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No Recent Automation Revolution

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Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#341

Post by asjw »

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.

Why not?

What's the incentive for millions of people working for free on open source projects?

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#342

Post by dragonwriter »

stale2002 wrote: post #329
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And now the socialists are saying that I won't own that. Dude, the cold war is over, the communists are gone, noone is coming for your code. Every half-sensible discussion of modern socialism is not about taking away all of your stuff. I am really tired of this bait and switch social democracy for communism. Einstein, Heinzenberg and many other scientists have advanced the whole human race, but you can't have IP on…

> Dude, the cold war is over, the communists are gone Correct, that is kind of my point. Socialists and communists are becoming more and more irrelevant in the modern era. That does not change the definition of what "The means of production" are though. I am not too worried about socialists taking over. They lost, and aren't going to take back the means of production from anyone. > is not about taking away all of you…

> Socialists and communists are becoming more and more irrelevant in the modern era.

Leninists and their descendants might be; socialists aren't any more than capitalists are, as pretty much every advanced economy is some hybrid of the two. Because of the Cold War (by which point that was already largely true), it's become fashionable to call those mixed economies “capitalist”, that is not particularly accurate (though it comports well with Leninist propaganda.)

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#343

Post by stale2002 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #333
stale2002 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dude, the cold war is over, the communists are gone Correct, that is kind of my point. Socialists and communists are becoming more and more irrelevant in the modern era. That does not change the definition of what "The means of production" are though. I am not too worried about socialists taking over. They lost, and aren't going to take back the means of production from anyone. > is not about taking away all of you…

The capitalist state you are celebrating is grafting on increasingly more socialist elements. Stop thinking about the cold war and start thinking about the past 200 years. There didn't use to be public education, police, justice system, etc. This trend is going to continue.

I already said that if you want to redefine socialism as to be capitalism with a slightly bigger safety net, and some government funding of education/healthcare you can do that.

But I am not going to call that socialism.

That's just capitalism, with a slightly larger safety net.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#344

Post by stale2002 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #340
stale2002 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> private ownership of the means of production is prohibited. This is a borderline semantic argument. There is very little difference between banning almost all private businesses, and banning all owenership of private capital. Everything that everyone does, relates to capital. If I write code, I just produced capital. And now the socialists are saying that I won't own that. Yes, code is capital. The value of almost…

> This is a borderline semantic argument. There's no borderline, once the issue was raised of, to paraphrase “what does the term ‘socialism’ encompass”, the discussion was inherently one of semantics. But that hardly invalidates a response once the term of the discussion are set. > There is very little difference between banning almost all private businesses, and banning all owenership of private capital. There's a v…

> means you can't own those goods while renting labor

And this is only slightly different than banning all private enterprises.

I do not consider "you can own some capital, but only if you are a single person, and you can't purchase labor from others for your business" to be significantly different than the slightly more extreme situation of banning all private enterprises.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#345

Post by dragonwriter »

stale2002 wrote: post #343
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The capitalist state you are celebrating is grafting on increasingly more socialist elements. Stop thinking about the cold war and start thinking about the past 200 years. There didn't use to be public education, police, justice system, etc. This trend is going to continue.

I already said that if you want to redefine socialism as to be capitalism with a slightly bigger safety net, and some government funding of education/healthcare you can do that. But I am not going to call that socialism. That's just capitalism, with a slightly larger safety net.

You are expanding the definition of capitalism. Why is that expansion to be preferred over what you call expanding the definition of socialism? Especially since socialists defined both?

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#346

Post by stale2002 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #345
stale2002 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already said that if you want to redefine socialism as to be capitalism with a slightly bigger safety net, and some government funding of education/healthcare you can do that. But I am not going to call that socialism. That's just capitalism, with a slightly larger safety net.

You are expanding the definition of capitalism. Why is that expansion to be preferred over what you call expanding the definition of socialism? Especially since socialists defined both?

Sure, so I can explain why my definition is better, using an example that you gave.

You said that a reasonable definition of socialism was the following: "means you can't own those goods while renting labor"

This situation, is so far removed, so far out there, so far significantly different than the current state of the world, that it makes no sense at all to call the current state of the world "socialist".

The situation you gave, is far, far outside the norm of how the world currently works, and is borderline unimaginable as to how such a society would even look like.

But my situation, of "Capitalism countries put more money into existing social safety net programs" is easily immaginable. It require no restructuring of society. It merely requires a bit more money, being put into existing programs.

Or in other words, not much would change.

Wheras making it so "you can't own those goods while renting labor" would mean that basically every major company in the world would have to be shutdown or restructured. It is such a massive change, that I cannot even begin to guess as to what such a world would look like.

If you want to make up a new word, or something, that describes giving a bit more money to existing social safety net programs, go ahead.

But whatever you decide to call it, please do not pretend that it is any way similar to if people "can't own those goods while renting labor". The situations are so extremely different, that it makes no sense to describe them using the same word.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#347

Post by msla »

lm28469 wrote: post #201
mc32 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

No country in modern Europe is Socialist. It's all Liberal Welfare State Capitalism.

And the Welfare State was created to avoid Socialism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck

> A master of complex politics at home, Bismarck created the first welfare state in the modern world, with the goal of gaining working class support that might otherwise go to his Socialist enemies.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#348

Post by kaybe »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #336
mumblemumble wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the idea I had at the time, probably not. But I'd like to think it would have enriched the lives of myself and others, all the same. In broad strokes, I'm more capitalist than communist, so I don't really disagree with the whole "greed is good" thing. Where I part ways is the unstated - often, I suspect, un-recognized - premise that it's the only good. Money's only useful for what it can buy, and its value has…

> Money's only useful for what it can buy, and its value has been artificially inflated by a social structure that makes it something that you just can't live without. That's a good point. And makes me think of videogames analogy, particularly MMORPG. In a typical MMO, you need to labor to earn money (known as "grinding") to buy all the stuff you'll need to make progress easier (and/or possible). But at any time, you…

That is a very interesting analogy! I'm going to steal that.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#349

Post by krapp »

throwaway092837 wrote: post #152
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…

There is no "west" and there is no "Judeo-Christian" culture. There are, and has been, hundreds of different cultures. Some have similarities, some are profoundly different. (I'm not trying to dismiss your whole point: I agree with everything else you wrote)

>There are, and has been, hundreds of different cultures. Some have similarities, some are profoundly different.

These cultures didn't emerge from a vacuum completely in isolation from one another. Their similarities and commonalities are what form the basis for these categories, broad though they may be.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#350

Post by bsder »

xyzzyz wrote: post #133
bsder wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how many restaurants now have online ordering who would never have had online ordering without being forced to? However, even before Covid, McDonald's was rolling out touchscreen kiosk and app ordering. So, there has definitely been automation in that sector. The paper is ... kinda odd ... because its methodology considers machine operators (injection molding machine operators, lathe and machining center operator…

> That's a pretty laughable idea to anyone who has tried to run one of those machines. That’s not laughable in the slightest to anyone who knows history of machining. There are fewer and fewer machine shops, and at the same time the machining centers are becoming more and more sophisticated. Sure, operating CNC mills requires significant expertise, but so did manual machining. We used to have hundreds of thousands of…

> Just because some existing process requires expertise, doesn’t mean that we cannot come up with a new process that will not need that skilled operator as a step.

However, completely wiping out a process (replacing sheet metal fabrication with plastics) is not particularly "automation" of said process. You've just changed where the expertise is rather than automated it away.

Replacing injection molding machine operators with 3D printing machine operators is automation because it makes some people go away/requires less expertise.

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