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The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

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Re: The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

#31

Post by tegeek »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #15
tomp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigrants aren't even citizens; I don't think they receive any sort of social security in most countries even today. I'm not saying that's the optimal policy, just that they wouldn't be worse-off.

In Europe, most immigrants can receive social security, which doesn't mean they do. In the US, undocumented immigrants have that problem though. Some politicians praised illegal immigration because that's a young, eager workforce with zero rights and benefits. Also it seems that welfare states can't really save money by excluding immigrants. At the very least the society has to foot the bill for medical emergencies,…

In almost entire Scandinavian (Sweden, Denmark, Nowray) if as an immigrant you loose your job, you've got 3 to 6 months to find a new job. If you can't find, you can't stay legally and you become illegal. In during the time of job searching you get no social security.

Re: The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

#32

Post by TuringTest »

grinnbearit wrote: post #18
istjohn wrote: post #2

Current top comment: I think the answer is fairly straightforward: create a guaranteed minimum income. Tax all income after that. As productivity goes up, you increase the guaranteed minimum income. If you want more than the minimum, you go out and work, and the people who have only skills that can be done by a computer/robot more cheaply than a minimum wage work just leave the work force. Should productivity go down…

Why a basic income? I propose basic welfare, food + clothing + shelter, even entertainment. Mass produced in order to minimise costs. Then allocate a fixed amount of tax revenue to fund it, say 10%. Then as productivity goes up and goods become cheaper, this 10% can provide even more. Let money be what it is, a claim on goods and services provided for by other people. With basic welfare no one is forced into work out…

The idea of the government issuing a basic income is that people can choose in their own way how to get food, clothing and shelter, instead of having to settle with whatever the government provides.

Moreover, it would discourage working to get more money, since if you want to move into a less frugal home, you would lose all the benefits of having a government issued one. That choice would then be seen as a net lose.

Re: The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

#33

Post by TuringTest »

tomp wrote: post #10
Loughla wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I legitimately do not believe that this would work in the US before an extreme collapse of the current system - including but not limited to a civil war. I believe this because we have a hard enough time pushing through cursory and very basic social welfare programs. Quite literally guaranteeing someone a basic income with 0 work involved would be as palatable as thumb tacks to many individuals in the states. Logic d…

Don't worry, an obvious solution will present itself as soon as unemployment reaches 50% of the voting population.

Unfortunately, that obvious solution is usually War.

Re: The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

#34

Post by syf81 »

saticmotion wrote: post #21
bayesianhorse wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a way to get there, for most nations. Big nations would have the most trouble introducing this. And what about immigration? Immigration can't be effectively regulated by any means available to a moderately democratic state. Should immigrants receive the BLS? If yes, you go broke. If no, the immigrants are essentially second-class citizens who have to work for an extremely low wage (because they would have…

A solution - though extremely unlikely in this day and age - would be to abandon the notion of nations. Especially in the far future, if we are ever to meet aliens. Imagine having to explain that you only represent one of 196 nations. Seems a bit silly to me.

Maybe the hypothetical aliens also only represent their own nation?

Re: The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

#35

Post by imgabe »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #24
istjohn wrote: post #2

Current top comment: I think the answer is fairly straightforward: create a guaranteed minimum income. Tax all income after that. As productivity goes up, you increase the guaranteed minimum income. If you want more than the minimum, you go out and work, and the people who have only skills that can be done by a computer/robot more cheaply than a minimum wage work just leave the work force. Should productivity go down…

Should productivity go down (say we run out of fossil fuels without developing a cheap alternative or all our productivity starts going to dealing with run-away climate change) then you just decrease the guaranteed minimum income. That decision would have lots of consequences. People usually live slightly beyond their means. Decrease their means, and suddenly the majority of your population is living way beyond their…

> People usually live slightly beyond their means

^ Citation needed. Maybe it's become common since the advent of easily available credit, but for most of human history it was physically impossible to live beyond your means.

Re: The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

#36

Post by wyager »

Right up until we invent strong AI (and probably even then), there's no particular reason the same thing that always happened won't keep happening; unskilled laborers will get replaced, most will retool, and no one in the next generation will train for the now-automated job. This happened to cordwainers, calculators, etc.

The reasoning for this is very simple. It's why the Luddites were wrong then and the Luddites are wrong now. When a job is automated away, the benefit is distributed among three areas: 1. Automation company profit 2. Automation user profit 3. End customer costs. The net benefit is always positive, or else the automation would not be used in the first place. These 3 groups do not take their earnings and hide it under the mattress. This newly produced value has to be spent somewhere. So we end up with fields that were historically not viable, but because automation lowers the overhead of doing other things, now are viable. These fields recreate the labor requirements "lost" to automation.

The question, of course, is how long it will take for unskilled laborers to retool, and what will they do in the time between jobs? Perhaps there will be technical solutions to speed the retooling process.

Re: The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

#37

Post by m-i-l »

The argument resolves around the "longer-term trend toward income and wealth inequality". There is nothing however to directly link this to technological innovation. In fact I believe it is government policy which is increasing inequality rather than technology. In the UK for example, we have been seeing some clear cases of policies which have (either deliberately or inadvertently) transferred wealth from the state (i.e. the population as a whole) to the elite (i.e. the rich), e.g. the privatisation of the Royal Mail.

Re: The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

#39

Post by libraryatnight »

saticmotion wrote: post #21
bayesianhorse wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a way to get there, for most nations. Big nations would have the most trouble introducing this. And what about immigration? Immigration can't be effectively regulated by any means available to a moderately democratic state. Should immigrants receive the BLS? If yes, you go broke. If no, the immigrants are essentially second-class citizens who have to work for an extremely low wage (because they would have…

A solution - though extremely unlikely in this day and age - would be to abandon the notion of nations. Especially in the far future, if we are ever to meet aliens. Imagine having to explain that you only represent one of 196 nations. Seems a bit silly to me.

This is what I hope for, though I'd like to think it happens even without aliens.

Re: The New Luddites: What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?

#40

Post by [deleted] »

istjohn wrote: post #2

Current top comment: I think the answer is fairly straightforward: create a guaranteed minimum income. Tax all income after that. As productivity goes up, you increase the guaranteed minimum income. If you want more than the minimum, you go out and work, and the people who have only skills that can be done by a computer/robot more cheaply than a minimum wage work just leave the work force. Should productivity go down…

[deleted]
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