Moore's Law for Everything • Hacker News Board

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#351

Post by sudosysgen » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

bnralt wrote: post #296

darawk wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consider a case where person A builds widget X, and person B builds widget Y, and they trade with each other. Automation takes over, they lose their jobs. If they continue getting the widgets they used to trade for (which are now created automatically), they simply have the same wealth as before but more time. If they don't have the widgets, they're now detached from the new automated widgets both in production and…

Well, that's the point. If they're getting their goods from a robot, their needs are being met. If they're not, they could trade with person B.

Trade what to Person B?

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#352

Post by dkersten » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

riskable wrote: post #341

Swizec wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what are the people who aren't programmers or artists supposed to do? Keep the programmers and artists happy. You can make a lot more and better AAA games if 50% of your time isn’t spent on life chores.

> You can make a lot more and better AAA games if 50% of your time isn’t spent on life chores. That's what the robots are for! And they never complain, never need to sleep, and are always one software upgrade away from amazing new capabilities.

That, and human population is still growing, meaning there are more and more humans who need jobs, yet as robots improve, the types of jobs left for humans get fewer. At some point, the lines will cross. Maybe it won't be soon, but if population keeps growing and robots keep being able to do more jobs, then eventually it will happen.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#353

Post by jodrellblank » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #206

legulere wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP per capita also counts children. $48,000 for a family of four sounds perfectly fine to me.

These arguments always ignore the fact that the only reason $X GDP is generated is because people are incentivized. Children don’t produce, so someone else is producing for them. If you tell people they will get $12k no matter how hard they work, they won’t work. We’ve tried socialism.

> "We’ve tried socialism."

I don't remember from school the bit where Mr Socialism said "let the workers sieze the means of production so they can shutdown the means of production, because they are lazy and stupid". "define:Socialism"[1] - "Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively". NB. that it involves production, and is /not/ "Systems of social organization in which lazy people get paid for doing nothing".

> "If you tell people they will get $12k no matter how hard they work, they won’t work"

Have you never seen or heard of volunteers? There are countries where the unemployed get money, e.g. the UK, and yet most people still work. How does this fit into your claim?

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define%3Asocialism&ia=definition

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#354

Post by firethief » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 2:49 AM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #175

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horses aren't the center of the economy, though. It's fundamentally different. Horses might always want more and more things no matter how much they get. But they don't create demand in our economy, so we'll never know. No matter how much humans get, they'll always want more. And other humans will have to come up with ways to meet that demand. Sure - if we ever reach a time where the entire human race says "this is e…

I can't get myself to agree with this. Indeed, it's true, horses don't create demand, but neither do unemployed humans. Our economy isn't centred around humans, it's centred around capital. Unemployable humans are as useless to it as horses, as they can't exchange their labour with capital owners (or become capital owners themselves). Unemployable people might want more, but will they get more? No, they won't.

> Indeed, it's true, horses don't create demand, but neither do unemployed humans.

Unemployed humans don't create supply. Incomeless humans don't create demand.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#355

Post by Knufferlbert » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 2:51 AM UTC

prestigious wrote: post #344

It doesn’t take long for government to own everything if they take 2.5% every year.

That doesn't seem true. Picketey's (probably misspelled) "capital in the 21st century" has a compelling argument for exactly this kind of tax. And my realization that I can't see it implemented ever, is about as chilling to me as climate change in terms of a real existential threat that we as humans see coming but will be unable to stop, because it requires cooperation that seems impossible.

The basic argument is, I'm hoping I'm getting this right: The return of capital far outstrips return of labour, that difference (if above a certain percentage) is a transfer of wealth from labourers to the capitalists. Return of labour is basically GPD growth, return of capital is income from rent/investment/interest and all of that.

This increases inequality over time leads to destabilization of society, I'd argue you can see that in the USA quite well. And starts happening in rest of Europe more slowly (not quite as capitalistic as the USA but heading there nevertheless). Wealth building for the bottom 50% is extremely difficult (house prices for example)

2.5% is a significant percentage, but rate of return is around 5% or thereabouts, basically a 50% tax if you make the average and continue investing (i.e. it's presumably useful to society). Once you "sit on your money", it would reduce the wealth slowly (no longer useful to society). I.e. if you keep investing, the government will still have less wealth than the capitalists no matter how long you do it. It won't be as a significant increase in national budgets as one may assume.

Also, "government owning things", the idea is that that money is redistributed to the people via benefits (unemployment, education, health care, ubi etc).

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#356

Post by xyzelement » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 3:00 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #350

nindalf wrote: post #123

> We will discover new jobs–we always do after a technological revolution CGP grey put this well > Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries all these new mechanical muscles (cars etc) will make horses unnecessary. The other horse reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier - remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Rememb…

This is a very misleading metaphor. Horses were not workers. The were tools workers used. Farmers used horses to plow the fields. Transport workers used them to transport goods and people. As those workers got better tools to plow and transport, productivity increased, society got richer. There are also millions of old telegraphs, slide rules, and rotary phones "unemployed" across the world. The fate of these no long…

I think his logic holds.

The point is that we found new jobs for horses because there were areas where machines were inferior to them. Once machines could do everything that a horse could do (probably some mixture of load carrying and agility / endurance) we had no more work for them.

To bring the same logic to humans, in history machines freed up humans to do better work than before. Let's say what humans excel at is dexterity and thinking. Once machines are more dexterous and can think better than people, there's no more new jobs - because whatever jobs they would be, machines will be better qualified for.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#357

Post by thyrsus » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

R0b0t1 wrote: post #346

confidantlake wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2.5% tax doesn't mean country B is growing 2.5% faster. The 2.5% in country B could be sitting in a vault doing nothing or being spent on yachts. Conversely the 2.5% in country A is being invested in making the workforce more productive.

In general it is right to assume that free capital will be used as productively as possible.

Please provide evidence.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#358

Post by tshaddox » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 3:04 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #350

nindalf wrote: post #123

> We will discover new jobs–we always do after a technological revolution CGP grey put this well > Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries all these new mechanical muscles (cars etc) will make horses unnecessary. The other horse reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier - remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Rememb…

This is a very misleading metaphor. Horses were not workers. The were tools workers used. Farmers used horses to plow the fields. Transport workers used them to transport goods and people. As those workers got better tools to plow and transport, productivity increased, society got richer. There are also millions of old telegraphs, slide rules, and rotary phones "unemployed" across the world. The fate of these no long…

I think that the bigger flaw in the analogy is that horse reproduction is mostly controlled by humans in ways which (to say the least) would not be considered acceptable for humans to do to other humans. Yes, it might be true that most individual horses had more comfortable jobs during that time period, but they also got to reproduce a lot less (it’s also probably uncomfortable for horses to not reproduce, but I’m even ignoring that for now).

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#359

Post by opo » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #195

S_A_P wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a good take- Having things be better for horses was never the point of the economy. In fact horses were probably the main driver for developing mechanical solutions since horse ownership is expensive and time consuming. There was no incentive to make life/jobs better for horses, and as soon as a better replacement was available horses were not necessary for most people. So you cant swap out horses for…

>Having things be better for horses was never the point of the economy Neither was making things better for humans. The point of the economy is for capital to reproduce itself, humans being taken care of is an accidental side effect because capital doesn't like a torch mob very much.

>... humans being taken care of is an accidental side effect

No, in any non-totalitarian society, humans being taken care of is the main effect. In a market of buyers and sellers, it is only by making the buyer better off that the seller survives. As Smith said over 200 years ago, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest."

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#360

Post by hooande » Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #356

BurningFrog wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very misleading metaphor. Horses were not workers. The were tools workers used. Farmers used horses to plow the fields. Transport workers used them to transport goods and people. As those workers got better tools to plow and transport, productivity increased, society got richer. There are also millions of old telegraphs, slide rules, and rotary phones "unemployed" across the world. The fate of these no long…

I think his logic holds. The point is that we found new jobs for horses because there were areas where machines were inferior to them. Once machines could do everything that a horse could do (probably some mixture of load carrying and agility / endurance) we had no more work for them. To bring the same logic to humans, in history machines freed up humans to do better work than before. Let's say what humans excel at i…

The number of jobs that horses can do is a rounding error compared to the number of jobs that humans can do. If we're living in an imaginary future where machines can be trained to 90% of jobs, sure. But google a list of "most common jobs" and see how many a computer could do fully.

Even if you think a miracle ai revolution is on the horizon, humans and horses are not comparable in terms of diversity of labor