Everyone should take it easy on the robot stuff for a while.
February 21, 2015 9:15 AM Subscribe
There's been a small, but influential, hysteria surrounding the idea is that a huge wave of automation, technology and skills have lead to a massive structural change in the economy since 2010. The implicit argument here is that robots and machines have both made traditional demand-side policies irrelevant or naïve, and been a major driver of wage stagnation and inequality. Though not the most pernicious story that gained prominence as the recovery remained sluggish in 2010 to 2011, it gained an important foothold among elite discussion. That is over.David Autor and Larry Summers tear apart the idea that a Machine Age is responsible for our economic plight.
Ie, even if the recent slump is primarily cyclical and financial, rather than technological or structural, the technological trend is very real.
This trend is going to ask hard questions of our social models, and it's worth thinking about the answers now. Some previous, related thoughts.
posted by grobstein at 9:37 AM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
This trend is going to ask hard questions of our social models, and it's worth thinking about the answers now. Some previous, related thoughts.
posted by grobstein at 9:37 AM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
Yeah, it's a real head scratcher what's damaging the economy.
In unrelated news, the richest eight Americans increased their wealth by $87 billion last year, more than the entire cost of the food stamp program, which feeds 47 million Americans.
Criminy, if only someone could solve the mystery of what's hurting our economy!
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:51 AM on February 21, 2015 [112 favorites]
In unrelated news, the richest eight Americans increased their wealth by $87 billion last year, more than the entire cost of the food stamp program, which feeds 47 million Americans.
Criminy, if only someone could solve the mystery of what's hurting our economy!
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:51 AM on February 21, 2015 [112 favorites]
Maybe I'm not versed enough in economics-speak but I don't see where Autor and Summers' arguments "tear apart" anything. Summers thinks that if jobs were being automated away RIGHT NOW, there'd be a short-term productivity boost as new robot installation jobs were added alongside traditional jobs before the changeover was complete. But not every robot is installed at once. Different industries are at different phases of automation, so one sector could have automated decades ago and seen a small productivity boost at that time that wasn't enough to effect the productivity of the economy as a whole, another sector could have automated a few years ago, another could be automating now, etc etc. The productivity boost is obviously gonna be small since all the work is mostly done up-front, compared to the effect on jobs which is persistent and can spillover from industry to industry (out-of-work engineers become teachers and displace the people who formerly would have been teachers, etc etc).
posted by subdee at 9:52 AM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by subdee at 9:52 AM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
Yeah I wouldn't blame automation for the 2010 economy (I mean, what?) but as a general trend more automated labor seems inevitably to lead to less well paying working class jobs over the long term.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:54 AM on February 21, 2015
posted by Drinky Die at 9:54 AM on February 21, 2015
Summers and Autor did a good job of refuting the worst of the alarmism. The main problem with those worrying about tech change is that their worry typically comes shrouded in a fatalistic helplessness: "we need to keep increasing productivity, so the best we can do is try to adapt to the tech change that is causing our misery." (Tyler Cowen and most right-leaning economists in a nutshell)
This is wrong for two reasons: productivity isn't increasing quickly by any measurable stats, and the idea that it would cause misery the kind of misery we worry about is extremely suspect anyway. There is scant evidence though that productivity gains (historically low since 2004) have anything to do the slow employment growth in most major sectors since 2001. Autor's point about the complexity of automation's effects is crucial: automation definitely hurts some workers, but it helps others and ultimately it is the main way society gets richer. The only time we've had fast productivity growth in the past 30 years is also the only time we've had significant wage gains for the bottom half of the distribution.
Of course, tech has absolutely shifted bargaining power within the economy, and will continue to do so in new ways--shifting how scarce types of labor are, shifting trade patterns, shifting control and knowledge in the workplace, etc... This should be solved with institutions (minimum wage, worker organizing protections, unemployment insurance, trade policy that doesn't just throw our uneducated workers under the bus) that address those power imbalances.
And if you are still worried about tech progressing too fast (and small groups of people reaping all the spoils), then go support ways for the public to get a better return for the R&D that they pay for and not have it all just go to private investors.
posted by ropeladder at 9:57 AM on February 21, 2015 [13 favorites]
This is wrong for two reasons: productivity isn't increasing quickly by any measurable stats, and the idea that it would cause misery the kind of misery we worry about is extremely suspect anyway. There is scant evidence though that productivity gains (historically low since 2004) have anything to do the slow employment growth in most major sectors since 2001. Autor's point about the complexity of automation's effects is crucial: automation definitely hurts some workers, but it helps others and ultimately it is the main way society gets richer. The only time we've had fast productivity growth in the past 30 years is also the only time we've had significant wage gains for the bottom half of the distribution.
Of course, tech has absolutely shifted bargaining power within the economy, and will continue to do so in new ways--shifting how scarce types of labor are, shifting trade patterns, shifting control and knowledge in the workplace, etc... This should be solved with institutions (minimum wage, worker organizing protections, unemployment insurance, trade policy that doesn't just throw our uneducated workers under the bus) that address those power imbalances.
And if you are still worried about tech progressing too fast (and small groups of people reaping all the spoils), then go support ways for the public to get a better return for the R&D that they pay for and not have it all just go to private investors.
posted by ropeladder at 9:57 AM on February 21, 2015 [13 favorites]
Summers is also wrong about *how* tech installation boosts employment/productivity. This comment on the original article "tears apart" Summers:
A last specific point. This isn't so policy relevant but I think it shows why I'm uncomfortable with the whole basis of this argument. Summers says (about automating retail): "you have to have a million guys running around figuring out how to put the new computer system in."posted by subdee at 10:05 AM on February 21, 2015 [19 favorites]
No, you don't. Summers is stuck in 1980 IT land. I live near lots little coffee shops, and now they all have iPad / Square based systems that are customized to their menu. Probably they are maintained by one or two contractors. The "infrastructure" is generic internet plus a few servers somewhere providing commoditised retail clearing -- altogether employing probably a few dozen people across the whole country. The IT services that Larry remembers have all been automated away.
Once again the way this affects jobs isn't so clear. One aspect that I can see is that running the iPad takes a lot less training and knowledge (and often less time per transaction) than running the old dumb cash register. But I have no way to go from this to any strong argument about impact on jobs, wages, etc.
But the fact that Summers is so wrong on this -- and doesn't even question his own memory and intuition -- suggests to me that we totally should not trust his view of automation.
The last paragraph in the article begins with
posted by XMLicious at 10:18 AM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
All the links I clicked on appeared to be talking about this issue occurring in the future, not explaining an event in the past via changes caused by automation. Both implying that the concerns about the economic impacts of automation are "over" and also declaring that the "problems are real" is a great way for the author to hedge his bets, I suppose.Perhaps this turn is just reflecting this very specific historical moment, and it could change again just as quickly. But the problems are real, and terrifying stories about robots taking all the jobs can no longer have the double function as a form of relief that we have no responsibility to try and address these problems.
posted by XMLicious at 10:18 AM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
If we had the income distribution in the United States that we did in 1979, the top 1% would have $1 trillion less today, and the bottom 80% would have $1 trillion more. That works out to about $700,000 a family for the top 1%, and about $11,000 a year for a family in the bottom 80%.What automation allows is the re-allocation of money to the top, at the expense of everyone else. Lets say you automate an assembly line making widgets, and cut the number of workers on the line to 10% of the previous number. It doesn't need productivity to increase - i.e. the machinery/robotics line to actually make more widgets per hour. Now instead of money from the sale of the widgets going to pay the workers with a chunk of profit on top for the owners of the factory, the money goes to pay off the investment in the machinery. Once that's paid off, the pure profit margin of the factory owner goes up substantially. The company that built the robots profited from that. The bank that loaned the money to the factory to invest in the robots made money. The workers on the line that got obsoleted? Well they get to go become Walmart greeters, or amazon pickers, or uber drivers, working for a pittance because they're fighting with many others for low skilled jobs and can be replaced at the drop of a hat. The handful that trained to become robot operators/maintainers/programmers survived, or more likely, were hired in from outside - but they went into hefty debt to train to do that job. It used to be companies would invest in their staff to do their job; now staff are expected to come ready made with the needed skills, or pay themselves to retrain for a new job, and the cost of higher education is ever rising.
So even with no change on productivity, we see that the owners of the company that makes widgets now make a lot more money than they used to. The people that invested capital in automation saw healthy returns on their investment. The workers got screwed. The same story plays out across the economy. The real money is in capital returns, which entirely co-incidentally has lower taxes than income, and benefits the people with the most capital to start with. And the politicians, who are themselves wealthy, and the media owners, who are wealthy, all happily support this state of affairs, and say if you don't work yourself harder, go further into debt to skill up, don't trample on your fellow workers to chase those fewer and fewer jobs, then you're a slacker and skiver and deserve to die hungry in a ditch, because you're just lazy. You should have been born into a wealthy family and could have made money hand over fist from investment banking, then you'd be worth something!
Automation and the techno-future doesn't destroy lives and impoverish the bulk of the population. It's just the tool of those with money and power using it to further increase their slice of the pie at the cost of everyone else.
posted by ArkhanJG at 10:28 AM on February 21, 2015 [38 favorites]
Funny that Summers is saying this now. Here's something from a lecture he gave in 2013:
Capital augments labor: it raises the productivity of labor. If there are only two factors, they have to be complements. If there's more capital, the wage has to rise. Now imagine that capital can be put to one of two uses. It can be put to the use in the production function that we are accustomed to thinking about or it can be used to substitute for labor. That is, you can take some of the stock of machines and, by designing them appropriately, you can have them do exactly what labor did before. I am suggesting replacing the production function
Y = F(K, L)
with
Y = F(βK, L + λ(1 ‒ β)K).
In this setting one unit of capital is the equivalent of λ units of labor. A moment's thought will reveal that capital will be deployed in these two uses to the point where their marginal productivity is the same, and that will determine what share of the capital stock is used in the customary way and what share is used to substitute for labor.
If you reflect on this a bit longer, you'll realize that three things happen. One, the availability of capital that substitutes for labor augments production opportunities. You can always choose not to use it. So, the level of output has to rise. Second, when capital is reallocated to substituting for labor, the stock of effective labor rises and the stock of conventional capital falls, and so wage rates fall. Third, the capital share, understood to include the total return to capital of both varieties, rises. That's just a corollary of output rising and wages falling. This pattern is similar to what we have seen take place. I suspect that this reflects the nature of the technical changes that we have seen: increasingly they take the form of capital that effectively substitutes for labor.
Now one could augment this story in various ways. If one augmented the production function to include entrepreneurs, for example, it would not be difficult to address the rising share of income going to the top one percent of the population. My conjecture is that for the next generation we are likely to see this process continue, both because of the very substantial scope for current levels of computing power to support capital-labor substitution on a larger scale, and because of the scope for increased computational power to make possible capital-labor substitution of a kind that we have not seen to date.
The likely consequence? Increased levels of output but at the same time growing pressure on wages. Given the observation I noted earlier, this will greatly pressure the income distribution. Not only will divergent wages increase inequality but the supply response will magnify these effects. It may well be that, given the possibilities for substitution, some categories of labor will not be able to earn a subsistence income.
Worth noting also that just between 1995 and 2002 global manufacturing job losses amounted to 22 million while manufacturing productivity rose by 30%, thanks to automation (this is not a new phenomenon). Summers also notes elsewhere that the unemployment rate among men aged 25-54 in 1965 was 5%; he seemingly anticipates something more on the order of 15% within a decade (source for this is here).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 10:55 AM on February 21, 2015 [7 favorites]
Capital augments labor: it raises the productivity of labor. If there are only two factors, they have to be complements. If there's more capital, the wage has to rise. Now imagine that capital can be put to one of two uses. It can be put to the use in the production function that we are accustomed to thinking about or it can be used to substitute for labor. That is, you can take some of the stock of machines and, by designing them appropriately, you can have them do exactly what labor did before. I am suggesting replacing the production function
Y = F(K, L)
with
Y = F(βK, L + λ(1 ‒ β)K).
In this setting one unit of capital is the equivalent of λ units of labor. A moment's thought will reveal that capital will be deployed in these two uses to the point where their marginal productivity is the same, and that will determine what share of the capital stock is used in the customary way and what share is used to substitute for labor.
If you reflect on this a bit longer, you'll realize that three things happen. One, the availability of capital that substitutes for labor augments production opportunities. You can always choose not to use it. So, the level of output has to rise. Second, when capital is reallocated to substituting for labor, the stock of effective labor rises and the stock of conventional capital falls, and so wage rates fall. Third, the capital share, understood to include the total return to capital of both varieties, rises. That's just a corollary of output rising and wages falling. This pattern is similar to what we have seen take place. I suspect that this reflects the nature of the technical changes that we have seen: increasingly they take the form of capital that effectively substitutes for labor.
Now one could augment this story in various ways. If one augmented the production function to include entrepreneurs, for example, it would not be difficult to address the rising share of income going to the top one percent of the population. My conjecture is that for the next generation we are likely to see this process continue, both because of the very substantial scope for current levels of computing power to support capital-labor substitution on a larger scale, and because of the scope for increased computational power to make possible capital-labor substitution of a kind that we have not seen to date.
The likely consequence? Increased levels of output but at the same time growing pressure on wages. Given the observation I noted earlier, this will greatly pressure the income distribution. Not only will divergent wages increase inequality but the supply response will magnify these effects. It may well be that, given the possibilities for substitution, some categories of labor will not be able to earn a subsistence income.
Worth noting also that just between 1995 and 2002 global manufacturing job losses amounted to 22 million while manufacturing productivity rose by 30%, thanks to automation (this is not a new phenomenon). Summers also notes elsewhere that the unemployment rate among men aged 25-54 in 1965 was 5%; he seemingly anticipates something more on the order of 15% within a decade (source for this is here).
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 10:55 AM on February 21, 2015 [7 favorites]
Larry Summers couldn't tear apart a roll of toilet paper -- however much the rest of us might wish he did have that ability.
posted by jamjam at 11:03 AM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 11:03 AM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
What automation allows is the re-allocation of money to the top, at the expense of everyone else.
Right, that is the whole essence of capitalism. There's nothing new here; it's been the same story since the Industrial Revolution. Capital acts like a wealth multiplier over time.
While technological advancement has the ugly effect of making the rich get richer, it's indisputably improved our standard of living over the last few hundred years. Anyone at any given point in the past few hundred years could make the argument "we have things good enough now, let's just stop innovating to protect jobs." Lots of weavers lost their livelihoods when the power loom was invented 200 years ago; the same happened for professional typists and "calculators" when personal computers became mainstream.
But yeah, it is scary to think of a scenario where we have a huge population and technology has improved the point where the wealthy just don't need human labor anymore. In the utopian scenario, robots would do all work for us and everyone would be free to enjoy their time doing what they like. Noah Smith wrote a pretty good piece about the dystopian scenario where he argues that human labor still has value in the ability to carry a gun (and thus redistribute wealth if the rich are acting tyrannically) and this is negated if robot armies arise and the wealthy control both the robot means of production and the robot armies to keep the poors out.
But all of this assumes that people always follow their economic self interest and have absolutely zero consideration for their fellow human, which I actually don't think is true. The decision to abolish slavery in the United States came from wealthy white men who had no economic incentive to abolish what was basically a source of free labor (and it's pretty safe to assume even those against slavery at the time would be considered pretty racist by modern standards).
posted by pravit at 11:26 AM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
Right, that is the whole essence of capitalism. There's nothing new here; it's been the same story since the Industrial Revolution. Capital acts like a wealth multiplier over time.
While technological advancement has the ugly effect of making the rich get richer, it's indisputably improved our standard of living over the last few hundred years. Anyone at any given point in the past few hundred years could make the argument "we have things good enough now, let's just stop innovating to protect jobs." Lots of weavers lost their livelihoods when the power loom was invented 200 years ago; the same happened for professional typists and "calculators" when personal computers became mainstream.
But yeah, it is scary to think of a scenario where we have a huge population and technology has improved the point where the wealthy just don't need human labor anymore. In the utopian scenario, robots would do all work for us and everyone would be free to enjoy their time doing what they like. Noah Smith wrote a pretty good piece about the dystopian scenario where he argues that human labor still has value in the ability to carry a gun (and thus redistribute wealth if the rich are acting tyrannically) and this is negated if robot armies arise and the wealthy control both the robot means of production and the robot armies to keep the poors out.
But all of this assumes that people always follow their economic self interest and have absolutely zero consideration for their fellow human, which I actually don't think is true. The decision to abolish slavery in the United States came from wealthy white men who had no economic incentive to abolish what was basically a source of free labor (and it's pretty safe to assume even those against slavery at the time would be considered pretty racist by modern standards).
posted by pravit at 11:26 AM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
yea, i'd say globalization > robots/machines (for now), but i think to the extent that productivity statistics are mismeasured -- GDP looks at $-transactions; activities enabled by, and the utility derived from, zero marginal cost digitization, aren't adequately captured by product accounts imo -- and 'software/mobile is eating the world' as the cost of computerization plummets along curves similar to the price of illumination, then automation writ large, job obsolescence and institutional failure thru nonlinear dynamics still need to be addressed.
so the policy prescriptions can start out as:
-Why not worker control?
-Why not worker ownership?
-Is democratic Keynesianism possible?
-How do you convert ability into income?
-The oblique path to growth
also btw...
-Heading for extinction?
-Extinct—Extincter—Extinctest
-Our Fear of Artificial Intelligence
posted by kliuless at 11:42 AM on February 21, 2015 [7 favorites]
so the policy prescriptions can start out as:
- The Federal Reserve Board needs to target full employment with wage growth matching productivity
- Targeted employment programs... [for the] many communities that will still be suffering substantial unemployment
- Public investment and infrastructure
- Reducing our trade deficit
- Raising the minimum wage
- Updating overtime rules
- Strengthening rights to collective bargaining
- Regularizing undocumented workers
- Ending forced arbitration
- Modernizing labor standards: sick leave, paid family leave
- Closing Race and gender inequities
- Fair contracting
- Tackling misclassification, wage theft, prevailing wages, and enforcement
- Correct, full-employment macro policy.
- Proper public spending--especially to boost our infrastructure capital.
- Reining-in our hypertrophied financial sector and the CEO-takeover-private-equity cycle that gives the CEO and his (almost always his) bucelarii the equivalent of a 25% equity stake in the company they run.
- Restoring worker bargaining power in the labor market.
[While] education-promoting policies will do little or nothing to redistribute back to the 20%-95% slots of the income distribution any of the immense wealth that has been grabbed by the top 5% and 1% and 0.1% and 0.01% slots of the income distribution...and so we might then range beyond the overton window:
The danger of tomorrow's Hamilton Project event, I think, is that the people there will take their "advances in artificial intelligence and broad technological development will create employment possibilities that we cannot yet begin to imagine...", "major commitment to increasing education and skill levels...", and "fostering business and organization innovation..." to be things we know how to do. I do not think we know what we need. I don't think making community college and four-year college free will do it. I don't think tax credits for small businesses, cheerleading incubators, and entrepreneurial mentorship coaches will do it. At this stage "increasing education" and "fostering innovation" are simply placeholders for policies we will not be able to imagine until we see more of the shape of our future.
-Why not worker control?
-Why not worker ownership?
-Is democratic Keynesianism possible?
-How do you convert ability into income?
-The oblique path to growth
also btw...
-Heading for extinction?
-Extinct—Extincter—Extinctest
-Our Fear of Artificial Intelligence
posted by kliuless at 11:42 AM on February 21, 2015 [7 favorites]
Y = F(K, L)
with
Y = F(βK, L + λ(1 ‒ β)K)
Ooh! It has lambdas in it!
It must be science!
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:30 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
with
Y = F(βK, L + λ(1 ‒ β)K)
Ooh! It has lambdas in it!
It must be science!
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:30 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
Lets say you automate an assembly line making widgets, and cut the number of workers on the line to 10% of the previous number. It doesn't need productivity to increase - i.e. the machinery/robotics line to actually make more widgets per hour.
You have an incorrect definition of productivity. Productivity is not defined as widgets per hour. Productivity is defined as widgets per hour of labor. More precisely, productivity is defined as dollar value of widgets divided by dollar of labor wages. So even if widgets remains the same but labor hours goes down 10%, you have a productivity increase of 10%.
This is pretty much the classic case for productivity increases -- you get the same amount of stuff for less hours worked.
posted by JackFlash at 12:40 PM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
You have an incorrect definition of productivity. Productivity is not defined as widgets per hour. Productivity is defined as widgets per hour of labor. More precisely, productivity is defined as dollar value of widgets divided by dollar of labor wages. So even if widgets remains the same but labor hours goes down 10%, you have a productivity increase of 10%.
This is pretty much the classic case for productivity increases -- you get the same amount of stuff for less hours worked.
posted by JackFlash at 12:40 PM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
But yeah, it is scary to think of a scenario where we have a huge population and technology has improved the point where the wealthy just don't need human labor anymore.
Why should this be scary? It would only be so if the output of the robots is restricted to certain people. This doesn't have to be how it happens.
It would be as if on the Starship Enterprise only Picard and Riker get to use the replicator and everyone else on the ship is begging for food. More likely, everyone will just work less and have more. This is a political problem, not a technological one.
posted by JackFlash at 12:48 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
Why should this be scary? It would only be so if the output of the robots is restricted to certain people. This doesn't have to be how it happens.
It would be as if on the Starship Enterprise only Picard and Riker get to use the replicator and everyone else on the ship is begging for food. More likely, everyone will just work less and have more. This is a political problem, not a technological one.
posted by JackFlash at 12:48 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
> Right, that is the whole essence of capitalism. There's nothing new here; it's been the same story since the Industrial Revolution. Capital acts like a wealth multiplier over time.
Sorry, this is absolutely new. Yes, the industrial revolution made a lot of rich people richer - but it also created an affluent middle class that managed to last for generations in the United States.
Up until recently, workers were an essential part of the equation. Bikes lead to a transportation revolution (particularly for women) but not just bicycle factories, but bicycle repair shops too, all of which require manpower in quantity.
Automation means that these jobs go away - to be replaced by nothing. The number of people who are needed to create and maintain the robots for an automated assembly line is a tiny fraction of the number of people that used to be needed to run that line.
Of course, the productivity for each of these workers will be incredibly high - because they are responsible for an army of robots busily working away 24-7. But there simply won't be very many of them.
And other jobs will go. There are literally millions of professional drivers in the US today. In forty years there will be thousands, and all for leisure activities (racing drivers, chauffeurs for the ultra-rich). There are millions of Americans in food preparation and service jobs - nearly all will be gone (except, again, for high-end dining). Manufacturing, millions of jobs lost.
And replaced by what? Don't snow me with, "We couldn't have predicted the jobs created by the automobile" because all these jobs were anticipated when the automobile was still a horseless carriage (because people had learned from the bike craze). If we can't name these new jobs, with several revolutions in technology under our belt already, it's a bad sign.
It could be a heaven on Earth. What we're going to find is that a few thousand humans going to try to turn it into a Hell, where a tiny number of ultra-rich psychopaths, bulwarked by a small number of affluent people, control nearly all of the world's goods, and the remainder of the world has nothing. The sooner we get about ridding ourselves of these dangerous crazies, by any means necessary, the better - because there will be blood sooner or later, and the later, the more blood there will be.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 12:56 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sorry, this is absolutely new. Yes, the industrial revolution made a lot of rich people richer - but it also created an affluent middle class that managed to last for generations in the United States.
Up until recently, workers were an essential part of the equation. Bikes lead to a transportation revolution (particularly for women) but not just bicycle factories, but bicycle repair shops too, all of which require manpower in quantity.
Automation means that these jobs go away - to be replaced by nothing. The number of people who are needed to create and maintain the robots for an automated assembly line is a tiny fraction of the number of people that used to be needed to run that line.
Of course, the productivity for each of these workers will be incredibly high - because they are responsible for an army of robots busily working away 24-7. But there simply won't be very many of them.
And other jobs will go. There are literally millions of professional drivers in the US today. In forty years there will be thousands, and all for leisure activities (racing drivers, chauffeurs for the ultra-rich). There are millions of Americans in food preparation and service jobs - nearly all will be gone (except, again, for high-end dining). Manufacturing, millions of jobs lost.
And replaced by what? Don't snow me with, "We couldn't have predicted the jobs created by the automobile" because all these jobs were anticipated when the automobile was still a horseless carriage (because people had learned from the bike craze). If we can't name these new jobs, with several revolutions in technology under our belt already, it's a bad sign.
It could be a heaven on Earth. What we're going to find is that a few thousand humans going to try to turn it into a Hell, where a tiny number of ultra-rich psychopaths, bulwarked by a small number of affluent people, control nearly all of the world's goods, and the remainder of the world has nothing. The sooner we get about ridding ourselves of these dangerous crazies, by any means necessary, the better - because there will be blood sooner or later, and the later, the more blood there will be.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 12:56 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
> It would only be so if the output of the robots is restricted to certain people.
You mean, like it is today, where the owners of the robots collect the profits?
How else will it play out? Do you really see the US government, today or in twenty years, spending billions to buy robots to make products for free in competition with free enterprise?
> This doesn't have to be how it happens.
I agree, but there will have to be a revolution. As things are today, capitalists will purchase the robots and own all of their outputs.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 1:01 PM on February 21, 2015
You mean, like it is today, where the owners of the robots collect the profits?
How else will it play out? Do you really see the US government, today or in twenty years, spending billions to buy robots to make products for free in competition with free enterprise?
> This doesn't have to be how it happens.
I agree, but there will have to be a revolution. As things are today, capitalists will purchase the robots and own all of their outputs.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 1:01 PM on February 21, 2015
More likely, everyone will just work less and have more. This is a political problem, not a technological one.
Oh, good. If the last 30 years have taught me anything it's definitely that technology has basically flatlined whereas political solutions have been easy to come by.
posted by one_bean at 1:01 PM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
Oh, good. If the last 30 years have taught me anything it's definitely that technology has basically flatlined whereas political solutions have been easy to come by.
posted by one_bean at 1:01 PM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
From my limited but non-zero interaction with members of the global CEO class, they seem entirely replaceable with algorithms. Do they fear IBM's Watson, I wonder, as much as the assembly lines should have feared Daihen and FANUC?
posted by cromagnon at 1:18 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by cromagnon at 1:18 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
If the last 30 years have taught me anything it's definitely that technology has basically flatlined whereas political solutions have been easy to come by. [sarcasm]
Well then, lets concentrate on the real problem, politics, not technology. Technology has the potential to make all of human kind well off with lots of leisure time. The idea of technology obsoleting labor is wonderful.
I can turn your criticism around and say that technology hasn't been necessary for the wealthy to bend the system to their advantage. That has occurred regardless of technology and will continue unless the politics change. Politics is the real issue, not technology.
posted by JackFlash at 1:29 PM on February 21, 2015
Well then, lets concentrate on the real problem, politics, not technology. Technology has the potential to make all of human kind well off with lots of leisure time. The idea of technology obsoleting labor is wonderful.
I can turn your criticism around and say that technology hasn't been necessary for the wealthy to bend the system to their advantage. That has occurred regardless of technology and will continue unless the politics change. Politics is the real issue, not technology.
posted by JackFlash at 1:29 PM on February 21, 2015
Technology has the potential to make all of human kind well off with lots of leisure time. The idea of technology obsoleting labor is wonderful.
Sure. So long as the cost of everything gets zeroed-out as well. Otherwise, you're going to have a whole lot of people with no job, no income, and no way to afford to live, let alone enjoy all that great leisure time.
Somehow, I can't see the 1% allowing an egalitarian, money-free world to happen. Millions of unemployed, yes. But, they'll still have to pay the rent and utilities.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:42 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sure. So long as the cost of everything gets zeroed-out as well. Otherwise, you're going to have a whole lot of people with no job, no income, and no way to afford to live, let alone enjoy all that great leisure time.
Somehow, I can't see the 1% allowing an egalitarian, money-free world to happen. Millions of unemployed, yes. But, they'll still have to pay the rent and utilities.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:42 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
lets concentrate on the real problem, politics, not technology
My intuition tells me it is extremely myopic to treat these as non-overlapping magisteria, but I cannot articulate precisely why.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 1:44 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
My intuition tells me it is extremely myopic to treat these as non-overlapping magisteria, but I cannot articulate precisely why.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 1:44 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
Right, that is the whole essence of capitalism. There's nothing new here; it's been the same story since the Industrial Revolution.
No. The Industrial Revolution and early capitalism created the middle class, and it destroyed strict two-class feudal/aristocratic systems (which basically represent maximum possible inequality) in every place that it touched.
It is an open question what the "steady state" income or wealth distribution under market capitalism in an industrialized society looks like, absent regulation. Probably not very pleasant, compared to what we might want, but it seems as though the actual answer (which is important to know if you want to construct policies, since it basically says how far you need to push the economy from its 'natural' tendency) probably depends on labor productivity, with higher labor productivity making possible greater inequality by placing labor in a worse bargaining position vs. capital than when low productivity leads to full employment and a tighter labor market.
Early industrialized capitalist economies generally saw rising wages as demand increases outstripped productivity increases, and then those wages led to further demand increases, in a positive feedback loop: the consumer economy. What seems to have been the case in recent decades is that productivity increases outstripped demand increases, such that fewer people were required for the same economic output, putting labor in a worse bargaining position compared to capital, leading to stagnant wages, less demand growth (within developed economies, anyway), and a negative feedback loop.
Autor/Summers don't think that productivity leads directly to inequality, and as evidence show that there are periods of wage growth and high productivity growth, but I'm not entirely convinced. In particular, in the post-WWII period in the US, you had huge external demand for industrial output as a result of being the last economy standing after the war, as well as pent-up domestic demand as a result of the switch from a wartime command economy back to a consumer-driven market economy, which could have papered over what might have otherwise been a decline due to productivity. In other words, if we imagine a universe where WWII just didn't happen, the 'End of Prosperity' in the 1970s might have occurred much earlier.
The elephant in the room with regards to market-economy / consumer-driven capitalism isn't that it creates inequality, it's that it only seems to work when you have growth (preferably, increasing growth; i.e. not only should there be positive growth, but the first derivative of growth should also be positive—it optimally wants not just a growing economy but preferably an accelerating one). Since we live on a finite planet, that would seem to be a problem that we will have to deal with at some point, and it would be nice if the 20th century's solution—kill lots of people and break lots of stuff so the survivors can make money rebuilding and repopulating the ruins—is not especially pleasant.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:02 PM on February 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
No. The Industrial Revolution and early capitalism created the middle class, and it destroyed strict two-class feudal/aristocratic systems (which basically represent maximum possible inequality) in every place that it touched.
It is an open question what the "steady state" income or wealth distribution under market capitalism in an industrialized society looks like, absent regulation. Probably not very pleasant, compared to what we might want, but it seems as though the actual answer (which is important to know if you want to construct policies, since it basically says how far you need to push the economy from its 'natural' tendency) probably depends on labor productivity, with higher labor productivity making possible greater inequality by placing labor in a worse bargaining position vs. capital than when low productivity leads to full employment and a tighter labor market.
Early industrialized capitalist economies generally saw rising wages as demand increases outstripped productivity increases, and then those wages led to further demand increases, in a positive feedback loop: the consumer economy. What seems to have been the case in recent decades is that productivity increases outstripped demand increases, such that fewer people were required for the same economic output, putting labor in a worse bargaining position compared to capital, leading to stagnant wages, less demand growth (within developed economies, anyway), and a negative feedback loop.
Autor/Summers don't think that productivity leads directly to inequality, and as evidence show that there are periods of wage growth and high productivity growth, but I'm not entirely convinced. In particular, in the post-WWII period in the US, you had huge external demand for industrial output as a result of being the last economy standing after the war, as well as pent-up domestic demand as a result of the switch from a wartime command economy back to a consumer-driven market economy, which could have papered over what might have otherwise been a decline due to productivity. In other words, if we imagine a universe where WWII just didn't happen, the 'End of Prosperity' in the 1970s might have occurred much earlier.
The elephant in the room with regards to market-economy / consumer-driven capitalism isn't that it creates inequality, it's that it only seems to work when you have growth (preferably, increasing growth; i.e. not only should there be positive growth, but the first derivative of growth should also be positive—it optimally wants not just a growing economy but preferably an accelerating one). Since we live on a finite planet, that would seem to be a problem that we will have to deal with at some point, and it would be nice if the 20th century's solution—kill lots of people and break lots of stuff so the survivors can make money rebuilding and repopulating the ruins—is not especially pleasant.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:02 PM on February 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
Noah Smith wrote a pretty good piece about the dystopian scenario where he argues that human labor still has value in the ability to carry a gun (and thus redistribute wealth if the rich are acting tyrannically) and this is negated if robot armies arise and the wealthy control both the robot means of production and the robot armies to keep the poors out.
I liked this article, and not just because I have been saying the same thing for a while. Philip Bobbitt's thesis in The Shield of Achilles is that constitutional law has evolved alongside strategy for the whole history of the modern (and pre-modern) state, liberalizing as more people (and more taxes) have become necessary for military dominance. Now that that is becoming less of an issue, we are seeing the welfare state wither away. Once the wealthy no longer need us at all?
Go ahead and read Kill Decision while you're at it.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:07 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
I liked this article, and not just because I have been saying the same thing for a while. Philip Bobbitt's thesis in The Shield of Achilles is that constitutional law has evolved alongside strategy for the whole history of the modern (and pre-modern) state, liberalizing as more people (and more taxes) have become necessary for military dominance. Now that that is becoming less of an issue, we are seeing the welfare state wither away. Once the wealthy no longer need us at all?
Go ahead and read Kill Decision while you're at it.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 2:07 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
The elephant in the room with regards to market-economy / consumer-driven capitalism isn't that it creates inequality, it's that it only seems to work when you have growth (preferably, increasing growth; i.e. not only should there be positive growth, but the first derivative of growth should also be positive—it optimally wants not just a growing economy but preferably an accelerating one). Since we live on a finite planet, that would seem to be a problem that we will have to deal with at some point
A series of cycles of growth->crash->growth->crash->growth->crash sounds pretty much like normal to me, but I was born in the 80's.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:10 PM on February 21, 2015
A series of cycles of growth->crash->growth->crash->growth->crash sounds pretty much like normal to me, but I was born in the 80's.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:10 PM on February 21, 2015
"Sorry, this is absolutely new. Yes, the industrial revolution made a lot of rich people richer - but it also created an affluent middle class that managed to last for generations in the United States."
It's not new. You need to look at what the gilded age was like. Technological innovation has always been very disruptive and even though it almost always increases overall wealth, the distribution of that wealth is entirely dependent upon the social and political context within which this economic change takes place. The affluent middle class you have in mind reached its peak in the post-war era and it was the product of the intersection of several social and political changes, but chief among them was the the US being primarily a manufacturing economy combined with the peak power of the labor movement in industry. That kept the distribution of new wealth more equal and created the comfortable American middle-class.
But it was not always so, the pre-WWI gilded age was for decades as unequal as today's America, and for the same reasons -- technological innovation and the expansion of American economy in the west produced vast amounts of wealth which were funneled primarily into the pockets of the plutocrats.
It is very much in the interests of today's plutocrats to keep the discussion centered on technological innovation in the form of automation being the problem -- less so globalization, but on balance this popular focus benefits them, too -- because both technological innovation and globalization are forces that absolutely are not going to be limited and the American voter absolutely won't want to be limited in actual practice. So centering fears on something that is going to happen anyway keeps attention away from the ways in which we could actually address these problems, which is a more equal wealth distribution and keeping these plutocrats in check.
The number one force for wage stagnation and increasing inequality in wealth is the decimation of the labor movement, with the closely related restructuring of government toward less regulation and lowered taxation being a close second. The fact that basically no one in American public life advocates for a return to the days of maximal labor movement influence and that basically no one is suggesting that we return to 70% top marginal rates and a reversal of the lowered rates on capital gains, tells you everything you need to know about how distorted and deliberately distracting this debate has become.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:27 PM on February 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
It's not new. You need to look at what the gilded age was like. Technological innovation has always been very disruptive and even though it almost always increases overall wealth, the distribution of that wealth is entirely dependent upon the social and political context within which this economic change takes place. The affluent middle class you have in mind reached its peak in the post-war era and it was the product of the intersection of several social and political changes, but chief among them was the the US being primarily a manufacturing economy combined with the peak power of the labor movement in industry. That kept the distribution of new wealth more equal and created the comfortable American middle-class.
But it was not always so, the pre-WWI gilded age was for decades as unequal as today's America, and for the same reasons -- technological innovation and the expansion of American economy in the west produced vast amounts of wealth which were funneled primarily into the pockets of the plutocrats.
It is very much in the interests of today's plutocrats to keep the discussion centered on technological innovation in the form of automation being the problem -- less so globalization, but on balance this popular focus benefits them, too -- because both technological innovation and globalization are forces that absolutely are not going to be limited and the American voter absolutely won't want to be limited in actual practice. So centering fears on something that is going to happen anyway keeps attention away from the ways in which we could actually address these problems, which is a more equal wealth distribution and keeping these plutocrats in check.
The number one force for wage stagnation and increasing inequality in wealth is the decimation of the labor movement, with the closely related restructuring of government toward less regulation and lowered taxation being a close second. The fact that basically no one in American public life advocates for a return to the days of maximal labor movement influence and that basically no one is suggesting that we return to 70% top marginal rates and a reversal of the lowered rates on capital gains, tells you everything you need to know about how distorted and deliberately distracting this debate has become.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:27 PM on February 21, 2015 [8 favorites]
The elephant in the room with regards to market-economy / consumer-driven capitalism isn't that it creates inequality, it's that it only seems to work when you have growth
Not necessarily. Take Japan as an example. They have a declining population size but still produce the same amount of stuff every year due to increasing productivity. With fewer people, then each one has more stuff, or alternatively, more leisure time. No actual output growth required for increased prosperity, just a declining population with the same output.
posted by JackFlash at 2:31 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Not necessarily. Take Japan as an example. They have a declining population size but still produce the same amount of stuff every year due to increasing productivity. With fewer people, then each one has more stuff, or alternatively, more leisure time. No actual output growth required for increased prosperity, just a declining population with the same output.
posted by JackFlash at 2:31 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well, Japan is sort of a test case for post-growth capitalism. If they can make things work as the population declines, that will be some good evidence that we are maybe not doomed to have to fight WWIII simply in order to keep the global economic machine moving forward. But there are a fairly steady stream of doom-and-gloom articles about how their "population crisis" is a "disaster" that is going to "crush [their] economy", and they must therefore either import people or implement various insane pro-natalist policies to keep the wheels on.
So the establishment jury may still be out on whether they represent a viable, much less desirable, path forward. (I am biased in that I hope they are.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:14 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
So the establishment jury may still be out on whether they represent a viable, much less desirable, path forward. (I am biased in that I hope they are.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:14 PM on February 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
I hate looking at abstract ideas. Debates over automation ironically grind my gears.
The problem lies in the fact that most people have to drive many miles to exchange their expertise for money, and money for goods and services. It's inefficient, environmentally destructive, and over time has demonstrably lost its appeal, as the latest generations are moving back into the cities (I'll ignore the life cycle of people moving out of the city as they age for the moment). I think the idea that the suburb is essentially a desert is taking root, still needs to grow in popularity, however.
If we dramatically tighten up the infrastructure that supports economic activity, and couple that with enforced conservation and waste management policies, i think we can have a vibrant economy. It may not look big in terms of numbers, but that's fine, as the growth model we've been running on is unsustainable on a finite planet, and thus we need to run on less.
As alluded above, Japan is looking great as they close in on good strategy. Most people there, guessing here, don't have to drive every day. There's commerce going on in every square meter in the cities, outside some of the vacant buildings from the 80s bubble, and the rural, forested areas are gorgeous and dense.
I think we can pull it off in America, or at least I can dream... :/ We just need to stop looking to the rich. We need to change and get a bigger bang from the buck, a much bigger bang. Then those with money will be more willing to invest in us as thier dollar will go much further than it has in recent history.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:30 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
The problem lies in the fact that most people have to drive many miles to exchange their expertise for money, and money for goods and services. It's inefficient, environmentally destructive, and over time has demonstrably lost its appeal, as the latest generations are moving back into the cities (I'll ignore the life cycle of people moving out of the city as they age for the moment). I think the idea that the suburb is essentially a desert is taking root, still needs to grow in popularity, however.
If we dramatically tighten up the infrastructure that supports economic activity, and couple that with enforced conservation and waste management policies, i think we can have a vibrant economy. It may not look big in terms of numbers, but that's fine, as the growth model we've been running on is unsustainable on a finite planet, and thus we need to run on less.
As alluded above, Japan is looking great as they close in on good strategy. Most people there, guessing here, don't have to drive every day. There's commerce going on in every square meter in the cities, outside some of the vacant buildings from the 80s bubble, and the rural, forested areas are gorgeous and dense.
I think we can pull it off in America, or at least I can dream... :/ We just need to stop looking to the rich. We need to change and get a bigger bang from the buck, a much bigger bang. Then those with money will be more willing to invest in us as thier dollar will go much further than it has in recent history.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:30 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
But there are a fairly steady stream of doom-and-gloom articles ...
So says a sports reporter, a professor of religious studies, a video game reporter, and an MBA candidate writing for Forbes, according to your links.
So the establishment jury may still be out
I'm not sure what establishment you are talking about unless it is idiot journalists attempting to write about economics.
posted by JackFlash at 3:33 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
So says a sports reporter, a professor of religious studies, a video game reporter, and an MBA candidate writing for Forbes, according to your links.
So the establishment jury may still be out
I'm not sure what establishment you are talking about unless it is idiot journalists attempting to write about economics.
posted by JackFlash at 3:33 PM on February 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
If only there was some nonviolent means of extracting wealth from the ultrarich and redistributing it. Perhaps the government could do it.
posted by benzenedream at 9:17 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 9:17 PM on February 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
Warning: privileged point-of-view ahead:
I've visited a number of craft markets around the world over the years. It seems to me that the products in those markets have shifted away from one-of-a-kind handmade items, to artisan-looking items produced en masse in Chinese factories.
For example, a few years ago I happened to be in Prague at Easter. Easter is kind of a big deal there. I came across a stall selling what appeared to be hand-painted easter eggs, and thought I'd bring some back for friends and family. Upon closer inspection, I found two eggs that were completely identical. Seems somewhere in the world, there is a factory dedicated to producing delicately machine-painted eggs. I'd imagine that the factory can spit out more eggs in one day than all of the artisans of Prague can produce in an entire month.
From the point of view of the vendors in these markets, I can see the initial appeal of selling factory-made items. At first, when no one else is selling them, your fuller shelves and lower prices may allow you to outsell competing vendors, and therefore do pretty well for yourself. But it's a trap. As soon as you stop injecting yourself into your work, you make yourself disposable. The guy in the stall next to you, seeing your success, could bring in a line of factory-made items by next month. There goes your competitive advantage. Even if you decide to switch back to higher-priced handmade items, the guy next to you--with his shelves freshly stocked with cheap pseudo-artisan goods--is probably going to continue outselling you thanks to his lower prices. It's a race to the bottom.
The craft market scenario is a bit of a toy example, because when it comes to industrial labour and the like, it's not the workers themselves who decide to automate.
My point being though, I don't necessarily think machines are the problem here. Our personal and corporate obsession with the short-term bottom line (lower household bills this month, more corporate profit next quarter) has a lot to do with it. I totally get it: whether they're out shopping or trying to excel in the boardroom, people have mouths to feed today. So lower prices are good, as are ways to make more money even if they're not sustainable.
My optimistic hope is that the more we talk about problems like job displacement by automation, the more we can find solutions to them. They're relatively new problems, in the grand scheme of things. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that they're insurmountable.
posted by mantecol at 11:02 PM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
I've visited a number of craft markets around the world over the years. It seems to me that the products in those markets have shifted away from one-of-a-kind handmade items, to artisan-looking items produced en masse in Chinese factories.
For example, a few years ago I happened to be in Prague at Easter. Easter is kind of a big deal there. I came across a stall selling what appeared to be hand-painted easter eggs, and thought I'd bring some back for friends and family. Upon closer inspection, I found two eggs that were completely identical. Seems somewhere in the world, there is a factory dedicated to producing delicately machine-painted eggs. I'd imagine that the factory can spit out more eggs in one day than all of the artisans of Prague can produce in an entire month.
From the point of view of the vendors in these markets, I can see the initial appeal of selling factory-made items. At first, when no one else is selling them, your fuller shelves and lower prices may allow you to outsell competing vendors, and therefore do pretty well for yourself. But it's a trap. As soon as you stop injecting yourself into your work, you make yourself disposable. The guy in the stall next to you, seeing your success, could bring in a line of factory-made items by next month. There goes your competitive advantage. Even if you decide to switch back to higher-priced handmade items, the guy next to you--with his shelves freshly stocked with cheap pseudo-artisan goods--is probably going to continue outselling you thanks to his lower prices. It's a race to the bottom.
The craft market scenario is a bit of a toy example, because when it comes to industrial labour and the like, it's not the workers themselves who decide to automate.
My point being though, I don't necessarily think machines are the problem here. Our personal and corporate obsession with the short-term bottom line (lower household bills this month, more corporate profit next quarter) has a lot to do with it. I totally get it: whether they're out shopping or trying to excel in the boardroom, people have mouths to feed today. So lower prices are good, as are ways to make more money even if they're not sustainable.
My optimistic hope is that the more we talk about problems like job displacement by automation, the more we can find solutions to them. They're relatively new problems, in the grand scheme of things. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that they're insurmountable.
posted by mantecol at 11:02 PM on February 21, 2015 [4 favorites]
The problem, as I see it, is that we have yet to get our collective heads around the main consequence of our ability to replace human labour with ever-cheaper automation.
There is a traditional presumption that the harder a man works, and the greater his skills, the more buying power he should rightfully have. This is the bedrock of the moral case for employment- and entrepreneurship-based wealth, and the basis of the archetype of the self-made man.
The traditional model for women is that the way for a woman to gain access to wealth is to attach herself to a wealthy man.
Under these traditional models, it has long been customary for women to do a vast amount of economically unrewarded work.
It had also long been customary for men to share their economic rewards with the women and children attached to them.
The relevant point to keep in mind here is that although women and children did not traditionally perform work in direct exchange for pay, there was never any widespread disagreement about their right to some share of the household's total buying power.
World War II saw women enter the paid workforce in large numbers, and this disrupted the traditional models. The idea that a man's fair share of buying power should depend mostly on his skills and his willingness to work got broadened; the general assumption now is that a person's fair share of buying power should depend mostly on their skills and willingness to work.
There has been a corresponding weakening in the idea that women should seek to attach themselves to men whose buying power they can then share.
Conservative commentators have long bemoaned the weakening of these "traditional family values", ascribed to that weakening most of the ills of modern society, and argued against policies encouraging women to achieve full workplace parity with men.
I think they're missing an opportunity. I think that ship has sailed, and bon voyage to it. I also think we're all standing on the pier about to wave goodbye to a similarly huge ship, one carrying away all the automation-replaceable jobs. And bon voyage to that one as well. Most of those jobs suck. If a mindless machine can do a job better than a person can, then that job is beneath human dignity.
But that leaves us with a problem: what do we do about the fact that an increase in automation by its very nature reduces the total number of humans required to keep us all in the style to which we have become accustomed?
At this point, I come back to the light in which a traditional family's economic provider views the other family members. Most people who support their families economically do not do so in exchange for work done by family members. We support our families because we want to, and because they are people, and because it is the right thing to do.
It seems to me that we should be able to re-purpose a lot of that conceptual machinery in order to extend the same generosity of spirit to people in general rather than exclusively to direct family members.
It seems to me that the age of plenty that we in the industrialised world now find ourselves living in ought to make this easier, not harder.
So I think it's time to start having a serious conversation about weakening the conceptual connection between the fair allocation of buying power on the one hand, and the possession of economically saleable skills and labour on the other.
I don't think we need a revolution. I don't think revolutions help. I think the system we have at present has a tremendous track record for turning scarcity into plenty, and that we ought to be careful not to break that.
But it also has an inbuilt tendency to allocate the vast bulk of the buying power derived from that plenty to people who already have plenty, and I think that we do need to address that on the grounds of basic fairness.
I think it's time to start having a conversation about to some extent decoupling buying power from willingness to work for it, instead viewing at least some minimal degree of buying power to be the kind of thing that every person ought to have access to as of right.
I think it's time we started thinking of the possibility of the welfare state less as a safety net for preventing the worst effects of labour market failure, and more as a reflection of the way we wish to treat each other as human beings.
I think it's time to start ramping down the amounts we pay out to welfare recipients in the form of means-tested grands, and ramping up a Universal Basic Income to replace those. I think that ought to be done gradually and carefully, not in some massive revolutionary whack. And I think that we should explore as many policy options for funding it as it takes, until we find a combination of options that makes it economically sustainable into the long term future.
I note in passing that there is absolutely no way that anybody within the present top 1% of income earners is achieving that income on the basis of skills and labour. The only way to be in that 1% is for the vast bulk of your income to be derived from returns on capital invested.
I think that even after the UBI has been ramped up to the point where most people could live solely on that if they were frugal and chose to do so, there should still exist means-tested welfare programs to top it up; the UBI should never become a substitute for a disability pension, for example.
What we need, in my view, is to learn to treat our economy less like slash-and-burn jungle farming and more like well-irrigated cultivation. Let's start turning trickle-down economics into sprinkler-facilitated economics and see where that goes.
posted by flabdablet at 11:45 PM on February 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
There is a traditional presumption that the harder a man works, and the greater his skills, the more buying power he should rightfully have. This is the bedrock of the moral case for employment- and entrepreneurship-based wealth, and the basis of the archetype of the self-made man.
The traditional model for women is that the way for a woman to gain access to wealth is to attach herself to a wealthy man.
Under these traditional models, it has long been customary for women to do a vast amount of economically unrewarded work.
It had also long been customary for men to share their economic rewards with the women and children attached to them.
The relevant point to keep in mind here is that although women and children did not traditionally perform work in direct exchange for pay, there was never any widespread disagreement about their right to some share of the household's total buying power.
World War II saw women enter the paid workforce in large numbers, and this disrupted the traditional models. The idea that a man's fair share of buying power should depend mostly on his skills and his willingness to work got broadened; the general assumption now is that a person's fair share of buying power should depend mostly on their skills and willingness to work.
There has been a corresponding weakening in the idea that women should seek to attach themselves to men whose buying power they can then share.
Conservative commentators have long bemoaned the weakening of these "traditional family values", ascribed to that weakening most of the ills of modern society, and argued against policies encouraging women to achieve full workplace parity with men.
I think they're missing an opportunity. I think that ship has sailed, and bon voyage to it. I also think we're all standing on the pier about to wave goodbye to a similarly huge ship, one carrying away all the automation-replaceable jobs. And bon voyage to that one as well. Most of those jobs suck. If a mindless machine can do a job better than a person can, then that job is beneath human dignity.
But that leaves us with a problem: what do we do about the fact that an increase in automation by its very nature reduces the total number of humans required to keep us all in the style to which we have become accustomed?
At this point, I come back to the light in which a traditional family's economic provider views the other family members. Most people who support their families economically do not do so in exchange for work done by family members. We support our families because we want to, and because they are people, and because it is the right thing to do.
It seems to me that we should be able to re-purpose a lot of that conceptual machinery in order to extend the same generosity of spirit to people in general rather than exclusively to direct family members.
It seems to me that the age of plenty that we in the industrialised world now find ourselves living in ought to make this easier, not harder.
So I think it's time to start having a serious conversation about weakening the conceptual connection between the fair allocation of buying power on the one hand, and the possession of economically saleable skills and labour on the other.
I don't think we need a revolution. I don't think revolutions help. I think the system we have at present has a tremendous track record for turning scarcity into plenty, and that we ought to be careful not to break that.
But it also has an inbuilt tendency to allocate the vast bulk of the buying power derived from that plenty to people who already have plenty, and I think that we do need to address that on the grounds of basic fairness.
I think it's time to start having a conversation about to some extent decoupling buying power from willingness to work for it, instead viewing at least some minimal degree of buying power to be the kind of thing that every person ought to have access to as of right.
I think it's time we started thinking of the possibility of the welfare state less as a safety net for preventing the worst effects of labour market failure, and more as a reflection of the way we wish to treat each other as human beings.
I think it's time to start ramping down the amounts we pay out to welfare recipients in the form of means-tested grands, and ramping up a Universal Basic Income to replace those. I think that ought to be done gradually and carefully, not in some massive revolutionary whack. And I think that we should explore as many policy options for funding it as it takes, until we find a combination of options that makes it economically sustainable into the long term future.
I note in passing that there is absolutely no way that anybody within the present top 1% of income earners is achieving that income on the basis of skills and labour. The only way to be in that 1% is for the vast bulk of your income to be derived from returns on capital invested.
I think that even after the UBI has been ramped up to the point where most people could live solely on that if they were frugal and chose to do so, there should still exist means-tested welfare programs to top it up; the UBI should never become a substitute for a disability pension, for example.
What we need, in my view, is to learn to treat our economy less like slash-and-burn jungle farming and more like well-irrigated cultivation. Let's start turning trickle-down economics into sprinkler-facilitated economics and see where that goes.
posted by flabdablet at 11:45 PM on February 21, 2015 [6 favorites]
The agriculture metaphor brings some possibly valid comparisons to the robot automation. A lot of farming is automated in a sense, fields that once needed hundreds or thousands of workers to sow or harvest a field is a single person in a gigantic combine. Farmers are not the core of the one percent and I think few would expect that to occur even if one robot owner automated all farms in Iowa.
As an aside, hopefully robot farming will enable micro-farming. Instead of the massive county sized fields of a single variety of corn it will be practical to return to diversified crops tuned to micro climates and ecologically integrated. Tasty heritage veggies can be both profitable and affordable for all.
Owners of the robot intellectual property will become incomprehensibly wealthy but, technology. Tech. Technology gets cheap. There are folks on here that barely imagined owning their own computer, how many do you carry, not just own but just carry around. (remember a cellphone is a powerful computer). When we cross the robotic tech threshold they will be cheap. Everyone will have not one but a bunch.
Who has the earliest access to computer technology? This will sound pejorative but I have noticed young toddlers with the cell propped up in the stroller while the parent holds up the line arguing about foodstamps. Will that lead to an educated demographic? One can hope but it will be a generation very comfortable with using tech and very ready to take advantage of the robotic view via windows on a portable device.
The transition will be bumpy, asymmetrical and divisive.
posted by sammyo at 5:41 AM on February 22, 2015
As an aside, hopefully robot farming will enable micro-farming. Instead of the massive county sized fields of a single variety of corn it will be practical to return to diversified crops tuned to micro climates and ecologically integrated. Tasty heritage veggies can be both profitable and affordable for all.
Owners of the robot intellectual property will become incomprehensibly wealthy but, technology. Tech. Technology gets cheap. There are folks on here that barely imagined owning their own computer, how many do you carry, not just own but just carry around. (remember a cellphone is a powerful computer). When we cross the robotic tech threshold they will be cheap. Everyone will have not one but a bunch.
Who has the earliest access to computer technology? This will sound pejorative but I have noticed young toddlers with the cell propped up in the stroller while the parent holds up the line arguing about foodstamps. Will that lead to an educated demographic? One can hope but it will be a generation very comfortable with using tech and very ready to take advantage of the robotic view via windows on a portable device.
The transition will be bumpy, asymmetrical and divisive.
posted by sammyo at 5:41 AM on February 22, 2015
Owners of the robot intellectual property will become incomprehensibly wealthy
At some point it would be in their best interests to make a collective decision to find ways to spread that incomprehensible wealth around more equitably, and for the rest of us to come to the collective understanding that a hard day's work is no longer the only honourable way to obtain a day's pay; that in fact technology has rendered that very idea as obsolete as the work it has made redundant.
Because if neither of those things happens there will be pitchforks and torches, and nobody benefits from that.
posted by flabdablet at 6:08 AM on February 22, 2015
At some point it would be in their best interests to make a collective decision to find ways to spread that incomprehensible wealth around more equitably, and for the rest of us to come to the collective understanding that a hard day's work is no longer the only honourable way to obtain a day's pay; that in fact technology has rendered that very idea as obsolete as the work it has made redundant.
Because if neither of those things happens there will be pitchforks and torches, and nobody benefits from that.
posted by flabdablet at 6:08 AM on February 22, 2015
Couple of clarifications on my suggestions above.
When I say that the UBI should be ramped up at the same rate that means-tested welfare is ramped down, I'm talking dollar-for-dollar amounts as seen by the recipients, not dollar-for-dollar amounts as total state expenditure. Removal of means tests must mean that total welfare expenditure rises, simply because it's being paid to more people.
It remains to be seen whether releasing millions of people from poverty traps could in fact generate enough extra economic activity to make that increased expenditure sustainable. I see no prima facie reason for assuming it could not.
I also think that the minimum wage should be ramped down as the UBI is ramped up, in such a way as to leave a person working full time at minimum wage in the same net position. This ought to relieve the flip side of the poverty trap: the often-prohibitive expense of employing workers legitimately and above board. Eventually, the result should be a more equitable spread of such low-paid jobs as technological improvements leave available.
When I say that I think we should take a more cultivatory approach to the economy, I'm not arguing for more central planning, which will in general always be brought undone by the sheer quantity of information unavailable to or ignored by the central planners. What I think we can do is a better job of setting up the economic infrastructure - the rules of the economic game we collectively agree to play - so that opportunities for individuals to get stupidly wealthy, whether by sheer luck or judicious investment, also become opportunities for everybody else to do somewhat better.
It's said that a rising tide lifts all boats. What we have now, it seems to me, is a situation where a small handful of boats have been fitted with massive tanks, pumps and seafloor anchors that let them suck up most of that tide. I think society would benefit from our economies being made leakier, so that as wealth becomes more concentrated the rules also tend to spray it around rather more indiscriminately.
posted by flabdablet at 6:28 AM on February 22, 2015
When I say that the UBI should be ramped up at the same rate that means-tested welfare is ramped down, I'm talking dollar-for-dollar amounts as seen by the recipients, not dollar-for-dollar amounts as total state expenditure. Removal of means tests must mean that total welfare expenditure rises, simply because it's being paid to more people.
It remains to be seen whether releasing millions of people from poverty traps could in fact generate enough extra economic activity to make that increased expenditure sustainable. I see no prima facie reason for assuming it could not.
I also think that the minimum wage should be ramped down as the UBI is ramped up, in such a way as to leave a person working full time at minimum wage in the same net position. This ought to relieve the flip side of the poverty trap: the often-prohibitive expense of employing workers legitimately and above board. Eventually, the result should be a more equitable spread of such low-paid jobs as technological improvements leave available.
When I say that I think we should take a more cultivatory approach to the economy, I'm not arguing for more central planning, which will in general always be brought undone by the sheer quantity of information unavailable to or ignored by the central planners. What I think we can do is a better job of setting up the economic infrastructure - the rules of the economic game we collectively agree to play - so that opportunities for individuals to get stupidly wealthy, whether by sheer luck or judicious investment, also become opportunities for everybody else to do somewhat better.
It's said that a rising tide lifts all boats. What we have now, it seems to me, is a situation where a small handful of boats have been fitted with massive tanks, pumps and seafloor anchors that let them suck up most of that tide. I think society would benefit from our economies being made leakier, so that as wealth becomes more concentrated the rules also tend to spray it around rather more indiscriminately.
posted by flabdablet at 6:28 AM on February 22, 2015
Our personal and corporate obsession with the short-term bottom line (lower household bills this month, more corporate profit next quarter) has a lot to do with it.
How short-term thinking hampers long-term economic growth:[*] "says Mr Haldane. The digital revolution is undermining social cohesion by widening income inequality."
I think it's time we started thinking of the possibility of the welfare state less as a safety net for preventing the worst effects of labour market failure, and more as a reflection of the way we wish to treat each other as human beings.
albert wenger has been doing some heavy lifting in this regard!
i'd also note jeremy rifkin's description of a distributed future with solar panels on every roof and 3D printers in every garage (tesla) batteries included :P
oh and while we're at it, ending banking and maybe having the green party help form a coalition gov't?
the problem of course is that you run into institutions of political economy that benefit from current arrangements; delong again...
posted by kliuless at 5:38 PM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]
How short-term thinking hampers long-term economic growth:[*] "says Mr Haldane. The digital revolution is undermining social cohesion by widening income inequality."
I think it's time we started thinking of the possibility of the welfare state less as a safety net for preventing the worst effects of labour market failure, and more as a reflection of the way we wish to treat each other as human beings.
albert wenger has been doing some heavy lifting in this regard!
i'd also note jeremy rifkin's description of a distributed future with solar panels on every roof and 3D printers in every garage (tesla) batteries included :P
oh and while we're at it, ending banking and maybe having the green party help form a coalition gov't?
the problem of course is that you run into institutions of political economy that benefit from current arrangements; delong again...
[Q]uestions of distribution are overwhelmingly resolved by economic bargaining power conditioned by social mores and politically-chosen institutions. Perhaps there used to be three sources of bargaining power, and thus three sources of durable advantage:with steinbaum saying: The Future of Work Is Up to UsAnd then, perhaps, over the past generation the third has dropped away, with the coming of globalization and the successful war against private sector unions. The rest are now themselves in flux. And perhaps they have been joined as a source of rent-extraction by those with the ability to tap into the savings produced in this age of the Global Savings Glut...
- Possession of the intellectual property and expertise needed to construct the high-throughput mass-production assembly lines of what used to be called “Fordist” capitalism
- Control over the brands and other distribution channels necessary in order to sell the products of high-throughput mass-production factories to the middle classes of the North Atlantic who could afford to buy them at a good price
- A blue-collar working class that had sufficient class consciousness to bargain for itself, and that was insulated by the requirement that the factories be located near to the engineers and to the corporate headquarters which needed to be placed so as to keep their eyes on the market
So what should be the focus of public policy is to figure out ways for workers to accrue more of corporate earnings, for more unemployed and underemployed people to find full-time, productive jobs, and for the broader economy to serve the interests of the actual people who inhabit it—those who overwhelmingly derive their living from their labor.but to noah smith (and perhaps JK galbraith ;) that smacks of a return to corporatism, which izabella kaminska elaborates on here -- The new Hanseatica, now with robot dogs [*] -- but with a twist!
But that’s hardly the issue that the likes of Jaron Lanier [*] and Andrew Keen have with the new digital economy. Their point is that we’re all working for the likes of Google, Facebook and Instagram, and don’t even know it.altho where rent extraction is concerned i'd still look to wall street over silicon valley (for now)[*]
And since none of us are being compensated for the work we’re doing this has led to a “zero cost” illusion, disguising the true Animal Farm nature of the new digital hierarchy system.
Furthermore, given that Google, Facebook et cetera would have little to no value without our continuous contributions, this puts these tech platforms in the position of modern-day exploitative landlords, living off rent extraction more than value provision.
If that’s true, the real cost to users is far from zero.
In fact, if Keen and Lanier are to believed, it’s substantial precisely because it comes at the cost of our privacy, freedom and individuality.
All the more so now that the landlord has a team of robot dogs to defend his interests.
posted by kliuless at 5:38 PM on February 23, 2015 [2 favorites]
The observations about Silicon Valley vs. Wall Street are interesting. It was Redmond, not Cupertino, that invented "embrace, extend, extinguish"; Silicon Valley has not actually been terribly skilled at that game. I suspect that Silicon Valley's attempts to make banking obsolete will ultimately amount to "embrace, extend, enmesh".
posted by flabdablet at 8:42 PM on February 23, 2015
posted by flabdablet at 8:42 PM on February 23, 2015
NSA Director defends back doors:
[yahoo CISO alex stamos]: Well, do you believe we should build backdoors for other countries?posted by kliuless at 5:55 AM on February 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
[NSA director mike rogers]: My position is — hey look, I think that we’re lying that this isn’t technically feasible. Now, it needs to be done...
also btw...
-Back to corporatism? [*]
-What Clever Robots Mean for Jobs [*]
-How computers can take over the world [*]
-Secular Stagnation & Economic Policy [1,2,3]
-When Exponential Progress Becomes Reality [*]
-The era of automated universal law enforcement is upon us [*]
-They said China couldn't tame the Internet. But it could, and it did. [*]
posted by kliuless at 9:42 AM on February 25, 2015
-Back to corporatism? [*]
-What Clever Robots Mean for Jobs [*]
-How computers can take over the world [*]
-Secular Stagnation & Economic Policy [1,2,3]
-When Exponential Progress Becomes Reality [*]
-The era of automated universal law enforcement is upon us [*]
-They said China couldn't tame the Internet. But it could, and it did. [*]
posted by kliuless at 9:42 AM on February 25, 2015
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Even if we should cool it about the falling sky, though, more sober versions of this thesis continue to deserve our attention.
posted by grobstein at 9:30 AM on February 21, 2015