Give up AC to save future generations?

[Fraggle Rocker]

Who makes those "automation" machines? Who makes the steel used in those machines? Who digs the iron ore? Who ships the iron ore? Who makes those ships? Who loads and unloads the iron ore? Who services those "automation" machines? Building homes and condos, providing food and utilities is essential to living even if no one works. Who buildings those homes? Who grows the food? Who cuts the trees to make the lumber? Who digs the clay to make bricks? Who makes the cement for concrete? Who digs the sand and gravel for the concrete? How is all of that shipped to where it's needed? Who builds the machines on which stuff is shipped? Who builds and maintains the roads/rails on which stuff is shipped? Who processes the raw food into edible products? Who raises the cattle? Who butchers the cattle for the meat? How is all that meat shipped to the consumers who are lying around on their asses doing nothing but playing on their computers? How is that meat distributed to the consumers? Who maintains the machines that do all the work? Who maintains the utility lines and pipes? Who works in the sewers when there's problems? Who works in the power plants to make sure that the nukes don't go 'BOOM'? Where does the uranium come from to make fuel for the generators?

Max, you keep asking the same stooopid questions, without altering the list, no matter how many times people answer them.

THESE THINGS ARE DONE BY A STEADILY SMALLER PORTION OF THE POPULATION BECAUSE AUTOMATION IS TAKING OVER A STEADILY LARGER PORTION OF THE WORK. JUST AS WE NOW HAVE 2% OF THE POPULATION RAISING FOOD INSTEAD OF 98%, BEFORE LONG WE'LL HAVE 2% OF THE POPULATION PERFORMING INDUSTRIAL LABOR (INCLUDING DIGGING HOLES, HAMMERING NAILS, BAKING BREAD AND DRIVING GIGANTIC VEHICLES) INSTEAD OF THE 20-40% WHO DO IT NOW.

Do you understand this yet? There's a reason so many of the Moderators regard your posts as trolling. You don't engage in discourse. When people respond to the things you say you pretend you can't understand the responses and you just post virtually the identical words again--two or three times. A discussion never moves forward if you're a participant. You take up an awful lot of our bandwidth by standing still.

"Second Life"? What's that? ...a computer game? How much money does he make playing on his computer and pretending to make clothes? Who buys his pretend clothes?

He doesn't NEED money. He spent his life working and now he can live on the proceeds. It's a pretty humble life but he had the good fortune to live to see Second Life, which is so cheap as to be essentially free.

For the next generation that balance of labor and leisure will be spread out more. They'll be working one or two hours a day, earning a satisfactory income because the value of their labor is leveraged by the automation economy, and having the rest of the day to do what they want. Instead of our way, which is to work for forty or fifty years in one big block, and then have nothing to do but play--at an age when we're too old for many types of leisure activities.

You have specifically ignored responses to your posts describing the increasing efficiency of human labor resulting from automation. The result of that is that the industrial tasks you keep throwing in our faces require steadily less human labor. Therefore one day to find a human engaged in one of them will be as challenging as it is today to find a farmer. (Fortunately we can search for them on the Web.)

You have also specifically ignored responses to your posts detailing the steady reduction in the number of hours humans spend working. From a relentless schedule in 9000BCE that would be a violation of the FLSA today, to having time off for church in the 19th century, to Henry Ford's forty-hour week. As work becomes increasingly automated this makes it reasonable to assume that the work week will not only continue to shrink, but may shrink to a level that we can't imagine.

This failure to respond to challenges is what many of us think qualifies your writing as trolling.

Fraggle, I think you're being seduced by some computerized "world" where everything is done with the flick of a button.

Gosh Max. Do you suppose it's because I've lived long enough to see things done with the flick of a button that the Max-like curmudgeons of my youth insisted would always require "good old hard work?" When's the last time anyone had to erect a telephone pole, much less chop down a tree with handsaws, drag it out with mules, and lathe it into a cylinder? How many humans do you see on a building construction site today compared to fifty years ago? How many people does it take to run a warehouse today? To load, unload or operate a ship? To convert a ton of wheat into bread and get it to your table?

There is less work to do, so everyone works less than their ancestors. That trend will continue.

Fraggle, that life is only possible when one already has the money to pay for everything he needs in the REAL world. The "pretend world" is for entertainment.

Explaining economics to you is especially hopeless. I think this is something you honestly do not understand, rather than merely pretending not to understand it in order to stay in character.

The average inflation-adjusted income has risen steadily since the Industrial Revolution, even though the average number of hours worked has steadily fallen. This means that the value of an hour of human labor has skyrocketed--as measured on the only meaningful scale: purchasing power. Today the average American couple's income can buy a house, a couple of cars, a set of appliances and other gadgets Buck Rogers could not have dreamed of, many hours of entertainment, a pretty decent vacation every now and then, Star Trek medical care, and (in normal times) a satisfactory retirement. Even though they each work only forty hours or maybe one works fifty. A few centuries ago the average couple were farmers working 70-90 hour weeks. Yet they lived in a house belonging to the lord of the manor and earned barely enough income to provide humble food and clothing and to keep their farm tools in good repair, and depended on their children to support them in retirement, basically by letting them continue to live in the same overcrowded house until they died. No vacations, scarce entertainment, few and primitive appliances, medical care from herbalists and midwives.

Please tell me why you do not believe that this trend will continue, so that in a couple of hundred years the average couple will work ten-hour weeks, for which they will earn an income with the purchasing power of today's millionaires?

You've lost sight of the real world, Fraggle.

I'm helping to build the real world, instead of standing on the sidelines grumbling about it.

Who makes the machines that do the work. . . . [yatta yatta yatta for the third or fourth time around] And the list goes on and on. Humans aren't taken OUT of the equation, they're just transferred to other types of work.

But you're missing the key point that at the same time, the volume of their work is decreasing steadily. And since that has been pointed out to you more than once, with numbers to back it up, to continue to ignore it would be a clear case of trolling.

People here need to take a lot closer look at the real world around them. Who bakes the bread? Who delivers the food? Who cleans up the garbage?

As has been already noted, three or four times, all of this is done by a mix of humans and technology, with the ratio steadily shifting more toward the technology. It isn't that people aren't "doing" these things. It's that they're getting so much assistance from technology that it doesn't take very much of their own work to "do" them. And they're being paid the same salary (actually an astronomically higher salary) for "doing" that tiny fraction of the work as their great-great^10 grandparents were paid for "doing" all of it.

In other words, because of technology the value of their labor has been increasing at a fantastic rate, and will continue to do so.

 

[Baron Max]

He doesn't NEED money. He spent his life working and now he can live on the proceeds.

'Nuf said, Fraggle. As long as we all have lots of money, there's no need to work any longer. Odd, though, don't you think, that he actually "worked" for all that money? ...when he could have just sat in front of computer and "lived" his life in a computer-generated world?

In other words, because of technology the value of their labor has been increasing at a fantastic rate, and will continue to do so.

So you're basically negating the law of supply and demand, is that it? And that's really the gist of your argument, isn't it? Joe Average works just 3 hours a week and he makes $1 million per year. And that just keeps getting better into infinity and beyond?

And it's all because of technology that no one will have to work much ...and all the comforts and necessities will just come flowing through the door of their multi-million dollar home.

Hmmm, sounds nice, don't it? Got any other fairy tales you'd like to tell us about, Fraggle?

Troll? No, Fraggle, I've asked several pointed questions which you failed to answer ...mostly because you can't other than saying "The machines or technology will do it all." Sounds sorta' like saying "God did it all", huh?

Baron Max

 

[frame]

"So you're basically negating the law of supply and demand, is that it? And that's really the gist of your argument, isn't it? Joe Average works just 3 hours a week and he makes $1 million per year. And that just keeps getting better into infinity and beyond?"

What's wrong with this?
If what fraggle is saying is true, and our manual labor will shoot down to 2%,
I think that that is all very reasonable.

Why?
Cause nobody except for 2% of the goddamn popluation can do it.
Say, years from now, many many years, gold is depleted EVERYWHERE.

The only gold left is antique relics buried in the ground from history.
Now, would you charge the 500$ you would pay for a gold braclet when gold is abundant, but NOT after it is gone?

 

[Baron Max]

I was just thinking....

Take the beef industry, okay? In the USA, there's tens of thousands of workers needed to provide the beef that Americans eat. They work 8 hours a day, 7 days per week and can barely keep up with demand. From growers to butchers to delivery men. Few of them can be robots. Now, as it is, they make a decent wage - nothing astronomical, but decent. Fraggle wants those same workers to work less hours (I think he mentions 3 hours a week), and, he wants those people to make astronomical wages for those 3 hours a week. With all that in mind, how much is a pound of beef gonna' cost for the consumer (the guy who works on his computer from his house a few hours a week)? If beef costs, say $4 per pound now, what's it gonna' cost in Fraggle's world?

Want another one? Okay. Let's take tomatoes. There's tens of thousands of workers needed to provide tomatoes for American consumers now. They work 8 hrs a day, 7 days a week and can barely keep up with demand ...and sometimes can't. And no machines that have ever been invented can pick tomotoes! Tomatoes are expensive now, but in Fraggle's world, how much is a tomato gonna' cost? And who can afford one? Hell, if you have one, you sure ain't gonna' sell it!

Supply and demand is not something that can be pushed aside ...it's one of the defining principles of almost any economic system. Fraggle seems to want to not only push it aside, he wants to eliminate it altogether!

So, in Fraggle's world, if you had a tomato or a pound of beef, would you just let someone have it for a pittance? If you worked to produce, harvest, distribute and store that tomato would you sell it for a song and a dance?

Supply and demand. And robots and machines doing the work don't change it. Supply and demand is the basic principle of economics that can't be changed on a whim. (Except perhaps in Fraggle's computer game?)

Then I got to wondering ....is all this that Fraggle is talking about just a silly computer game? Or is he actually talking about real life? It is confusing.

Baron Max

 

[John99]

happy to say that i have not used AC in over ten years...dont use plastic bags for shopping either. just a personal choice.

 

[frame]

I was just thinking....

Take the beef industry, okay? In the USA, there's tens of thousands of workers needed to provide the beef that Americans eat. They work 8 hours a day, 7 days per week and can barely keep up with demand. From growers to butchers to delivery men. Few of them can be robots. Now, as it is, they make a decent wage - nothing astronomical, but decent. Fraggle wants those same workers to work less hours (I think he mentions 3 hours a week), and, he wants those people to make astronomical wages for those 3 hours a week. With all that in mind, how much is a pound of beef gonna' cost for the consumer (the guy who works on his computer from his house a few hours a week)? If beef costs, say $4 per pound now, what's it gonna' cost in Fraggle's world?

Want another one? Okay. Let's take tomatoes. There's tens of thousands of workers needed to provide tomatoes for American consumers now. They work 8 hrs a day, 7 days a week and can barely keep up with demand ...and sometimes can't. And no machines that have ever been invented can pick tomotoes! Tomatoes are expensive now, but in Fraggle's world, how much is a tomato gonna' cost? And who can afford one? Hell, if you have one, you sure ain't gonna' sell it!

Supply and demand is not something that can be pushed aside ...it's one of the defining principles of almost any economic system. Fraggle seems to want to not only push it aside, he wants to eliminate it altogether!

So, in Fraggle's world, if you had a tomato or a pound of beef, would you just let someone have it for a pittance? If you worked to produce, harvest, distribute and store that tomato would you sell it for a song and a dance?

Supply and demand. And robots and machines doing the work don't change it. Supply and demand is the basic principle of economics that can't be changed on a whim. (Except perhaps in Fraggle's computer game?)

Then I got to wondering ....is all this that Fraggle is talking about just a silly computer game? Or is he actually talking about real life? It is confusing.

Baron Max

i was under the impression that Fraggle made a reference to a TREND

"K. JUST AS WE NOW HAVE 2% OF THE POPULATION RAISING FOOD INSTEAD OF 98%, BEFORE LONG WE'LL HAVE 2% OF THE POPULATION PERFORMING INDUSTRIAL LABOR (INCLUDING DIGGING HOLES, HAMMERING NAILS, BAKING BREAD AND DRIVING GIGANTIC VEHICLES) INSTEAD OF THE 20-40% WHO DO IT NOW."

Trends happen over time.
We may not have the technology NOW, but
from what I can tell from what Fraggle is saying,
The way we are progressing, we WILL make that technology, because it makes things EASIER.

Correct me If I am wrong, Fraggle D:

 

[Baron Max]

i was under the impression that Fraggle made a reference to a TREND

You need to read more of Fraggle's posts. He is talking about a trend, but he takes it much, much further than that ..to the point of no one doing anything except sitting at their computers home.

Read his posts, you'll begin to get an idea of Fraggle's ....ahh, philosophy. (If we can call it that?!)

Baron Max

PS - I know his posts are damned difficult to read, but if you can stand it, read them. If you get bad headaches, just stop reading, take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

 

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

Second life has an estimated GDP of US$ 150 million.

Yes people do shift to other types of employment but overall the number of people it takes to get the same quantity of output decreases over time.

 

[Baron Max]

Second life has an estimated GDP of US$ 150 million.

What is this ...."Second Life"? A computer game?

Yes people do shift to other types of employment but overall the number of people it takes to get the same quantity of output decreases over time.

And there's no point of stopping? that decrease just goes on forever?

And am I talking now about a fuckin' computer game or real life? Now you've got me confused ....is Fraggle talking about a lousy computer game?

Baron Max

 

[Billy T]

... If you get bad headaches, just stop reading, take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

Jeeess - you are an old timer with the old ways still. Now days one goes the YouTube's humor section for pain relief. More information, less chemicals - get it?

But I never visit them so do not know there is a humor section. I (probably like you) prefer ETOH, well aged with nice smoooth flavor.

 

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

According to the website:

Second Life® is a 3-D virtual world created by its Residents.

Basically it's an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game which mimics real life to a certain degree except that since everything is virtual the entire in game economy does not function in an intuitive manner.
For example traditional resources, such as raw materials are irrelevant, similarly with manufactured goods and agriculture. The only scarce resources are processing power /memory on the servers that run the game which is represented by 'land' in the game, enterprise and any in game items that allow people to customise their avatars (such as clothes). In the case of the latter, the scarcity is not in the supply of the item, because that is completely arbitrary and effectively infinite, the scarcity lies in the design of new items and competition between different suppliers of said items.

http://secondlife.com/whatis/

Yes there is effectively no stopping point, in theory you can at some point completely take humans out of the loop. For example, now you need people to construct buildings but there is no reason to suggest that at some point in the future most of that work and eventually all of that work could be done by robots.

Eventually service jobs might be preformed by robots, at some point management jobs as well. The only Jobs that, in theory, might be immune to this would be those require very complex pattern recognition like say engineering but even that could be done away with the advent of true artificial intelligence.

Most of this is highly unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future but some of it surely will, the first to go will likely be many of those jobs you were talking about previously, in particular construction.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Let's take tomatoes. There's tens of thousands of workers needed to provide tomatoes for American consumers now. They work 8 hrs a day, 7 days a week and can barely keep up with demand ...and sometimes can't. And no machines that have ever been invented can pick tomotoes!

And when does your visa expire before you have to go home to the 16th century? You seem to come from a place where it's assumed that just because no machine has ever been invented to do X, that no machine will ever be invented to do X.

Get real, Max. I.T. makes it possible to invent machines that will do almost anything. There will come a day when very nearly the only thing they can't do is think. And all bets are off on that too.

Supply and demand is not something that can be pushed aside ...it's one of the defining principles of almost any economic system. Fraggle seems to want to not only push it aside, he wants to eliminate it altogether!

But technology reduces the cost of supplying goods, thereby making them cheaper. Duh?

So, in Fraggle's world, if you had a tomato or a pound of beef, would you just let someone have it for a pittance? If you worked to produce, harvest, distribute and store that tomato would you sell it for a song and a dance?

It used to cost more than the average person earned in a year to purchase a cross-country trip. The technology of railroads made it not only affordable, but faster. Today transportation is so cheap that if you've got a guitar you can hitchhike and travel for literally "a song and a dance." The same thing will happen to everything else.

Max, everyone in America knows this stuff. You are TROLLING.

Supply and demand. And robots and machines doing the work don't change it.

They don't change the principle, but they change the PRICES. If it takes less labor to produce something, it becomes cheaper. Once again, this is something everyone in America knows. Max knows it too. He just likes to troll.

Jeeess - you are an old timer with the old ways still.

I think I'm a few years older than Max (65) but somehow I've managed to stay up do date.

According to the website: Basically it's an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game which mimics real life to a certain degree except that since everything is virtual the entire in game economy does not function in an intuitive manner. For example traditional resources, such as raw materials are irrelevant, similarly with manufactured goods and agriculture.

My friend does not actually play Second Life, I just use that as a generic term for all non-war-intensive MMORPGs. His game (I don't even remember which one) is apparently much more advanced, with an increasingly realistic economy. He produces the clothes, somebody else produces the food. I don't know how long the game has been around and how well they've filled in the details. But if there are not now miners and trash collectors, check back next year. In real life those jobs aren't popular because they're dirty, uncomfortable, dangerous, etc., but in a virtual world they can be very interesting for people who are engineers in real life. Nonetheless the heavy portion of computer geeks who inhabit the virtual world will accelerate the pace at which it all becomes automated. The occupations that involve creativity, like my friend's clothing designs, will surely remain the most popular.

Yes there is effectively no stopping point, in theory you can at some point completely take humans out of the loop.

Depends on how you define the loop. Somebody has to do the planning. Somebody has to be "The Decider." Somebody has to invent the next generation of technology.

For example, now you need people to construct buildings but there is no reason to suggest that at some point in the future most of that work and eventually all of that work could be done by robots.

You're preaching to the choir here. But Max still owns stock in companies that make ox harnesses and telephone switchboards.

Eventually service jobs might be preformed by robots, at some point management jobs as well. The only Jobs that, in theory, might be immune to this would be those require very complex pattern recognition like say engineering but even that could be done away with the advent of true artificial intelligence.

There's always a higher level of organization that needs to be staffed.

Most of this is highly unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future but some of it surely will, the first to go will likely be many of those jobs you were talking about previously, in particular construction.

Max also doesn't understand the portion of the economy that is comprised of arts and entertainment. And that's growing as our leisure time increases. There's a lot of automation in that industry but it still relies on creativity, which will not be automated in the near future. In order to automate something we first have to understand it.

The same can be said for teaching, since the hard work of teaching is figuring out what any individual's barriers are to learning. We're all getting good practice trying to teach Economics 101 to Max and failing, for example, because his neurons were cauterized when Adam Smith died. Automation is a boon to teachers, but still the essence of the job seems like something that will be difficult to automate.

Nonetheless, notice that both entertainment and education are basically knowledge work. They require very little physical resources.

 

[Baron Max]

Get real, Max. I.T. makes it possible to invent machines that will do almost anything.

Do these machines use energy? If so, what kind? (The topic is about energy, ya' know?) What are they built out of? Where does the raw material come from?

But technology reduces the cost of supplying goods, thereby making them cheaper.

Depends on the cost of energy to produce and use those machines and technology, don't it. Not to mention the resources needed to provide the raw materials to produce those machines and robots.

In the old days, horses pulled the plows. Then they invented farm tractors that pulled the plows much cheaper and better. Now, as we approach the era of expensive fuels, those tractors ain't so cheap anymore, are they. And the cost of tomatoes and other farm produce is rising every day.

And you might not know this, Fraggle, but many people are now farming with horses just like in the old days. Read up on it, you'll be shocked and surprised at the efficiency of farming with horses.

They don't change the principle, but they change the PRICES. If it takes less labor to produce something, it becomes cheaper.

Again, it depends on the cost to operate those machines and robots. How much and what kind of energy do they use? How much does it cost to produce those machines and robots? Who services them when they break down?

And, Fraggle, I'm still trying to figure out how people are going to afford the food that they must eat ....when they don't work at anything? In your dreamworld, you've effectively eliminated almost all jobs. So does everyone then become computer IT experts ...thus flooding the field with IT experts?

And once the machines are invented and built, what does the inventors and builders do? Have they worked themselves out of a job? Once the IT people have written the programs to make the machines work, what do they do then? And if those people don't work, how do they eat?

Once again, this is something everyone in America knows. Max knows it too. He just likes to troll.

Is it trolling to ask questions? And so far, you've really not done a good job of explaining your brave new world, Fraggle. You've laid out a nice little dream world, and even given some interesting examples, but you've answered most of my questions/points ONLY with more dreamworld stuff.

The same can be said for teaching, since the hard work of teaching is figuring out what any individual's barriers are to learning.

Why should people go to school/college? What can they learn to help them get jobs when all the jobs are done by machines and robots?

Baron Max

 

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

Do these machines use energy? If so, what kind? (The topic is about energy, ya' know?) What are they built out of? Where does the raw material come from?

The materials could be mined by robots, the power stations could be completely automatic.

Depends on the cost of energy to produce and use those machines and technology, don't it. Not to mention the resources needed to provide the raw materials to produce those machines and robots.

In the next 50 to 100 years several new technologies are likely to become viable which will make energy far cheaper then present, for example controlled Fusion and massive satellite arrays of solar panels which beam down power as microwaves.

In the old days, horses pulled the plows. Then they invented farm tractors that pulled the plows much cheaper and better. Now, as we approach the era of expensive fuels, those tractors ain't so cheap anymore, are they. And the cost of tomatoes and other farm produce is rising every day.

And you might not know this, Fraggle, but many people are now farming with horses just like in the old days. Read up on it, you'll be shocked and surprised at the efficiency of farming with horses.

Just because we can't do it now doesn't mean we won't be able to in the future.

Again, it depends on the cost to operate those machines and robots. How much and what kind of energy do they use? How much does it cost to produce those machines and robots? Who services them when they break down?

Like most technologies it will most likely be expensive at first and then come down in price as the technology matures and the volume of production increases.

And, Fraggle, I'm still trying to figure out how people are going to afford the food that they must eat ....when they don't work at anything? In your dreamworld, you've effectively eliminated almost all jobs. So does everyone then become computer IT experts ...thus flooding the field with IT experts?

And once the machines are invented and built, what does the inventors and builders do? Have they worked themselves out of a job? Once the IT people have written the programs to make the machines work, what do they do then? And if those people don't work, how do they eat?

Remember before when we were talking about how previously agriculture made up a huge percentage of the work force and now its only about 2%?
Well it's a similar deal with plenty of modern labour intensive industries, as technology improves the number of people necessary to do the job goes down.
Once the machines are built that doesn't simply put the inventors out of work, allow me to illustrate this with an example:

car manufacturers employ people to design new cars, one they have a design ready to go and in production they don't simply fire all of those people because someone has to design the next one, someone has to improve upon the current version of the technology.

In all likelihood, more and more of the workforce will be involved in IT and IT related industries in the future.

Is it trolling to ask questions? And so far, you've really not done a good job of explaining your brave new world, Fraggle. You've laid out a nice little dream world, and even given some interesting examples, but you've answered most of my questions/points ONLY with more dreamworld stuff.

Why should people go to school/college? What can they learn to help them get jobs when all the jobs are done by machines and robots?

Just because you think it wont happen doesn't mean it won't.

They probably wont get the same qualifications and training as they would today, they will get whatever training is relevant at the time.
How many people today apprentice as a black smith?