Eventually you would be able to pop onto an online job board, and do something for someone for a couple of hours from home.
There will also be people who work doing art or entertainment, look at how much we already pay professional athletes and pop stars!
These are only dreams - in reality, only small percent of the population can be creative (generate ideas, program, compose music, show achievements in sport etc). For the other part a "kick in the ass" need that they be able to work (by a boss/manager or some state authority like it was in the USSR), otherwise they will either idle (in counties that will implement unconditional income), work on state-owned enterprises few hours a day (in the countries that will switch to state-controlled planned economy) or generate riots and violence, transforming prosperous countries into Somalia (if the elite will ignore tech unemployment problem). Average woorker used to till the soil, then pound on things in factories, then serve fries and clean hotels, and soon may be sitting at home, tagging photos with keywords or something.
You really believe that these jobs are jobs of the future - relocating items in factory, working in fastfood restaurant, cleaning?! Imagine instead people own shares of productive companies and live off the dividends payed out by their investments.
People will just sell these shares to buy useless stuff or entertainment. Privatization after USSR collapse is good example how it will be. There are many ways this could work out, and the poll gives a very limited number of choices.
These 2 options are most probable variants and are well-described. Of course you can suggest own options. P.S. Bitcointalk users are much more creative and initiative than average population, so you much think about median worker at first and not about yourself. |
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Still "Lucite falacy." The author starts to fail right at this sentence
Some of those industries are relatively labor intensive
What he is missing is that we will have new types of jobs, ones that may not even be labor intensive, and that automating labor just frees up people to do something more productive.
The problem is not new jobs won't be created at all, it is that technological progress started to accelerate too fast now to create new jobs in larger quantities than traditional being destroyed by productivity growth (automation). Author of this book mentioned about this trend: We can expect that technological advance will give rise to entirely new industries in the future. However, the reality is that few if any of these are likely to be labor intensive. By their very nature, these new industries will tend to rely on information technology and will offer relatively few opportunities for average workers. There is also a risk that these new industries may directly compete with and ultimately destroy existing, more labor intensive industries. |
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I don't think the Fed would dump them on the market. They would hoard them like they supposedly do with gold in order to remain somewhat solvent when the dollar inevitably collapses. This seizure could potentially allow them to obtain BTC without causing a large sudden disruption in the exchange rate that would occur if they purchased BTC in the open market.
+1. I think govts around the world will finally realize that Bitcoin can be used to back fiat currencies like other commodities (gold, oil, natural gas, rare-earth elements etc). |
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You are already lost because your mental framework is through the broken "only govt. can solve the big problems" prism.
We do not have free market capitalism, big failures get bailed out. The wealth concentration problem is mostly due to misallocation of resources in weak, useless, 'bad' hands caused by the monopoly currency issuance, (financial cartel). We need more Elon Musks, not Jamie Dimons and Bernankes is the basic problem ... Elon Musks create jobs, Jamie Dimons and Bernankes destroy them. It really is as simple as that ... lack of vision, imagination, social organisation and liberty
I don't insist that my opinion is 100% true, may be you are right, but the scenario I have described in original post considered most probably. Even mainstream economists start accepting existence of the problem, please read Gartner report. BTW, I never told that any current government could solve the problem, mentality shift is need. Coming Swiss referendum could be good start for it. |
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Unemployment is a massive misallocation of resource and its a symptom, not a problem.
The basic argument seems to boil down to "the machines took all the jobs, we don't need workers anymore".
This is a fallacy, it is like arguing that the guy who invented spades took away jobs from the peons scratching the dirt with their bare hands.
The problem is not lack of jobs but lack of vision, imagination, social organisation and liberty to take on projects of scale that can truly enhance the existence of all of humanity.
Your average Westerner lives in a comparatively royal existence when compared with a citizen of Roman times. Imagine if everyone could live like today's royalty? What resources would it require? How much labour would be needed to achieve this, include for the leverage that advanced technology allows? Could we set up colonies on the Moon, on the ocean floor, orbiting Nirvanas? Could we provide cheap plentiful energy, nutrition, mobility to every person on the planet?
I agree with you that humans' demands growth will always create some jobs, but unfortunately free market capitalism is unable to solve technological unemployment problem without government intervention - too big wealth concentration on capital and not labor will simply destroy the economy. You should look at "net jobs" effect from automation (jobs created in new areas MINUS jobs lost), after some point it will no matter be negative, even if our society are full of creative people (of course if no regulatory measurements taken, e.g. working day reduced). You can still hope that problem will be solved itself, but this is really hard to believe now! |
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.gov already manipulates the labor force with the minimum wage, unemployment/disability bennies, and other subsidies/handouts.
These manipulations are biased in favor of the big corporations - real wage falling since 70's and labor participation rate also decreasing continuously since early 2000s (which can indicate that "peak jobs" already passed). Governments that have been in power within last decades worsened the problem, not tried to solve as they must. |
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Main value of Bitcoin is impossibility for the government to confiscate it (of course if the owner properly encrypted private keys).
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There are also private companies with the intention of exploring Mars, and lots of people willing to go there and be pioneers in a new land. Travelling out of the Solar System is again a step by step process, which may work in a free society. Why can't you go to Jupiter or Saturn after Mars has been colonized?
And do you really believe these private corporations will employ billions of "useless" people, reduce working day to 1 hour without wage cut just to preserve stability in the society?   |
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today site is working very slow I try 2 3 times but very slow just because of this unable to have my todays coins what happen
What date/time have you experienced slowdown? I see 300-400ms average response time on Pingdom report (checks the site every minute) today that is well enough. |
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Unless there is major unrest, it seems we are surely moving towards a more knowledge-oriented economy. The problem exists because those who are not capable to adapt are being left out. It has been happening for ages, though. In the Roman Empire, for example, those without good sight or physically weak may had trouble to survive. How to tackle these issues is definitely a challenge.
And there no doubt WILL be great civil war, or do you really think people will keep silence and starve when are aware that permanent technological unemployment start appearing!? We don't see unrest now because people still believe "Luddite fallacy" is a true fallacy and will last forever, but it it won't. There will always be a need for human labor because human needs are insatiable. Once all needs seem to be fulfilled, new needs will arise: immortality, eternal happiness, travelling to the space, travelling to the future
These projects cannot be fulfilled in capitalist economy because don't guarantee success (ROI) within reasonable timespan. Capital owners don't even invest into nuclear fusion which is soon-achievable, so why should they invest into immortality or relativistic speed travel which may be possible only after 1000 years!? |
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No reason a government (or many governments) couldn't reduce it to 35 or 32.
If we are 10% below peak labor then reducing workweek 10% would compensate.
This is not feasible while corporations have large lobbying forces in the government. In some countries we can see even inverse processes now - softening working hours regulations as government try to make own country more competitive for the capital owners. |
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I don't think so, food might became close to free that time....
Food production requires a lot of energy, but economic collapse caused by tech unemployment will happen much faster than invention of cheap abundant energy source. |
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Two centuries ago, upwards of 98% of the population was involved with food production.
Oh wait, actually that's not at all what happened. When people stopped needing to farm they figured out how to reallocate their time and effort all by themselves.
There are only 3 basic sectors in the economy: agriculture, industry and services. Mechanization of the food production freed people to produce more goods like clothes, cars, TV sets, furniture etc, and further automation of the industrial sector moved 80% of the population in services areas (IT, banking, transportation, retail). Moreover, technology advancement still continues - automation started intruding into service sector and in this case there will be no extra sector in which to move "useless" workforce. No doubt it will result in free market capitalism collapse if no action from government taken (e.g. unconditional income introduced). |
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@Mike Christ, of course resource-based economy (Jacque Fresco "Project Venus") is the best solution, but it requires much higher level of technology than we have now and probably impossible in near-term, therefore I haven't added this variant to the poll. However, market-driven economy collapse is imminent if no action taken within 3-5 years thus governments must act immediately. Unconditional income or transition to the planned economy are only ones solutions that can be implemented rapidly BEFORE massive riots and/or civil war will fire around the world (in developed countries at first, then also in third-world).
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If the automation doesn't make things cheaper then how will all these people without jobs be able to afford the products created by this automation? How will this automation survive economically.
Wrong assumption. People must earn above some minimum to be able to live and work (food, shelter, transportation, education, healthcare etc) while automation requires only one-time big investment and much smaller costs on electricity and maintenance. Robotic systems become more cheap each day and after some point will fall below minimum wage for the human workers (e.g. this already happened for ATMs and self-service checkout lanes in supermarkets). These problems are always resolved automatically and naturally by market forces.
Good performance in the past does not guarantee the same in the future. "Luddite fallacy" is just another rule of thumb like Moore's law, so it is not guaranteed to last forever. It's easy to solve n% unemployment if you want to - just make everyone work n% less and thus create n% more work.
Do you mean the government can enact the law limiting working day to 2-4 hours? In free market economy capital owners will simply move away production/services to the country without such legislation. |
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For the last 200 years increase in the labor productivity have leaded to higher standards of living and creating jobs in new areas. Arguments that robots can leave people out of work have been called "Luddite fallacy" and dismissed by most economist and politicians. But look what happens now. Highly paid blue-collar jobs have been already replaced with robots or outsourced to China. Service sector is most difficult to automate, so most jobs (>80%) are concentrated here today. Professions which in the past being considered as temporarily for students and school dropouts (fastfood cooks and waiters, bartenders, janitors, taxi/truck drivers, cashiers etc) now become acceptable even for adult people with college degree, however they also start showing signs of the automation and no doubt these jobs will gone after 5..10..20 years. Skilled white-collar jobs aren't safe places anymore - software reduce demand for accountants and tax consultants, cloud computing hits IT-workers, emerging AI systems like IBM Watson will definitely shrink number of doctors/lawyers/journalists and other data-processing jobs. Personal 3D printers could break away whole supply chains (manufacturing -> shipping -> warehouses -> retail sale) leaving millions of "useless intermediaries" out of work. Problem of the technological unemployment is well described in the book " Lights in the tunnel". Personally I don't agree with the solution offered there, however author provides strong proof about problem's seriousness. This is the idea behind the "Luddite fallacy". At present, I suspect that most economists would probably be likely to agree with this statement and, therefore, disagree with what I have suggested in this book. Here, in a nutshell, is my argument for why I think we will end up with a serious unemployment problem: As technology advances and industries automate, this improves the efficiency of production and tends to make the products and services produced by those industries more affordable. That leaves more purchasing power in the pockets of consumers. Those consumers then go out and spend that extra money on all kinds of products and services produced by a variety of industries. Some of those industries are relatively labor intensive, so they have to hire more workers to meet this demand—and so overall employment remains stable or increases. This is the reason that, historically, technology has not led to sustained, widespread unemployment. My argument is that accelerating automation technology will ultimately invade many of the industries that have traditionally been labor intensive. Additionally, the process of creative destruction will destroy old industries and create new ones, and very few of these new industries are likely to be labor intensive. As a result, the overall economy will become less labor intensive and ultimately reach a "tipping point". Beyond this point, the economy will no longer be able to absorb the workers who lose jobs due to automation: businesses will instead invest primarily in more machines. I have also argued that this process will be relentless, and if it is not addressed by some type of government policy, we may ultimately see a precipitous drop in consumer spending as a substantial fraction of the population loses confidence in its future income continuity. That, of course, would result in even more unemployment and a downward spiral would ensue.  Point (4) on this chart means "peak jobs" - after it number of the working positions taken by automation will start outperforming number of jobs appeared in new areas. Many evidence shows that this point was already passed in 2000s, but unemployment growth have been artificially inhibited by credit bubble. As you know it busted in 2007 starting current recession from which the economy still not recovered - some people even noticed that job growth during recovering was too weak and unemployment levels created "new normal". If it is true and "Luddite fallacy" is no more a fallacy, sooner or later people start to understand what is happening. Governments probably cannot do anything because they don't have enough funds even now, not mentioning extra load on the welfare system from increased number unemployed and falling consumer expenditures. Desperate jobless will have no other choice than to raise civil unrest and demand solutions from the govt, most likely there will be revolutions, even civil wars - capital owners and lucky "tech elite" (programmers, scientists, 3D-model designers etc whose jobs cannot be automated) probably won't peacefully accept high taxes and/or property expropriation. To prevent this scenario governments must start thinking right now and very fast - by my expectations existence of technological unemployment will be clear for the majority of people in developed counties after less than 5 years. Most publications about tech unemployment issue promote an idea of the unconditional income to be paid to each citizen regardless does he or she is working or not. Switzerland even decided to perform a referendum about this measure soon. Personally, I think it is not a good solution - vast majority of "useless" people will spend entire lives on watching TV, games, alcohol, drugs etc. Assumption that these people could start innovative business is false in general, may be only few percents will do so, other will just degrade to the level of monkeys. Think about "bread and circuses" in the Ancient Rome and what was the result. Also "Useless" people will be angry living on this tiny unconditional income and seeing how do tech elite (people with jobs) lives, so there no matter will be social tension. Providing unconditional income may be impossible at all - it requires extremely high taxation which probably will result in capital flight and fast economy collapse, so it must be implemented it all countries of the world simultaneously to be successful (e.g. by United Nations resolution mandatory for all members). Alternative solution is to reject free market capitalism entirely and switch to the planned economy. The state will own all production means and hire workers, so full employment can be achieved - by reducing working day for just 1-2 hours, developing large scientific projects like nuclear fusion and far-space exploration etc. Don't blame planned economy for the disadvantages that USSR had, by using state-wide ERP-like software systems (aka modern version of the Chilean project "Cybersyn") they can be gradually reduced. If you have another ideas, propose them in the thread. But please don't tell me 1000th time that I have the "Luddite fallacy" - even respectful analysts like Gartner acknowledge the problem. |
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Server-side script have been updated to significantly improve main page load time!
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1 BTC = $10^18
1 bread loaf = $10^15
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that sells colored coins/tokens of btc that are pegged to the dollar?
I don't understand, these tokens will be denominated in USD or BTC? |
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