More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production • Hacker News Board

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#61

Post by TimJYoung » Mon, May 08, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

bryondowd wrote: post #37

TimJYoung wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to keep going and not stop at the first level (for example, who buys airline tickets ?). What you'll find is that, eventually, it all comes back to consumer demand.

But the people making decisions at any one company can't go beyond that level for their decision-making. While it would be beneficial to the company if consumers in general had more spending power, each company's decisions can only make a negligible influence on that, and would in fact just be providing a tiny subsidy that the rest of the market would likely eat up without returning the favor. Most owners and shareho…

Yes, it is absolutely a problem along the same lines as the Prisoner's dilemma:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

And yes, I agree, we're going to need a countervailing market mechanism to stop it from proceeding to its logical conclusion: a persistent, severe recession. Whatever the mechanism, it's going to need to be dynamic and adaptable, or it's "dead on arrival" as a solution.

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#62

Post by TimPC » Mon, May 08, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #53

flyingfences wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs are still jobs, though. If people are still employed then that means that there are still jobs for people to do.

There are always 'jobs' for people to do. I, for one, would love to have a dozen servants to do everything for me. I'm just not interested in paying them a living wage. Most of those temp jobs do not pay a living wage. They exist because of the largess of either government subsidies for the working poor, the largess of relatives of the working poor, or because said working poor are burning the furniture to keep warm.…

This is true only when the alternative is a living wage job. A job that needs a top-up of benefits from the government is economically better for the government than that person relying entirely on government benefits. Most companies that pay low wages would potentially not exist if they had to pay $15+ an hour today. At a minimum the price structure of goods would radically alter and the incentives to cut workforce would dramatically increase. The poor aren’t necessarily better off with higher salary if that salary is paid for by higher prices on everything they buy.

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#63

Post by drzaiusapelord » Mon, May 08, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #8

Detroit lost so many jobs, not because of robots, but due to the decline of the domestic auto manufacturing industry. The modern auto assembly line, which uses human-assisted robots, existed a couple decades before Detroit's precipitous decline. The Detroit riots during the 60's and 'capital flight' also didn't help. The argument of robots destroying jobs, imho, has a lot of holes ..the hysteria seems overblown http:…

>The printing press put scribes out of work, but then the entire publishing industry exploded.

And now the publishing industry is dying because of the web. Its not remotely a 1 to 1 transition and automation certainly is to blame for that. Sounds like your example was just a couple hundred years too early. Back in the old days you literally had a factory running to print papers everyday, two usually, with an evening edition. Editing layouts took several experienced people which now can be done by a bored intern with a copy of Adobe CS. Teams of copy editors had to read and re-read copy to make sure it makes sense, now spell and grammar check do that.

Your Detroit example isn't good either. New factories require less human assistance. Ford's new plants in Tijuana will require less human work per car for example.

The numbers simply don't add up and every new form of automation doesn't lead to an explosion of jobs. Worse, in the few cases it does, it creates local unemployment. Its unrealistic to expect a 20 year travel agent veteran to become a full stack developer for Expedia. And if she did, how many job openings are there for that? In the past we needed one travel agent for every 1,000 people. A handful of devs can put up a travel service that serves millions.

Also the article linked makes some good points,but ignores a lot of job growth has been in retail or part-time jobs[1]. While technically employed, these people are far from the jobs of old and cannot be the primary breadwinners in their household. Not to mention, that we've never had automation on this level before so historical data might be meaningless. Sure we can talk about horses turning into cars, but people still needed to drive and own those cars. We may be only a few years away from a self-driving car service that makes both those things obsolete and the jobs it produces will be nowhere near what we have today.

[1] In other words, the automation downturn is already here but some haven't recognized it yet. People with college degrees working at Footlocker or greeting at Walmart know its happening.

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#64

Post by petra » Mon, May 08, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

Jabanga wrote: post #12

Industries that lose jobs due to automation cause job growth in more slowly automating industries: http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/10/24/13327014/productivit... This has been the pattern for over 200 years of labour-saving automation: http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite...

That's not accurate. People in the past worked longer hours,with less vacations, didn't have longer education or retirement etc. So they've worked less.

Further more , what we do know from history is that technology does cause transition periods with heavy unemployment and other forms of suffering. But: in the past ,things happened much slower. The term "the industrial revolution", for example, was created after the fact ,because people of that time just seen a slow change, both in time and geography. And yet, all that suffering, both directly(unemployment, poverty) and indirectly(world wars).

But it seems that today ,things are happening fast. So even if the only problem is handling the transition periods ,it could be a really big problem.

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#65

Post by tankenmate » Mon, May 08, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #59

grecy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Automation isn't the problem, living is a culture incapable of valuing leisure time is what needs to change Leave North America, it's a whole new world(TM) I recently read "A Year of Living Danishly"[1] - an amazing account of two early-30s brits who move to Denmark and learn how life works there. After an adjustment period, they are floored , and I mean absolutely floored how good the work/life balance is. They ar…

The biggest workaholics I know are from the UK and EU. Its not really cultural outside of edge cases like Nordic economies, which will probably slide back to the norm after the oil money runs out or after they have a major economic event which means less capital to spread across the population. Capitalism more or less demands workaholism and people conform to it often thinking they don't have a choice or do have a ch…

In Norway they have two things limiting the "oil money" from just running out. Firstly they are limited by legislation from spending the capital amount in their sovereign fund. And secondly all changes to the system have to reported on by the sovereign fund's philosopher. Going by recent run rates it would take about 50~100 years for the sovereign fund to be depleted.

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#66

Post by petra » Mon, May 08, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

j2bax wrote: post #30

With the looming take over of the robots, why is the fast food industry still largely meat powered? I would think these establishments at their scale, would be ripe for automation, yet they aren't. Are humans still cheaper in this particular industry?

There are many startups working on automating cheap and easy food, be it zume pizza, spyce foods(they have an impressive video), 2 for burger joints , Sally the salad robot , tovala combi oven to reheat frozen meals to restaurant quality , and surely others.

It's just a matter of time.

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#67

Post by drzaiusapelord » Mon, May 08, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

tankenmate wrote: post #65

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest workaholics I know are from the UK and EU. Its not really cultural outside of edge cases like Nordic economies, which will probably slide back to the norm after the oil money runs out or after they have a major economic event which means less capital to spread across the population. Capitalism more or less demands workaholism and people conform to it often thinking they don't have a choice or do have a ch…

In Norway they have two things limiting the "oil money" from just running out. Firstly they are limited by legislation from spending the capital amount in their sovereign fund. And secondly all changes to the system have to reported on by the sovereign fund's philosopher. Going by recent run rates it would take about 50~100 years for the sovereign fund to be depleted.

Then what? Its not like we'll have a turn-key replacement for capitalism in 50-100 years.

Industrial capitalism is over 200 years old and shows no signs of stopping. Its biggest competitor, communism, failed spectacularly. So yes, the oil money will run out and then the laws of scarcity will put these economies in the same place everyone else is in. This scarcity will trickle down to labor as the cycle repeats itself.

Or, more likely, oil prices will crash once ICE gets replaced by electric vehicles and we power them with solar, nuclear, natural gas, and wind. That will most likely happen well before 50 years. A lot of good that oil will do Norway if no one wants it.

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#68

Post by treyfitty » Mon, May 08, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #40

treyfitty wrote: post #16

The stark job loss by industry infographic is quite somber, across those manufacturing industries. Everyone likes to quip "Relevance: gotta retrain to remain" when it comes to automation, but people fail to realize the implicit costs of doing so at an individual level (the time commitment and energy required to face this anxiety all the time). The rate of "innovation" has grown so fast, that we may very well be at a…

"at an individual level" And the irrelevance at the large scale. General life advice is not to mix micro-economic problems and solutions with macro-economic problems and solutions. Obviously on a micro-individual layer, if the bottom 90% are getting fired, getting yourself into the top 10% cognitive elite is quite useful. Its also completely useless as macro-economic societal level advice, there's no point telling th…

> What do I as a taxpayer get out of spending my tax dollars so my waitress was able to obtain her unusable education degree? It certainly doesn't make her a better waitress

Eh... Taxes are a tricky subject. I think it's unproductive to make arguments based on what is owed to you in return for your contribution to taxes. Sure, our taxes pay for infrastructure, and we have an expectation for that infrastructure to work properly. But, when you extend it to matters such as "paying for someone else's education" and expecting something in return, it just doesn't sound "right."

No one owes you anything, even if an indiscernible amount of that was funding that person's education. Taxes are a social construct allowing our elected officials to allocate resources to what's needed.

So, the problem isn't so much that your taxes aren't being utilized to give you something in return (the frivolous education of your barista), but the underlying problem is the excessive funding to education that exacerbates all the waste to happen.

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#69

Post by gaius » Mon, May 08, 2017, 6:09 PM UTC

HillaryBriss wrote: post #2

interestingly, the most intense clusters of robots are in Michigan, Delaware and Texas. by contrast, there's not so much robotic clustering in California. also, this optimistic note: Some of the sectors with the biggest job losses were ones that didn't automate intensively, like textiles and paper products. That goes to show that keeping out robots won't necessarily protect your job.

Californian labour-intensive industries use undocumented workers, they're cheaper thsn robots.

Re: More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production

#70

Post by Animats » Mon, May 08, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

There's a 90-year old book on this, "Chapters on machinery and labor".[1] This analyzes three industries drastically changed by new machinery - printing, glass bottle making, and stone planing.

- Printing was the "good case". Before the Linotype, typesetting was a very slow process, with people picking type slugs from a case one letter at a time. The Linotype had a keyboard and ran as fast as the operator could type. This made shorter-run print jobs and thicker newspapers practical. Printing, and employment in the printing trades increased substantially.

- Glass bottle making was the "production way up, wages down" case. Bottle making by hand glassblowing required a skilled team of about six people working in close coordination, manipulating molten glass and molds. It took years to get good at this. Bottles were expensive. Once an automatic bottle making machine was developed, it took a semi-skilled machine tender to feed the machine and take the bottles away. The skilled trade was destroyed. Bottle cost went down, production went up, and wages went down.

- Stone planing was the "almost everybody gets fired" case. Brick houses used to have stone lintels over doors and windows. These were chiseled flat by people with big hammers, big chisels, and big muscles. Then a machine for planing stone flat was developed. This was much faster and cheaper. But the size of the stone lintel market was determined by the rate of house construction, and cheaper lintels didn't affect that much. So almost all workers lost their jobs.

Those are still the ways automation plays out.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Chapters-Machinery-Labor-George-Barne...