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America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

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Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#401

Post by skyyler »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #372
dzonga wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

highly meritocratic system all the way from bottom to top. incredible indeed. in china you start as a low level official managing a village, if you succeed - you're promoted to town etc. they keep detailed records of your performance in school from kindergarten and a comprehensive dossier is compiled to evaluated by party officials. that means you will never have a nincompoop in charge at any level. maybe chinese nat…

If you appear to succeed- all that is needed is a face of success and connections to others who appear to succeed.

How does this differ from the US or western Europe?

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#402

Post by consteval »

themaninthedark wrote: post #197
netsharc wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also think that there are a large number of people who ended up lost without direction or purpose. People on welfare? I can imagine a lot of these people "accept" that the goal is to get themselves out of welfare, ASAP (especially if there's a deadline), but they can't see a way to that goal - e.g. applying for jobs but getting rejected left and right, and feeling dejected. With utopian UBI, one would be free to…

No, there a lot of people who have no idea what to do when they have free time. There are lots of older people who go back to work, not because they need the money but because the need the structure. In fact, there is an increased risk of death due to retirement. >Available evidence suggests it is unlikely that changes in health insurance and income can account for the increase in mortality at age 62. So, to further…

You can achieve the need to do something by forming human connections. Mutual necessity between people, a form of fulfillment that long predates any economy.

We have the unfortunate combination of being uniquely individualistic and with too much time. Community-based societies, which we will have to transition to in a post-scarcity world, don’t have that problem.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#403

Post by danans »

tartuffe78 wrote: post #2

Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them? The cars? The food and the clothes? Wealth keeps concentrating upward, great leaps in efficiency and throughput, but I can't see how it's a sustainable model for continued consumption growth year after year.

> Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them? The cars? The food and the clothes

The headline last week was that the top 10% now accounts for 50% of consumer spending [1]. As that trend accelerates, the economy will reconfigure to focus ever more on selling goods and services to a smaller, wealthier group of people.

This trend is already visible in many service-oriented sectors (i.e. concierge medicine, private membership based ski resorts, etc).

Exacerbating wealth inequality is the objective with which these technologies are being deployed, even if it's not the objective with which they are developed by engineers and scientists.

1. https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/us-economy-strength-ri...

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#404

Post by skyyler »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #379
immibis wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting tangent to bring up. How many people does America kill?

Mao killed his own people. The only possible historical analogue is what USSR argued about missing people from the Great Depression.

The closest analogue would be the culling of the buffalo, an intentional effort to destroy the food supply of the natives.

Americans don't like to acknowledge this.

But even that's a little different. Application of new farming practices is not an intentional genocide. The culling of the buffalo was an intentional genocide.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#405

Post by dluan »

rtp4me wrote: post #130
sieabahlpark wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, thanks for plainly stating why we need manufacturing back to the states.

Yes, and I think this is the core motivation behind the Trump messaging - bring it back to the US if possible. In fact, he wants to bring back commercial and maritime ship building back[1]. Pretty cool! Hopefully this will employ lots of people. [1] https://news.usni.org/2025/03/05/trumps-make-shipbuilding-gr...

The US makes 5 commercial ships per year. China makes 1,700.

https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/containers/us-wakes-up-to-...

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#406

Post by roenxi »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #381
roenxi wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is normal; the world worked that way prior to 1990. The real change is that the US economy isn't obviously superior to the next however many economies combined. Consequently the US is losing the ability to impose its opinions on others as fundamental truths. It looks like everyone in the West will have to re-learn negotiation and it'll probably be a rocky process.

> the world worked that way prior to 1990 Sort of. I’d move the needle to the 1970s, when Soviet power was on an obvious downside. Realpolitik would dictate, at that time, for Europe and Asia to balance America. But we were a good ally. So balancing wasn’t seen to be necessary.

> So balancing wasn’t seen to be necessary.

Wasn't seen as possible, an important distinction. The Australian experience so far is the US demands we ... basically commit war crimes every so often. Or whatever the term is for invading countries without justification. It is a lot like being good friends with a shark; it is important to keep them pointed at other things and the shark isn't ever going to go out of its way for you unless it is hungry and the friendship is ending.

The world was probably better for us when the US was unconstrained by reality; but the reality is the US have been behaving very irresponsibly for decades. Trump is on the upper end of the presidential scale in recent history, the world can't cope with another Bush or Biden. Obama might have been able to get better diplomatic results.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#407

Post by greenie_beans »

llamaimperative wrote: post #380
greenie_beans wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i look at zillow multiple times per day so i'm well aware of the local market, so no it's not surprising me. zillow doesn't give the full picture of what is happening locally. zillow list price for vacant land doesn't consider all the vacant lots held by people who aren't building for various reasons nor does it consider the surrounding suburbs etc. or the land uvm holds but doesn't develop (who they gonna sell to? t…

> Zillow list price for vacant land doesn't consider all the vacant lots held by people who aren't building for various reasons nor does it consider the surrounding suburbs etc. or the land uvm holds but doesn't develop (who they gonna sell to? they have more money than anybody). there are a lot more variables than just zillow! What? Yes it does. That's how prices work. If UVM sold all of their land, prices would go…

of course land price contributes to housing cost but "land price" isn't the full picture. i wish it were that simple.

> That's how prices work. If UVM sold all of their land, prices would go down, but they aren't selling all of their land, so the prices are higher.

yes exactly how prices work in a textbook but a textbook is not a local market with all sort of dynamics. imagine the political process of UVM choosing to sell all their land, that is just absurd to be like "they can do that and the price problem is solved!" they probably got the land for very cheap and clearly want to develop but they can't because they can't afford construction costs, for a number of reasons (price of land being only one).

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#408

Post by [deleted] »

dluan wrote: post #405
rtp4me wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I think this is the core motivation behind the Trump messaging - bring it back to the US if possible. In fact, he wants to bring back commercial and maritime ship building back[1]. Pretty cool! Hopefully this will employ lots of people. [1] https://news.usni.org/2025/03/05/trumps-make-shipbuilding-gr...

The US makes 5 commercial ships per year. China makes 1,700. https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/containers/us-wakes-up-to-...

[deleted]

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#409

Post by consteval »

dingnuts wrote: post #69
pphysch wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time, a US president said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". His unconventional administration brought USA from deep economic depression into a golden age. Meanwhile, the current ruling elite smears him as one of the worst presidents of all time, and has spent decades undoing that legacy and racing towards a repeat of 1929.

he also ran for reelection four times and made private ownership of gold illegal, and vastly expanded the power of the executive branch. Reminds me a lot of the current guy and his obsession with another term, and whether or not the gold (that FDR largely stole from the people in the first place) is in Ft Knox. I guess the biggest difference is DOGE but it's all too much centralized power for me

IMO his expansion of the government was a best case scenario. The US was quickly barreling towards a socialist revolution. Any other president, particularly a greedy ultra-capitalist, would’ve stoked that flame.

The American people were angry about their exploitation at a level that hasn’t been seen since the creation of the US. He successfully bread crumbed the poor away from taking heads, literally. We so often forget that the most powerful people in this nation is Us, the People. We vote and we revolt. A nation-wide catastrophe is the perfect opportunity for mass organization.

Make no mistake, FDR was a staunch free market capitalist. He just wasn’t stupid.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#410

Post by consteval »

RealityVoid wrote: post #101
gosub100 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it makes us work more, but I think it makes us less satisfied with our lives. Which ultimately fuels the consumerism and pleasure-seeking.

Well, that solves the consumption part of the things, but not the production side.

The production side of things comes from exploitation - the US is the strongest imperialist force in the world. We don’t just exploit the periphery, we also exploit our own citizens to the maximum they can bear.
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