Earlier quoted context omitted.
inequality is rising because some people are simply more skilled than others.
what research can you cite supporting this hypothesis?
Rothbard, Hayek, Hoppe, et al.
Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
171–180 of 233 posts
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
If things worked out according to the rosiest predictions, that would raise what classical economists called the "margin of production" and would thus raise wages for as long as there is freely available land of sufficient quality. Although, you'd be surprised how quickly a commons can be enclosed. Yet, given the harshness and distances in space, and the fact that land generally obtains value by proximity to other st…
> as long as there is freely available land of sufficient quality For any reasonable near-term (centuries scale) prospect, there are no serious space or material constraints to outer space. Quality is a different subject, I want to get into that. > Yet, given the harshness and distances in space, and the fact that land generally obtains value by proximity to other stores of human-produced value Density of development…
It hasn't been done because it's uneconomic with current technology.
Space mining is a nice idea with no practical road map. You can't just send tools into space, aim them at the nearest asteroid, and start drilling. You certainly can't expect to start building viable habitats yet.
The industrial revolution was incremental. A steam engine wasn't a completely new thing, it was just an improved source of power for existing technologies like spinning. Mechanisation could proceed gradually in a relatively comfortable environment with plenty of natural resources.
Not so in space. The problems - energy generation, mining, refining, distribution, assembly, sustainable life support and/or control (and probably defence) - have to be solved all at once, or you get nothing.
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
inequality is rising because some people are simply more skilled than others.
"Some people are more skilled than others, therefore inequality exists" - sure. But why would that predict _rising_ inequality?
because people continue to live. those skilled in making money make more money, those not - lose more money.
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
That behaviour describes my biggest pet peeve with banks. I don't want product offers from you. You take my money, make money with it, and pay me interest (a whole < 1%). That's our relationship, fuck off with your "credit card protection free trial period".
That "credit card protection free trial period" is how they're making money.
originally they made money by the margin between the profit they make on wise investments and the amount they pay in interest for the privilege of investing money for them. those days are long gone.
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But, like, there's no massive discontinuity in how likely people are to employ a cleaner (is there)? I'd expect that distribution to be a bell curve like anything else Even if it was a bell curve (and I see no reason why reality ought to be that neat), there's no reason to suppose it doesn't just lead to slightly cleaner houses rather than fewer maids. > You already mentioned Roombas, and I mentioned LaundryBot Room…
> there's no reason to suppose it doesn't just lead to slightly cleaner houses rather than fewer maids. If we assume people's willingness to hire a cleaner is a function of how dirty their house is (and how could it not be?) then the two are equivalent. The only way roombas could not be putting people out of work on the margin is if there's some sort of mysterious discontinuity, and why would we assume such a thing?
>If we assume people's willingness to hire a cleaner is a function of how dirty their house is (and how could it not be?)
Because:
a) lots and lots and lots of people clean their own house and maybe they're the ones buying the vast majority of the roombas, not people with maids.
b) just because your roomba cleans up your pet hair really well upstairs doesn't necessarily mean you will want your cleaner to stop coming on tuesdays.
c) tolerance for dirt to me seems like a textbook example of something that has a high demand elasticity
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
inequality is rising because some people are simply more skilled than others.
That could only be said with some certainty if we had equal opportunity. Most western societies are far off the mark in that regard.
i agree. free market capitalism should replace current corporatism. but that's currently impossible - there will always be lobbying and special treatments while the goverment is able to interfere with the market.
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Given the possibility of remote work, [...] urban centers. Even HN doesn't yet seem to be discussing the impact of coming VR/AR on people's geographic distribution. Perhaps it's still too low profile? Eye tracking; facial expression tracking (researchy); foveated rendering reducing GPU requirements; inexpensive laptops with discrete GPUs; HMDs with monitor-like angular resolution; inexpensive finger tracking (hopef…
I don't understand what problem VR/AR is solving in your hypothetical.
Not the OP, but I've been thinking about this a lot recently.
The problem is that telecommuting is currently very limited by technology. You can currently only transport your voice and a single video view, while collaborating over a single view from a monitor. You end up missing on very many of the modalities available in the real world.
But my vision of what work and study could be like with good VR is The Magic School Bus. Assume that every time you an your colleagues wanted to do work on any domain, you would be transported into a hi-fi all-senses-included representation of that domain, which provides a perfect sense of presence. That technology is still quite far away, but once we're there, it would be significantly better than just being in a room with them. And the world would be forever changed.
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand what problem VR/AR is solving in your hypothetical.
Not the OP, but I've been thinking about this a lot recently. The problem is that telecommuting is currently very limited by technology. You can currently only transport your voice and a single video view, while collaborating over a single view from a monitor. You end up missing on very many of the modalities available in the real world. But my vision of what work and study could be like with good VR is The Magic Sch…
so: constricted communication bandwidth?
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
This bullshit job argument has never made much sense to me, but I see the argument a lot. If companies care about maximizing productivity and profits, and given America's hyper-competitive economy and super-fickle stock market where the difference between meeting the earnings estimate versus missing it by a penny can make the difference between a stock being up 10% or down 10%, why would a company waste money on jobs…
To be fair, the stock market is bullshit. Its legalized professional gambling where some participants have way more information than others. The fact the vast majority of business exists to try to "win" the stock market game than provide real productive returns to the economy reaffirms the bullshit economics involved. IE, vast amounts of effort from major globalcorps is dedicated towards tax avoidance. You spend trem…
the whole point of capitalism is to align incentives s.t. when businesses act selfishly to "win" in the markets, they are producing real returns to the economy
Re: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
#180Production just requires land and labor. Capital is output from previous production used as input again, and it is nice to have but not strictly necessary for employment of labor. Labor can be applied whenever labor has access to land. So the question is why can't people just go to work? Grow their own food to feed themselves, if need be? The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming beca…
"The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming became illegal" Not completely true, see the Inclosure Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts It's not unique to England either, it's just well documented there. Generally speaking the process of removing subsistence hunters, herders and farmers off of land they have historically lived off takes place with violence - not because th…
>>The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming became illegal
>Not completely true, see the Inclosure Acts
I don't think that's disputing the parent's point. Seizing land isn't "banning farming" any more than repoing my car is "banning driving".
To respond to the general point: if yeoman farming were actually more productive per unit input, then even enclosure wouldn't be enough to stamp it out. Displaced farmers would still have been able to buy back the original land and continue: the new owners would see the offer price as being better than the capitalized returns they could make, and some bank would have seen the business plan and interest payments as being enough to merit a loan.