This video came up in another thread and I thought its interesting enough to have its own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU Basically the argument is that automation is inevitable, unstoppable and will bring about mass unemployment and it will happen across the board, in manufacturing and with the development of driverless vehicles distribution and retail. Also with the advances that will come in ‘intelligent’ software many if not most managerial and professional jobs will go. It paints a picture of a brave new world where automated factories pumping out goods day and night without stop, that are distributed automatically to automated shops. My first thought was and who are these goods been sold to? The industrial revolution brought about mass production and the differing type of capitalism that grew out of that became increasingly dependent on people with enough disposable income to pay for goods, the consumers. This automated new world would seem to be cutting its own throat under the present economic monetary based system – to produce more, more cheaply manufactures etc replace paid workers with a unpaid machines (or software) a great saving is made in the cost of production, but you have also greatly reduced the number of people that can buy your products, I mean the robots don’t want them. Would the balances work out, would the products be cheap enough that manufactures could still sell enough to the much poorer people to cover the smaller costs and make a profit or would the decrease in costs be enough to cover the drop in sales, leaving profits stable, but leaving your factories idle for a lot of the time. Anyway there are a few thoughts have you any?
there will have to be a huge paradigm shift in the way we think about money, employment, and economics. the rate of population growth is inversely proportional to the number of workers needed to actually sustain said population.
Meanwhile back in the 3rd world where the population is growing the fastest, millions still live by subsistence farming.
Ever see those assembly line machines in commercials doing the welding? Those used to jobs for humans. I know this for a fact, because I put dashboards in Mustangs (like a monkey) from 64 and a half through '67, before I learned the trade I stuck with. Walter Reuther, the head of the Auto workers union famously said when Henry Ford showed him some machines that replaced humans---" how many Fords will they buy?" True, machines don't strike, don't need bathroom or lunch breaks and do as they're directed.. How does that help any people other than the owners and where do the displaced workers go. Out the fuckin' door to look for some kind of job that will support them. Not going to get better, because I think MOST of us know by now, that the main point of this whole rig is to make the rich even richer. Good question regarding who will buy the products made solely by machines?
you know...we can't find anything we need you to do so I guess you can go starve. we're going to need socialist policies and the means of production owned equally by the people instead of corporations. eventually we will be forced to examine whether or not economics of any sort is sustainable or even has a place at all anymore ... I'd say in 50 years we might be getting close to that point.
^Yes - the current economic model is badly broken, and in the future we're going to have to organize ourselves very differently. Perhaps we'll come up with some kind of AI which will organize things for us. Maybe we could call it mummy :baby:
Black Do you know the history of enclosure in the UK (I’m guessing yes) Well I think that something like that could happen to those subsistence farmers over the next few years, they will be pushed out by agri-business corporations so their land can be intensely farmed. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jul/03/africa-land-grab And that would be the same process and have the same result as automation would have on post industrial workers eg unemployment. The thing is that those 17-18 century agricultural workers thrown off the land migrated to the cities and industrial areas and their cheap labour underpinned the industrial revolution, but in the bright new world that avenue wouldn’t be there because the robots will have taken that away. (Yes I know that’s a gross generalisation of history by I hope it gives an overview of my thinking).
Here are some other things to put into the mix Sorry I’m not sure if the bbc programmes are available outside of the UK, where I have found alternatives I will try to give them. Something on artificial Intelligence http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05372sx A long term viewpoint http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24331106 outside of UK on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9cKbk5aRNs
The economics is difficult, would free market capitalism eat itself from the tail, striving to increase profits by reducing costs resulting in lower wages and then no wages at all, thereby pauperising the general population resulting in fewer and fewer products being bought. It’s likely to be uneven with some areas going the automatic route earlier than others, the software ‘intelligent’ systems are likely to spread much more rapidly, which would limit the numbers in developing countries moving into the middle classes.
I have been hearing this argument for 30 years. If every part of the process that goes into making an Ipod or a Ford was done by a human, you wouldnt be able to afford either, an Ipod would be 30 grand, a new Ford, half a million Market forces dont affect labour independant of everything else. There are far more specialized jobs out there nowadays, far more jobs overall worldwide, all thats really changed is a lot more people in the developing world got the work. The richer are supposedly getting richer, and they are, but at the same time the poorer are getting richer, Just the fat slobs in the middle that didnt really benefit. Overall the world is in a better place because of it
It just isn't going to work under current economic models. And there's the added problem that population growth is completely out of control, and is a topic which politicians won't go anywhere near. That's probably correct up to a point. But a lot of the subsistence farming is 'slash and burn' where you only really get one crop before the soil is depleted of nutrients making the land barren. That in itself is a big problem.
i see nothing wrong with fewer hours being required of individuals, only with the failure of the benefits of this, to be more universally distributed.
its the next step in the evolution of our species, we could simply have a society no longer dominated by labor and wages/currency but by education and intellectual ability. as individuals we are lucky to be alive for a short time, in this short time we have the chance to learn all we can about the world and universe/reality we are a part of. every form of economy we have tried has failed, some might say every form of government has failed but the fact is that every type of government thus far has come bundled with an economic system to boot. currency is an abstraction away from tangible goods, an intermediate step for us to realize that this imaginary quantity is only of imaginary value. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity ... expecting any form of economy to be successful is an insane expectation.
