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Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

economist.com

71–80 of 95 posts

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...libertarians do not believe in free education or social services. I'm an ex-libertarian and have moved to a more centrist position, but this is disingenuous. Libertarians generally want the right to make their own decisions and are anti-coercion. However, many of them are big believers in philanthropy and true voluntary social contracts - just not the kind enforced by the barrel of a gun. They're not opposed to…

It's unrealistic because the people with the money are not going to give it away unless you force them. In the industrial revolution the wealthy had a motivation to educate the masses: get better workers and fill the military. What now though? Robots are better soldiers AND workers. Carnegie and Rockefeller were motivated by foreign competition to help people with education and social services. Rockefeller in particu…

How does someone with no money, no marketable skills, no way to afford education, no ability to exert physical power, continue to survive when the upper class only accepts appeals to their self-interest?

Appeal to enlightened self-interest is more powerful than appeal to someone's "better nature". Find the sweet spot where those two meet. It does happen (that those two things meet) and that's the target if you want meaningful, effective change. Rome had a policy of "bread and circus" -- to keep the masses fed and passively entertained in order to avoid rioting in the streets. I follow a similar policy in my household when facing difficult situations. It's very effective.

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation. Does NOT. Destroy. Jobs. Is the economy smaller today than in 1911? Are there fewer jobs today? Are there less worthwhile jobs today? Exactly the opposite in every case. Automation may eliminate A job in the near-term but in the long-term it creates and enhances wealth. Ultimately every dollar spent makes its way from one person to another person. Robots don't have bank accounts.

Building on Donald Knuth's definition of an artist (someone who does work that cannot yet be automated, such as a programmer), it seems like today the most efficient economy is one that automates everything that can be automated, so that all of its population work as artists. The argument that automation destroys jobs assumes that at least part of the population does not have the propensity to be artists. This is the…

The question here is -- which jobs will remain longest. Is that "high IQ" jobs? Computers are wonderful at solving well-defined "high IQ" problems, like playing chess or performing register allocation. And creativity is just an ability to generate original solutions to the problem. Computers are more than capable of doing that.

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#73

This debate isn't about jobs. The question is this: will the powerful still value human life when robots are better than manual workers? Wealth keeps concentrating in the hands of a small minority. Unskilled workers increasingly look like nothing but a drain on resources, unable to produce anything valuable or afford education. Many many billionaires have little respect for unskilled human life and libertarians do no…

When they have no marketable skills, they'd better learn some. In the absence of mental or physical handicaps, I don't see any reason why people would be incapable of doing this.

Why marketable skills? Why not useful skills. I find the focus on marketing as much as a problem as everything else.

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#74
post #50
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the mental/physical floor required to get a job is getting higher.

The physical floor has crashed, actually. Today a man in a wheelchair can contribute meaningful work.

Only above a certain mental floor. Calling it a floor in general is oversimplifying, it's a curve (Stephen Hawking, football player).

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#75
post #60

Wanted to share this - Robot comes from the slavic (czech, russian, bulgarian and others) word - rabota - WORK.

My memory recalls it's not just work, but slavery.

"Origin of ROBOT Czech, from robota compulsory labor; akin to Old High German arabeit trouble, Latin orbus orphaned — more at orphan First Known Use: 1922" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robot

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#76

I know that the suggestion that these are going to eliminate human positions is an unpopular sentiment here at HN because economics. However, are we really so sure that there will always be a human labor demand to effectively meet the human labor supply? What do we do when there is an excess of human labor? Everyone here is opposed to make work for good reason. But a suggestion that solves the moral issue of what to…

The 40 hour work week is a relic of the industrial age, right? Things are different today, and the technology sector is a good example: top talent produces a disproportionately large amount of work, while there are practically very few "menial" positions that could be filled in with low skilled employees. Maybe we should expect this to become a much more common pattern in the future; once construction workers, waiters, window cleaners, drivers get replaced with robots we are left with a sizeable population of unemployable people. Maybe a revival of agriculture or sth will absorb those people.

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#77
post #51

I know that the suggestion that these are going to eliminate human positions is an unpopular sentiment here at HN because economics. However, are we really so sure that there will always be a human labor demand to effectively meet the human labor supply? What do we do when there is an excess of human labor? Everyone here is opposed to make work for good reason. But a suggestion that solves the moral issue of what to…

New industry will be service-orientated. Even if robot cooks can make a better pizza, people will tell themselves that human-made ones are more individual, and taste better. As the price of human labor goes to zero, humans will be increasingly used as marketing props. In a democracy or socialist state, handouts or negative taxation will redistribute wealth.

Services like tourism and healthcare are in growing demand, however there is a shift going on there, too, e.g. airbnb, innovative medical devices etc. Unfortunately, an expensive services sector cannot sustain an economy on its own. It works in rich countries where people can afford to spend the money they make on other sectors for premium products and services. The issue of how to avoid unemployment and "keep people busy" in a socially fair way will be an active discussion in the following years.

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#78
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many many billionaires have little respect for unskilled human life Which billionaires do not value unskilled human life? How many billionaires are their in the world? Are there really many, many of them that feel that way? Are they really all that selfish that they would happily destroy millions of lives? What does that benefit them?

Actions speak louder than words. Billionaires stand by while the miserable and hopeless suffer. Billionaires fund FOX News to indoctrinate the middle class and push them toward self-destruction. Which billionaires are funding universal liberal educations or a culture of empowerment? By their actions the upper class is saying that they don't want a middle class. They are saying: if the middle class is so stupid to fal…

Which billionaires are funding universal liberal educations or a culture of empowerment?

I have no clue what a "culture of empowerment" is, but as to funding education:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundati...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett

http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/09/mark-zuckerberg-to-donat...

Another billionaire was recently in the news for donating $40k to a Republican governor. He also donated $7M to PBS, $35M to educating people about evolution and $78M to educating people about science in general didn't make the news.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Koch#Philanthropy

These are just a few that I can think of.

Peter Thiel also funds education, though probably not the sort of education you wish he would fund.

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#79
post #60

Wanted to share this - Robot comes from the slavic (czech, russian, bulgarian and others) word - rabota - WORK.

And created by Czech playwrite Karel Čapek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R._(Rossum%27s_Universal_Ro...

Noteworthy, I think, because it'd seem natural for a technology to be named by the people who created it, but that isn't always the case. Sometimes its the people who dreamed of it.

Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...

#80
post #51

I know that the suggestion that these are going to eliminate human positions is an unpopular sentiment here at HN because economics. However, are we really so sure that there will always be a human labor demand to effectively meet the human labor supply? What do we do when there is an excess of human labor? Everyone here is opposed to make work for good reason. But a suggestion that solves the moral issue of what to…

New industry will be service-orientated. Even if robot cooks can make a better pizza, people will tell themselves that human-made ones are more individual, and taste better. As the price of human labor goes to zero, humans will be increasingly used as marketing props. In a democracy or socialist state, handouts or negative taxation will redistribute wealth.

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