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Just own the damn robots

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Re: Just own the damn robots

#171

Post by CryptoPunk »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #162
Zanni wrote: post #161

What I never see mentioned in these types of articles is the rise of the service economy. There are some jobs that will never be automated because we prefer to deal with humans. Take food service for instance. No one wants to go to a high end steak house and have their wine poured and meal served by robots. Human interaction is part of the experience and part of the value. (At McDonald's, by contrast, the humans don'…

> What I never see mentioned in these types of articles is the rise of the service economy. There are some jobs that will never be automated because we prefer to deal with humans Mainly because percentage-wise there are so few of them, and they don't make up a significant enough portion of the economy to keep it afloat.

Customer-facing service jobs employ a huge number of people. In any case, there once was a time when white collar jobs were a tiny occupation category. There was even a time when manufacturing jobs were rare. The economy and composition of jobs changes with the abundance of resources.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#172

Post by bufordsharkley »

graeme wrote: post #132
bufordsharkley wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no surprise that we're seeing more and more anxiety coalesce around land: this is the classical economic expectation of what would happen as automated output starts to outperform labor, and capital can be automatically produced. When this happens, scarce natural resources (such as location) increase in value. Henry George saw this nearly 140 years ago, with his "Fool's Paradise" thought experiment.[0] As efficie…

Please don’t encourage the Toronto housing bubble. (Or Vancouver, OP is surely in one of the two) I’m sure Georgianism has its merits, but housing generally hasn’t been a great investment in most of north america, especially once maintenance costs are factored in. Meanwhile, Toronto and Vancouver are in the midst of a speculative housing mania. House prices have far outpaced rents. OP is correct not to buy. (Especial…

This is quite fair. No message to "put all your money in land!" was intended, and indeed we see many cases of localized manias, the galloping of irrational exuberance. Land bubbles come and go, but the underlying cause is the same. What's productive about bidding up the price of land, after all?

Re: Just own the damn robots

#173

Post by ianai »

Waterluvian wrote: post #98

Reads like this are slowly convincing me not to buy into the world of mortgages and debt and to just live the rest of my life paying for everything in cash. I tried to buy a house last year with my wife but the market exploded where I live and suddenly houses were 40% more expensive from last year. So we still rent, which makes me feel incomplete. Like I'm kind of failing my duty of bringing the Canadian Dream to my…

Don’t let some stereotype of supposed happiness keep you from the real thing. Further, remember cash is great. Keep that cash through to the next bubble burst and when all the prices tank pick up everything on clearance-level prices.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#174

Post by toast0 »

rtpg wrote: post #152
adrianN wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean that the technology hasn't progressed. Cheap labor from countries like China has made it less profitable to invest in automation.

it's also possible that we no longer have a lot of general technology imporvements that can be cost effective relative to just paying someone. We could probably build excellent robots to bring food from the kitchen to tables of a restaurant, but the capital costs are just not worth it relative to hiring wait staff (conveyor belt sushi nonwithstanding). Would it ever be worth it to Chili's to outfit a 40-table restaur…

I don't think Chili's is going to automate bringing the food to you any time soon, but they're probably considering putting kiosk tablets to order drinks and pay to save a few trips (I haven't been to a Chili's in a while, but these things are invading most of the chains I frequent).

McDonald's now has automated drink machines, mobile ordering and in select locations kiosk ordering (on giant touch screens). They've also experimented with call center handling of drive through ordering, so could be ready to potentially hand that over to voice recognition as well.

I think it's a long time before food service jobs are all automated away, but some of the jobs are going away. (McDonald's claims they plan to keep the same number of employees, and shift to provide more service in the seating area)

Re: Just own the damn robots

#175

Post by sametmax »

Zanni wrote: post #161

What I never see mentioned in these types of articles is the rise of the service economy. There are some jobs that will never be automated because we prefer to deal with humans. Take food service for instance. No one wants to go to a high end steak house and have their wine poured and meal served by robots. Human interaction is part of the experience and part of the value. (At McDonald's, by contrast, the humans don'…

I lived in some place in africa where you are required to have way more interactions for basic days to days activity. No phonebook. No map. No price or list of ingredients. When you want an info you have to ask.

Well, we got rid of those.

With a lot of modern services (social networks, online administration, food delivery) we are doing the same.

Robots will allow people to avoid people. And they will do it.

Why ? Because we created a society that requires to play a lot of games and people just want to be themselves​ without having to pay for it. They also don't want to pay for the unhappiness or inadequateness of others.

There will be a reverse tendency once people realize they need humans to be happy. But it won't start by that.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#176

Post by sdenton4 »

adventured wrote: post #7
pdog wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the proposed solution is to buy stocks of the U.S. technology giants: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

The largest market cap companies in a given decade, overwhelmingly tend to be under-performers in the following decade. It's a trend that has repeated decade after decade. Many of these types of companies - AMZN, NFLX, GOOGL, FB - have pulled a massive share of their future returns forward (which is what happened to Microsoft, stagnating its stock for ~15 years). In 2007 the largest companies were: Exxon, GE, Microso…

Oddly enough, you can observe the same phenomenon for fighter pilots! After an amazing run, pilots tend to give a mediocre performance.

Is it 'future value compression,' or just reversion to the mean?

Re: Just own the damn robots

#177

Post by ultraluminous »

adventured wrote: post #7
pdog wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the proposed solution is to buy stocks of the U.S. technology giants: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

The largest market cap companies in a given decade, overwhelmingly tend to be under-performers in the following decade. It's a trend that has repeated decade after decade. Many of these types of companies - AMZN, NFLX, GOOGL, FB - have pulled a massive share of their future returns forward (which is what happened to Microsoft, stagnating its stock for ~15 years). In 2007 the largest companies were: Exxon, GE, Microso…

Ironically (considering all the prognostication) one of the main examples you cite is factually incorrect.

which is what happened to Microsoft, stagnating its stock for ~15 years

Microsoft stock ticker - https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT

The longest "stagnant" period is directly after the dotcom bust and up to 2007. In that period the stock appreciated by ~10%. Over the following decade it appreciated by ~150%. Not quite the dramatic hockeystick growth curve startup folk like to see, but pretty reasonable for a company already 30 years old at that point. Either way, the quote above has no basis in reality.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#178

Post by BoiledCabbage »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #171
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I never see mentioned in these types of articles is the rise of the service economy. There are some jobs that will never be automated because we prefer to deal with humans Mainly because percentage-wise there are so few of them, and they don't make up a significant enough portion of the economy to keep it afloat.

Customer-facing service jobs employ a huge number of people. In any case, there once was a time when white collar jobs were a tiny occupation category. There was even a time when manufacturing jobs were rare. The economy and composition of jobs changes with the abundance of resources.

> Customer-facing service jobs employ a huge number of people

But irreplaceable ones aren't. Bank tellers, cashiers, bus drivers, firemen, card dealers, bar tenders... all can and will be replaced by automation and consumers won't care.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#179

Post by CryptoPunk »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #178
CryptoPunk wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer-facing service jobs employ a huge number of people. In any case, there once was a time when white collar jobs were a tiny occupation category. There was even a time when manufacturing jobs were rare. The economy and composition of jobs changes with the abundance of resources.

> Customer-facing service jobs employ a huge number of people But irreplaceable ones aren't. Bank tellers, cashiers, bus drivers, firemen, card dealers, bar tenders... all can and will be replaced by automation and consumers won't care.

Bartenders are totally irreplaceable. The non-social aspect of the job is easily automatable and has been for a long time, and the social aspect is contingent on human interaction.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#180

Post by ThomPete »

sien wrote: post #156
ThomPete wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't that it's been going on for a long time but the speed with which it is happening today. Furthermore, I don't think most people understand how little the tech sector is. Even in the Bay Area, it's only around 15-20% who actually work in tech. Most people aren't able to just relearn and adopt.

If it's happening so fast why is US unemployment low and productivity growth low?

95% of the jobs created since 2008 are temp jobs not actually jobs you can live of. A job is not just a job.
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