The consumer driven economy is for people who don't naturally automate things • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by iSnow » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 8:41 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #32

iSnow wrote: post #28

I cannot see how increased automation without some pseudo-socialist redistribution of income is going to reduce working hours. We had lots and lots of automation over the last generations - and all it led to is still the same long weeks, overnighters, checking in to the company via smartphone. The jobs made redundant have been replace by bullshit pseudo-jobs like commnity managers and social media experts.

It's a shame you think community manager is a bullshit job. Do you want to work the forums two hours a day rather than code? That's what the "community managers" at my workplace do, and I really appreciate it.

I do something like this in my spare time (not two hours a day of course) and would not ever consider it an occupation.

But it's not community manager per se - I could have chosen grocery packers at the checkout too. I was trying to pick on fluff jobs that are only marginally useful and can only exist because they cannot easily be automated and add just enough of marginal value that companies decide to pay for it. I doubt anyone would notice if they were gone and replaced by an inferior automaton longer than 2 weeks.

The point is: we are not reaping the fruits of 150 years of fierce rationalization, but fight for the 10% indispensable employees, keep the majority employed whether it makes sense or not - and pay the rest just enough that they don't starve. Seems dysfunctional to me.

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

#42

Post by RyanZAG » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 8:56 AM UTC

yardie wrote: post #35

gfodor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point seemed to fly right over your head. Of course he realizes that the flying experience for Bill Gates is superior to that of your average coach class traveler. But the point is that they are both economically capable, in 2013, to fly in a jet that can take them across the country in a few hours. This is quite remarkable if you think about it.

Okay, expand that out a little. Bill Gates can fly into any country he wants and stay as long as he wants. Your typical coach flyer does not have that resource (visa constraints, return ticket constraints). He may have quite a few things in common with the upper-middle class but barely anything in common with the lower and poor class.

I think you're missing the point he's making. 200 years ago, it doesn't matter how rich you were - you could not travel across country in a couple hours. So the 'poor' of today are able to travel better and faster than the rich of yesterday.

Perhaps in 50 years time, everyone will travel how Bill Gates does now, and Bill Gates would travel even better. This would come about through better automation of air transport.

The argument is fairly simple: we can try to decrease the gap between Bill Gates and everyone else, or we can leave the gap where it is and focus on shifting the entire bar so far that the bottom rung of the future becomes higher than the top rung of today. This is the progressive idealist viewpoint of capitalism and stands in direct opposition to the socialist viewpoint. Historically, mixing the two together works best, and it's what we use: capitalism with high taxes. Unfortunately, localized competition for tax money is driving those taxes down and destroying the system while also using the taxes for short term and ultimately useless goals instead of long term infrastructure. In comparison, Norway is probably the country closest to 'correct' in how they are using the wealth generated from oil taxes - investing it in the positive return economy.

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

#43

Post by RyanZAG » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 9:07 AM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #25

svachalek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things never change, until they do. Think about the extreme case, where a $10,000 machine can do any job that humans currently do, better than they do, 24 hours a day. Would the entire world find new jobs, everyone doing things that no one up until 2013 had ever done before, things that machines are still not capable of, things that are valuable to the economy? I doubt it. At some point, the machines will win, and ev…

When you assume the outcome, of course it's inevitable. But consider: machines are still dumb. At the end of the day, someone automates the process. If all work that is necessary for the function of life can be automated, how wonderful! But, consider the dishwasher. It saves time, but is often misused by dirty dishes going in without pre rinse and disposal. So technically the work has been automated, but parts of the…

If we make a better dishwasher that does not require pre-rinse, what happens to your argument? Is your argument that there will now be some other task, maybe loading the dishes?

Consider: washing the dishes across a town employs 1000 people. Pre-washing the rishes employs 300 people. Loading the dishes employs 100 people. The factory creating the dishwasher is automated and employs 10 people. 50 people are involved in designing and marketing the dishwasher.

We have now gone from employing 1000 people to employing 150. Those 850 people are now unemployed and must seek or create new employment. Whether they succeed is irrelevant though, the dishwashing process now needs fewer employees and economic benefit has moved from the employees to the smaller number of people creating the dishwashers.

So your argument doesn't work for a simple reason: automation (by definition) reduces the number of people required to complete a task.

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

#44

Post by tonyedgecombe » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 9:26 AM UTC

svachalek wrote: post #22

jseliger wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Things never change, until they do. Think about the extreme case, where a $10,000 machine can do any job that humans currently do, better than they do, 24 hours a day. Would the entire world find new jobs, everyone doing things that no one up until 2013 had ever done before, things that machines are still not capable of, things that are valuable to the economy? I doubt it. At some point, the machines will win, and ev…

The paradox is if the jobs are eliminated by the machines then so are the customers for the products produced by the machines.

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

#45

Post by xlayn » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 9:28 AM UTC

first than nothing, discussion about the topic is great as most of the times is @hn, but I have this felling about this post:

why this kind of post keep appearing in HN? is this also going to go the same way of decadence as slashdot to end up being another Yahoo answers?

Let start to dissect the post: The tenet is:

"Consumption doesn't improve economy or humanity in general. Neither does production. If you want to help, start automating things."

first thing first, where is the cold, hard data supporting this, or is this another "I would write some fancy stuff on my blog and get it re-blogged, I'm so tweet-in"? this is starting to be a trend, in which people throw a lot of poorly supported stuff to their blogs so they look "in".

Poor argument, emotion driven conclusion, at the beginning of the second paragraph is stated: "Imagine" but he later concludes: "At this point, both of them are getting fat from their excessive consumption and working harder pay for it all." what the heck does being fat has to do with the idea behind it all? is this a slimfast supporting post? what does the fat analogy means? was an analogy?

"Both are now working harder for things they don't need" why they both should work harder? if they did not want ice cream or cookies the example is flawed in first place, economic should start with things that are required and go up to things we want a la Maslov.

"Of course, if they were intelligent people they'd try to improve the production of cookies and ice cream" it's called "competition" and it does already exist, it force you to create new technology to make the process cheaper and have better income from the same products allowing you to get your prices low (because you have better earning marging) and still be profitable, it's what prevents you from start making average tennis shoes, or cookies or ice cream because someone else is already way better at doing that; PLEASE do not come to the argument of "if they were intelligent" explain why is better.

"Is it true that we will only automate the processes we're working on once we're >" at this point I'm starting to think this is about a existential problem/phase of the author.

and I'm pretty sure you can start dissecting any part of the post with arguments pro and against it, as with anything else, it's the lack of any new light that bothers me, please don't tell me this will start to be the "throw some random stuff so I can show I'm cool" place.

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

#46

Post by loup-vaillant » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 9:50 AM UTC

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…

> (If machines are smarter than human)

At this point, you have intelligence explosion, and current economics means squat. The machine will take over the world, killing us all in the process (we're made of atoms it can use for its purposes, whatever they are).

Or it can build a paradise, if it has been programmed to do exactly that. Good luck with that, since it's not exactly easy to describe "paradise" with programmatic precision.

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

#47

Post by Joeri » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 10:22 AM UTC

_lex wrote: post #37

Joeri wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's false to think that automation must create jobs, although it's a tautology that it does destroy/reduce parts of them. Your argument essentially amounts to "this is how it's worked in the past (unemployed people have been able to find other categories of jobs), so it'll always work that way".

It's not automation that creates jobs, it's the incentives embedded in our socio-economic culture that create the replacement jobs for those that automation destroys.

When labor is freed up, entrepreneurs look for new ways to employ it to make money. When production costs are lowered, entrepreneurs look for new ways to employ the freed up capital. This is why so many companies are hiring at the same time as they are firing. Taken at a national or global scale, the result is that labor and capital follow supply and demand curves and that adjustments to the system through automation are compensated elsewhere through economic incentives.

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

#48

Post by richardw » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 11:08 AM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #23

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…

>5. Richer people will get richer. Poor people will get poorer. I'm going to go ahead and call you on that one. What you probably mean is that rich people will get a lot richer comparatively. There will be a wider gap on paper. Those same machines have a tendency to make that paper gap more meaningless as time goes on. Bill Gates and I both get to ride in jet planes. Even the poorest people in developed countries liv…

> The question is: Would you rather be a poor man in a rich society or a rich man in a poor one?

I've read a couple of studies that link happiness to how wealthy you are relative to your friends and your neighbours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_income_hypothesis

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/suicide-rate-rich-n...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7497...

So each individual would be happier if they were that rich person. Obviously the other neighbours less so.

If the choice is based on whether you want the whole world richer or poorer, then it's a bit more abstract. We're built to look for relative advantage and we'll do it whether it's measured by a better stick or a nicer logo/wife/jet/body/mind. We're already in that richer society (relative to most of our forefathers), but we abstract away the improved situation and compete in any environment we find ourselves in, and are (again, in general) happy to the extent that we succeed.

I love the saying "Youth is wasted on the young". For an old person, wealth would be the opportunity to go for a run again, meet a girl, or have the energy and opportunity to try some venture again. No matter what country you live in, most will experience these things - youth, friends, love, loss, possibly children, competition, failure and success. So unless you're actually in a war situation being hunted down by a rival tribe or army, life's not bad.

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

#49

Post by atrus » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 12:16 PM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #34

noonespecial wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>5. Richer people will get richer. Poor people will get poorer. I'm going to go ahead and call you on that one. What you probably mean is that rich people will get a lot richer comparatively. There will be a wider gap on paper. Those same machines have a tendency to make that paper gap more meaningless as time goes on. Bill Gates and I both get to ride in jet planes. Even the poorest people in developed countries liv…

Totally agree, but I think the question that capitalists need to ask is given the current level of abundance in X and scarcity in Y, what should every human being be privelaged to? When food was scarce, it would be unreasonable to think that anyone but those that produced the food were entitled. However, now that we can produce as much food as we currently can, how can we justify that some people in the world can exi…

Isn't most hunger due to distribution issues, not supply issues?

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

#50

Post by nyan_sandwich » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 1:26 AM UTC

_lex wrote: post #36

nyan_sandwich wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1,2,3 Yup, except why do the developers not get the income? Presumably they are selling the machines? >4 Yes. The key with this kind of logic is to relate it to the current situation, though; people with more workers can afford even more workers. Why doesn't it all blow up now ? There is more to success than simply scale of manufacturing capability; firms need to keep ahead of competitors, keep up with technology, m…

Developers will benefit from some of the income, but won't get it all. This is because their initial benefit will draw more people into software development, which, if not coincided by an increase in demand for software engineers, will lower wages since it'll increase competition for jobs. The poor will get poorer b/c they will have neither capital (money/development machines) and because eventually the rate of canni…

>They will still be under the control/ownership of capitalists because they won't be persons - everything that isn't a person technically has an owner.

>When machines do cross the barrier of deserving rights, we should reconvene and have this discussion again.

You are assuming the rule of law holds through all of this.

If an autonomous machine intelligence is capable of becoming militarily sovereign (in the sense that it becomes nontrivial to simply "arrest" or otherwise overpower), it matters little whether the rest of us think it has rights, or who nominally "owns" it.

If that machine is also able to outcompete human capitalists at wealth accumulation (assuming market holds) or human generals at military power (assuming nothing)...

And let's face it, it's not that hard for even lone smart humans to be militarily untouchable. Think cybercriminals: If today we decided that cybercriminals weren't people and were owned by the government, would the they care? No; they are sovereign through anonymity, and their legal status is not an impediment to their work. Likewise with autonomous machine intelligence.