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The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

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Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#171

Post by zigzigzag »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #77
zigzigzag wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It depends on your definition of good. Programming is an office job with low customer interaction (most times), but on the other hand, you might be working quite a bit of overtime or be subjected to meeting after meeting. All without having a decent vacation or sick leave policy. I'd argue that such things like limits on workweeks, paid sick days that do not risk jobs, and 3-4 weeks off a year (mandatory!) would mean…

Perhaps this is a geographical problem. I've always had paid time off, sick time etc as a working programmer. But I have been working in Europe. I know Americans get less sick time and vacation time but I'm pretty sure it's more than nothing.

Being subject to too many meetings is a pain but most workers would hardly see it as a major quality of life issue.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#172

Post by yummyfajitas »

auggierose wrote: post #167
yummyfajitas wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is forced to do anything. Anyone who doesn't want a government job is free to refuse and make their own way in the world - in fact, that's the preferred option. If you are actually saying you don't want your children taken care of by someone doing it for the money (or prefer a person selling the "artisinal child care" persona), that's fine. Many wealthy people in the west can afford to hold out for such things…

It is a matter of how that job offer is set up. If the terms are "pick one of these 100 government jobs or we cut your benefits" then clearly the people you will get for that job will be different than your standard public school teacher, who is supposed to have studied for that job (at least that is how it is in Germany). IF on the other hand you establish child care as a proper job that people can take or leave, ju…

As I said repeatedly above, the basic job guarantee is just another job. It pays primarily in-kind benefits (i.e. rooms in govt dorms, govt cafeteria food, etc) and little money, and it's available to anyone who wants it. Also welfare is eliminated the day we create the basic job (or after some phase-in period, more realistically).

So basically yes, the government will pay for an army of child carers, an army of infrastructure fixers, an army of trash picker uppers, etc. It just won't pay very much and most of what it pays will be in-kind benefits rather than money (e.g. rooms in government dorms in low cost areas).

It's interesting that you are suggesting people who are currently on government benefits are disproportionately unsuitable for child care. Can you expand on this? My attempts to fill in the blanks here lead me to the idea that poor people are irresponsible and morally defective (e.g., they might ignore it when children start hitting each other with rocks), but I suspect that isn't a claim you'll endorse. Could you clarify in detail what you mean?

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#173

Post by zigzigzag »

Clubber wrote: post #92
zigzigzag wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd have to unionize globally though, and that'd be very hard. The incentives to undercut a unionised workforce are massive. Yes there's been some outsourcing but I also know many companies that are squeamish about remote work and insist on having local workers even in high cost localities. Unionised workforce and constant strikes would get rid of that squeamishness double quick time.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#174

Post by JMCQ87 »

iliketosleep wrote: post #8

It appears like the logical conclusion of capitalism: the majority of people being made redundant due to AI/automation, and a small handful of corporations basically ruling the world.

Depends on us if that's the end of history, or just a stage though. ;)

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#175

Post by trgn »

iliketosleep wrote: post #8

It appears like the logical conclusion of capitalism: the majority of people being made redundant due to AI/automation, and a small handful of corporations basically ruling the world.

Compare this to the logical conclusion of capitalism that Marx put forward 150 years ago. For him, capitalism creates an ever-growing proletariat, a majority of the population being transformed into a commodity; individuals become interchangeable, and are payed only enough to have their basic needs met. The proletariat as a whole was a necessary condition though. Their labor produced value, the surplus of which went to the owning class.

Your take is similar, but instead now people will actually become redundant. Not even producing value anymore.

Things did not exactly turn out the way Marx thought they would. I certainly hope your prediction won't either!

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#176

Post by CaptSpify »

johngalt wrote: post #166

Technology has been reducing the need for human labor since the invention of the plow. And yet we aren't all unemployed hunter-gatherers. You could argue that 'this time it's different', but you have to at least acknowledge that luddites of every generation have made similar claims and been wrong every time. Literally tried and proven wrong for centuries.

http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply

What is different this time, I think is that we're giving up our main advantage: Intelligence.

Humans have always been able to fall back on work no animal/machine can do, but we're running out of work that machines can't do.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#177

Post by auggierose »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #172
auggierose wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a matter of how that job offer is set up. If the terms are "pick one of these 100 government jobs or we cut your benefits" then clearly the people you will get for that job will be different than your standard public school teacher, who is supposed to have studied for that job (at least that is how it is in Germany). IF on the other hand you establish child care as a proper job that people can take or leave, ju…

As I said repeatedly above, the basic job guarantee is just another job. It pays primarily in-kind benefits (i.e. rooms in govt dorms, govt cafeteria food, etc) and little money, and it's available to anyone who wants it. Also welfare is eliminated the day we create the basic job (or after some phase-in period, more realistically). So basically yes, the government will pay for an army of child carers, an army of infr…

Please don't put words in my mouth I didn't say. It is a matter of motivation, you need people who are motivated to do a job and skilled enough to do it. YOU brought up the public school teacher as an example, and I like it. A child carer needs to be compensated with money, just as any other professional or teacher, because money means choice and power. A child carer should not be forced into a salary race to the bottom, and it is ridiculous to assume that a child carer would want to work just for food and a roof over his/her head. This is NOT a deal any responsible adult in my opinion should take, and somebody who takes that deal is per se disqualified to take care of my children.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#178

Post by imgabe »

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…

This only makes sense if the robot consumes as much resources as the human. I think a robot would consume far far less. Maybe 1% of what a human uses at most.

1. To build a robot you have to mine raw materials and refine them and assemble them and program them. This takes a while, but to build a human worker you need to feed, house, clothe and educate them for 18+ years.

2. The human can only reliably work 8 hours a day. During that time you need to provide ample overhead lighting, and heat or cool thousands or millions of cubic feet of air to a comfortable temperature (this alone takes a tremendous amount of energy). Outside of those 8 hours, the human consumes an entirely separate structure that also has to be lit and heated and cooled. Further, the human has to be fueled with food that has to be grown out of the ground or via livestock that has to be carefully tended.

The robot, on the other hand, can stay in one place it's entire life. Doesn't need much light or temperature control. It runs on electricity which can be easily generated compared to growing a cow or a field of corn. Eventually it may even be solar powered. Aside from that it will work 24 hours a day without complaint (with some occasional maintenance).

So, if you replace 100 humans with 100 robots, you might use the extra resources of 1 additional humans. Now, if out of those 100 humans even 1 of them does something productive that can't be done by a robot, you've got a net win. I think the resource consumption advantage is tilted heavily towards robots.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#179

Post by yummyfajitas »

PeterisP wrote: post #169
yummyfajitas wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India has lower income inequality than the US. Your hypothesis seems falsified. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

This measure of inequality is mostly influenced by the distance between the mean income and the largest earners (who constitute a huge portion of the total GDP), however, I still maintain that in India there is a much larger distance between the mean income and the lowest wages of simple laborers/maids/walas/etc than the first world. It seems that you are from India, can you give an anecdotal example of how large is…

I'm not from India but I spend a lot of time there. Most people don't have a full time maid. They have a maid who comes daily (or maybe 3x/week) and also works for others.

This is quite feasible economically in the US - suppose cleaning a home takes 2 hours and a maid accepts $10/hour. That's $20/day or $430/month (assuming 5x/week). So in the US you could get comparable levels of service for maybe $1000/month. It's just not feasible right now because maids cost a lot more than $10/hour.

A maid working 10 hours/day, 5 days/week would be earning $2150/month. For comparison, US GDP/capita works out to $4,400/month. (Mean wage/compensation is a bit lower than this.)

But you don't even need to look at money to determine this is feasible. You just need to count. Take the number of people sitting around on welfare/disability fraud/etc, multiply by the number of houses they could clean each day, and you can determine how many maids the US could have.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#180

Post by PeterisP »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #179
PeterisP wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This measure of inequality is mostly influenced by the distance between the mean income and the largest earners (who constitute a huge portion of the total GDP), however, I still maintain that in India there is a much larger distance between the mean income and the lowest wages of simple laborers/maids/walas/etc than the first world. It seems that you are from India, can you give an anecdotal example of how large is…

I'm not from India but I spend a lot of time there. Most people don't have a full time maid. They have a maid who comes daily (or maybe 3x/week) and also works for others. This is quite feasible economically in the US - suppose cleaning a home takes 2 hours and a maid accepts $10/hour. That's $20/day or $430/month (assuming 5x/week). So in the US you could get comparable levels of service for maybe $1000/month. It's…

The thing is, there really isn't a market for a huge number of maids when it costs $1000/month, and you can't really go below that because, as you say, $10/hour.. about the minimum wage in many places.

The middle class in USA definitelly can't afford to pay $12k/year (plus taxes!) for such a service. The most highly paid white collar professions would generally scoff at such an expense. At best, the top 1% could afford that, but they don't employ that much maids because there's not so many so rich people.

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