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

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

#91

Post by s73ver »

phkahler wrote: post #72
s73ver wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Over the years I've watched various professions devalued to search engines and spreadsheets, from paralegals to accountants. I don't think it's a bad thing. It's progress and it's freeing up time." I absolutely despise this argument, because it usually forgets that you can have all the time in the world, and it won't matter if you can't pay your rent or buy food.

>> I absolutely despise this argument, because it usually forgets that you can have all the time in the world, and it won't matter if you can't pay your rent or buy food. Why should one be forced to pay rent or buy food? Just try to live independently in the US, it's not possible. If you want to buy land and grow your own food, the first thing to notice is that property taxes are actually a rent paid to the state. In…

"Why should one be forced to pay rent or buy food?"

Well, you're not. You don't have to exist. I kinda like existing, though.

Yes, yes, utopian society and all that. It's the way things exist now, and while it can be fun to imagine a world without it, it's not entirely practical when trying to figure out a problem for those displaced from automation.

"I do not advocate welfare with this, just elimination of as much financial pressure as possible. Eliminating rents is the first step IMHO. This includes phasing out mortgages, which are rents on money that only serve to inflate home prices thereby increasing demand for loans. On this point I am not totally convinced, but I think gradually reducing the percent of sale price than can be borrowed would be a start. I don't know if lowering that to zero is actually optimal, but I suspect 50 percent would be better than where we are today."

So nobody but the uber wealthy can buy houses? And how do you eliminate the rent when I live in an apartment?

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

#92

Post by PeterisP »

nradov wrote: post #33
60654 wrote: post #4

Glad to see they're framing as a capital/labor question, because there are additional important considerations about robots replacing labor, in addition to increased productivity: 1. Robots are capital, and therefore investment, while labor is a pure expense. Capital will generate income that can be reinvested back into more capital etc, generating more wealth for the owner, and they can sell those robots later to tu…

Robots are a depreciating capital investment, just like a lathe or forklift. They don't last forever and require a lot of maintenance. And there's very little standardization. If you try to sell a used robot expect to take a huge loss; it's not even remotely a liquid investment.

Yes, it's not liquid (mainly due to specialization, current robots designed to do something in one factory aren't that usable doing something a bit different elsewhere), but it's still a long term investment.

If you pay $1M in salaries, that won't help you next year at all; if you buy robots for $1M, you'd expect at least half of them to still do useful work for you after quite a few years.

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

#93

Post by colorint »

IIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #48
colorint wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do question the capacity for greed, in the broader sense of, what can happen before a system enters some sort of catastrophic negative feedback? In the immediate term, private debt build-up provokes financial crises. In the long run, there's another balancing factor you're forgetting about: revolution. Workers can safely ("safely") be eviscerated somewhere else, because it's very hard for them to take arms to dista…

Revolutions require organisation - very good organisation. All you'll get from ordinary workers is, possibly, a riot, quickly subdued. You are also up against an extremely well-organised and well-armed government, but that may not even be the most salient point: A lot of people for very good reasons do not want to see the government overthrown. They know the result will only be worse. Our societies are far too organi…

Those are all good points. I should say that I don't really believe in "greedy people," or more broadly, I don't believe that people have stable personalities that can be described in that sort of way. I was talking about greed as a, let's say, institution.

That said, I was talking about revolution specifically as a failure state of unbounded greed. It has been bad enough for that in the past, and revolutions have been successful at deposing governments, even if they don't always produce the best follow-on state. The postwar era has generally seen western governments be successful at economic stability, but that's becoming less true over time. That said, there are some vestiges of economic control still in effect (that is, "stabilizers" like unemployment and Social Security) that stopped the global financial crisis from getting unbearably bad. But keep in mind, the last time we saw overthrows of major western governments was the Great Depression, so the more economic policy looks like the conceits pre-Keynes "Classicals," the less your moderating arguments work out.

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

#94

Post by s73ver »

mikepurvis wrote: post #58
s73ver wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Over the years I've watched various professions devalued to search engines and spreadsheets, from paralegals to accountants. I don't think it's a bad thing. It's progress and it's freeing up time." I absolutely despise this argument, because it usually forgets that you can have all the time in the world, and it won't matter if you can't pay your rent or buy food.

Right, but that's the core of the Basic Income argument.

Which is orthogonal to this discussion. Mainly because I don't believe Basic Income would gain any traction in the US. So we need to find other solutions.

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

#95

Post by PeterisP »

neuromantik8086 wrote: post #56
jawns wrote: post #15

I live in the Wilmington, Delaware, area which, according to this article, is the East Coast hotbed of robots-replacing-workers. Our liabilities, in terms of industries ripe for automation, include the chemicals sector (DuPont is headquartered here and is our largest for-profit employer) and the pharmaceuticals sector (AstraZeneca is our third largest for-profit employer). We also used to have several large auto manu…

My blue-collar cousin works for one of the companies that is responsible for at least some of the automation in the states that the article highlights. When asked about the workers at these factories at a family gathering, his response was to advocate that these workers pursue more education, which I think echoes your point- the more knowledge you have that you can recombine in new and creative ways, the less likely…

If 10 menial jobs are replaced by 3 high-skilled jobs, more knowledge will help you be among the minority who take those new jobs.

However, giving extra education to all 10 of those people won't help all of them; the whole point why those 10 jobs were eliminated was to achieve the same result with less people.

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

#96

Post by djschnei »

thesagan wrote: post #85
djschnei wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're getting caught up in pretty meaningless semantics here... but maybe your conflating natural individual self interest with the goal of an economic system? They are different things. Capitalism (the economic system) looks to channel individual self interest towards it's most mutually beneficial ends. It looks to maximize productive output of the overall system by channeling natural individual tendencies.

Econ and politics is rife with semantics, and they're very important, and sometimes central to the conversation. Either way, I think you're the one making the claims that need substantiation. Years of studying econ hasn't provided me clear evidence that upholds the idea that "economies have goals" other than "economies tend to grow in material wealth" – and even that has subtleties too many to thoroughly discuss on a…

Economic systems have goals. They're systems devised by men. They don't just throw spaghetti against the wall and call it an economic system. Socialism was designed to accomplish some set of goals, capitalism was designed to accomplish some set of goals. Not really sure how this is an argument...

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

#97

Post by mattkrause »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #79
tankenmate wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund (somewhat strangely called the Government Pension Fund Global; it used to be called the Petroleum Fund, and it funded fully by tax receipts / profits from it's oil industry) is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world at nearly USD1T. The Norwegian government rarely touches the capital (even though it is allowed to to a limited extent). With a minor reduction in spending it c…

>at nearly USD1T. At today's prices. Do you really think oil demand will continue for the next 50-100 years at this level with all this investment in renewables? We're currently at a price slump close to pricing from two decades ago. Its a little presumptuous to think oil will continue to have this value.

That's the whole point of the fund--it's invested in things that are not oil.

Wikipedia says it's a mixture of equities (60%), government bonds (25%), corporate bonds (10%) and real estate (5%). If (when) oil profits vanish, these investments will still be there. In fact, since they are legally unable to withdraw more than 4% of the fund's value each year (and typically make more than that), it should continue to grow indefinitely.

The fund has a really interesting set of ethical guidelines--they won't invest in tobacco companies, companies causing severe environmental damage, or those involved in nuclear weapons or cluster munitions, for example.

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

#98

Post by phkahler »

s73ver wrote: post #91
phkahler wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I absolutely despise this argument, because it usually forgets that you can have all the time in the world, and it won't matter if you can't pay your rent or buy food. Why should one be forced to pay rent or buy food? Just try to live independently in the US, it's not possible. If you want to buy land and grow your own food, the first thing to notice is that property taxes are actually a rent paid to the state. In…

"Why should one be forced to pay rent or buy food?" Well, you're not. You don't have to exist. I kinda like existing, though. Yes, yes, utopian society and all that. It's the way things exist now, and while it can be fun to imagine a world without it, it's not entirely practical when trying to figure out a problem for those displaced from automation. "I do not advocate welfare with this, just elimination of as much f…

>> So nobody but the uber wealthy can buy houses?

Adjust that so nobody but the wealthy can afford to build a NEW house. We already have it that the poor generally buy used cars (or buy with bad deals, negative equity etc...). If there were no loans then there would probably be an eventual housing shortage, but we currently have people over extending themselves just to get in the game.

As housing prices fall, your rent will too. But I'm in favor of doing as much as possible to eliminate rentals as well.

As an example, look at the housing bubble forming in the bay area. If people had to put down 50 percent of the purchase price, they would not be able to afford todays prices and the prices would come down.

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

#99

Post by clock_tower »

colorint wrote: post #35
dv_dt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And hoisting ever-increasing debt on workers only works for so long. I think you are underestimating the capacity for greed as well as the effect of globalization. Even if whole nations of workers are eviscerated, it is possible to sit in comfort and growing your wealth and power with little regard to the balance or even efficiency of the overall system.

I do question the capacity for greed, in the broader sense of, what can happen before a system enters some sort of catastrophic negative feedback? In the immediate term, private debt build-up provokes financial crises. In the long run, there's another balancing factor you're forgetting about: revolution. Workers can safely ("safely") be eviscerated somewhere else, because it's very hard for them to take arms to dista…

There's revolution, and there's also a general fading into irrelevance. The Ottoman Empire probably stagnated and collapsed because their land-use practices led to steadily declining agricultural yields; the US's increasingly strange allocations of capital may be yielding similar results.

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

#100

Post by s73ver »

phkahler wrote: post #98
s73ver wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why should one be forced to pay rent or buy food?" Well, you're not. You don't have to exist. I kinda like existing, though. Yes, yes, utopian society and all that. It's the way things exist now, and while it can be fun to imagine a world without it, it's not entirely practical when trying to figure out a problem for those displaced from automation. "I do not advocate welfare with this, just elimination of as much f…

>> So nobody but the uber wealthy can buy houses? Adjust that so nobody but the wealthy can afford to build a NEW house. We already have it that the poor generally buy used cars (or buy with bad deals, negative equity etc...). If there were no loans then there would probably be an eventual housing shortage, but we currently have people over extending themselves just to get in the game. As housing prices fall, your re…

"Adjust that so nobody but the wealthy can afford to build a NEW house. We already have it that the poor generally buy used cars (or buy with bad deals, negative equity etc...). If there were no loans then there would probably be an eventual housing shortage, but we currently have people over extending themselves just to get in the game."

Housing shortages tend to RAISE prices, not lower them. And no, I'm not going to adjust my statement, as it reflects current reality. You adjust your response.

"As housing prices fall, your rent will too."

There's not much to indicate this would be true.

"But I'm in favor of doing as much as possible to eliminate rentals as well."

So while I'm busy not being able to buy a house, where do I live?

"As an example, look at the housing bubble forming in the bay area. If people had to put down 50 percent of the purchase price, they would not be able to afford todays prices and the prices would come down."

That's assuming there aren't people buying those houses.

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