I fail to see how it's the employer screwing anyone over. Should automation be outlawed? What kinds of automation? It's a problem that society needs to deal with, sure, and some of that might involve some regulation of automation, or some social support for manual jobs, but there's nothing inherently immoral about automation. If a company reduces it's work force through automation there's nothing immoral about that.…
How does outlawing automation make employers biased against hiring new workers?
I didn't say that it does. However one of the justifications given by the French left for high redundancy payments is to compensate workers if their jobs are taken by automation, so they are related issues.
Simon Funk [1] makes a great point that in a mixed capitalist/welfare state, automation decreases efficiency. Imagine a worker, earning the bare minimum to survive, who gets replaced by a robot with slightly lower operating cost. Now the robot is consuming slightly fewer resources that the worker would have, but the worker doesn't stop consuming resources in turn! Unless you're willing to kill the worker, he goes on…
As I understand it destroying/preventing automation is an example of the broken window fallacy. The problem is not automation, but rather the system that punishes a worker for being displaced for the sake of efficiency. The economy would be burning .8x the resources, as you admitted the efficiency increased, and my worker on welfare does not consume more than when not on welfare.
"Bastiat used the parable of a broken window to point out why destruction doesn't benefit the economy. In Bastiat's tale, a man's son breaks a pane of glass, meaning the man will have to pay to replace it."
Simon Funk [1] makes a great point that in a mixed capitalist/welfare state, automation decreases efficiency. Imagine a worker, earning the bare minimum to survive, who gets replaced by a robot with slightly lower operating cost. Now the robot is consuming slightly fewer resources that the worker would have, but the worker doesn't stop consuming resources in turn! Unless you're willing to kill the worker, he goes on…
As I understand it destroying/preventing automation is an example of the broken window fallacy. The problem is not automation, but rather the system that punishes a worker for being displaced for the sake of efficiency. The economy would be burning .8x the resources, as you admitted the efficiency increased, and my worker on welfare does not consume more than when not on welfare. "Bastiat used the parable of a broken…
I realize now where you are getting the 2x, but if you are paying a full man's wages to power a robot you really need a different energy provider. The costs of powering and maintaining a robot are a fraction of the cost of a human.
>Every app, every piece of code has to be written just once, then replication is free This is true in terms of physical reality, but not in terms of the patent system.
Which is human-made and not a property of the universe. That is not an argument for OPs comment, since it can be changed very easily. Nor does it have any influence even if it isn't (changed) - I don't see the relevance for this sub-discussion?
>Which is human-made and not a property of the universe
Precisely my point.
>it can be changed very easily.
It would seem this is not the case, though I wish it was.
The thing is, there really isn't a market for a huge number of maids when it costs $1000/month, and you can't really go below that because, as you say, $10/hour.. about the minimum wage in many places. The middle class in USA definitelly can't afford to pay $12k/year (plus taxes!) for such a service. The most highly paid white collar professions would generally scoff at such an expense. At best, the top 1% could affo…
The middle class in the USA is already paying for such a service! When you pay taxes, the bulk of it is just redistributed to people who don't work. All I'm proposing is that we restructure things so that instead of getting nothing for your money you get something .
I know this is an old thread that I'm unlikely to get a response to, but I can't tell whether you're proposing a federal make-work program or a free-market restructuring. If the latter, you seem to be ignoring the demand side of the equation, which makes your whole proposal unworkable - there isn't demand for this in the US, and not just for financial reasons, the middle class here is unlikely to employ (what we see as) servants for social reasons as well. If you're proposing a make-work program where tax dollars go toward putting people to work, maybe that's a good idea, but I'd rather see those people working on improving our crumbling infrastructure, or perhaps on creating new high-speed rail, than cleaning middle class houses.