71–80 of 92 posts
The government’s job should be to keep an eye that gains are shared broadly enough, and ensure increased productivity doesn’t cause excess environmental harm. (If the government funds Robotics research, all citizens should share in the windfall)
"all citizens should share in the windfall" Maybe we all get assigned a robot as our "work" and we get the robot's pay.
The government’s job should be to keep an eye that gains are shared broadly enough, and ensure increased productivity doesn’t cause excess environmental harm. (If the government funds Robotics research, all citizens should share in the windfall)
Based on your comment I think you'll really enjoy this book - I'm about 75% through it. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/280466/the-value-of-everythi... The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato. One of the best economics books I've read in a very long time, well argued and not too heavy in Jargon. The thrust of the argument is that we've misconstrued value and thus don't properly account for all the activity in th…
There are lots of externalities (pollution) that are hard to measure.
We used to spend most of our people growing food. Then we got tractors and combines, and we could spend only 2% of our people growing food. We spent the newly-available people on factories - some to make tractors and combines, but more to make cars and dishwashers and tons of other things. It was an overall improvement to society - we could spend our people on more productive uses.
We need to do the same in this situation. We can automate factories. Great! We don't have to spend as many people making stuff. The trick is to find better things to spend our people on. If we can, those new things, being more useful to society than factory work, should also pay better than factory work.
But what are those "better" things? Aye, there's the rub...
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That's exactly the point. Humans rely on jobs, what happens when robots take over?
Why do we assume that robots will replace all existing work, or that the jobs being automated won't be replaced by other forms of work or income that don't rely on jobs that can be automated? I think it's a bit sensationalist to assume that all work everywhere will be automated. Even if we get to the point where that happens, capitalism as we know it would crumble if there is literally only automated jobs and robots…
Exactly! What happens after capitalism?
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Another solution is to claw back mineral rights by taxing raw materials. You burn the sky, take the water, dig in the ground, that is something the citizens don’t get to use. You owe them. The thing I like about this (its not my model but it’s my favorite) is that it happens at the input side so it codifies the idea of Reduce Reuse Recycle by setting a base cost where it’s cheaper to recycle and purify than it is to…
I like this idea, as long as it extends to all land use. So, people renting from others are actually receiving a dividend from the landlord, for the utility of owning that land. I've read that land/material-based taxes instead of income-based could raise enough to fund a GBI, and be sort of organized like Alaska's oil fund.
The article talks about how globalization caused automation to replace millions of factory workers. Factory jobs, aren't the greatest, especially before the 1970s, and in many parts of the world, are still awful. Similarly, If we could replace every mining job with robots we'd remove a lot of human abuse in many parts of the world.
You’d also remove the way for lots of people to make a living. The unemployed only know that making a living in a lousy industry is better than not making any living at all.
How will humans gather resources after the 'job' method is automated?
Or will we even need to gather resources anymore and will be able to focus on art and scientific pursuits and advancing the human race?
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You’d also remove the way for lots of people to make a living. The unemployed only know that making a living in a lousy industry is better than not making any living at all.
You can say that about every efficiency ever invented.
Person comes home from a coalmine job, grumbling because there are rumors going around that the mine is going to buy a bunch of automatic conveyors and lay off half the miners. They come in through the basement entrance straight into the laundry room (people who've lived in coal country, you know how that works ;) ) and toss their grubby clothes directly into the washing machine. How are they gonna make ends meet if they get laid off, they wonder?
They do not for one second stop and consider that a scant hundred years ago, a person would have been the one doing that laundry the machine is doing right now.
Don't think of "employing" people, of making sure people have jobs. Instead, think of a society "spending" people. We used to spend most of our people growing food. Then we got tractors and combines, and we could spend only 2% of our people growing food. We spent the newly-available people on factories - some to make tractors and combines, but more to make cars and dishwashers and tons of other things. It was an over…
Think of how advanced the human race could get if no one was starving and people's attention could be focused on science and art and building cool new technology to better the human race.
One day people will look back at how we live as extremely primitive.