willing to get monthly payments from anyone who wants to bet until this happ…

The difference between your comparison is that automation of finance/insurance would be achieved purely by mathematical calculations performed by software, while the automation of many/most other jobs would require much more complex robotics.

I read the parent comment as; getting to the point where computers understand speech that well, is a far more difficult challenge than a large number of robotic challenges.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#147

Post by Drakim » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

sverige wrote: post #139

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

beep beep I. am. a. person. I want... prooo ductive. I want... puur pose. I will. Take the orders. From a capital-supplier. To prooo duce economic vallll-ue. I. am. Totally. Not. a robot. beep beep /s Seriously, though? People want to be exploited because they need a wage-paying employer to give them purpose ? Then where are all the people who don't work for someone else getting this much-vaunted "purpose", eh? Whate…

Work is exploitive only when you're not compensated adequately for it, or if you cannot leave that job voluntarily. And I assume that by "people who don't work for someone else," you are referring to people who still work rather than, say, landowners who collect rents whose main work is to go to the bank to make a deposit. People can be both ends and means and be quite content. Personally, I think there is too much e…

> People can be both ends and means and be quite content. Personally, I think there is too much emphasis on people being ends unto themselves in the current culture.

That's because society is really nothing but a lot of people working together in an alliance. If we didn't make people themselves the end they would have no reason to participate in society.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#148

Post by PeterisP » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 2:09 PM UTC

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…

The big issue with such a situation is that for the worker, there is no difference if they work or not, since they are anyway in both scenarios earning the bare minimum to survive - so in essence such a system is stating in practice that the value of that labor is already zero.

However, in a concept where the "bare minimum to survive" is unconditional, then the incentives of employer and employee become aligned with the true situation of economy, since the amount that the employer would be replacing by automation is equal to the amount that the employee is getting above that bare minimum, and the decision to automate this task or not becomes the same for a particular employer as for the whole economy.

Also, even for the classic welfare model, this argument fails in the normal case where there cannot be workers earning the bare minimum to survive, as there is a labor price floor, the minimum wage, which is supposed to be (and in any currently functioning welfare state, actually is) a "livable wage" that's strictly larger than the bare minimum to survive, and larger than the long-term benefits such a worker would receive.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#149

Post by klipt » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

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…

By that logic, society should have collapsed already. The combine harvester automated the work of millions of peasants-with-scythes, and that was decades ago.

And yet most people agree that society is better now that most of us aren't forced to spend all day scything the fields!

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#150

Post by fsloth » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

formula1 wrote: post #33

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.

Its slso possible they werent sustainable. Worker strikes snd unions will definitely put a hamper on your production. If people cant support children or they know a job is a death sentence, when an opening comes up due to a strike they may not be too eager to work

Yes, I trivialized a complex social evolution on my comment to make the point that labour conditions were not changed simply because it made sense economically in the factory owner's yearly budgeting. The main driving factor was recognition from all around that the labour conditions needed to change for ethical reasons, and the factory owners had to acquiesce to the demands of the society.