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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

#211

Post by yummyfajitas »

prostoalex wrote: post #209
yummyfajitas wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 This did not seem to work for Soviet Union (and its reluctant allies), and market realities still exposed themselves - if you wanted to hire a government plumber, repairman, electr…

The Soviet Union had only this system, nothing else. I'm proposing is using this kind of a system to provide government services (e.g. filling in potholes) in return for money we are already spending.

In the Soviet Union, there was no private sector. I'm proposing no restrictions on the private sector - in fact, one explicit goal of this system is to make government dependence less pleasant (you need to go out into the national park and build trails rather than sitting at home playing video games) so that more people enter the private sector.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#212

Post by dragonwriter »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #181
auggierose wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bot…

I didn't put words in your mouth. I explicitly said that was just the only thing I could come up with to fill in the blanks, and I explicitly asked for you to clarify. So again, here's the concrete question. It's a positive question about the world, not a normative question about what you think should happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_statement#Positive_st... Suppose we implement my scheme and people who…

A "positive question" about "objectively bad" is a oxymoron. "Bad" is inherently subjective and, always a normative rather than positive issue.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#213

Post by johngalt »

burkaman wrote: post #192
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.

Even if this time isn't different, "luddites of every generation" are not always wrong about short term effects. It's not acceptable to say "most people without college educations are probably going to be screwed over, but it should all work out eventually". In the past, technological advancement has changed jobs rather than eliminating them, but life also sucked for most workers in the past. Basically what I mean is…

It is true that in some cases there are short term negatives for a small group of people within a specific trade. In exchange there are large benefits to society as a whole. Large enough to outweigh even the small groups inconvenience. I.E. I would rather be a permanently unemployed dock worker today, than a gainfully employed dock worker in 1900.

There is certainly an argument to be made regarding the pace of change, and retraining/educational opportunities. But the automation driven job-pocalypse just isn't going to happen.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#214

Post by prostoalex »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #211
prostoalex wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This did not seem to work for Soviet Union (and its reluctant allies), and market realities still exposed themselves - if you wanted to hire a government plumber, repairman, electr…

The Soviet Union had only this system, nothing else. I'm proposing is using this kind of a system to provide government services (e.g. filling in potholes) in return for money we are already spending . In the Soviet Union, there was no private sector. I'm proposing no restrictions on the private sector - in fact, one explicit goal of this system is to make government dependence less pleasant (you need to go out into…

In this dual system what happens to the government-run pothole-filling entity (and its employees) when it's outbid by a private pothole-filling contractor on most/all jobs?

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#215

Post by dragonwriter »

prostoalex wrote: post #214
yummyfajitas wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviet Union had only this system, nothing else. I'm proposing is using this kind of a system to provide government services (e.g. filling in potholes) in return for money we are already spending . In the Soviet Union, there was no private sector. I'm proposing no restrictions on the private sector - in fact, one explicit goal of this system is to make government dependence less pleasant (you need to go out into…

In this dual system what happens to the government-run pothole-filling entity (and its employees) when it's outbid by a private pothole-filling contractor on most/all jobs?

I think the idea is that the jobs the government entity does are government-demanded jobs, and that private entities won't be given a chance to bid on them; they'll be reserved to the government and the pool of people it keeps out of regular work by reserving work for the command segment of the economy.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#216

Post by yummyfajitas »

dragonwriter wrote: post #212
yummyfajitas wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't put words in your mouth. I explicitly said that was just the only thing I could come up with to fill in the blanks, and I explicitly asked for you to clarify. So again, here's the concrete question. It's a positive question about the world, not a normative question about what you think should happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_statement#Positive_st... Suppose we implement my scheme and people who…

A "positive question" about "objectively bad" is a oxymoron. "Bad" is inherently subjective and, always a normative rather than positive issue.

True. A better way to phrase it would have been "are there any objectively measurable things that happen to the children which are widely perceived to be bad?"

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#217

Post by CaptSpify »

johngalt wrote: post #210
CaptSpify wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The video is a well articulated argument, but there are two large gaps in reasoning that are common with this line of thought. Grey ignores the idea that technology also allows for normal people to do jobs that used to require highly skilled specialists. A big part of this is so called 'brain' labor. A banker before computers had to have amortization tables manually calculated. Now the personal banker who does your H…

> Grey ignores the idea that technology also allows for normal people to do jobs that used to require highly skilled specialists.

Computers are much better at highly specialized jobs than people are. And the amount of things they are not good at is slimming down all the time.

> If Watson is doing diagnosis, that means that more people with less training can be effective 'doctors'.

And it'll eventually improve to the point that we won't need 'doctors'. It'll get to the point that your average person can be their own 'doctor', because most of the work is shelled out to a computer.

> Yet the number of people employed overall in transportation went up not down.

Because even with more automated, cheaper shipping, we still had jobs that robots couldn't do. But more of those jobs are disappearing every day.

I think your logic is skipping over the fact that computers don't have hard limits like humans do. If a computer can't do something, just give it a handful of engineers, and some time, and it'll eventually be able to do that. Once a computer gets better at a task than humans, there's no reason to ever go back to humans. It's a one way street.

Sure, computers can't do everything we do now, but they will. It's only a matter of time.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#218

Post by prostoalex »

dragonwriter wrote: post #215
prostoalex wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this dual system what happens to the government-run pothole-filling entity (and its employees) when it's outbid by a private pothole-filling contractor on most/all jobs?

I think the idea is that the jobs the government entity does are government-demanded jobs, and that private entities won't be given a chance to bid on them; they'll be reserved to the government and the pool of people it keeps out of regular work by reserving work for the command segment of the economy.

Right, if one introduces monopolies on certain job sectors, it's not a dual system, it's two parallel systems.

There are some short-term issues as far as performance and accountability for those hired into such monopolies, as well as aynrandian incumbency protection, such as rejecting light bulbs as too many are employed in the candle-making sector.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#219

Post by yummyfajitas »

prostoalex wrote: post #214
yummyfajitas wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviet Union had only this system, nothing else. I'm proposing is using this kind of a system to provide government services (e.g. filling in potholes) in return for money we are already spending . In the Soviet Union, there was no private sector. I'm proposing no restrictions on the private sector - in fact, one explicit goal of this system is to make government dependence less pleasant (you need to go out into…

In this dual system what happens to the government-run pothole-filling entity (and its employees) when it's outbid by a private pothole-filling contractor on most/all jobs?

Then the private pothole filling entity gets the contract, and the government directs it's dependents to do something else.

But it'll actually be pretty hard for the private sector to compete on any task requiring unskilled labor. The government gets labor at nearly zero marginal cost since it would be paying those people even if it didn't put them to work.

Again, literally the only thing I'm proposing is that instead of giving people money NOT to work, we instead give them money to work. I'm not proposing communism or slave labor.

Re: The brave new world of robots and lost jobs

#220

Post by prostoalex »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #219
prostoalex wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this dual system what happens to the government-run pothole-filling entity (and its employees) when it's outbid by a private pothole-filling contractor on most/all jobs?

Then the private pothole filling entity gets the contract, and the government directs it's dependents to do something else. But it'll actually be pretty hard for the private sector to compete on any task requiring unskilled labor. The government gets labor at nearly zero marginal cost since it would be paying those people even if it didn't put them to work. Again, literally the only thing I'm proposing is that instea…

> The government gets labor at nearly zero marginal cost since it would be paying those people even if it didn't put them to work.

The motivation for the overseers is clear. The worker bees have two choices - work hard (and get paid) versus do nothing (and get paid). Why would the workers go for the former versus the latter?

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