rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread ;)

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Or put another way.  The market economy (or indeed all economies, as we understand the term) are all about managing scarce resources.

No one has yet figured out how to organise society when the main task is to manage plentiful resources.

Scarcity never completely goes away (unless you get to heaven or something and want for absolutely nothing). The idea with technological unemployment is that everything is so plentiful that it is so incredibly cheap as to be obtainable with a tiny amount of going out of your way. To take it to an extreme scenario, you might get enough money from simply stepping aside to allow someone to pass you on the sidewalk (a few satoshis are transferred automatically by apps on your two phones, or however it's done in the future) to pay for your living expenses for an entire month if you lived at the level of comfort you live now.

It's probably more helpful to think of it as a move from full-time to part-time to minimal time to ultra-minimal time employment.

Bottom line: you'll simply need to work far less, and the work will be far easier, to enjoy the same standard of living you do now.

[Roy Badami]

Just like most people in first-world countries (third-world countries are third-world because they're much farther from the "problem" of technological unemployment) can get by now working a low-wage part-time job if they don't mind having no electricity or running water, in the future you'll be able to get by on a low-wage part-time job if you don't mind living exactly as you are now.

What makes you think those low wage part time jobs will still exist?  It's highly likely that they'll increasingly be automated out of existence.

Yes, the world you describe is certainly one possible outcome, but I don't believe it's in any way assured.  I fear a dystopia in which the jobs just don't exist, because there is virtually nothing that needs doing that still requires any human labour in order to accomplish it.

Actually, I was probably wrong to suggest that scarcity will cease to be a problem.  Scarcity of natural resources (metals, oil to make plastics, energy, etc) will be with us for the forseable future.  Only scarcity of labour will cease to exist (due to a massive drop in the demand for labour).  So the rate of pay for labour will collapse much more rapidly than the cost of goods.

I fear the result will be business as usual, and a market economy which excludes an increasingly large proportion of society from meaningful participation in society.  Followed by a bloody revolution.

I hope I'm wrong, but I fear the transition to the world of plenty won't be quite as smooth as you seem to anticipate.

roy

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Just like most people in first-world countries (third-world countries are third-world because they're much farther from the "problem" of technological unemployment) can get by now working a low-wage part-time job if they don't mind having no electricity or running water, in the future you'll be able to get by on a low-wage part-time job if you don't mind living exactly as you are now.

What makes you think those low wage part time jobs will still exist?  It's highly likely that they'll increasingly be automated out of existence.

You're right. Those jobs eventually won't exist, because they'll be automated. Instead, other - easier, higher paying - jobs will exist as people desire greater and greater comfort in their lives and hence start wanting tiny, really easy things done.

Proofreading my comments here for readability takes a few extra seconds/minutes. Shall I hire someone to do it? How about hiring someone to adjust the feng shui of my sentence arrangement? Perhaps, as mentioned above, I'll simply pay someone a satoshi to get out of my way since I'm in a hurry. Maybe someone to follow me around at a distance with binoculars to periodically make sure there's nothing embarrassing stuck in my hair or on my face/clothes.

In a world where having just a bit a skill allows you live like a wealthy person does today because everything is insanely cheap, I might want to pay for all sorts of things. There will still be relatively rich and relatively poor, of course, and it will naturally usually be the richer paying the poorer to do such things, which is how the relatively poor will be able to get the tiny amount of money they need to live in what is today considered great comfort.

Yes, the world you describe is certainly one possible outcome, but I don't believe it's in any way assured.

It's assured by basic economic logic. If nothing needs doing, it's because, well, nothing needs doing. No one wants for anything. If you have a solar-powered house that does everything automatically, including growing food and preparing it and serving it, you'll have no housework (no jobs) at all to do, but is this a bad situation? (Perhaps you'll pay for someone to chew it for you so you can continue your dinnertime chat uninterrupted?) The economy where truly nothing needs doing is like that solar-powered Inspector Gadget house. And transitory phases on the way to that ideal just involve things like 2-minute workweeks to pay for the ultra-cheap goods and (almost all automated) services we need to enjoy our present standard of living.

I fear the result will be business as usual, and a market economy which excludes an increasingly large proportion of society from meaningful participation in society.  Followed by a bloody revolution.

The market isn't excluding anyone from participating in society; government barriers are. In a free market, anyone who can provide any service that anyone values at $4 per hour (or $3, or $2, or $1) can get a wage just slightly below that. Some people simply cannot provide services that are valued any higher than $1 per hour, but that is nothing novel or unique to high technology; imagine the lot of such a person 200 or 2000 years ago. They would be reliant on charity, or living in whatever is considered relative squalor at that point in history. At least in a free market society they'd be able to make a tiny amount of money working, in addition to whatever charity (or if you like, welfare) they receive, instead of nothing...and in the future when things are fantastically cheap they may be earning enough to live better than any of us are now.

This is a gigantic boon, especially for the poor and unskilled. Far from being a cause for concern, it is rather the solution to those very types of concerns.

[Sir Barken Hyena]

The trend is so blindingly obvious that it scarcely warrants mention: unskilled labor gets easier and easier (hard/dangerous/dirty labor gets paid more), and the wages received buy a dramatically greater standard of living. When we add in technological innovations that further save on the labor that is otherwise necessary for basic living - such as washing dishes, bailing water from a well (to say nothing of digging and maintaining the well) - the argument becomes several times more striking.

How does this apply to real estate? In the US a lot of people living in crack addled trailer parks who have iPhones and Netflix, but they still have drug addicts for neighbors. We need to broaden what is included in our "quality of life" stats to capture this; it's presently invisible.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

The trend is so blindingly obvious that it scarcely warrants mention: unskilled labor gets easier and easier (hard/dangerous/dirty labor gets paid more), and the wages received buy a dramatically greater standard of living. When we add in technological innovations that further save on the labor that is otherwise necessary for basic living - such as washing dishes, bailing water from a well (to say nothing of digging and maintaining the well) - the argument becomes several times more striking.

How does this apply to real estate? In the US a lot of people living in crack addled trailer parks who have iPhones and Netflix, but they still have drug addicts for neighbors. We need to broaden what is included in our "quality of life" stats to capture this; it's presently invisible.

What do you think living 200 years ago was like for people of similar skill level, family circumstances, and motivation? Or perhaps I shouldn't say living: the vast majority of them would probably not be living at all.

[Roy Badami]

You're right. Those jobs eventually won't exist, because they'll be automated. Instead, other - easier, higher paying - jobs will exist as people desire greater and greater comfort in their lives and hence start wanting tiny, really easy things done.

Proofreading my comments here for readability takes a few extra seconds/minutes. Shall I hire someone to do it? How about hiring someone to adjust the feng shui of my sentence arrangement? Perhaps, as mentioned above, I'll simply pay someone a satoshi to get out of my way since I'm in a hurry. Maybe someone to follow me around at a distance with binoculars to periodically make sure there's nothing embarrassing stuck in my hair or on my face/clothes.

The problem is that in my dystopia, you might be willing and able to pay for such services, but if so you'd be part of the new aristocracy, the lucky few.  The vast majority of people would not be able to spend money on such frivolous expenses, and therefore there would be few oppurtunities to earn money that way.

It's assured by basic economic logic. If nothing needs doing, it's because, well, nothing needs doing. No one wants for anything.

Lack of economic demand doesn't equate to lack of human need.  Demand is a function of price - in economic terms you can only contribute to demand for a good to the extent that you have the means to purchase it.

Lets look at this another way:

My fear is that this world will result in a massive increase in inequality.  Essentially, there will be two classes of people.  Those who contribute to creating and operating the automated systems, and those that don't.  The economic value of the latter class will be negligible compared to the economic value of the former.  EDIT: And in the long term the latter class is invevitably the majority.  And in my dystopian future (not the only future, but I fear the most likely) the majority are living in poverty.

roy

[JayJuanGee]

You're right. Those jobs eventually won't exist, because they'll be automated. Instead, other - easier, higher paying - jobs will exist as people desire greater and greater comfort in their lives and hence start wanting tiny, really easy things done.

Proofreading my comments here for readability takes a few extra seconds/minutes. Shall I hire someone to do it? How about hiring someone to adjust the feng shui of my sentence arrangement? Perhaps, as mentioned above, I'll simply pay someone a satoshi to get out of my way since I'm in a hurry. Maybe someone to follow me around at a distance with binoculars to periodically make sure there's nothing embarrassing stuck in my hair or on my face/clothes.

The problem is that in my dystopia, you might be willing and able to pay for such services, but if so you'd be part of the new aristocracy, the lucky few.  The vast majority of people would not be able to spend money on such frivolous expenses, and therefore there would be few oppurtunities to earn money that way.

It's assured by basic economic logic. If nothing needs doing, it's because, well, nothing needs doing. No one wants for anything.

Lack of economic demand doesn't equate to lack of human need.  Demand is a function of price - in economic terms you can only contribute to demand for a good to the extent that you have the means to purchase it.

Lets look at this another way:

My fear is that this world will result in a massive increase in inequality.  Essentially, there will be two classes of people.  Those who contribute to creating and operating the automated systems, and those that don't.  The economic value of the latter class will be negligible compared to the economic value of the former.  EDIT: And in the long term the latter class is invevitably the majority.  And in my dystopian future (not the only future, but I fear the most likely) the majority are living in poverty.

roy

Inequality is going to continue - even if we have potential wealth distribution equalizers such as technologies and bitcoin and other crypto currencies.  Surely, there may be some upheavals from time to time in which the masses may protest and even overthrow some social/financial institutions b/c they bias the rich, but in the end we are going to suffer from continuing inequality and continuing unfair distrbution of wealth and duties and even quite a few categories of jobs that are underpaid in comparison to the need for them to be done by humans rather than automated.

[Biodom]

The trend is so blindingly obvious that it scarcely warrants mention: unskilled labor gets easier and easier (hard/dangerous/dirty labor gets paid more), and the wages received buy a dramatically greater standard of living. When we add in technological innovations that further save on the labor that is otherwise necessary for basic living - such as washing dishes, bailing water from a well (to say nothing of digging and maintaining the well) - the argument becomes several times more striking.

How does this apply to real estate? In the US a lot of people living in crack addled trailer parks who have iPhones and Netflix, but they still have drug addicts for neighbors. We need to broaden what is included in our "quality of life" stats to capture this; it's presently invisible.

What do you think living 200 years ago was like for people of similar skill level, family circumstances, and motivation? Or perhaps I shouldn't say living: the vast majority of them would probably not be living at all.

For the last 200 years it is a correct assessment, but if you are old enough, comparing 2014 with 1999 in almost every aspect (except, bitcoin  ): living conditions, income and work load in US for a majority of the population are much worse in 2014, no question about it. Creeping unrecognized inflation; long term unemployment; higher premium, but worse medical plans-we have it all. Because of high unemployment, people have difficulty changing jobs and/or moving, etc., etc.
I am trying the Piketty book-it seems that he got something right there regarding the cause of this situation, but I am not sure what solutions (if any) are possible.

[Bitcopia]

hmmm, interesting!
looking for (automation) industrial engineers?

Looking for people who can obey orders, smile, clean rooms, serve tables, cook, know wines, stand long hours in scorching sun, nitpick about petty amounts, do gardening, smile, drive cars, furnish rooms, clean toilets, empty trashbins, greet guests, empty ashtrays, water lawns, sell wines, do the laundry, smile, answer repetitious questions, clean floors, obey orders and smile.

Oh yes, and the starting pay is bad but the range goes up to 4000€/month.

As we are an equal opportunity employer, being an industrial engineer is not a disqualifier.

I don't want anyone to stand long hours in me!  

 

[JayJuanGee]

hmmm, interesting!
looking for (automation) industrial engineers?

Looking for people who can obey orders, smile, clean rooms, serve tables, cook, know wines, stand long hours in scorching sun, nitpick about petty amounts, do gardening, smile, drive cars, furnish rooms, clean toilets, empty trashbins, greet guests, empty ashtrays, water lawns, sell wines, do the laundry, smile, answer repetitious questions, clean floors, obey orders and smile.

Oh yes, and the starting pay is bad but the range goes up to 4000€/month.

As we are an equal opportunity employer, being an industrial engineer is not a disqualifier.

I don't want anyone to stand long hours in me!  

 

I was trying to figure that out ...... NOW,  I see... 

[ArticMine]

The trend is so blindingly obvious that it scarcely warrants mention: unskilled labor gets easier and easier (hard/dangerous/dirty labor gets paid more), and the wages received buy a dramatically greater standard of living. When we add in technological innovations that further save on the labor that is otherwise necessary for basic living - such as washing dishes, bailing water from a well (to say nothing of digging and maintaining the well) - the argument becomes several times more striking.

How does this apply to real estate? In the US a lot of people living in crack addled trailer parks who have iPhones and Netflix, but they still have drug addicts for neighbors. We need to broaden what is included in our "quality of life" stats to capture this; it's presently invisible.

I would argue that they are living in in crack addled trailer parks because they have iPhones and Netflix.

[ajola90]

Any interest in Bitcoin gentlemen and gentleladies? Seems to not be of interest for 100 pages or so.

[rpietila]

Isn't this your trendline?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log+%28bitcoin%2Fusd%29++%2F+log+10+%2B+2.869800+-++0.003012+*++number+of+days+since+2009+Jan+03+%2Fdays+

Perhaps it is, but that's an old version. The real one self-adjusts downwards constantly.

[Pruden]

For the last 200 years it is a correct assessment, but if you are old enough, comparing 2014 with 1999 in almost every aspect (except, bitcoin  ): living conditions, income and work load in US for a majority of the population are much worse in 2014, no question about it. Creeping unrecognized inflation; long term unemployment; higher premium, but worse medical plans-we have it all. Because of high unemployment, people have difficulty changing jobs and/or moving, etc., etc.
I am trying the Piketty book-it seems that he got something right there regarding the cause of this situation, but I am not sure what solutions (if any) are possible.

Maybe if people stopped consuming 105% of their salaries "because I deserve this treat". Their deficit is the businesses' earnings, which goes to stockholders, people who saved so they could invest.

I have heard of many bad things the government does, but never found an explanation for people digging themselves into debt and acccelerating the treadmill of hedonic adaptation on which they are barely keeping up. I have to think that's their own doing.

[rpietila]

Some quite interesting ideas.

[JayJuanGee]

For the last 200 years it is a correct assessment, but if you are old enough, comparing 2014 with 1999 in almost every aspect (except, bitcoin  ): living conditions, income and work load in US for a majority of the population are much worse in 2014, no question about it. Creeping unrecognized inflation; long term unemployment; higher premium, but worse medical plans-we have it all. Because of high unemployment, people have difficulty changing jobs and/or moving, etc., etc.
I am trying the Piketty book-it seems that he got something right there regarding the cause of this situation, but I am not sure what solutions (if any) are possible.

Maybe if people stopped consuming 105% of their salaries "because I deserve this treat". Their deficit is the businesses' earnings, which goes to stockholders, people who saved so they could invest.

I have heard of many bad things the government does, but never found an explanation for people digging themselves into debt and acccelerating the treadmill of hedonic adaptation on which they are barely keeping up. I have to think that's their own doing.

Systems are set up to create incentives, including whether to save or to spend... whether to invest or NOT too... and where and how to invest.

[ErisDiscordia]

I'd like to join the technological unemployment discussion.

As to technological unemployment, it is indeed a good thing. Nay, a fantastic thing. A world without a demand for anyone to work except those who are highly technically skilled would clearly be a world of plenty. Just think about it: no one needs anything non-technical done; that means no non-technical need is going unfulfilled: no one is hungry, because if there were any shortage of food there would be demand for farmers. No one is unclothed, because if there were any shortage of clothes there would be demand for weavers, etc.

And if you'll say that any shortage of clothing will just be met by more machines, YES, that's the whole point and it's great! It means, again, there is no shortage of clothing. Clothing is not in demand. But still more miraculously, no people (or very few people) are required to devote their labor to achieve this state of affairs. It's the whole reason you buy a dishwasher, for example, freeing you up to do something you think is more fun or valuable than washing dishes by hand. You're not working anymore because you don't need to do the work. You're either doing some other work that needed doing, or - if there is no other work at all that needs doing - you're living in a paradise, since all your needs that could be met by any kind of human labor are already met. You don't even need a shoulder massage, because if you did you could hire someone to do that and that would be a non-technical job created, contradicting the initial assumption.

This would be paradise, a situation where you don't need to work at all and you can still experience a higher standard of living than you do now. On the way there, we'll have intermediate situations where you can work only part time with no reduction in life quality, then only 5 hours a week, then a few minutes a week will do it. Finally most people won't work at all unless they want to enjoy an even higher standard of living or if they just want to occupy themselves with something for the fun or psychic reward of it. There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of about this scenario. And keep in mind at no time is the unemployment involuntary in such a future. It's people working less because they care little to better their already quite nice situation by toiling for hours a day; instead they will work only a few hours a week, or eventually not at all - all the while enjoying an increasing standard of living.

Many people when confronted with the (rather probable) scenario of unemployment due to technological progress are apprehensive about such a scenario. Losing employment is by definition negative. Yet most people when queried respond that they don't enjoy their jobs very much or at all and they'd rather be doing something else. This peculiar situation tells us something about the state of our culture. I can't hope to try to describe what has happened as eloquently as Robert Anton Wilson in his book Prometheus Rising (1983) so I'll quote him:

As civilization has advanced, the pack-bond (the tribe, the extended family) has been broken. This is the root of the widely diagnosed "anomie" or "alienation" or "existential anguish" about which so many social critics have written so eloquently. What has happened is that the conditioning of the bio-survival bond to the gene-pool has been replaced by a conditioning of bio-survival drives to hook onto the peculiar tickets which we call "money".

....

Concretely, a modern man or woman doesn't look for bio-survival security in the gene-pool, the pack, the extended family. Bio-survival depends on getting the tickets. If the tickets are withdrawn, acute bio-survival anxiety appears at once.

...

Welfare-ism, socialism, totalitarianism, etc. represent attempts, in varying degrees of rationality and hysteria, to re-create the tribal bond by making the State stand-in for the gene-pool.

...the State is not a gene-pool or a tribe, and cannot really play the bio-survival unit convincingly. Everybody on Welfare becomes paranoid, because they are continually worrying that they are going to get cut off ("exiled") for some minor infraction of the increasingly incomprehensible bureaucratic rules.

So because work, employment is the basic way of obtaining these bio-survival tickets for most people, the threat of their employment being taken away is being met by acute bio-survival anxiety. It's like being threatened to be ostracized and thrown out of the tribe. It amounts to a death sentence in most cases.

Until we can cure ourselves of this state, there will be hysteria and anxiety about the unfolding scenario of technological progress increasing productivity and eliminating the need for human labor. We, as a culture, literally can't think straight about this issue at this point in time.

Needs would still go unfilled, because people without jobs would not have the money to pay for them.

Yes indeed! And that would be a bad thing, right? It doesn't tell us anything about our available resources for fulfilling those needs, though. What it tells us instead is that our system of managing and distributing those resources is sub-optimal. Now what can we do about that? A resource based economy has been proposed by the Zeitgeist movement. I am skeptical about it because of its rather centralized nature but I support the testing of such an idea on a voluntary basis. This solution aims to eliminate the problem of unequal distribution of the bio-survival tickets (money) by eliminating the need for them in an economy. The problem with this is that money fulfills an important role today: it helps us with attributing prices to resources and so managing their distribution. This would have to be replaced by some other means of determining where resources should flow in society and central planning just doesn't cut it for me.

Other than this suggestion we are left with trying to work within the confines of a system based on bio-survival tickets but perhaps we can change the way we use them (our culture) and/or the attributes of the tickets (Bitcoin anyone?). I feel like a broken record lately, but I want to emphasize the need for a culture of tipping and micropayments to emerge so we can foster the kinds of economic relationships Zanglebert Dingleback was talking about. This might be a stepping stone in the right direction. Think bloggers, coaches, consultants, IT people, artists, receiving direct transactions from their customers or their audience and thus supplementing or even supplanting their employment income.

Lets look at this another way:

My fear is that this world will result in a massive increase in inequality.  Essentially, there will be two classes of people.  Those who contribute to creating and operating the automated systems, and those that don't.  The economic value of the latter class will be negligible compared to the economic value of the former.  EDIT: And in the long term the latter class is invevitably the majority.  And in my dystopian future (not the only future, but I fear the most likely) the majority are living in poverty.

roy

This scenario has been explored as early as 1895 by H.G. Wells in his book The Time Machine. In this futuristic dystopia the human race has evolved into two species - the ruling class of Eloi who reap all the benefits of a fully industrialized society and the working class of Morlocks, who run all the machinery, but get close to none of the benefits. This might indeed be a possible endgame for our current system. That's why I advocate changing, nay, abolishing the system. What we need are systems and protocols

[cAPSLOCK]

Well now.

I have to check my calculations over as I do my math with legos, but I think we may be at the moment we have all been waiting for.  Well at least since last Christmas or so.

The log trend line and the actual price look like they are about to meet up in a significant way. 

Any actual techie gurus out there want to confirm?  But I think the next big move is a major trendsetter.  Or breaker...

[bucktotal]

Well now.

I have to check my calculations over as I do my math with legos, but I think we may be at the moment we have all been waiting for.  Well at least since last Christmas or so.

The log trend line and the actual price look like they are about to meet up in a significant way. 

Any actual techie gurus out there want to confirm?  But I think the next big move is a major trendsetter.  Or breaker...

+1, for the last few years, each downswing has touched a lower bound (a long-term MA) twice, then off we go to the next plateau.

for ex:
early 2012 bounced twice of the 80 day MA,
late 2012- 170 day MA,
early 2013 - 240 day MA
late 2013/2014 - 365 day MA

its coming up again... from ~500-530 depending on time frame, exchange, etc... i hope we touch it.

[Capt Drake]

August will be a pretty exciting month, some altcoins would launch major upgrades to their grids, some major funds will open and hopefully, major dollar will enter the bitcoinland.

See ya fellas! Let it be the day we are waiting for so long!