Like how the birth of farm machines meant the excess former farmers were unemployed forever, huh?
A sector largely requiring large amounts of unskilled labor is replaced by a sector largely requiring large amounts of unskilled labor. In what ways might the current situation be different from that?
Horses’ power and speed were their primary economic interest. Once machines were able to do this better and cheaper, with horses limited to niche applications, what happened to the horses?
Humans’ intelligence is unique in the economy, but machines are now becoming more and more intelligent and adaptable. In one sector this might just displace workers, but what happens when it applies to all sectors simultaneously? Why would you hire a human worker, who cannot work below a certain minimum due to resource requirements to survive, rather than just use a machine that does the same thing for less money?
Is there any law of economics that requires that someone’s maximum feasible production be enough for them to survive? Remember to account for opportunity cost of the necessary resources in your answer, such as real estate being purchased by those with orders of magnitude higher productivity.
It seems there rather clearly isn’t such a law since economically non-viable people already exist.
This position of yours appears to stem from an ideological pre-commitment to Capitalism, and I say this as someone that argues against Communists. The ability of Capitalism to outperform Stalin on human suffering is conditional, and those conditions have held for a long time, but that is slowly changing.
I take some exception to the very term ‘unskilled labor’ as a general term, because agricultural work is not ‘unskilled’ and neither were the various manufacturing jobs that often replaced them. These are not skill sets that have cross over. So we start off with that error, but I’ll say right now I can already see you’re missing my point, but I’ll get to that.
The flaw here is comparing an animal who was used for an end (horses) and the animal that built the system (humans.) That is even putting aside the idea that somehow machines will become intelligent and adaptable enough to displace workers in the first place, a reality that is likely not nearly as close as we think. Indeed, there is a flaw that even if we did, the idea we’d be able to replicate the human way of thinking is itself improbable. And the idea that it would happen and suddenly penetrate every industry simultaneously is itself flawed.
Further, I think you’re also missing the point by your claim that this is based on an ideological pre-commitment to Capitalism, to which I’d argue, as opposed to what? The flaw here is capitalism, which is private ownership of ‘capital’ (really, property, as the designation of capital is frankly arbitrary) and the exchange there of with other private individuals. At its core, it is an expression of individual rights. The only other option would be a disregard for individual rights, and implicitly authoritarianism of some form or another. I’m an individualist, I’m anti-authoritarian, therefor, I am capitalist, not the other way around
I also think you’re arguing something I don’t believe and never have. I would argue that folks may very well hire humans out of their desire to do so, as humans are not and never have been homo economicus, but that is largely an aside to the real point.
My real point is actually that whatever the next revolution is, the ability to predict its effects is likely beyond any living human in any real capacity, in the same way that predictions for the Industrial Revolution were themselves largely impossible until we passed into it and could adapt to the particulars of it. I largely think doomsaying can be set aside because it seems to disregard that humans will shape the system to suit humans.
And what, exactly, is the alternatives? No one seems to have proposed anything somehow forestall this supposed doom of robots taking our jerbs. The supposed 'fixes’ are little more than rehashes of old policies that didn’t work then and won’t work now, and/or are ethically compromised.
As an aside, I’d argue the vast majority of folks who fall under 'economical unviable’ do so for reasons beyond actual economic concerns, and more to due with government intervention, but that’s largely my anarchism, I suspect.
I take some exception to the very term ‘unskilled labor’ as a general term, because agricultural work is not 'unskilled’ and neither were the various manufacturing jobs that often replaced them. These are not skill sets that have cross over. So we start off with that error, but I’ll say right now I can already see you’re missing my point, but I’ll get to that.
They’re both skillsets which don’t require as much training or IQ. Putting someone to work on an assembly line is not something which requires a four year degree’s worth of education (though I’m sure you’ll argue that the training isn’t really required, regardless of whether it is) and an IQ over 110.
The flaw here is comparing an animal who was used for an end (horses) and the animal that built the system (humans.)
In other words, the human beings will change the system away from purist Capitalism before it destroys them and replaces them with a more economically efficient form of matter. Capitalism does use people for ends. Employment is an unwanted side effect of production that so-called “job creators” do not actually want.
That is even putting aside the idea that somehow machines will become intelligent and adaptable enough to displace workers in the first place, a reality that is likely not nearly as close as we think.
It doesn’t need to displace all workers, just those with an IQ below some amount, in order to cause problems with mass unemployment. As for how close it is, well, factories in China are performing layoffs in favor of automation, warehouses are getting factor 5-6x reductions in staff, it’s hitting lawyers with tools for document search, and doctors, and so on.
You have to remember that even if jobs still exist, the number of applicants kicked out of other sectors can drive down the wages to unsustainable levels because the amount of most categories of services actually needed by the economy are limited. (eg, if a typical plumber can fix X pipes per hour, and there are Y pipes needed per person normally without much more gain from Y+1 pipes, then the number of plumbers that it’s beneficial to have is limited.)
Indeed, there is a flaw that even if we did, the idea we’d be able to replicate the human way of thinking is itself improbable.
“A computer will never defeat human masters at Go. Surely that can’t happen, it’s far too intuitive of a game.”
And, computers don’t actually have to think like humans to displace human workers. They often come at things in ways we would consider sideways.
And the idea that it would happen and suddenly penetrate every industry simultaneously is itself flawed.
By and large, computers have penetrated every industry over the last several decades. Suggesting robots won’t penetrate almost every industry at once is almost proposing that capitalists will simply leave money on the table and that capitalism is not efficient.
Further, I think you’re also missing the point by your claim that this is based on an ideological pre-commitment to Capitalism, to which I’d argue, as opposed to what? The flaw here is capitalism, which is private ownership of 'capital’ (really, property, as the designation of capital is frankly arbitrary) and the exchange there of with other private individuals. At its core, it is an expression of individual rights. The only other option would be a disregard for individual rights, and implicitly authoritarianism of some form or another. I’m an individualist, I’m anti-authoritarian, therefor, I am capitalist, not the other way around
If participation in the market is necessary for survival, then participation in the market is not truly voluntary. It doesn’t matter that a specific agent isn’t holding the gun to mandate it - it is nonetheless mandatory. Capitalism is just another form of hierarchy, and ideal Capitalism does not and cannot exist. Of course, individual rights are purely an intermediate node, too, and always were.
Put simply, Capitalism is an amoral (not moral or immoral) resource production and distribution algorithm. Its moral value derives purely from its consequences. Treating it any other way is bound to cause disappointment.
I also think you’re arguing something I don’t believe and never have. I would argue that folks may very well hire humans out of their desire to do so, as humans are not and never have been homo economicus, but that is largely an aside to the real point.
The relative popularity of check-out kiosks at grocery stores, and other low-human-contact services such as internet retailers trouncing brick and mortars, suggest that this is limited to a niche appeal only… sort of like horses.
My real point is actually that whatever the next revolution is, the ability to predict its effects is likely beyond any living human in any real capacity, in the same way that predictions for the Industrial Revolution were themselves largely impossible until we passed into it and could adapt to the particulars of it. I largely think doomsaying can be set aside because it seems to disregard that humans will shape the system to suit humans.
…by passing laws to make it not purist Capitalism anymore.
And what, exactly, is the alternatives? No one seems to have proposed anything somehow forestall this supposed doom of robots taking our jerbs. The supposed 'fixes’ are little more than rehashes of old policies that didn’t work then and won’t work now, and/or are ethically compromised.
It’s only ethically compromised if you’re foolish enough to think Capitalism is a moral system and that property rights are not subordinate to utility. Furthermore, while it’s great at producing large volumes of goods, Capitalism with work-or-starve is already fundamentally ethically compromised, and therefore any complaints that “oh, it’s immoral to do something that isn’t pure Capitalism” are ungrounded.
Also quite frankly, unless you support giving the whole of the land of the United States of America back to the descendants of the natives, then you don’t really believe in transcendent moral property rights that are beyond the bounds of human invention and therefore systematic human alterations. Unlike other human beings themselves, who would continue to exist if we erased all our data and memories about them, allocated property rights as we know them would be almost totally gone if all the data about them were erased. They’re just a human invention - a useful one, but only a tool. (Yes, I know animals have territorial behaviors, but that isn’t property rights as we know it.)
As for solutions…
Across-the-board wage subsidies would not only avoid drawing the ire of economists, but allow society to lower the minimum wage dramatically (as many economic freedom types want - despite their ignoring the massive negotiating power disparity). Job choice would expand a great deal, putting a lot more bargaining power in the hands of low level workers. The program can be rolled out incrementally and reversed if it does not work - unlike socialist revolution. It promotes membership in the community and could help fix improverished regions such as inner cities, by reconnecting them to the normal societal status hierarchy instead of them being disconnected from it and inventing new status hierarchies that cause collateral damage. It would also help to get people off of welfare, and recover a portion of the economic value that would normally be lost to welfare payments.
As an aside, I’d argue the vast majority of folks who fall under 'economical unviable’ do so for reasons beyond actual economic concerns, and more to due with government intervention, but that’s largely my anarchism, I suspect.
I can’t say I agree there. It’s far too convenient for your worldview to simply ignore the effects of disability, mental illness, and age, and simply handwave it all away as the fault of the state.
They’re both skillsets which don’t require as much training or IQ. Putting someone to work on an assembly line is not something which requires a four year degree’s worth of education (though I’m sure you’ll argue that the training isn’t really required, regardless of whether it is) and an IQ over 110.
Most jobs don’t require a four year degree’s worth of training. Indeed, the vast majority of jobs don’t, and largely never will. Much like diamonds, the degree is a largely artificially inflated value, though tied more into government actions than savvy marketing.
I think saying 'well, they don’t require much training or IQ’ is a bit overly reductive. They require other skills and temperaments. I worked for two days in a Macy’s distribution center before I had to quit. Two days was all I lasted in the monotony, because I lacked the temperament to handle a job of that nature. I met folks who had done it for twenty years, happy as can be. And having been there, the level of automation required even for that job would be so colossal and resource draining that it’s simply not feasible under any near-future scenario, as an aside.
In other words, the human beings will change the system away from purist Capitalism before it destroys them and replaces them with a more economically efficient form of matter. Capitalism does use people for ends.
Employment is an unwanted side effect of production that so-called “job creators” do not actually want.
Except systems don’t exist, and don’t do anything, and we’re not in 'purist Capitalism’ now, and haven’t been for… well, honestly ever. Capitalism doesn’t do anything, though. Capitalism doesn’t exist, it’s merely a label for the behavior of human beings. It as much 'uses people for ends’ as much as any set of actions human beings do, and you’d be hard pressed to find a single one that doesn’t in exactly the same way capitalism does, which I’ll show when you get into your supposed solutions later on.
It doesn’t need to displace all workers, just those with an IQ below some amount, in order to cause problems with mass unemployment. As for how close it is, well, factories in China are performing layoffs in favor of automation, warehouses are getting factor 5-6x reductions in staff, it’s hitting lawyers with tools for document search, and doctors, and so on.
You have to remember that even if jobs still exist, the number of applicants kicked out of other sectors can drive down the wages to unsustainable levels because the amount of most categories of services actually needed by the economy are limited. (eg, if a typical plumber can fix X pipes per hour, and there are Y pipes needed per person normally without much more gain from Y+1 pipes, then the number of plumbers that it’s beneficial to have is limited.)
This seems to imply those people will just cease to exist and could not go off and find their own ends in any given world, or society. I’d argue that the fact they can’t has more to do with overreaching government actions than some failure of the market or Capitalism, even if we assumed your doom scenario was true. In reality, China’s issue itself stems from government manipulation: the government manipulated their currency to get folks to move businesses there but you can only do that for so long before it catches up with you and that, along with artificially employing folks by building ghost cities and the like ends up collapsing.
All the sudden, the 'cheap labor’ you went for isn’t cheap because it was only cheap, artificially, and had they not attempted to game the system this never would have happened. This is not capitalism, either, given it was a government act manipulating a fiat currency backed up only by armed force. But the thing is, the people in China never would have been layed off had they not been hired in the first place via artificial means. Like, I feel so much of this imagines a world were only the modern, urban style of living exists, when it flatly doesn’t; hell, the modern shape of things is itself a government program. It’s not a natural growth.
Further, this seems to miss the idea that there will be new forms of employment invented over time. How many classes of job exist now that rely themselves on development of industries and jobs that were not even imagined by folks a hundred years past, two hundred years, and so on?
“A computer will never defeat human masters at Go. Surely that can’t happen, it’s far too intuitive of a game.”
Apples and oranges comparison and something I never said? The ability to solve what essentially is a complex but fundamentally closed problem is not the same. Folks thinking that Go was 'far too intuitive of a game’ were fooling themselves, it was merely an extremely complex one but it was just as solvable as Chess, but at a great scale. The complexity of human interaction is such that even if we were to accept that it is itself 'solvable’ and manageable in a similar way, the ability to do so would require computational power on such a scale greater as to be not worth considering at this point, to say nothing of the nature of human emotions being that any attempt to do so would themselves trigger folks doing the opposite purely out of spite.
And this doesn’t even get into the mechanization part of it because a computer that could solve all these problems would be useless without the actual ability to affect change in the material world.
And, computers don’t actually have to think like humans to displace human workers. They often come at things in ways we would consider sideways.
But they do have to think like humans in order to provide services a human wants, because if they don’t think like us then they will never fully understand what it is to be us, or grasp our wants and needs in any intuitive level, nor provide certain services of the same grade or type.
By and large, computers have penetrated every industry over the last several decades. Suggesting robots won’t penetrate almost every industry at once is almost proposing that capitalists will simply leave money on the table and that capitalism is not efficient.
Sure, but it didn’t happen instantly and doing so actually created more industries than it replaced. Jobs and industries that never could have been imagined until such broad deployment took place.
If participation in the market is necessary for survival, then participation in the market is not truly voluntary. It doesn’t matter that a specific agent isn’t holding the gun to mandate it - it is nonetheless mandatory. Capitalism is just another form of hierarchy, and ideal Capitalism does not and cannot exist. Of course, individual rights are purely an intermediate node, too, and always were.
Put simply, Capitalism is an amoral (not moral or immoral) resource production and distribution algorithm. Its moral value derives purely from its consequences. Treating it any other way is bound to cause disappointment.
The market is vast and participation is varied, limited now by many things that ideally it should not be. Further, claims that somehow it is not voluntary are themselves silly. It absolutely is voluntary to engage in any given interaction, but to claim somehow its not is no more than to say it is somehow not voluntary because you must expend energy to survive. One could say, sure, that the fact you must act in order to survive means it is not 'voluntary’ but to do so is missing the point.
Capitalism is amoral in the sense it does not exist, it is merely a manifestation of human actions, which may be moral or immoral depending on them. It is a manifestation of hierarchies, maybe, but humans are hierarchical in nature, so that is not surprising.
Individual rights are moral, and capitalism is the only economic system that can exist with full respect to individual rights. It could be consider moral only in that sense, but that is merely incidental.
The relative popularity of check-out kiosks at grocery stores, and other low-human-contact services such as internet retailers trouncing brick and mortars, suggest that this is limited to a niche appeal only… sort of like horses.
Sure, but they will exist never-the-less.
…by passing laws to make it not purist Capitalism anymore.
I’ll address why this fails the 'ethically compromised’ thing when you get into your solutions.
It’s only ethically compromised if you’re foolish enough to think Capitalism is a moral system and that property rights are not subordinate to utility.
Furthermore, while it’s great at producing large volumes of goods, Capitalism with work-or-starve is already fundamentally ethically compromised, and therefore any complaints that “oh, it’s immoral to do something that isn’t pure Capitalism” are ungrounded.
First off, this is an asinine comparison because it isn’t capitalism that requires work or starve, it’s nature. Living beings have to expend energy to obtain more energy, in order to survive. That’s the nature of living. Claiming that somehow is ethically compromised is flatly asinine, to be blunt.
Then again, you’re operating off this very strained conception of what capitalism is, so let me really break it down. If two people exist, and one cuts down trees to make a chair and the other is growing apples, and they trade a bunch of apples for a chair, than capitalism is taking place. Capitalism is private ownership and the exchange of goods by private individuals.
Also quite frankly, unless you support giving the whole of the land of the United States of America back to the descendants of the natives, then you don’t really believe in transcendent moral property rights that are beyond the bounds of human invention and therefore systematic human alterations. Unlike other human beings themselves, who would continue to exist if we erased all our data and memories about them, allocated property rights as we know them would be almost totally gone if all the data about them were erased. They’re just a human invention - a useful one, but only a tool. (Yes, I know animals have territorial behaviors, but that isn’t property rights as we know it.)
Except the entirety of the United States of America wasn’t held by any one group, and vast quantities of land were unclaimed or unused, for one. Two, if you could actually trace back claims to legitimate them, in many cases, yes, the original owner should be able to claim them, but for various reasons this is functionally impossible to do. To say nothing about the fact that some tribes were nomadic and never claimed the land per se. But the entirety of folks living in what is now the United States could not claim the entire area, because that isn’t how ownership works. People own things, not demographics.
Don’t presume about my commitment to principles, I’d say.
Property exists, and property rights exist, and are the foundation for all human rights. Any other basis is functionally arbitrary, rather than based in a principle of self-ownership and thus ownership of external, limited goods. They are not merely a 'human invention,’ they are a physical reality. I own myself, in as much as only I can actually control my body and my actions, and the results of my actions can be attributed, thus, to me. The nature of exclusive use claims exist necessarily because only one entity can physically exist in any given space at a time, and scarce resources can, by necessity, only be used by one entity. However, we’re delving deep beyond things here, and I’d be better off merely recommending reading than attempting to explain the entire principle here.
Further, if by some chance all memories and data on any given item was erased from all knowledge, it would not erase the claim, merely make it so that no one was able to press it, assuming there were literally no ways to deduce the rightful owner based on first use and the like. This would be, as it would, akin to your claim about the claims of the Native Americans; it many cases, property and land very much likely does have claims by other individuals that merely cannot be confirmed or even known. This does not mean their claims are non existent, merely impossible to pursue.
Regardless, the core point is that, for me, property rights are a moral absolute, and thus any solution that relies on trampling them is fundamentally unethical.
As for solutions…
Across-the-board wage subsidies would not only avoid drawing the ire of economists, but allow society to lower the minimum wage dramatically (as many economic freedom types want - despite their ignoring the massive negotiating power disparity). Job choice would expand a great deal, putting a lot more bargaining power in the hands of low level workers. The program can be rolled out incrementally and reversed if it does not work - unlike socialist revolution. It promotes membership in the community and could help fix improverished regions such as inner cities, by reconnecting them to the normal societal status hierarchy instead of them being disconnected from it and inventing new status hierarchies that cause collateral damage. It would also help to get people off of welfare, and recover a portion of the economic value that would normally be lost to welfare payments.
Except 'across the board wage subsidies’ would violate the ethically bankrupt part, as they’re require seizing property from one group to transfer to another. It has nothing to do with 'ignoring’ a 'negotiating power disparity’ as it has to do with that largely being irrelevant. Your basic premise seems to be, though, about putting more power in the hands of 'lower level workers,’ which I’d argue is your own pre-conceived notion and goal, and one I ask simply… why? Like, what exactly is your motivation there anyway?
Like, in terms of socialism as 'centrally planned economics,’ your system is functionally the same, it’s merely replacing one set of government intervention with another, and all the same issues remain. To say nothing of the fact that all the things you listed seem to have little to nothing to do with the issue at hand, which was the threat of super-automation.
I can’t say I agree there. It’s far too convenient for your worldview to simply ignore the effects of disability, mental illness, and age, and simply handwave it all away as the fault of the state.
Except you can, because sans the state, the economic resources of individuals would be such that caring for these would be far easier than it is now. God knows if the state wasn’t stealing 33% of my income I’d be significantly more able to give to charity, both organizationally and individually, than I am now.
I’m just going to drop the rest of this and go for the heart of the matter.
Imagine a system where you are the only person that exists. Effectively, in such a system, everything “belongs” to you… and in that system, because ownership is defined by exclusion, since there is no one to exclude, the concept of property is nonsensical.
However, you would still exist. Your experience would still exist. Your emotions would still exist.
Property would not meaningfully exist.
Personhood precedes property. Utility, by many definitions (what it describes rather than the concept itself) precedes property.
(edit: Personhood can still be relevant in a single-agent system because there are still mind and non-mind elements for the dichotomy to exist. The concept of personhood is also particularly relevant depending on where you place animals.)
You seem to believe that you and property are fundamentally intertwined. You are not. Property is a philosophical construct which comes after actual core elements of yourself, requiring at least two agents in a system, coming well after boats, buildings, writing, and other concepts. It’s something we invented, and is not merely an extension of nervous-system control over the body.
Furthermore, what you consider to be “you” is not just yourself but a result of complex interactions with your environment. Even your control over your body is not absolute - not just from autonomous nervous system responses that cannot be consciously controlled, but from other organisms such as bacteria which are essential to your survival but which do not share your genome and which come and go from your body.
I own myself, in as much as only I can actually control my body and my actions, and the results of my actions can be attributed, thus, to me.
Now, not only are your actions actually the result of complex interactions with the environment which extend your ability to think and so on, but…
- There exist chemicals and organisms which can influence behavior. This would allow an outside agent to control your thoughts and reactions to a degree.
- This implies that if some other organism managed to seize exclusive control of your bodily tissue, it would be morally acceptable for it to do so, and your bodily tissue would now be its property, because only it can control it.
- The simple physical fact that you exercise some control over your nerve impulses to control your bodily tissues is an objective fact. Deriving the idea that only you ought to is quite another matter. Deriving from that that external property which you do not use nerve impulses to control exists is yet another matter. It does not logically follow.
