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What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

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Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#31

Post by oliveira12345 »

maroonblazer wrote: post #9
oliveira12345 wrote: post #5

"Yet rather than putting people out of work, this will supposedly free them up for more creative, skilled tasks, rather than subjecting them to menial, low-skilled work" This is a lie. It pretends that the factory owner will continue to pay the wages of existing employees and also the acquisition-and-maintenance of new CPS machines. Simply a lie. It pretends that the employees will be free "for more creative skilled…

>I believe this should be regulated to create socially-owned factories to solve nation-wide necessities. Which industries comprise the list of necessities?

Can't give you a complete answer on this, although I believe the correct way to evolve on this list (and other questions of importance to society) could be something like (for example):

* a) open period of public discussion (media info and debates), and invite proposals to be sent and received before a fixed deadline-A. This expects the contribution from anyone, both {government, social, private} entities which work around the context but also from anyone else who has a valid opinion or contribution to make (journalists, individuals, teachers, etc).

* b) let the discussion of arguments and solutions breed during the period of public discussion, and when deadline-A is reached identify key-arguments-and-participants who surfaced as dominant contributions and with them constitute a "task-team". (make available to them some gov-special-temp-permission to work on this)

* c) Ask the "task-team" to try to elaborate a joint proposal, with their different contributions taken into account, and explaining the pros/cons of the decisions proposed (this could serve also as an historical-explanation-of-why-those-decisions-were-proposed-at-that-time). If it is not possible to make a joint proposal (arguments too different) then the task-team would elaborate multiple proposals and take them to an online voting to let the public decide which proposals should be discarded at this point.

* d) At this point, there should already be public conscience of the problem and the different tradeoffs around proposed solutions (from a)). Also there should be a proposal elaborated by the "task-force" (from c)), so in this phase the proposal should be gradually implemented, with much communication and transparency of the whys-and-hows.

These are just some sparse ideas... I believe that society could be led to participate much further and generate greater/better contributions towards the well-being of the nation...

Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#32

Post by logfromblammo »

phkahler wrote: post #20
jjoonathan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a lie and it is insulting to expect that it will slip past most people (it's a "some of the people all of the time" lie). I agree with everything except your last sentence. Some alternatives to socialism: * basic income * putting teeth back in overtime laws and shortening the workweek * "Communes" that arise naturally as the rising cost of rent-seeking exceeds the falling inefficiency of small-scale production.…

How about Less People. Most of the worlds problems would be reduced with fewer people. This is only a partial solution if you think about it.

Ok. You first.

Go on...

You see now why this is not a viable solution. At least, it isn't until planetary emigration becomes possible.

Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#33

Post by pdkl95 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #13
oliveira12345 wrote: post #5

"Yet rather than putting people out of work, this will supposedly free them up for more creative, skilled tasks, rather than subjecting them to menial, low-skilled work" This is a lie. It pretends that the factory owner will continue to pay the wages of existing employees and also the acquisition-and-maintenance of new CPS machines. Simply a lie. It pretends that the employees will be free "for more creative skilled…

It is a lie and it is insulting to expect that it will slip past most people (it's a "some of the people all of the time" lie). I agree with everything except your last sentence. Some alternatives to socialism: * basic income * putting teeth back in overtime laws and shortening the workweek * "Communes" that arise naturally as the rising cost of rent-seeking exceeds the falling inefficiency of small-scale production.…

> Some alternatives to socialism: > basic income

You may want to check the definition of "socialism" that you're using, as basic income (along with group healthcare) is one of the canonical examples of socialism. Which is a good thing, as long as we remember to regulate it properly (just like how we need to regulate capital-focused ideas - any pure ideology will eventually cause problems if left unchecked)

Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#34

Post by oliveira12345 »

oliveira12345 wrote: post #5

"Yet rather than putting people out of work, this will supposedly free them up for more creative, skilled tasks, rather than subjecting them to menial, low-skilled work" This is a lie. It pretends that the factory owner will continue to pay the wages of existing employees and also the acquisition-and-maintenance of new CPS machines. Simply a lie. It pretends that the employees will be free "for more creative skilled…

UPDATE: Let me clarify that with "socially-owned factories to solve nation-wide necessities" I meant to say "some way to use this technology towards the common good" - I tried to express this idea with a contrived example "socially-owned factories". Sorry for the misunderstanding

Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#35

Post by notahacker »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #23
oliveira12345 wrote: post #5

"Yet rather than putting people out of work, this will supposedly free them up for more creative, skilled tasks, rather than subjecting them to menial, low-skilled work" This is a lie. It pretends that the factory owner will continue to pay the wages of existing employees and also the acquisition-and-maintenance of new CPS machines. Simply a lie. It pretends that the employees will be free "for more creative skilled…

The truth is that this means layoffs and a new wave of unemployment, for the benefit of the corporate efficiency though machines highly intelligent. Disagree slightly. I don't think it would look like "We are bringing in the TRX-1000 to do your job." Rather it will be along the lines of "Corpocom is going out of business because they can't compete in quality or price compared to Mechacom." Small but key distinction i…

The other key distinction being the number of extra direct and indirect jobs Corpocom creates to sell its product, because its margins on manufacture are so much bigger than Mechacom's it can justify whopping commissions and a really aggressive marketing play...

Sucks to be a production control manager for Mechacom, but life looks a lot rosier if you've a flair for persuading people that they won't get fired for buying Corpocom instead.

Plus the majority of Corpocom's products end up being sold to people who didn't think they needed or wanted Mechacom's anyway. And even if Mechacom doesn't survive, there are jobs in production innovation at Nucom figuring out how the machines will talk to each other when manufacturing a device people thought had no reason to exist two years ago.

We've been a supposedly decade away from eliminating much of our labour requirement for at least a century, but what's actually happened is that most people have more stuff and different job titles these days.

Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#36

Post by pdkl95 »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

"Humans Need Not Apply" (by CGPGrey)

In case someone hasn't seen it yet, this is prone of better overviews on the problem we need to start solving now, now that automation has started making many of the remaining jobs obsolete,

Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#37

Post by marcosdumay »

nine_k wrote: post #22
marcosdumay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the factory owners care about people consuming his production? What will those people offer him for it?

Because these same people pay them money. If you're a producer, your first and foremost care is your consumer. If the great majority of people cannot afford to buy what your machines produce, your market is very narrow. If every producer's market is narrow, there's not enough wealth on it, and they are suddenly poor, too. This is why most producers, especially huge corporations, go to great lengths to lower prices fo…

They don't have money. Remember that nobody wants to employ them?

The only inherent character of a market that gets very narrow is that it's narrow. The amount of wealth created depends on, well, how much wealth is produced, not on how many people are available to buy it. If you don't need people to produce wealth, those two things may have no relation at all.

People are making a huge effort here to assure that no, there's no problem. Yet, both Economis and History say otherwise.

Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#38

Post by logfromblammo »

Phlarp wrote: post #21
marcosdumay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the factory owners care about people consuming his production? What will those people offer him for it?

uh, money?

Currency is the intermediate trade good. Currency is only worth what you can buy with it.

If nobody makes anything, no amount of money can buy anything.

If the only people making things are the rich folks who own production capital, they can only trade with each other. If they are not producing the things that rich people want, they can't trade.

Imagine a degenerate world where there are two rich factory owners and 7 billion unemployed people. One rich owner produces food with robots, enough to feed the whole world at $0.01 per meal. The other produces potable water with robots, enough to supply the whole world at $0.01 per cubic meter. Every day, one richie trades a day's worth of meals to the other, who trades a day's worth of water back.

The 7 billion povs can produce food and water, but they cannot compete on price. Even the cheapest pov-made food or drink trades much more expensively than the factory goods. Their problem is that very little that the povs make is worth anything to the factory owners. They, too, would prefer to get their goods from the factories.

Every last pov is relegated to subsistence production, for personal use. The only way out is to produce a trade good or service that a richie would prefer to richie-made goods and services.

In this degenerate world, the most commonly sold service is likely going to be "not murdering you in your sleep and taking control of your factory the next day".

And that is why it is important to care about what people can trade.

Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#39

Post by scrumper »

jjoonathan wrote: post #13
oliveira12345 wrote: post #5

"Yet rather than putting people out of work, this will supposedly free them up for more creative, skilled tasks, rather than subjecting them to menial, low-skilled work" This is a lie. It pretends that the factory owner will continue to pay the wages of existing employees and also the acquisition-and-maintenance of new CPS machines. Simply a lie. It pretends that the employees will be free "for more creative skilled…

It is a lie and it is insulting to expect that it will slip past most people (it's a "some of the people all of the time" lie). I agree with everything except your last sentence. Some alternatives to socialism: * basic income * putting teeth back in overtime laws and shortening the workweek * "Communes" that arise naturally as the rising cost of rent-seeking exceeds the falling inefficiency of small-scale production.…

I wanted to engage with this but I'm having a hard time getting past:

the internet almost certainly improved the viability of social economic systems by a factor of 10 or so

Certainly for me, arbitrary, dimensionless quantification of an essentially unmeasurable factor casts the rest of your post in a bad light.

Still, basic income isn't entirely good: it denies people the ability to meet a basic need - that of being valued for their contribution to society or some other enterprise. In other words, it replaces the good feeling of doing honest work with a kind of glorified unemployment benefit. While it would be good culturally (by allowing those of an artistic bent to pursue their craft, for example), it's not going to do much for the mental well-being of most of those laid-off factory workers.

As far as your point on communes, can you elaborate on how rent seeking is going to get comparatively more costly? What particular types of rents were you referring to?

Re: What the Fourth Industrial Revolution Looks Like

#40

Post by TeMPOraL »

nine_k wrote: post #22
marcosdumay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the factory owners care about people consuming his production? What will those people offer him for it?

Because these same people pay them money. If you're a producer, your first and foremost care is your consumer. If the great majority of people cannot afford to buy what your machines produce, your market is very narrow. If every producer's market is narrow, there's not enough wealth on it, and they are suddenly poor, too. This is why most producers, especially huge corporations, go to great lengths to lower prices fo…

> If you're a producer, your first and foremost care is your consumer.

No, this is not true, and it's pretty clear everywhere you look. If you're a producer, your first and foremost care is money, not your consumer. Sure, appealing to your customers is a good way to get that money, but it's not the only one. Why do you think that, to pick just one example, companies put so much malware on the computers they sell? Because they calculated that they can do something against their clients that yields extra profits but is not annoying enough for the clients to switch.

Customers are just a proxy for profits.

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