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The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

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Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#11

Post by DickingAround »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #2

The thought is generally good but it overshoots the solution I think in one key respect: consumer priorities. I think for this post you are conflating consumer spending with luxury spending. If indeed there were a single minded "consumerism" that strictly identified more or less meaningless items (luxury goods) as the key consumption then I would agree. The fact is however, "consumer driven economy" simply is disting…

But don't we already have a society that only has 2% of people working on food production? If that is considered the only non-luxury/required good, then most of us are working to get more luxuries.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#12

Post by peterkelly »

DickingAround wrote: post #9
peterkelly wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm mostly in agreement with the rest of the article, I think on this point that cultural exploration does actually benefit society to a degree, because it results in people who are better educated about the world and less xenephobic/racist. If you spent a gap year in a particular country and have friends there, you're much less likely to support a war against that country.

I'd agree that cultural exploration can benefit society by making people more accepting of each other. But I'd like to distinguish it as still being a form of consumption/production since no production is permanently improved. For example, if the person who did the exploration dies, unless they've done something clearly permanent to teach it to their kids or enshrine that learning, the experience will die with them.…

I consider it a combination of consumption and education, rather than production per se.

The balance between these two factors depends a lot on the person; someone who goes abroad just to party will have a little bit of cultural immersion but mostly just consume. Someone who goes abroad to seriously learn about a country, learn the language, spend time living there and getting to know the locals, will have more of an education.

But I agree it can't be classified as production.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#13

Post by aaron695 »

DickingAround wrote: post #9
peterkelly wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm mostly in agreement with the rest of the article, I think on this point that cultural exploration does actually benefit society to a degree, because it results in people who are better educated about the world and less xenephobic/racist. If you spent a gap year in a particular country and have friends there, you're much less likely to support a war against that country.

I'd agree that cultural exploration can benefit society by making people more accepting of each other. But I'd like to distinguish it as still being a form of consumption/production since no production is permanently improved. For example, if the person who did the exploration dies, unless they've done something clearly permanent to teach it to their kids or enshrine that learning, the experience will die with them.…

But this is where the article totally lost me.

What's the point of making society better if we are not happy. What are we aiming for?

Studies show travel makes people happy, unlike buying objects for instance.

True making myself happy doesn't help society, I guess, but then what's the point of it all.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#14

Post by joe_the_user »

Actually,

I would suggest that to "improve ... humanity in general" you actually need to redefine the production process, the consumption process and what gets consumed.

If you keep the keep the same assumptions and automate more, all you wind-up with is people lose their jobs and become homeless because there's no new activity for them to do. And his example of increase production shows how that doesn't necessarily improve things. Of course, any increase in production does redefine all this stuff, it has to. The question is whether it redefines them enough.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#15

Post by cwhy »

I am from China, and I can share a bit of what I have learnt about Marxism in my secondary school:

1. As technology advances, machines will do more and more things that what human originally do.

2. As a result, less people will have jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment

3. At the same time, people (organization) who owns (not develops) machines will take this income.

4. People (organization) who owns more machines can more easily to buy another one.

5. Richer people will get richer. Poor people will get poorer.

-. Capitalism has bugs.

In the future (my crazy thoughts):

(If machines keep getting smarter)

> More and more jobs are handled by humans, thus things like labor strike will have less and less impact on machine owners - since machines can still work for them.

(If machines are smarter than human)

> People who cannot develop machines will have no competition with machine owners, since they have machines which are smarter

(If machines can developer machines)

> Even people who can develop machines (maybe the last group of people) will be unemployed. People who own machines will have endless expansion. And people's life will be depending on how many machines they have and how advanced the machines are.

About new jobs the machine enables:

Other than machine generator/operators, most of them are entertainment which are generated needs. This portion of job looks unlikely will be replaced by machines. But who knows.

I know my logic may be flawed and all objections with reasons are extremely welcome.

I only proposed a problem with no solution, as I cannot imagine one (and definitely not pure centralized socialism), and I like machines.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#16

Post by AndrewKemendo »

DickingAround wrote: post #11
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #2

The thought is generally good but it overshoots the solution I think in one key respect: consumer priorities. I think for this post you are conflating consumer spending with luxury spending. If indeed there were a single minded "consumerism" that strictly identified more or less meaningless items (luxury goods) as the key consumption then I would agree. The fact is however, "consumer driven economy" simply is disting…

But don't we already have a society that only has 2% of people working on food production? If that is considered the only non-luxury/required good, then most of us are working to get more luxuries.

That is certainly not the only required good, but I would argue it is the #2 behind water consumption. I also wouldn't disagree that most folks are working for more luxuries. Remember I agreed that we should be working for fewer luxuries.

The issue with food is that when you factor in everything, to include environmental impact, good sustainable food is actually very expensive. I am also including the logistics that go into food delivery and the significant amount of waste and impact it causes [1].

[1]: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2013/09/12/un...

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#17

Post by vbuterin »

DickingAround wrote: post #11
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #2

The thought is generally good but it overshoots the solution I think in one key respect: consumer priorities. I think for this post you are conflating consumer spending with luxury spending. If indeed there were a single minded "consumerism" that strictly identified more or less meaningless items (luxury goods) as the key consumption then I would agree. The fact is however, "consumer driven economy" simply is disting…

But don't we already have a society that only has 2% of people working on food production? If that is considered the only non-luxury/required good, then most of us are working to get more luxuries.

Food is basically a solved problem. Priority #1 is medical care IMO. Housing is expensive, but really Japanese-style closet hotels can solve that problem for ultracheap if needed (as I understand it's mostly zoning laws preventing it right now). If we can get medical care to the point where, say, the 1970s standard of care is as cheap as food is, then we're basically at post-scarcity.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#18

Post by ehsanu1 »

vbuterin wrote: post #17
DickingAround wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't we already have a society that only has 2% of people working on food production? If that is considered the only non-luxury/required good, then most of us are working to get more luxuries.

Food is basically a solved problem. Priority #1 is medical care IMO. Housing is expensive, but really Japanese-style closet hotels can solve that problem for ultracheap if needed (as I understand it's mostly zoning laws preventing it right now). If we can get medical care to the point where, say, the 1970s standard of care is as cheap as food is, then we're basically at post-scarcity.

If we can get medical care to the point where, say, the 1970s standard of care is as cheap as food is, then we're basically at post-scarcity.

How so? Post-scarcity implies, to me at least, that nobody has to work to live: everything is abundant and free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#19

Post by Joeri »

cwhy wrote: post #15

I am from China, and I can share a bit of what I have learnt about Marxism in my secondary school: 1. As technology advances, machines will do more and more things that what human originally do. 2. As a result, less people will have jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment 3. At the same time, people (organization) who owns (not develops) machines will take this income. 4. People (organization) w…

> As a result, less people will have jobs

Automation has never unemployed people, only persons. Specific categories of jobs are removed by automation, but these are replaced by other categories of jobs. Demand is created for the products of these jobs, and the whole machine keeps turning.

The consumer driven economy is built on artificial demand. The vast majority of 'stuff' bought is unnecessary. Without advertising and a culture that emphasises keeping up with the joneses we would see unemployment on a large scale, but our economy has adapted to fill the unemployment niches.

The real challenge is not how to prevent unemployment through automation. It is to find an alternate solution to artificially inflated demand which doesn't waste so much labor and materials producing goods and services which are strictly speaking unnecessary.

Re: The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things

#20

Post by jseliger »

cwhy wrote: post #15

I am from China, and I can share a bit of what I have learnt about Marxism in my secondary school: 1. As technology advances, machines will do more and more things that what human originally do. 2. As a result, less people will have jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment 3. At the same time, people (organization) who owns (not develops) machines will take this income. 4. People (organization) w…

2. As a result, less people will have jobs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment

This isn't true, though people keep writing about it in various contexts: Babbage in the 19th C, and David Ricardo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo. The jobs people do change. No one in 1800 worked as a video-game designer or social media marketing specialist. Few people today work as farrier or milliners.

I have no idea what the book situation is like in China, but if you can, get a copy of Tyler Cowen's recent book Average Is Over.

5. Richer people will get richer. Poor people will get poorer.

The entire world has been getting richer for centuries, and in the last couple decades the world has seen unprecedented wealth creation due to the fall of Communism. See Cowen, noted above, or something like Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson.

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