America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

Post by llamaimperative » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 6:54 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #47

dragonwriter wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't, and the proof of that is that landlords don't already charge 100% of income. You seem to be assuming housing rental is an perfectly monopolistic market, which it isn't, and any place where it even loosely approximates that needs to correct that whether or not UBI is adopted.

Most participants in mature markets know approximately what percentage of the public's wallet they can grab. Obviously it's not 100% for any of them, but they all know what they can get away with. My guess is that if UBI added $1,000/mo to everyone's income, landlords would respond by raising rent by about $400-$500 or so, grocery stores would raise their prices by a percentage of that new income, and so on for all b…

Post by hangsi » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 6:57 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #31

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? Other wealthy people. I knew someone in the yacht-building business who would say "If you want a business that will last, sell to rich people--they're the ones who have money." We are very quickly moving towards a world where the economic activity (earning + spending + producing) of the median person is insignificant ne…

Post by atrus » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 7:02 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #31

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? Other wealthy people. I knew someone in the yacht-building business who would say "If you want a business that will last, sell to rich people--they're the ones who have money." We are very quickly moving towards a world where the economic activity (earning + spending + producing) of the median person is insignificant ne…

Post by cladopa » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

blueyes wrote: post #18

Some authors of this piece are deeply involved themselves in building robots and other hardware technology. They should be taken seriously. The US is moving into a trade war, however unwise, with the country that supplies components for everything we make and need. That country has expansionist ambitions and a superior manufacturing base, which is typically what wins wars.

Post by gosub100 » Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 7:13 PM UTC

RealityVoid wrote: post #26

piva00 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paranoia is the USA's way of life, when life always seems to be teetering on the edge of a cliff: losing your job at a moment's time, losing your life savings for a healthcare emergency, losing your kid to a school shooting, losing your stuff to burglars. Any of these have a very low chance of happening but they can be so life-changing that Americans seem to always be in some state of paranoia, a low-trust society wi…

I've observed this as well, I do wonder though if that doesn't strongly encourage competitivity(is this word right? autocorrect highlights it, huh) and make people work... well, more. More effective, more time, more angry. It's certainly one possible explanation for why they dominate in many areas. But it does sound like such an exhausting thing.