Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

Post by foobarbaz321 » Sun, Apr 21, 2024, 9:09 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #127

LadyCailin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s too hard to do. What is “a robot” and “a job?” Replacing workers is easy enough to calculate that with, but what if I start a brand new factory that only ever used robots? The solution is wealth tax and UBI. Get rid of regular income tax, then do a progressive wealth tax, which is enough to pay for a progressive UBI. This way, it’s no problem if you lay off all your workers to replace them with robots. In fact…

Very few people hoard wealth. You imagine wealthy people like Scrooge McDuck with a room full of gold coins. It's almost always invested in stocks which helps companies grow or in bonds which helps finance public works.

Post by downrightmike » Sun, Apr 21, 2024, 9:13 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #93

ranger_danger wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point.

Not by my reading of the original comment. Seems like they're saying that layoffs result in higher skilled jobs. And here's my basis for that conclusion: > The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. And what I'm saying is that there may not be new jobs, and if they are they may be lower skill jobs if history is any indication.

Post by karaterobot » Sun, Apr 21, 2024, 9:28 PM UTC

trimethylpurine wrote: post #111

karaterobot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a minute. Higher skill jobs? For at least a decade, the place jobs shifted to was Amazon. If you lost your job because Amazon put your company out of business, you could get a worse, more humiliating job working at an Amazon warehouse, or as an Amazon driver. It was not higher skill jobs the market shifted to, it was Nomadland jobs. Now that Amazon is switching to robots, where are those people Amazon is putting…

The fact that you can now warehouse with robots lowers the barrier of entry for warehousing, which creates new companies that will host competition against Amazon, offer contract labor for Amazon, and in both ways create jobs that are superior to the previously needed entry level pick and packer. The same laborer can now be promoted at a new company to a higher pay job that requires no greater skill set, simply becau…

Post by RGamma » Sun, Apr 21, 2024, 9:30 PM UTC

starbugs wrote: post #133

MichaelZuo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone claimed technological changes will impact every group and subgroup on a literally equal basis? Some will have better prospects and others will have worse. Since roughly half the population must have below median average prospects by definition.

> Has anyone claimed technological changes will impact every group and subgroup on a literally equal basis? No, but too much inequality is not sustainable. Since in a democracy everyone has an equal vote, there will be a force that balances things out over time one way or another.

Post by actuallyalys » Sun, Apr 21, 2024, 9:30 PM UTC

Adverblessly wrote: post #104

VHRanger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been saying that for a long time. [Keynes predicted we'd be working 15 hour weeks by now]( https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecca.12439 ) The thing is, people don't actually want to tradeoff their labor time for leisure time all that well. They value consumption too much. There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! But you'd need to have a smaller appartment, an older c…

> There are plenty of 15 hour jobs out there. You can get one right now! Not without a 90% pay cut (i.e. as opposed to the ~60% pay cut you'd expect for working 40% of the hours), I've checked.