Technological unemployment is (almost) here

[deed02392]

Why is there no 'false dilemma' poll option? I think what the 2nd or 3rd poster said is right - all automation does is make manufacturing cheaper, which only means the product gets cheaper for those who get their jobs displaced.

Basic math fail detected. I guess you are just another free-marketer.

It doesn't matter how things are cheap when your income is zero. Zero divided by any number no matter how small still gives zero.

Basic reading fail detected. I never said people would go jobless, obviously that is an entirely different thing.

[giantdragon]

Unfortunately a planned economy can't work.  If you plan the entire thing and the smallest detail doesn't line up with "the plan" then how does the rest of the plan adjust?  This was tried a lot in the USSR (5-year plans) but always failed.

I never offered to repeat USSR economy model, it already proven to fail. But with current level of technology it is possible to enable state-wide computer-aided planning system (like ERP, but in much larger scale) which will readjust plan in realtime - so no more shortages, no waste of resources, reduced possibility to embezzle.  In Chile there was an attempt to build this system (Project Cybersyn) but Pinochet's coup didn't let to try.

Additionally, I'm not sure how you plan an economy without everyone being on welfare (i.e. provided for by the government).  Wouldn't their wages, or alternatively their means of subsistence, need to be part of the plan?

Of course planning agency will set wage structures (with participation of the worker unions).

I would like to see some examples of the African countries you indicated had a high standard of living while the USSR was in existence.  I suspect the state they are in now is either a direct result of involvement with the USSR (and the fallout from its collapse) or events since then have caused the issues and true "laissez-faire policies" were never really tried.

There were many countries in Africa who cooperated with USSR, e.g. Ethiopia, Angola, Somalia (the last is totally collapsed now). In some sense it is difficult to prove something using official statistics because pro-market reforms were made by IMF and World Bank fanatics and they teached local officials how to hide real problems and show better economy (which is not true in fact). BTW, Somalia now is much more "laissez-faire" than United States, I am not joking (no stable govt = no regulations at all)!

People are competitive by nature. Central planning brings most alpha-types to the center. There they consolidate power and draw disproportionate benefits for themselves and their support groups. Ideas threatening the status quo are outlawed. Security and stability are emphasized. Large security apparatus is built to protect the state.
Eventually central planers find ways to chose & groom their successors, which usually turn to be next in kin. Gradually a narrative develops praising the elite for its unique skills & wisdom. An aristocracy is born.

I mean democratic version of planned economy in which government must be responsive to population's needs (e.g. clause in the constitution that referendums must be held about important resource allocation decisions).

Why is there no 'false dilemma' poll option? I think what the 2nd or 3rd poster said is right - all automation does is make manufacturing cheaper, which only means the product gets cheaper for those who get their jobs displaced.

Murwa correctly answered on your question. There are really no viable 3+ option, in fact only single variant is possible because implementing unconditional income will instantly fail as capital will flight from this country.

[Murwa]

Why is there no 'false dilemma' poll option? I think what the 2nd or 3rd poster said is right - all automation does is make manufacturing cheaper, which only means the product gets cheaper for those who get their jobs displaced.

--------------------------------

Basic reading fail detected. I never said people would go jobless, obviously that is an entirely different thing.

So displaced people got jobs

[Murwa]

Murwa correctly answered on your question. There are really no viable 3+ option, in fact only single variant is possible because implementing unconditional income will instantly fail as capital will flight from this country.

There is a third way.

Open source economy based on principle of production on demand.

We just need a cheap 3D printers available for general population not only in labs such as NASA. And right now printers can print in almost anything , there is no technology that we lack.

[FiatKiller]

We use winding machines here where I work and the automation has not really impacted it much at all. Originally the machines could be programmed with the number of turns/revolutions only and the operator had to guide the wire from one end of the coilform to another. The latest machines do that automatically, only requiring the operator to setup each coil and then tag the leads and remove it. The production has increased because they can set one up and then go to another machine and get it going also. But we still need an operator and it is extremely unlikely a machine could ever autotag the wires. They are extremely thin wires and I don't see how humans can even do it. I would go insane doing that job. lol  So I guess it depends on what kind of automation you are talking about. If a taxicab does not need a driver at some point, then that would be a huge impact.

[jdbtracker]

It'll probably end up like in the last days of the USSR; Everyone standing around drinking vodka doing nothing at the factory. Where I used to work years ago, we cleaned all the industrial centrifuges manually, now they are automated like the rest of the system; All we did was just program the settings into the machines and it would carry out the operations... Now it is fully automated everything in the plant. The Owner still keeps workers around because he probably knows that for the economy they are necessary, no one ever gets layed off at that plant... but everyone just stands around for hours doing nothing just watching the machines do their thing, people are just there for back-up now.

[deisik]

It'll probably end up like in the last days of the USSR; Everyone standing around drinking vodka doing nothing at the factory. Where I used to work years ago, we cleaned all the industrial centrifuges manually, now they are automated like the rest of the system; All we did was just program the settings into the machines and it would carry out the operations... Now it is fully automated everything in the plant. The Owner still keeps workers around because he probably knows that for the economy they are necessary, no one ever gets layed off at that plant... but everyone just stands around for hours doing nothing just watching the machines do their thing, people are just there for back-up now.

I don't even remotely remember such things. You'd better stop spreading nonsense. No one will keep workers around just because "they are necessary for the the economy", not even in Russia...

[giantdragon]

There is a third way.

Open source economy based on principle of production on demand.

We just need a cheap 3D printers available for general population not only in labs such as NASA. And right now printers can print in almost anything , there is no technology that we lack.

Don't be so naive - production of replicator-level 3D printers will be monopolized by large corporations like anything else. Energy also won't be free, look how EU banned cheap Chinese photovoltaic panels to reduce competition for preferred corporations.

The production has increased because they can set one up and then go to another machine and get it going also. But we still need an operator and it is extremely unlikely a machine could ever autotag the wires. They are extremely thin wires and I don't see how humans can even do it. I would go insane doing that job. lol  So I guess it depends on what kind of automation you are talking about.

Increasing productivity with automation doesn't directly means an elimination of the workers on this concrete plant, however competing companies may be wiped out from the market entirely and have to fire 100% their employees. Good example is high-productive Germany and lagging Southern & Eastern Europe. Germany has low unemployment and high level of automation simultaneously, but Greece/Spain/Latvia/Bulgaria etc have closed many industries and suffer now from 30-50% real unemployment!
Relative to the whole country's economy it is the same as firing some part of the employees on each factory proportionally.

Now it is fully automated everything in the plant. The Owner still keeps workers around because he probably knows that for the economy they are necessary, no one ever gets layed off at that plant... but everyone just stands around for hours doing nothing just watching the machines do their thing, people are just there for back-up now.

Are you telling about Russia? If so, don't hope it will last permanently - preserving inefficiency is possible due to oil and gas revenues, as well as Vladimir Putin's fear to lose its power if unemployment start rising.
Will be interesting to look what will happen when oil price will fall below $100!  

[Murwa]

Don't be so naive - production of replicator-level 3D printers will be monopolized by large corporations like anything else. Energy also won't be free, look how EU banned cheap Chinese photovoltaic panels to reduce competition for preferred corporations.

Welcome to capitalism ??

And in before argument : it is not capitalism , capitalism is about free market crap.

No , capitalism is about winning period.

Money flowing into your industry,pocket = win. Money not flowing , you die. This is simple as that.
No one gives a s**t about fantasy world in libertarians heads.

[jdbtracker]

There's definitely a lot that can be automated like cooking and teaching. These are relatively simple things. But, can you really automate neurosurgery/heart surgery in the next year?

It is possible; There are surgery simulators out there. So if we took Surgeon Simulator 2013 and upgraded it to have easier controls, more intuitive controls with very high detail simulations of surgery we could, by using machine learning, learn all the necessities of surgery from average users. Yes I know sounds crazy, but as more people successfully complete the surgery with a A.I. observing the best players it can learn what to do and by observing the unsuccessful players it will learn what not to do.

I think it will be easier and more expedient to design nanobots that would make repairs (in the way natural healing occurs) without actual surgery than build a robot able to carry out neurosurgery...

Truth is that the modern surgery methods sometimes already use remote control. So we really aren't that faraway from pure robots. Automating minimaly invasive techniques shouldn't be too complex problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_Soviet-type_economic_planning  Eto byl zhestokiy sluchay v istorii . Lyudi zarabotali rubley nichego ne delaya, ne bylo proizvodstva vydelyayutsya .

agreed, start small, I know from experience, you want something to succeed you start small, small parameters, perfect those then build on top of it; Monolithic projects with massive complexity from the beginning always fail too many things to fix and monitor and not enough experience or resources to tackle problems efficiently.

So it can be done, check out Surgeon simulator 2014 and ask for small surgeries, the basics, stitches, casts, small incisions, topical surgeries, instead of the invasive ones they have there in the game right now.

[temp1029]

I never offered to repeat USSR economy model, it already proven to fail. But with current level of technology it is possible to enable state-wide computer-aided planning system (like ERP, but in much larger scale) which will readjust plan in realtime - so no more shortages, no waste of resources, reduced possibility to embezzle.  In Chile there was an attempt to build this system (Project Cybersyn) but Pinochet's coup didn't let to try.

And this "supercomputer", how will it account for people's wants and desires?  People aren't parts in a machine, intended to be used to further some arbitrary ends, they are sovereign beings capable of making decisions and fulfilling their own wants.  No centralized system can account for me deciding I want a ham sandwich instead of turkey sandwich.  When it comes to the interaction of closed systems (i.e. individuals), past results are not a valid predictor of future encounters.

Something tells me your part of the nuttery-coven at the Venus Project.  Good luck with taking resources from people and turning it all over to machines, PM me with the death toll yu have to ring up to make that happen.

Of course planning agency will set wage structures (with participation of the worker unions).

OK, so.....welfare then?  Or maybe a better term would be slave/forced labor.  When people are denied the basic right of determining how they will work and for what gains, they call that slavery. 

There were many countries in Africa who cooperated with USSR, e.g. Ethiopia, Angola, Somalia (the last is totally collapsed now). In some sense it is difficult to prove something using official statistics because pro-market reforms were made by IMF and World Bank fanatics and they teached local officials how to hide real problems and show better economy (which is not true in fact).

TL/DR version: "I like to spout facts and when someone asks me to support them, well.....its a conspiracy!"

BTW, Somalia now is much more "laissez-faire" than United States, I am not joking (no stable govt = no regulations at all)!

A laissez-faire system assumes protection from theft.  It is the role of government to provide this protection.  The system you were looking for was Anarchy.

[Rassah]

agreed, start small, I know from experience, you want something to succeed you start small, small parameters, perfect those then build on top of it; Monolithic projects with massive complexity from the beginning always fail too many things to fix and monitor and not enough experience or resources to tackle problems efficiently.

Da, eto byl ochen plohoy vek v chelovecheskoy istorii

It doesn't matter how you start. What matters is how you end. If you start small, and end big, you will still end up with a big, monolithic entity that can't adapt or react to changes in time. We have seen this in USSR, and see it constantly with large monolithic corporations being killed off by new, more agile startups. You have to start small, and remain small, and the only way to do that is to keep everything distributed and decentralized. That means central planning is out. Even if you set up a bunch of small, distributed, centrally-planned communities, there may still be incentive for them to combine into ever bigger units, leading to the same deadly monolithic entity we want to avoid, so we would have to figure out how to set up incentives to avoid any sort of centralization.

[giantdragon]

And this "supercomputer", how will it account for people's wants and desires?  People aren't parts in a machine, intended to be used to further some arbitrary ends, they are sovereign beings capable of making decisions and fulfilling their own wants.  No centralized system can account for me deciding I want a ham sandwich instead of turkey sandwich.

When you buy this sandwich, the planning system will count increase in this good's consumption and can balance its supply to meet demand.

OK, so.....welfare then?  Or maybe a better term would be slave/forced labor.  When people are denied the basic right of determining how they will work and for what gains, they call that slavery.

There are no welfare for idling, as well as forced labor - the state owns means of production so pays to its workers as corporations do now (but in more fairer way so the owner won't get 99% of the profit).

P.S. It is clear for almost everyone that technological unemployment is a final stalemate for the free market! Of course this system have some advantages over central planning, but will be dead no matter how much do you like it (not certainly anywhere in the world - most likely regions like Silicon Valley will prosper under capitalism but be populated only with "technological elite")! Think realistically, not emotionally!

[PirateHatForTea]

Uh, yeah, we had a severe global economic collapse, followed by increased regulations, capital seizures, and austerity measures. We didn't just invent "technlogy" in 2000's. What we did have is a huge increase in outsourcing.
And sure, women entered the workforce in USA, and maybe in Europe, in 1950's, but women have been in the workforce pretty much constantly in USSR and many other parts world through the 1900's and prior.

I don't fully understand your point. Is it that global participation rates haven't been trending downwards? Because even your data shows a downtrend once converted to a per-capita participation rate instead of gross workforce.

Or perhaps it is about there being extenuating circumstances for the extreme downturn in US participation rate - fair enough, you'd be right. But you can't deny that at least recently, jobs that disappear form the system have not come back - perhaps we have entered an era of 'ratcheting down' of jobs.

Your comments about women in the workforce in eg USSR in the early 20th century are a red herring.

[jdbtracker]

These people still need to earn a living of course, but where are they getting their income? From Welfare? Investments? Cryptocurrencies? Are they living off their parents? shared household? Whatever the reason there must be a minimum amount for survivability. I have seen a few online jobs where you get money for doing small tasks, solving problems, but that never generates more than a few dollars an hour, way below minimum wage.

If we analyzed these vectors, we could find out exactly what is going on, but where do we get this data? How do we interpret it?

[Rassah]

Or perhaps it is about there being extenuating circumstances for the extreme downturn in US participation rate - fair enough, you'd be right. But you can't deny that at least recently, jobs that disappear form the system have not come back - perhaps we have entered an era of 'ratcheting down' of jobs.

That was my point, that the jobs disappearing and not coming back is a recent phenomenon, while technological progress is not. This suggests that something other than the increase in technological development is causing this drop.

Your comments about women in the workforce in eg USSR in the early 20th century are a red herring.

It was a response to the claim that the only reason we had a growth in labor since the 50s was due to women entering the workforce. In America, maybe, but they were already working in other countries.

[Murwa]

That was my point, that the jobs disappearing and not coming back is a recent phenomenon, while technological progress is not. This suggests that something other than the increase in technological development is causing this drop.

Like computer and software progress which is new.

Nice way of ignoring everything i and OP said and keeping your head in free-market wonderland.

Read first post in this thread. It is only after technology becomes autonomous ( thanks to computers and software ) the problem arrives not just because of the technology.
Free market is dead no matter what you do , how do you feel being ideological bankrupt

[Rassah]

Like computer and software progress which is new.

We had computers since the 30's (before even), and software since the 60's. We also had factory automation since at least the middle of the last century, since you don't need computers automate factory assembly lines. Just needs some extra gears and switches. So this whole automation thing has been going on for most of the last 100 years. You are basically claiming that a tractor or a machine replacing 25 farmers or factory workers with 1 is not a problem, but a computer replacing 25 tractor drivers with 1 computer operator is. I don't buy it.

[giantdragon]

You are basically claiming that a tractor or a machine replacing 25 farmers or factory workers with 1 is not a problem, but a computer replacing 25 tractor drivers with 1 computer operator is. I don't buy it.

Already broke this argument.
Farmers replaced with tractors moved to industrial sector, industrial workers replaced with CNC machinery were dumped to the services sector. But now there are simply no 4th sector to move in.

[Rassah]

You are basically claiming that a tractor or a machine replacing 25 farmers or factory workers with 1 is not a problem, but a computer replacing 25 tractor drivers with 1 computer operator is. I don't buy it.

Already broke this argument.
Farmers replaced with tractors moved to industrial sector, industrial workers replaced with CNC machinery were dumped to the services sector. But now there are simply no 4th sector to move in.

There was no such thing as industrial sector when farmers were around. There was no such thing as a white collar service sector, or IT sector, when CNC machinery was introduced. You don't know what the next sector will be, so there is no way you can definitively say that there is no 4th sector to move into.