Technological unemployment is (almost) here

[go1111111]

here is a succinct and well polished video that explains why even if one person is better at literally everything than another person it still makes economic sense for both of them to work and trade with each other (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0H7r_Dl1CQ). This means that as long as people want to work, there will always be work available.

I don't think you're factoring in that when strong AI arrives, we'll be able to create cheap copies of the better person/AI. So not only is Bob better than you at everything, Bob can also make as many copies of himself as he wants for $1000 each, and pay them only enough to keep the AI running, which likely will cost far less than what you'd want as wages. In that case, Bob is better off never hiring you for anything.

As for the issue of not being payed enough to survive, that will be entirely offset by the fact that the same productivity that has displaced them has also made the products that they consume proportionately cheaper, after all that was the reason why the entrepreneur chose to displace them to begin with.

How do you know that the cheapness of goods will be enough to make up for the reduced value of your labor? What you need to look at is the ratio of your productivity to your cost of living, compared to the productivity of an AI to its cost of living. As mentioned above, the AI will likely need far less capital to 'live' than you will. The AI will be paid more than you because it's more productive, but it will be paid barely enough to survive. In that case, you won't be able to support yourself.

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[Zangelbert Bingledack]

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.

It is absolutely a fallacy, correctly called the "Luddite fallacy," and it isn't so much an economic fallacy as a logical one. The underlying mistake is to view jobs as an end in themselves. A job is a task that people want done so much that they are willing to pay for it. A society with no jobs is - by definition - a society where NOTHING NEEDS DOING because that society is so incredibly efficient that EVERY NEED ANYONE HAS IS ALREADY SATISFIED. Needless to say, such a society would be paradise.

Even just getting close to that situation looks like this: your life is already pretty great, you can get your basic needs and a whole lot more met by working only a few hours a week, even at very low wages since everything is incredibly cheap thanks to the efficiency of automation. If you can't work at all, everyone else is so rich and stuff is so cheap that their proverbial coins in your tin are already enough to live better than the average American does today.

Need I carry on? In a free market where working is not prohibited in any way, a lack of jobs is a lack of unfulfilled needs, which is a utopia. The absolute opposite of people being "left in the dust." They're instead left wanting for nothing. Of course in the real world there are always more "last 1%" services people want provided. If my life is already near perfect, I'd pay people a nice wage just to identify tiny itches on my body and scratch them so I don't have to take my hands away from the keyboard while writing posts. We'll realistically never run out of things to employ people for, and if we did that means we are in heaven.

No solution is needed to this "problem," and the poll is a false dichotomy. The solution is to let it happen, kick back, and enjoy sipping margaritas on the beach while robots do (almost) all the work for you.

[johnyj]

It is absolutely a fallacy, correctly called the "Luddite fallacy," and it isn't so much an economic fallacy as a logical one. The underlying mistake is to view jobs as an end in themselves. A job is a task that people want done so much that they are willing to pay for it. A society with no jobs is - by definition - a society where NOTHING NEEDS DOING because that society is so incredibly efficient that EVERY NEED ANYONE HAS IS ALREADY SATISFIED. Needless to say, such a society would be paradise.

Even just getting close to that situation looks like this: your life is already pretty great, you can get your basic needs and a whole lot more met by working only a few hours a week, even at very low wages since everything is incredibly cheap thanks to the efficiency of automation. If you can't work at all, everyone else is so rich and stuff is so cheap that their proverbial coins in your tin are already enough to live better than the average American does today.

Need I carry on? In a free market where working is not prohibited in any way, a lack of jobs is a lack of unfulfilled needs, which is a utopia. The absolute opposite of people being "left in the dust." They're instead left wanting for nothing. Of course in the real world there are always more "last 1%" services people want provided. If my life is already near perfect, I'd pay people a nice wage just to identify tiny itches on my body and scratch them so I don't have to take my hands away from the keyboard while writing posts. We'll realistically never run out of things to employ people for, and if we did that means we are in heaven.

No solution is needed to this "problem," and the poll is a false dichotomy. The solution is to let it happen, kick back, and enjoy sipping margaritas on the beach while robots do (almost) all the work for you.

Just imagine on a island with only 2 people A and B. If A have super high efficiency and can produce anything they need, then it seems that the other one B don't need to work at all

But who receive the ownership of those products usually can decide how to use it. So if A is making all the production, he has the right to keep everything, thus B will starve. B's survival purely depends on A and A might keep B living but give him only enough to keep his life

Someone will argue that B can make his own living by work by himself, but after A became very rich, he already bought all the land on the island thus B have to pay A rent. B's miserable production have to be given to A to pay his rent, but since A already have everything, he accept B's product just as a symbolic payment (He don't need B's product anyway), just to keep B alive

That's what happened in reality. In order to counter this inevitable result, since last century, government established social security to protect the people who already lost the possibility to make a living by their own: A were taxed and part of his production were re-allocated to B, but that process still don't change the nature of unemployment which is caused by A's super high productivity

Basically put, you can not violate the ownership, that will punish the motivation of honest working. But if you respect each one's work, some of the people will become super rich and some others will lose everything, to its root, this is caused by each people's different personality

[superresistant]

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.

At 5% unemployment it would just reduce a typical working week by 2 hours, so with some clever economics it could be possible
But generally I agree - there is no economic incentive for a government to significantly reduce unemployment without reducing their competitiveness.

We did it in France. We work 35 hours a week for a full-time job, earning 1 430.22 € minimum wage (before taxes).
We still have 10.9% of unemployment.

http://www.expatica.com/fr/employment/employment_information/French-labour-laws_-Working-time-and-leave_16106.html

[giantdragon]

As for the issue of not being payed enough to survive, that will be entirely offset by the fact that the same productivity that has displaced them has also made the products that they consume proportionately cheaper, after all that was the reason why the entrepreneur chose to displace them to begin with.

I have already argued that this assumption is a fallacy, please see my previous post:

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).

We did it in France. We work 35 hours a week for a full-time job, earning 1 430.22 € minimum wage (before taxes).
We still have 10.9% of unemployment.

May be France have accepted too much immigrants who don't even want to work, preferring to live on welfare?!

[superresistant]

We did it in France. We work 35 hours a week for a full-time job, earning 1 430.22 € minimum wage (before taxes).
We still have 10.9% of unemployment.

May be France have accepted too much immigrants who don't even want to work, preferring to live on welfare?!

That's a huge problem. If you stop working after one year of work, you still get your salary for a year doing nothing.

[Ekaros]

For Finland it seems that there is job offers only for 10% of jobless. And even in that 10% are lot of jobs offers that aren't real, such as various agencies gathering info and maybe offering workers to companies or spots for phone salesman and such...

So there is lack of work, not workers.

[giantdragon]

The problem is not enough jobs for everyone though, at least in the cities. For most people its almost impossible to get a full time contract in Paris, partly because of the labour laws but mainly because its a buyers market.

I have read the France have one of the highest level of labor productivity (=automation/mechanization) in EU, so may be tech unemployment already start taking place here?!

[DoomDumas]

Cant vote, both choice are'nt good from my POV !

I vote for a "Ressources Based Economy" ..  See : http://futurewewant.org/portfolio/resource-based-economy/

[giantdragon]

Cant vote, both choice are'nt good from my POV !

I vote for a "Ressources Based Economy" ..  See : http://futurewewant.org/portfolio/resource-based-economy/

I myself would like to support resource based economy, but it requires extreme case - full automation to be sustainable (which may not happen within our lifetime, as well as Moore's law could stop at any time). In this topic I try to discuss implications of the existing or current-in-development automation deploying which will have effect now or after 5-10-20 years.

[Carlton Banks]

Chimney sweeps lost their jobs post 1960's. Gas engineers took their place. I think the gas engineers could be judged the more economically useful and also the more educated of the two. Chimney sweeps just had rods and a brush. And a hat to keep the soot out of their eyes.

This whole "what will we do with all these useless bus drivers in the future?" thing is driven by a strange combination of contempt and fear; contempt that the "ordinary" people will become useless, luddite resistors of technotopia, and a sub-conscious fear that the sage oracle who identifies the "technological unemployment" trend will themselves become a victim ("don't throw me out of the air-balloon, I predicted this outcome! Who knows what useful stuff I might predict next! least of all me....")

When the robots are thoroughly capable of assembling. fixing, maintaining, designing, and sourcing all of the raw materials required to do all of the previous stated steps, all for themselves, then we might have something to contemplate along the whole "The tRminator is out there!!!1" lines. Until then, the trend will be that doing mind-numbing jobs that make machines out of humans will give way to freeing people up for useful skilled work to do, creative work that involves designing for human needs, critical thinking, philosophising about the next brave new world and such like. A culture that becomes increasingly like that, well, maybe someone might just come out of it that can think about where we go in order to outpace our perfect android creations.  

[giantdragon]

@Carlton Banks, I am not a Luddite myself and strongly encourage technological progress, but you need to look realistically what will happen in currently-dominant economic system (market capitalism) if technology will start removing old jobs a bit faster than creating new ones (again, I am not telling about extreme case of full automation). "Critical thinking, philosophising about the next brave new world and such like" is good, but not in the world where capital owners will take all profit from automation, reducing labor cost so low that "useless people" won't have enough funds to fulfill basic needs and have no other choice than riots and violence.

[Carlton Banks]

not in the world where capital owners will take all profit from automation, reducing labor cost so low that "useless people" won't have enough funds to fulfill basic needs and have no other choice than riots and violence.

But that's only one possible scenario to choose from though. You're forgetting the most important class of capital owners; the money men. We are those men (and women), at least of the world you're talking about anyway. So maybe you should making an appeal to the people of Bitcointalk from that perspective. We will be the investors that the big planners of the future will need to win over, and they can't just steal it from us like they were able to do even in the recent past. The balance of power has shifted, WW3/collapse of the internet notwithstanding. And I think the Chinese state has been quietly helping to make this happen, I predict all or nothing scenario to be played out in the next 24-36 months where cryptocurrency is concerned. The idea that people will increasingly catch on, but that the trend will hit some wall in the adoption curve doesn't seem plausible, we're on the verge of momentous change, IMO.

[Rassah]

Running low on foof is a pretty good "kick in the ass"

If you mean "food", it will more likely force them to riot and destroy "lucky working elite" property rather than be creative. Recent attacks on Google shuttle buses is good example what will happen.

I find this quote from the article puzzling: "Unfortunately, I’ve haven’t seen the tech giants who’ve colonized the neighborhood do much to give back."

Aren't the appartment owners, who actually own the apartments and property in the area, earning much more, now that their rental properties are paying them more a month? How is that not giving back?

I don't think these communities will be able to sustain for any considerable time - army and police will also understand what is happening and probably support 90% of "useless" population, not the working elite (because they also could be replaced with the drones).

The useless population won't be able to pay for army or police. Army and police work for a paycheck, too.

In 90's Russia people needed the same, but nevertheless sold free privatization shares (vouchers) to the oligarchs.

I didn't bring up Russia, but Russia is a place where people have been brainwashed into socialism and subservience for almost a century, and most people who weren't got the hell out way back in the late 80's/early 90's. So Russia is a horrible example of everything that's horrible.

[Rassah]

You are thinking linearly while technology advances by exponential curve (BTW, the same fallacy caused many Bitcoin miners to buy ASICs not counting exponential rise of the difficulty which resulted in negative ROI for them).

I'm pretty sure the fault there was not exponential growth of technology, but rather extreme delays by a certain ASIC manufacturer, which made it impossible to predict when and how many new miners would be released on the market. Much of the negative ROI nowadays is coming from preorders that are just now being filled.

[Rassah]

However we are running into a hard barrier in the next 10 to 16 years depending on how persimistic you are.  Even before that transistor density is probably going to under perform Moore's law.

Didn't we switch from transistor dencity to multiple cored running in parallel a while ago, so that performance can still continue to double simply by increasing the amount of work we can do at the same time?

BTW Moore's law deals with transistor density not performance directly (although performance has closely followed transistor density).  

Ah, I wasn't aware of that (I'll take your word for it though). We do have some nanotech developments in diamond-based cores that can run stably at 1,000C+ temperatures, and some rudimentary light-based processors. Maybe those will become more common as we start to reach a limit, and cheaper as we end up needing them more and more.

[justusranvier]

This video predicts the existence of threads like this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A

[giantdragon]

not in the world where capital owners will take all profit from automation, reducing labor cost so low that "useless people" won't have enough funds to fulfill basic needs and have no other choice than riots and violence.

But that's only one possible scenario to choose from though.

You are right, I am just trying to discuss more peaceful ways to solve the problem or at least increase awareness.

I don't think these communities will be able to sustain for any considerable time - army and police will also understand what is happening and probably support 90% of "useless" population, not the working elite (because they also could be replaced with the drones).

The useless population won't be able to pay for army or police. Army and police work for a paycheck, too.

Mercenaries with pure monetary interest always exist, but I don't think they will play major role in the EU and other civilized countries (about U.S. I am not sure).

[Rassah]

Reading through this thread, one thing that is completely missing is the notion of human technological evolution. Everyone keeps mentioning AI as some separate thing that will take over, when a much more likely scenario will be that humans will augment themselves with AI, in the same way that we have been augmenting our math skills with calculators, and our general knowledge wth google. Who knows, maybe later on in the future we will be able to augment ourselves with technology that lets us generate portable electricity, and augment our bodies with technology that lets us generate portable protein and vitamins (some custom created bacteria that replicates wildly under sunlight for example). At that point, your need for food will be mostly taken care of, and your need to be knowledgeable, skilled, and creative will be taken care of as well. Even now, software developers don't need to rely on knowing everything there is to know about programming syntax, or cary huge books with programming references. They just need to understand the concepts of computer logic, and everything else regarding the actual specifics of programing are just a google search away.

[Rassah]

Mercenaries with pure monetary interest always exist, but I don't think they will play major role in the EU and other civilized countries (about U.S. I am not sure).

If you are talking about an extremely technologically advanced world, where jobs are being rapidly replaced by technology (and where things like taxation and regulations of goods and information are nearly impossible), then concepts like EU or US would no longer exist.