Automation is collapsing our economy

[Michael]

Over-supply exist BECAUSE of automation, with more workers for ANY AND EVERY skill they compete for fewer jobs, the companies can get the workers willing to do the most work for the least amount of money, wages drop. Changing up the labors skills sets will do NOTHING because ANY AND EVERY skill is becoming more and more automated!

This presumes that these humans can only function in society doing a mundane 'robotic' task. Is that true? 12 full years of education equates to retail check out? Give me a break. I mean, come on, I learned to scan my groceries in under 10 seconds - it certainly doesn't bode well if 12 years of 'Public' so-called Education only prepares a person to work as a check-chick or a bringing food to someone. It's obvious where the real problem lays. You don't think there is anything these people are capable of doing that is valued by society?

See, I think they can, the problem is they're not being allowed to due to regulations and licencing/rent-seeking. Also, public 'education' exasperates the problem as it prepares them for a world where they graduate and 'find a job' instead of graduate and 'create a job'. Public education was purposely designed to increase the workers in society for the producers (this had the knock-on effect of reducing their wage as more and more of them searched for limited factory work). Public education is a huge part of the problem - but so are Public regulations and Public licencing/rent-seeking activities.

Also the government's central bank devalues our 'fiat' currency so that most of these workers can never put away any reasonable amount of savings/capital to go on do create a business for themselves. Also, people who should be retiring from a lifetime of work on their savings - aren't because the money is constantly losing value - so they can never retire, and they're sticking around in their jobs. Thus, the central bank/government manages to further make what shouldn't BE a problem INTO ONE. Hence, the reason I said we need to eliminate income tax, bring in currency competition, watch as the central banks implode as they can no longer feed off the worker (income tax) and the young (T-bonds) and of course, the central cancer will shrink accordingly.


There are not 'fewer jobs' - there are few mundane jobs. But, there's plenty of work to do. Have you looked at any city in the USA? Most are pretty ugly crap holes - THERE'S a LOT work just in cleaning these crap-holes up. Look at all the pollution that needs cleaning. Look at how children are graduating functionally illiterate. Believe me, automation is NOT the problem. It's probably the only thing holding this sham-economy together.

 

[Michael]

We can't be more productive, population growth is slowing, demand per person has limits, energy and resources is getting more expensive are finite, productivity must stagnate, yet to match ever increasing efficiency we must grow exponentially or else cut jobs.

Yes, so we cut jobs. That's the whole point. Not working. But to not work, you need sound money that isn't losing value so you can retire and enjoy life. Right? We don't have a disagreement here. You just don't want to accept that 'or else cut jobs' is the answer. In short - YOU have your answer, from you!

A conclusion with no valid premise, I might as well say "The only way to know is institute a communist society in which all automatic products are divided fairly to all the people" technically we would know as the product everyone would be producing is nothing.

I don't agree.

How CAN you know if and by how much I want to buy the coffee cup sitting on my desk? You can't. Go ahead - I'll write down a number on a piece of paper (ok, did that) and you try and tell me what it is. You can't know. The only way you will ever know is by offering to trade with me for my cup. Heck, maybe I don't even know until that day comes. AND this trade must be freely made AND in a currency (or money) that we can both value. That's the ONLY way. It's really the only way possible to know that information.

I'd say sound-money and free-trade are axiomatic in terms of measuring economic value. I just don't see how else you can calculate this subjective experience. There is no other way. Further, sound-money is needed to ensure goods and services that are valued by people in society (subjective again) are created and that the limits places on these by the real world are felt (subjective again) in the price paid on these goods and services to ensure they are not over consumed by the society - AKA: the price mechanism. So, it may be true you can create a replica of my coffee cup and distribute one to everyone - this is just wasting resources and very inefficient as 90% of people will just drop their's off in the trash bin as they never wanted it to begin with (maybe even me - now that it's not unique and THAT is what 'I' value). There is a reality with limits out there. You cannot produce everything of anything for everyone. The world only has so much water, so much gold, so much etc...


See? So, again, sound-money and free-trade appear to be axiomatic for measuring value.

WHAT OTHER SERVICES??? It not just the Cheese factory but every other factory and every other service and even new services that have yet to be invented that are increasingly automated, there will be NO OTHER SERVICES that will magically appear to take up the glut of laid off workers! They will have to compete for few and less paying jobs! We know this as a fact over the last few decades as most people left the industrial sector and crammed into the service sector, now the service sector is start to be automated. Sound money is completely irrelevant to this movement of labor!

We simply have to agree we can not know what services people will want in the future. Also, automation doesn't remove all jobs at once - it's a continual process. As for sound money, that makes up the capital that people will use to create the new goods and services that are NOT (or can not be) automated. For example, hand-made food. Maybe this is what people want - a human to make them some food. No a robot, not a look-alike, but a real live human making food for them?

Why not 10 robots? Robots that are smarter then people, that look like people, that never get frustrated with the child, never hit it, show that child nothing but love, that can laugh and try out food and talk about dreams, etc, what lie is there in that? A machine that incapable of anger or hate, only love for a child, how is that a lie? They won't be human though, without all the negative emotions of a person, without demands for food, sleep, sex, shelter, both physiologically and mentally not human, maybe once were human, but not anymore, and the economy of said beings would not be like anything we have today or probably could even imagine, and would certainly not be a free-market.

Because that would be tricking the child into thinking the robot was human and that the feelings were genuine when they were in fact just being simulated. Lying is not virtuous. The Gods only know what sort of mind-f*ck that could play on a child developing into a human?!? To know, your entire childhood was a lie? The robot may 'show' as in simulate 'love' - but it never actually 'loved' the child. Maybe such a child wouldn't value human life at all!?! It may be that it's crucial to experience emotion from a real human just to grow to appreciate humans. So, there's a LOT of jobs that need being done TODAY!

Think about that. Evidence suggests that pre-verbal children who are not loved, continuously cuddled and soothed by their primary care giver (usually the mother) do not develop a normally functioning somatosensory cortex (which develops by being touched, soothed, and other calming skin to skin contact) - and because this part of the brain is not normal, it seems that it doesn't form the proper association pathways to the forebrain. Thus the executive function also doesn't form correctly (such as impulse control, or feeling comfortable being held - etc...). This is happening - NOW. Not in some distant future, but here and now. There's one job people need to do - act as a parent to their children! But many are not doing this. They're wasting time running on a treadmill as the State devalues their currency while causing 'inflation' on the house they wanted to buy, the university they were saving up to attend, the rent-seeking overpriced under quality medical bills they owe on. The State paid it's $8.5 trillion to fight these wars. That money didn't come from nowhere. It was ground out of the souls of the young, here, in the USA. These children will, IMO, repay their parents in kind in the future. It's just the way history seems to have to go. We could call it karma, but the true is, this is a simple fact of being a human infant that needs their parent at home with them all day every day for at least 4 years.

The 'fiat' in fiat currency means State force. It's destroying, literally destroying, our society. Not automation - the State is doing this.

 

[ElectricFetus]

This presumes that these humans can only function in society doing a mundane 'robotic' task. Is that true?

No your assume robots will forever be limited to doing 'robotic' tasks, they won't and are already entering advance fields that require more and more heuristic thinking. Also imagine everyone got a PhD, doctors, lawyers, chemist, assuming everyone had the intellect, could EVERYONE be productive as such?, do we have enough job openings for that many PhDs, worse what about when they come up with AI doctors and lawyers and chemist? There will be no jobs to create for humans if a machine can be created to do that job, and worse if a machine can dream up jobs and create, build and fields machines for those jobs, Long before that though enough jobs will be automated and enough people will be too stupid/ignorant and/or lacking in resources to be able to compete.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Yes, so we cut jobs. That's the whole point. Not working. But to not work, you need sound money that isn't losing value so you can retire and enjoy life.

Money, 'sound' or not, does not magical appear in the hands of those not working! There is no free-market way money will appear in thier hands, the free-markt means competeing with the very automation that got them laid-off and incomeless in the first place.

How CAN you know if and by how much I want to buy the coffee cup sitting on my desk? You can't. Go ahead - I'll write down a number on a piece of paper (ok, did that) and you try and tell me what it is. You can't know. The only way you will ever know is by offering to trade with me for my cup. Heck, maybe I don't even know until that day comes. AND this trade must be freely made AND in a currency (or money) that we can both value. That's the ONLY way. It's really the only way possible to know that information.

And what to say a robot can't make a cup to your specifications, negotiate the price and make the trade?

We simply have to agree we can not know what services people will want in the future. Also, automation doesn't remove all jobs at once - it's a continual process. As for sound money, that makes up the capital that people will use to create the new goods and services that are NOT (or can not be) automated.

You can't know there will be some job that won't be replaceable by a machine, and just replacing some jobs faster then they can be replaced with 'new' jobs is all that is needed to cripple an economy, don't even need to replace them all!

For example, hand-made food. Maybe this is what people want - a human to make them some food. No a robot, not a look-alike, but a real live human making food for them?

I guarantee you as a fact of today most people will want machine made food, per-processed by hygienic machines not by disease carrying human hands and solled at a much lower prices, that is in fact today that more and more food is made with less and less human labor, in fact we now produce, prepare and distribute food today with several hundredths the labor of 200 years ago, it why the agriculture sector represent less then 2% of the jobs today, and why industrial jobs have drooped to just 9%.

But no lets go with that, imagine everyone making and selling food, like 10 times the number of restaurants of today per person, do you think everyone could get enough to keep that many business running, especially when these human food makers have to compete against increasingly automated restaurants that can afford to sell food at cheaper prices and increasing quality?

Because that would be tricking the child into thinking the robot was human and that the feelings were genuine.

Who to say the emotion is not genuine?

The Gods only know what sort of mind-f*ck that could play on a child developing into a human. Maybe such a child wouldn't value human life! No, it may be that it's crucial to experience emotion from a real human just to grow to appreciate humans.

Morality changes over time, once slavery and feudal lords was morally just, someday perhaps murder will be legal because everyone is uploaded (by their on free will) and can just respawn.

But, that's a long ways off.

Long before which are economy will be devastated by ever increase numbers of underemployed, unemployed and unemployable.

 

[Michael]

Money, 'sound' or not, does not magical appear in the hands of those not working! There is no free-market way money will appear in thier hands, the free-markt means competeing with the very automation that got them laid-off and incomeless in the first place.

Again, automation can not occur all at once as you NEED people to buy goods to continue to automate. No people buying = no automation. But, I think we can see the problem here is 'money' and how to get some. Not automation.

And what to say a robot can't make a cup to your specifications, negotiate the price and make the trade?

Sure, it could. But, maybe I want a hand made cup, by a human? Maybe I want a real conversation - with a human. Not a simulated conversation with a robot. Maybe I 'want' to teach a human. Then I'm going to 'need' a human to teach. Maybe teachers will pay kids to teach them Or maybe I want to 'entertain'. Maybe there are humans that want to 'be' entertained by someone who is showing 'genuine' emotion - not simulated emotion?

You can't know there will be some job that won't be replaceable by a machine, and just replacing some jobs faster then they can be replaced with 'new' jobs is all that is needed to cripple an economy, don't even need to replace them all!

I agree in our hyper-regulated economy yes, this will happen. In a free-market economy? We simply don't know. But, I can tell you now, IBM's Watson will begin replacing some doctors soon enough. And Lawyers and Accountants - that'll be easy enough.

I guarantee you as a fact of today most people will want machine made food, per-processed by hygienic machines not by disease carrying human hands and solled at a much lower prices, that is in fact today that more and more food is made with less and less human labor, in fact we now produce, prepare and distribute food today with several hundredths the labor of 200 years ago, it why the agriculture sector represent less then 2% of the jobs today, and why industrial jobs have drooped to just 9%.

OK, I agree. And as I said, as machines do more and more menual work - that should leave us humans with more and more free time to play Which brings us back to how to get 'money'?

Who to say the emotion is not genuine?

Unless the machine feels emotion - then it's no longer a machine, but is a human.

Morality changes over time, once slavery and feudal lords was morally just, someday perhaps murder will be legal because everyone is uploaded (by their on free will) and can just respawn.

I don't agree morality changes, this is a legacy of Romanticism. Ethically morality remains constant. Murder is by definition immoral because one person has to NOT want 'their' body killed. Which is why we have the word 'murder' and didn't use the word 'assisted suicide'. Both end in death, one is immoral, the other moral.

I do like the idea of respawning though

Long before which are economy will be devastated by ever increase numbers of underemployed, unemployed and unemployable.

I agree, this is going to happen. I'm not even sure the USA will make it another 35 years as Nation States with Central Banks are about to be the dinosaurs of yesterday as people demand the markets are freed so that they can try to offer value to people and get some money. It's going to happen. Anarchy is the ideal society - we're marching towards it ever quicker

I personally suggest to embrace the coming change. Do NOT hold on to the past. I was just chatting to someone last night about possibly opening up a private alternative school in the USA and then one in Japan so that students have a chance to make an annual trip to Japan and from Japan to the USA. Of course, this is all just waaaaaaaay too expensive and time consuming for me to do, yet, someone younger and more ambition - maybe? I also like the idea of making breathing meditation a part of learning. Also, older children should sleep in until around 11am or so. There's a huge up-and-coming market in alternative education. There's all sorts of stuff that the coming future will need.

 

[Michael]

Here's a job: You sit and watch Youtube and rate thumbs up or thumbs down. It's not a well paid job, but it requires a human because only a human can have a genuine opinion on aesthetics. Your value to society? You serve as one of millions of people who collectively allow society to determine price - which is a VERY important aspect of society. Now, do you get paid bundles? Nope. But, you're doing low-value work. Luckily, in a highly-automated society, with sound money that doesn't lose value, stuff is really really cheap. Every now and again, you make your own Youtube video, this is then rated. If you get good ratings, then you get a bit more money.

Simple enough?

I personally think it's going to be very very interesting to see how people value one another in the coming decades. Oh, that and watching the collapse of the Nation State should be fun I bet ex-politicians are such sociopaths, their value goes to near zero. The so-called political 'leaders' will be seen for what they truly are - parasites with next to no value by a society not based on shoving a gun in someone's face.

 

[Yetanothersock]

@ Michael,

Just making a machine go faster is automation.

If your mechanic can do oil changes faster because of a new wrench that is automation. Robots are not required for every instance.

@ Billy T,

I showed somebody writing a Thesis full of original ideas might have had imagination training via computers. A normal teacher using a computer instead of overhead projector is automation. A laser pointer is automation.

I have a lifetime ban coming so I wont be able to continue on this thread... But I think the point is made.

 

[Michael]

Coincidentally The Economist has a piece on this EXACT issue: The onrushing wave
Previous technological innovation has always delivered more long-run employment, not less. But things can change

Excerpts:

When the sleeper wakes
Yet some now fear that a new era of automation enabled by ever more powerful and capable computers could work out differently. They start from the observation that, across the rich world, all is far from well in the world of work. The essence of what they see as a work crisis is that in rich countries the wages of the typical worker, adjusted for cost of living, are stagnant. In America the real wage has hardly budged over the past four decades. Even in places like Britain and Germany, where employment is touching new highs, wages have been flat for a decade. Recent research suggests that this is because substituting capital for labour through automation is increasingly attractive; as a result owners of capital have captured ever more of the world’s income since the 1980s, while the share going to labour has fallen.

At the same time, even in relatively egalitarian places like Sweden, inequality among the employed has risen sharply, with the share going to the highest earners soaring. For those not in the elite, argues David Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, much of modern labour consists of stultifying “bullshit jobs”—low- and mid-level screen-sitting that serves simply to occupy workers for whom the economy no longer has much use. Keeping them employed, Mr Graeber argues, is not an economic choice; it is something the ruling class does to keep control over the lives of others.

Being newly able to do brain work will not stop computers from doing ever more formerly manual labour; it will make them better at it. The designers of the latest generation of industrial robots talk about their creations as helping workers rather than replacing them; but there is little doubt that the technology will be able to do a bit of both—probably more than a bit. A taxi driver will be a rarity in many places by the 2030s or 2040s. That sounds like bad news for journalists who rely on that most reliable source of local knowledge and prejudice—but will there be many journalists left to care? Will there be airline pilots? Or traffic cops? Or soldiers?

Jobs expected to stick around:

I would also add to this list: Primary Graduate Level Researchers (the one's that generate the experimental data that the computers then use to develop ...X, Y, and Z). It is funny The Economist listed 'Economists', HA! They'll be the first to go!

 

[Michael]

Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University and a much-read blogger, writes in his most recent book, “Average is Over”, that rich economies seem to be bifurcating into a small group of workers with skills highly complementary with machine intelligence, for whom he has high hopes, and the rest, for whom not so much.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Again, automation can not occur all at once as you NEED people to buy goods to continue to automate. No people buying = no automation. But, I think we can see the problem here is 'money' and how to get some. Not automation.

Never said it could occur at once and have often explain stepwise what is presently occurring and what will occur as we get more automated, progressively and not instantly.

Sure, it could. But, maybe I want a hand made cup, by a human?

Not enough people will, it like saying hobbyist that like vinyl records can keep an economy going. The only solution would be for such people to cut-off form society and outlaw progress (become like the Amish) and create a technologically stagnant economy of their own.

Maybe I want a real conversation - with a human. Not a simulated conversation with a robot.

Who to say it's "simulated"? If and when the day and age comes that machines are all around better then us, most people are going to like and want 'conversation' with machines more then humans, Even then a break down of pro and cons could put the machines in favor most if the time, same as why CDs replace vinyl (smaller, better quality sound) and mp3 replace CD (cheaper - free)

Maybe I 'want' to teach a human. Then I'm going to 'need' a human to teach. Maybe teachers will pay kids to teach them Or maybe I want to 'entertain'. Maybe there are humans that want to 'be' entertained by someone who is showing 'genuine' emotion - not simulated emotion?

Again with the unprovable 'simulation', how do I know your really conscious, you may have a tiny brain aneurism that has striped you of consciousness but you still behave as if you are conscious, how can I tell the difference, I can't there is no way of disproving that your only "simulating" consciousness, so I just assume you are. Again for people that want the old-timy human feel, they would need to split off and go technologically retro in order to re-create a society in which everyone has a "job".

I agree in our hyper-regulated economy yes, this will happen. In a free-market economy? We simply don't know. But, I can tell you now, IBM's Watson will begin replacing some doctors soon enough. And Lawyers and Accountants - that'll be easy enough.

The market place is relatively predictable because we have centuries of study in psychology and anthropology that allow us to model human behavior and what choices they make, as a matter of historical precedence people keep choosing the more automated option overall, the less money they have the more automated option they choose in fact (unless they are completely broke and have land, then they choose a sustenance living of growing food to survive and living off what every they can make for themselves and a very minimalist per-historic barter economy). You might claim there is some regulation that prevent your free-market vision, but then there will always be some regulation, there will never be a total free-market.

OK, I agree. And as I said, as machines do more and more manual work - that should leave us humans with more and more free time to play Which brings us back to how to get 'money'?

And it has not. Keynes whas completely right about his prediction of productive yield today yet horrible wrong about the 5 hour work week! Something went very wrong, the rich took more and more of the profit because they were owning more and more of the labor as it became more and more automated and they needed to pay less and less workers. It will take serious regulations and 'violation' of the rich's personal property rights through taxation as well as reduce working week hours by law, increase minimum wage, etc.

Unless the machine feels emotion - then it's no longer a machine, but is a human.

Are animals human?

I don't agree morality changes, this is a legacy of Romanticism. Ethically morality remains constant. Murder is by definition immoral because one person has to NOT want 'their' body killed. Which is why we have the word 'murder' and didn't use the word 'assisted suicide'. Both end in death, one is immoral, the other moral.

No one wants to be cut in line either, but that not illegal. If murder became as inconvenient as being cut in line it would likely not be illegal either.

I agree, this is going to happen. I'm not even sure the USA will make it another 35 years as Nation States with Central Banks are about to be the dinosaurs of yesterday as people demand the markets are freed so that they can try to offer value to people and get some money.

Or the socialism will take over as people demand stipends for being human... Your beliefs in the future are just as political delusional as that. I don't know, but people-capitalism, automated socialism, exterminism and ludditism (or going the way of the amish) are the only likely avenues, making the market "freer" as you say would most likely lead to one or both of the last two, the rich keep getting richer as deregulation allows them to hord more, eventually the poor revolt, either the poor are killed off or the rich, some run off to start a retro economy in which technology not the market is regulated.

It's going to happen. Anarchy is the ideal society - we're marching towards it ever quicker

Utter delusion. For all we know society could become a perfect hive mind, cybernetically linked all things micromanaged simultaneously. What is 'ideal', I don't know, if you want an "ideal society", join the amish.

I personally suggest to embrace the coming change. Do NOT hold on to the past. I was just chatting to someone last night about possibly opening up a private alternative school in the USA and then one in Japan so that students have a chance to make an annual trip to Japan and from Japan to the USA. Of course, this is all just waaaaaaaay too expensive and time consuming for me to do, yet, someone younger and more ambition - maybe? I also like the idea of making breathing meditation a part of learning. Also, older children should sleep in until around 11am or so. There's a huge up-and-coming market in alternative education. There's all sorts of stuff that the coming future will need.

What the fuck does that have to do with the thread topic?

 

[ElectricFetus]

Actually look at this table, look at it! How many more people are "retail salesperson" compared to "dentist", all the Jobs on the bottom of the list are far far more common then the ones on top! How are we to squeeze all those people into the jobs at top (personally I don't want any more chemical engineers). Did you know out of the top 34 most common jobs only 1 (the 34th) has been created in the last 70 years (computer technician, representing less then 0.75% of jobs) all the rest from retail salesperson to telemarketer, to typist, to machinist are each more common and likely to disappear soon... where are these 'new' jobs to replace them?

 

[ElectricFetus]

Here's a job: You sit and watch Youtube and rate thumbs up or thumbs down. It's not a well paid job, but it requires a human because only a human can have a genuine opinion on aesthetics.

Untrue

"[It's] a series of algorithms that we use to look at what's the potential of a song to be sticky with a listener," Meredith says. "To have those patterns in the music that would correspond with what human brain waves would find pleasing."

Meredith says his software found that hits have certain common patterns of rhythm, harmony, chord progression, length and lyrics. A study conducted by the Harvard Business School found that the software was accurate 8 out of 10 times.

It very possible an AI can be created to rate videos accurately to the average humans liking, just like when Google set loose a gigantic unsuperivised pattern-learning program on to youtube and the first thing it started to recognize was cats (because there so god dam many cat videos!)

Frankly any time you say "only a human" your wrong: there is no proof that "only a human" will be able to do any specific thing.

Your value to society? You serve as one of millions of people who collectively allow society to determine price - which is a VERY important aspect of society.

Let assume that ranking youtube videos is in fact a job, how much does it pay, can a fair percentage of humans live as youtube rankers? No probably not.

Now, do you get paid bundles? Nope. But, you're doing low-value work. Luckily, in a highly-automated society, with sound money that doesn't lose value, stuff is really really cheap. Every now and again, you make your own Youtube video, this is then rated. If you get good ratings, then you get a bit more money.

This only leads to stagnation, not increase standard of living and reduce working hours. The reduce income matches with deflation resulting in stagnation and even mild regression unless people work longer and harder to make less (ala japan).

I personally think it's going to be very very interesting to see how people value one another in the coming decades.

It not hard to predict, people will be valued on extreme talent and beauty, as they have since 'the beginning of time'. Those lacking in talent and beauty, most people, will become increasingly valueless.

Oh, that and watching the collapse of the Nation State should be fun

Your insane! There nothing fun in that, unless you like the idea of possibly being murdered in a rush mob, house burned down, family raped and cut-up in civil unrest before your very eyes, starving to death and watching other starve to death around you... sure in the long run things are likely to be better off, but actually surviving the transition is not "fun", unless you enjoy watching others and your self suffer and die, you sick misandristic masochist!

I bet ex-politicians are such sociopaths, their value goes to near zero. The so-called political 'leaders' will be seen for what they truly are - parasites with next to no value by a society not based on shoving a gun in someone's face.

Again that outside this threads topic, but I do have an fetish for direct internet democracy that cuts out most politicians, but actually getting to that era is not going to be easy. Nor do I deny the possibility that humans in generally might want someone to lead them and idealize by nature "leaders", thus there will always be politicians as long as there are humans... as long as there are humans.

 

[iceaura]

It's obvious where the real problem lays. You don't think there is anything these people are capable of doing that is valued by society?

Not only is there, but to a significant extent they are doing it.

The catch has been getting "society" to pay money for value received.

Right now value to society is not paid for - only value to someone with money, who is somehow induced (often coerced) to exchange it for the value received.

Also, public 'education' exasperates the problem as it prepares them for a world where they graduate and 'find a job' instead of graduate and 'create a job'. Public education was purposely designed to increase the workers in society for the producers (this had the knock-on effect of reducing their wage as more and more of them searched for limited factory work).

The dispersal, extension, and intensification of universally available public education was followed by increasing wages and growing demand for labor in every country on this planet with a capitalist economy.

I was just chatting to someone last night about possibly opening up a private alternative school in the USA and then one in Japan so that students have a chance to make an annual trip to Japan and from Japan to the USA.

Private schools that do that are all over the country, as is the practice of "student exchange", "foreign exchange student", etc, in public schools.

Even in places like Britain and Germany, where employment is touching new highs, wages have been flat for a decade. Recent research suggests that this is because substituting capital for labour through automation is increasingly attractive; as a result owners of capital have captured ever more of the world’s income since the 1980s, while the share going to labour has fallen.

Recent research - ?

Standard leftwing analysis of the consequences of disproportionately lowering the taxes on capital gains and high incomes. Common knowledge in the reality based community for a hundred years and more, and the standard prediction of the consequences of Reaganomics in the US (Thatcher in Britain, whoever in Germany) since before that administration had even started swinging the wrecking ball at the foundations of American prosperity.

I agree in our hyper-regulated economy yes, this will happen. In a free-market economy? We simply don't know.

Your grade school fantasy of a "free market", like the frictionless and inertia free inclined planes of grade school physics, does not exist even in theory. In a theoretical machine devoid of friction, for example, bolts do not hold, compression is impossible, etc.

So of course you already know what "will happen" in your fantasy world, or you can find out easily - just invent whatever is consistent with the rest of your assumptions.

 

[Gage]

Interesting and scary stuff. Hard to argue against what ElectricFetus and others are saying. Like many I've never taken the time to consider this problem. Perhaps the anti-Luddite argument doesn't hold up in our current and on-going situation. Though it's hard to accept this is 20-30 years away and causing mass turmoil and economic stagnation, maybe 100 or so. But by then I would assume were already colonizing space. Capitalism would surly follow us there... With some Socialism by necessity. There's just such an endless supply of things to do. Even an endless supply of robots couldn't do it all. Like my father always said "There's always work to be done." For that reason alone it's hard to vision a foreseeable future where humans are doing work as a hobby.. But maybe I just haven't thought about it long enough because the part about robots doing all the work sure sounds nice.

 

[ElectricFetus]

I don't know about the timing, we are feeling it now, but sure the "water" may be heating up and it may reach boiling in 20-30 years or in 100, it difficult to predict. The most prominent present day predictions based on the human brains raw computing power, digital computers ability to replicate it and the predicted exponentially increasing amount of computing power available to us put human level AI at 2030 and cheaply by 2040. Of course I would predict that software strong AI on Universal Turing machine (computers) is gross overkill to that of an analog-spiking neural-network. Sure we will have nearly 100 years experience and gigantic industry dedicated to building Turing machines, and yes they are great all-purpose task machines, but we know by the existence of our own brains that an analog-spiking neural-network can do the specific task if heuristic thinking several thousand times more efficiently and with several thousand times less energy then a digital Turing machine. Look at the industry of GPUs and FPGAs as models to dedicating hardware rather then software to specific tasks because they are thousands of times better at doing that specific task then a digital Turing machine and it is not hard to forsee that for strong AI likely will require an industry of creating dedicate hardware neuromorphic silicon chips .

I would not give us a 100 years to colonize space though, first off the vast majority of humanity would be trap here on earth for centuries, unless somekind of breakthiugh like cheap anti-gravity drive capable of taking off from earth its just not going to be possible ot move billions of people off world! A space colony would likely be in the dozens maybe hundreds at best by the end of this century, second AI by then maybe advanced enough to replace astronauts completely: fully automated asteroid mines would be vastly more economical than human ones for example. Honestly why send talking monkeys into space, they need food, water, air, far more susceptible to radiation, are emotional wrecks, etc, etc, when you could send fearless machines for much cheaper and no moral outcry about them dying in space.

Again I advice watching Lawrence Summers lecture "Economic Possibilities for Our Children", notice at the end the best counter argument against him is not "it won't happen" none of the economist there say that and all agree it will happen, rather the only counter argument is "Well maybe we still have some time, the "universal doer" may be a long ways away as it hard to see where exactly we are on the exponential curve, and we may adapt with ease."

 

[Michael]

Our Economy is collapsing because of...

I think this chick has an idea of who, and what, is at fault.

[video=youtube;_8Pz_d_BCiU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Pz_d_BCiU[/video]

"Paper money polluted the equity of our laws, turned them into engines of oppression, corrupted the justice of our public administration, destroyed the fortunes of thousands who had confidence in it, enervated the trade, husbandry, and manufactures of our country, and went far to destroy the morality of our people."
-- Pelatiah Webster, “Political Essays” Philadelphia, 1791

 

[ElectricFetus]

Yeah clearly in one ear and out the other with you Micheal.

 

[Billy T]

... Sure we will have nearly 100 years experience and gigantic industry dedicated to building Turing machines, and yes they are great all-purpose task machines, but we know by the existence of our own brains that an analog-spiking neural-network can do the specific task if heuristic thinking several thousand times more efficiently and with several thousand times less energy then a digital Turing machine. . neuromorphic silicon chips . ...

Yes, if it to happen, a non-von Neumann (not Turing) approach is how, but your link has only one step on that path - where is said:
"a new non-von Neumann, modular, parallel, distributed, fault-tolerant, event-driven, scalable architecture inspired by the function, low power, and compact volume of the organic brain."

You hint at a reason why Turing machines can't hack it. Not only do they need to be programed instead of self learning, but every bit flipped from 1 to 0 (or conversely) releases heat - that sets a limit on the density of computation. Volume need for human like scale of computation more likely is a small room, rather than inside a skull. - Not likely to be the AI of a useful robot I would want standing near me. - If it slips and falls on me I'd be crushed by its weight.

Also the learning will be slow, if the best that exists (human child) is a model. I'm not inclined to let a bunch of AI robots learn near me - lets send them to the moon to become "socialized" with each other.

 

[Billy T]

I enjoyed the singing video of post 116. She has lovely voice with large tonal range. I like sarcasm and repetition too - "This time is different, everything is fine, fine fine." and simple rhymes (Ben - open up the door and pour, pour, pour)

I'm sure Ben will go down in history as one or the most important men starting the new century - a really great man;
But the jury is still out: Is he the "great savior of the economy" Or: "The great destroyer of it and the dollar" ?

He is a recognized expert on the great depression - agrees with most that the "tight" money policy made it worse and prolonged it.

He once said: "I won't make that mistake again - I'll make my own mistakes."

I'm inclined to reply: "You sure have - bigger and more serious ones." but only the future will tell.

If you want to see / understand why, Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R1kB1pUxR7k#t=123
It is fact filled, with clear graphs / charts but 19 minutes long (time well spent) with only 15 seconds or so at end promoting his firm. He gives about a dozen reasons why economies and their fiat money are collapsing, with no mention of Electric's "automation" stealing jobs, but I agree that alone is a serious problem.

 

[Michael]

Yeah clearly in one ear and out the other with you Micheal.

The title of your thread is Our Economy is collapsing because of... and then you lead with a premise it's automation. Is this correct? You think relieving humans of doing mundane jobs is 'bad' for the economy?

So, if we had a society where no one had to work, and had 100% leisure, as ALL jobs were automated - that would be 'bad' and 'collapse'?
Is this correct?


My answer to the question "Our Economy is collapsing because of..." is simple, it's because we have a society based on fiat-currency and not sound money. With State currency the State is able to open and pay for Government schools, not only do these types of "schools" create mediocrity but also they create an over-supply of workers driving down the price of labor-hours. With State currency the State can grow to a size where it can regulate and enforce those regulations in favor of rent-seekers (which is most of our economy). State currency allows for $8.5 trillion to be wasted incompetently losing wars and wasting resources. In a free society, free people get wealthy through free-trade - only the State has the incentive to murder women and children purely for spoils/profit. The problem with our economy is fiat currency and the solution is to end Income Tax.

Automation is the only thing holding this economy together. If anything, we need MORE automation. A universal doer would be wonderful.