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Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

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Re: Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

#31

Post by gerbal »

WalterBright wrote: post #29
al2o3cr wrote: post #10

"In the 19th century, the maturation and standardization of weaving technology finally brought long-overdue raises to textile workers." Wow. Way to completely write out of the story the PEOPLE who fought tooth-and-nail to get those raises, WaPo.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mill_Girls Of course, acknowledging the real struggle might seriously impact the whole "things will get better by themselves, just keep…

Consider Fred, who is paid $1 and produces $10 in value. Every employer would love to have Fred come and work for them. In fact, another employer would likely offer Fred $2 to come and generate $10. Fred, not being an idiot, takes the offer. Another employer offers Fred $3, and so on, until Fred is making ($10 - opportunitycost). In other words, Fred being way underpaid according to the value he produces is an unstab…

Unless of course there are 10,000 Freds and only 1000 jobs like Fred's.

Re: Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

#32

Post by WalterBright »

marcosdumay wrote: post #11
hobs wrote: post #2

One of the arguments of this article is that as technology stabilizes we will be able to demand higher pay. Technology will likely not stabilize.

Well, it must, some day. But I'm not betting on any specific millennium. I just love those articles that state that "we have no problem" because "everything just settles out at the end", while forgetting that one of the mechanisms for everything to settle up is a huge share of the population dying. It's survival bias acting at slaughter time.

I don't know about England in the 1700's, but during the industrialization of the US, 1800-1900, the life expectancy and just about every other measure of health got dramatically better throughout that century.

Another way to look at it as go visit Fort Williams in New York, they have a display of 18th century clothing. Look how tiny it was. It's a dramatic illustration of how hard life was in pre-industrial America.

Next visit some Civil War museums and look at the uniforms on display. They're about halfway between colonial sizes and modern sizes.

Re: Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

#33

Post by sliverstorm »

TDL wrote: post #30
FD3SA wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that The Washington Post was recently acquired by Jeff Bezos. This article makes much more sense when viewed in the light of Amazon's current PR problems due to their treatment of poorly paid warehouse workers. They are desperately trying to automate as fast as possible, and this piece tries its best to spin it as a win-win for everyone.

You of course have evidence that Bezos is interfering in the editorial operations of the Post, right?

It's happened enough with other figures & papers that some people take it as good practice to assume, proof or no, and simply disregard the paper on suspect topics.

Certainly nothing you can take anyone to court over, but perhaps prudent.

Re: Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

#35

Post by minouye »

FD3SA wrote: post #26
al2o3cr wrote: post #10

"In the 19th century, the maturation and standardization of weaving technology finally brought long-overdue raises to textile workers." Wow. Way to completely write out of the story the PEOPLE who fought tooth-and-nail to get those raises, WaPo.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mill_Girls Of course, acknowledging the real struggle might seriously impact the whole "things will get better by themselves, just keep…

Keep in mind that The Washington Post was recently acquired by Jeff Bezos. This article makes much more sense when viewed in the light of Amazon's current PR problems due to their treatment of poorly paid warehouse workers. They are desperately trying to automate as fast as possible, and this piece tries its best to spin it as a win-win for everyone.

The idea that Bezos has already turned the WaPo into Amazon's personal PR factory seems highly unlikely. Esp. when you see articles like this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/16...

Re: Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

#36

Post by WalterBright »

gerbal wrote: post #31
WalterBright wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider Fred, who is paid $1 and produces $10 in value. Every employer would love to have Fred come and work for them. In fact, another employer would likely offer Fred $2 to come and generate $10. Fred, not being an idiot, takes the offer. Another employer offers Fred $3, and so on, until Fred is making ($10 - opportunitycost). In other words, Fred being way underpaid according to the value he produces is an unstab…

Unless of course there are 10,000 Freds and only 1000 jobs like Fred's.

There's no reason to suspect it's a static system.

People have a history of rushing to start new businesses where there's lots of value being created at little cost.

For a couple examples: the 1849 gold rush, and the current internet startup rush.

Re: Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

#37

Post by aridiculous »

This is conveniently forgetting that demand (which eventually ends in consumer demand) isn't necessarily infinite. We have this thing called a planet we live on, that needs to remain intact (or Elon Musk needs to get a move on getting us to other planets :)

Re: Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

#38

Post by ealloc »

> as the market for cotton cloth matured in the mid-20th century, further automation no longer generated such increases in demand and new technology slowly eliminated jobs in the textile industry.

This seems to be a counterpoint to his thesis: Technology does indeed create unemployment if all demand has already been satisfied.

His point should thus be stated with a caveat: Technology does not destroy jobs as long as demand increases along with the increased supply. In order to know whether robots will steal our jobs, we have to first determine whether human demands are already being met or not, and it seems plausible to me that they nearly are today (though the inverse also seems plausible).

Re: Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

#39

Post by sp332 »

WalterBright wrote: post #36
gerbal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless of course there are 10,000 Freds and only 1000 jobs like Fred's.

There's no reason to suspect it's a static system. People have a history of rushing to start new businesses where there's lots of value being created at little cost. For a couple examples: the 1849 gold rush, and the current internet startup rush.

The 1849 gold rush was a terrible idea and cost most people more than they got back. Most startups also fail. I feel like that's not a good way to run an economy.

Re: Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

#40

Post by samatman »

sp332 wrote: post #39
WalterBright wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to suspect it's a static system. People have a history of rushing to start new businesses where there's lots of value being created at little cost. For a couple examples: the 1849 gold rush, and the current internet startup rush.

The 1849 gold rush was a terrible idea and cost most people more than they got back. Most startups also fail. I feel like that's not a good way to run an economy.

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