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No Recent Automation Revolution

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Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#271

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #195
omginternets wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the parent poster does not have Vietnam, nor North Korea, nor even communism in mind. You know this, and we know you know this.

Fair enough, so not capitalism, not communism. What political system might be capable of meeting these requirements? Is it the political equivalent of unobtanium or vaporware? Im not trying to be a smartass; I want to know what the answer might look like. It doesn’t have to be a treatise. Just something consistent with a chance at succeeding with non-ideal people.

[deleted]

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#272

Post by barrkel »

shuntress wrote: post #258
barrkel wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might think you're being facetious, but many wealthy people don't want their children's lives to be wasted on consumption, and so limit their inheritance: enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing. The most meaning in life comes from doing things for other people - not necessarily for money, but for other people. I'd love if we could try and figure out a social, institutional, structural technology whic…

>The most meaning in life comes from doing things for other people Exactly. So we should set up a system that provides everyone with enough to meet their basic needs. That way they can spend their time and effort to find the way they can most effectively do things for other people rather than finding the local maxima "job I can tolerate that keeps me alive"

The most effective means we have today for determining what we should do for other people is prices.

That means capitalism.

The downsides are lack of agency in large efficient orgs and unearned profits from capital.

I don't know the answer, but I don't think UBI + charity++ is it.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#273

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Nimitz14 wrote: post #219
lm28469 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have that thing in Europe called socialism, it brought us paid vacations, public health care, paid parental leaves, paid sick leaves, less working hours, &c. In a way all these things are wealth redistribution. It's actually funny to listen to political debates of the 60s and 70s because people were planning that if automation were properly handled we'd be working like 2 days a week while keeping our standards of…

European society is based on capitalism. It is disingenuous to claim it is based on socialism. And regardless, income inequality is also a problem in Europe. The person you are replying to was making the obvious point that noone knows a better system than the current one. Adding a bit more wealth distribution just means tweaking the system, rather than creating a new one, which is what the parent poster implied was n…

European society is based on rule of law, democracy, equality, the scientific method, the justice system, free public education and capitalism.

Capitalism existed for thousands of years (first company if the world was registered like yr. 700) and only supported miserable living standards. Most of these systems appears during / after the Renaissance, and deserve more credit for the society we have today than capitalism does

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#274

Post by barrkel »

carapace wrote: post #260
barrkel wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've been CONDITIONED I haven't been conditioned, thanks. Large corporations enable efficiencies of scale which in turn enables modern living. We can't live at our current standards with artisan search engines, hand-crafted phones and home-made cars. But the same scale which enables modern living alienates workers from their labour. In most companies, all but a select few at the top have very little agency. They…

I don't mean this as a personal attack, but I'm struck that your objection to having been "conditioned" is immediately followed by a paragraph affirming the content of the supposed "conditioning". > > You’ve been CONDITIONED to think that large corporations are better ways to allocate your time and organize us all. Emphasis added. > Large corporations enable efficiencies of scale which in turn enables modern living.…

It is objectively true (is, not ought) that in the world we currently live in, large orgs enable scale which enables modern living.

It does not follow that I think that's the way things ought to be. That's how I interpret the "better" in EGreg's comment, because this conversation is about how we can live a better lives, not how to maximize efficiency. But we can only talk about oughts in the context of what can be.

What I'd like - as I've mentioned in another comment here - is some kind of organizational technology which enables the same efficiencies as large orgs, but without the alienation of labour.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#275

Post by carapace »

bildung wrote: post #143
krapp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're talking about the Western world, and in particular, the politics and culture of class (of which "work being part of people's identity" is a part) then Judeo-Christian influence is the only influence that matters. And memes like the dignity of labor, the just world fallacy (that wealth and poverty have inherent moral dimensions) and welfare (or leftist/secular ideology) breeding laziness definitely have their…

I'm agreeing with everything you wrote (with the minor differentiation that this is mostly rooted in particular protestant branches, not Christianity per se), but in my understanding the opposition to UBI is not primarily about dignity, but about identity, hence my comment. People were displayed as their being their job, not just generic underlings to the king, on egyptian stela from 3000 BC.

John Smith

Mark Miller

Sally Baker

etc...

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#276

Post by barrkel »

EGreg wrote: post #268
barrkel wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've been CONDITIONED I haven't been conditioned, thanks. Large corporations enable efficiencies of scale which in turn enables modern living. We can't live at our current standards with artisan search engines, hand-crafted phones and home-made cars. But the same scale which enables modern living alienates workers from their labour. In most companies, all but a select few at the top have very little agency. They…

Corporations aren’t the best way to organize things. They are good, but have been outcompeted by decentralized systems with small owner-contributors and no ownership of the platform. LiveJournal vs Wordpress AOL vs The Web Britannica vs Wikipedia I could go on and on. Science, Open Source, Creative Commons allows collaboration instead of a top-down approach, and has been wildly successful. In the past, we needed cent…

Wordpress -> Facebook -> Instagram etc.; what goes around comes around.

AOL -> Web -> Google AMP etc.

Wikipedia has its editors and its petty squabbles, and worse, its ever increasing budgets (for what, exactly?) funded by guilt-based extortion from the masses, a bunch of parasites feeding on public contributions.

Once a hill has appeared from the bottom up, climbers crawl out of their holes, clamber up and try and steer from the top. And they usually succeed.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#277

Post by vsareto »

ajuc wrote: post #203
kaybe wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really makes me sad that jobs are seen as inherently valuable. The way you phrase it, 'provide jobs', feels like jobs are something needed. Of course, in the current setup, this is true, but there are so many boring and hard jobs (worked by people who are yet poor) that we shouldn't mourn once we manage to get rid of them. I want an economy where we can celebrate automation and distribute the profits evenly.

> I want an economy where we can celebrate automation and distribute the profits evenly. In such an economy there's no incentive to work on further automation. In particular if there's a part of world where profits aren't distributed evenly - the innovation and manufacturing will move there.

You'll eventually get someone that improves it for its own sake and wants to learn for the sake of learning.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#278

Post by ClumsyPilot »

tuatoru wrote: post #69

An independent line of evidence looks at the formation of new occupations over time. If automation were taking over jobs, or jobs were being refactored because some tasks are automated, then we'd expect to see new job titles appearing in employment advertising and classifications such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics's. This does happen, as it has happened since the start of the Industrial Revolution. "Social Media…

> then we'd expect to see new job titles appearing

Not at all! If we replaced all accountants with software, no new jobs title would appear. If anything, they would Dissapear!

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#279

Post by m12k »

tengbretson wrote: post #266
m12k wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see what high horse you are talking about. The point is that having to work in order to survive is not inherently a desirable situation for a human to be in. A more desirable situation is to have your needs such as housing, food and healthcare already taken care of irrespective of what you spend your time on. Historically such a life has been possible for a select few in the aristocracy, and they seem to have…

> A more desirable situation is to have your needs such as housing, food and healthcare already taken care of irrespective of what you spend your time on. What you are describing is already a reality for our house pets. I don't find becoming a house pet to some AI/automated machine to be desirable in any way shape or form.

So you're saying the aristocracy were the pets of their slaves and serfs? Got it, thank you for adding to the debate.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#280

Post by dan_can_code »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #213
awestroke wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's already digitalized and automated in sane companies. Use something like bamboohr

The problem is not the tool. The problem is the people who, without broken processes, would not have jobs. The purpose of the system is what it does.

The insurance industry in the UK is a great example of this.

Manual data entry for claims via the phone and a system called 'TAM'.

There are roles such as 'claims handlers' who's job is to repeat what is said over the phone into TAM.

Cut out the claims handler and present the claimant with a form, and their jobs are gone.

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