On the issue of jobs....

[Moonbeam]

They're already in God's eye, getting out was the issue. That was covered in "The Gripping Hand".

Thank you. That was not the only issue with the analogy. The issue there was resources and competition for them. But it illuminated the competition disease so I mentioned it anyway. One possible reason nobody has come for our goodies is that competition rhymes with extinction.

 

[realibrad]

As everything become cheaper and cheaper, the thing that remains to be cut is profit. As profit tends toward zero so would the number of wealthy. If you want to eat you won't be able to compete with a machine owned business it would seem to me.

Moonbeam. Why do you think it is, that Africa does not produce more food? The land is capable of making far more food that it currently is. So what is the reason the people do not make more food in there lands?

 

[Victorian Gray]

I

How are the Moties going to get to God's Eye?

Birth control, self discipline and cooperation.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Moonbeam. Why do you think it is, that Africa does not produce more food? The land is capable of making far more food that it currently is. So what is the reason the people do not make more food in there lands?

Not as much arable land as you might think and it's shrinking.

http://www.mapsofworld.com/africa/thematic/countries-by-arable-land.html

 

[realibrad]

Not as much arable land as you might think and it's shrinking.

http://www.mapsofworld.com/africa/thematic/countries-by-arable-land.html

Far more than is used for sure. The question is why is more not being used. With as poor as Africa is, you would think people would be growing more food. Why is that. Grey, I bet you know. The question is, does moon understand?

 

[OverVolt]

The shit we make has to actually be useful to someone, or else it all a waste of energy and resources.

You could pay people to dig holes it wouldn't actually improve anyone's life.

 

[sandorski]

It doesn't take replacing Humans outright to become a major issue. Simply replacing 100s of millions becomes a major problem in itself.

 

[glenn1]

The shit we make has to actually be useful to someone, or else it all a waste of energy and resources.

You could pay people to dig holes it wouldn't actually improve anyone's life.

Don't tell the Keynesian fetishists that or they'll go on about how great that hole digging would be.

Other problem is people trying to be "humane" with welfare and not understanding that giving someone taxpayer money still can't buy them dignity or a sense of purpose. No matter how much urban liberals try to bribe the ghetto they'll still always live in fear of being lynched by pitchfork wielding mobs.

 

[Moonbeam]

So that explains why online shopping is not really a thing, and there are no B&M stores being squeezed out of the market ... Oh wait.

Overall that example is poor, most of the value in a brick and mortar store is in the physical interaction with the product, if that same interaction could be done with automated checkout systems and help systems on smartphones, or robot assistants it would work quite as well for most people.

Similar for the food prep question - I honestly don't care if my steak was prepared by a chef or a robot, provided the results are of the same quality. At the high end of the market it will probably still be humans for the kitchen as well as the waitstaff, but I could definitely see the Chili's/Applebees/TGIF level places going to an automated kitchen, and they are already automating much of the waitstaff duties to reduce headcount. As for the low end fast food places - I don't care if I go to the drive through, speak to a voice recognition system, and pull up to a window that just has tray slide out with my order on it. I'm hardly having any meaningful human interaction by repeating "The chicken cheese bacon club with no ranch" three times.

And don't think that this is just about grunt work, even positions that require knowledge and intelligence are in the line of fire.

While I don't disagree there are places where human interaction is desired, a great many jobs are not those, and changing social norms are increasingly removing those as new generations grow up with less expectation of human service. Human interaction needs will be met through other sources, primarily leisure activities.

The question I have is - historically new advances in technology that reduced labor force in one market segment have been offset by the opening of new opportunities in new market areas. As increasingly advanced automation systems chip away at labor demand in a lot of current labor areas, where do you see there being new opportunities?

To date, I have not received a good answer for this question - a lot of people feel like the historical trend will continue (automation will just lead to higher productivity overall, and there will be demand for labor elsewhere) but no one seems to have a good suggestion for where this demand will be.

We can already rule out the human-based service industry, in modern countries that really doesn't have much room to grow, things are pretty saturated and will pretty much grow as a function of population growth.

There is also not going to be a big place for robot manufacturing (which I swear is everyone's favorite pick "well someone has to build the robots!"); the design and engineering can be done by rather small teams compared to the number of units that can be produced; and the manufacture of the robots is an obvious place for automation.

Maintenance of the systems would expand, but the economics wouldn't work out if the maintenance of the automation systems took as much labor as the systems displace. Repair work will be efficiently done at centralized refurbishing centers, which of course would be heavily automated.

So, where?

Kind of what I am asking. In the system we have now the material quality of the life we have is based on ownership, the possession and title to capital and the means of production. We have to have something that others want or need. What we seem to be experiencing in our country is less and less people who have anything of value to offer, simply because whatever skills that used to have value are no longer needed. They can either be had elsewhere for less or they have become obsolete. We see a world in which genius high school kids are sometimes getting rich because they are the only ones capable of surfing the crest of the wave of change. And the rate of change is accelerating. Fewer and fewer people are going to be able to keep up.

It seems to me then that our technology has outpacing the capacity of our system to adjust and accommodate to it. We have a thread about ISIS building a dirty bomb. Change is difficult to handle and even more so if your mind is from the dark ages. But the fact that knowledge is growing geometrically means we will soon be from the dark ages if we are but a few years old.

So if the system today is based on ownership or possession of value, some means to produce what others need, and fewer and fewer people will have that, it seems the logical answer is that the profits of productivity will have to be shared. If markets are a place where an economy is created that is designed to trade value for value so that people can buy what they need and machines produce more and more of what is valued and don't have needs themselves, then wouldn't it make sense to have them working for the benefit of everybody.

We live in a system in which we base an estimation of our self worth on our ability to acquire money and thus status in life, generally speaking. It seems to me we will need a paradigm change in our thinking.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

We live in a system in which we base an estimation of our self worth on our ability to acquire money and thus status in life, generally speaking. It seems to me we will need a paradigm change in our thinking.

We're highly materialistic. Of course we have been trained for the last century with consumerism and many claim that was a driving force for our technological advancement. I'll accept that is true to a large degree and I'm not anti-technology by any means, but I am more pro-human than pro-machine and so I see that we're not buying things we need which are superior. Instead there's someone who has one goal in life and that is to sell things. That has become our value system, stuff. I like "stuff". I have it. I have many more things than I need. Sam Walton made a huge fortune selling stuff. When I look at him I don't think he was a success. How can that be? HE MADE A LOT OF MONEY. True he did. He was an awful parent who left his family stuff instead of himself. Contrast that to a father who was actually present who valued his wife and children, who made real sacrifices for them out of love. I don't envy his family in any way. I'd like more cash because there are things I could do with it, but I'm not consumed by it like our culture who talk about people like they were merely dollar signs. That is the legacy I wish for them, to be able to care for themselves and at the same time remain human in a less than grubbing way. They get it. They love each other and us. They have empathy and character and are no fools. What better inheritance can I give them? A trust fund? No.

 

[Moonbeam]

Don't tell the Keynesian fetishists that or they'll go on about how great that hole digging would be.

Other problem is people trying to be "humane" with welfare and not understanding that giving someone taxpayer money still can't buy them dignity or a sense of purpose. No matter how much urban liberals try to bribe the ghetto they'll still always live in fear of being lynched by pitchfork wielding mobs.

Pitchfork wielding mobs lacking dignity and a sense of purpose???? I wonder how they could have come to have such low opinions of themselves.

Maybe we could dress up the hole digging process a bit and dig say 18 of them where really important people can acquire real dignity by seeing who can roll a ball into them with a stick by hitting it the fewest number of times.

 

[Moonbeam]

We're highly materialistic. Of course we have been trained for the last century with consumerism and many claim that was a driving force for our technological advancement. I'll accept that is true to a large degree and I'm not anti-technology by any means, but I am more pro-human than pro-machine and so I see that we're not buying things we need which are superior. Instead there's someone who has one goal in life and that is to sell things. That has become our value system, stuff. I like "stuff". I have it. I have many more things than I need. Sam Walton made a huge fortune selling stuff. When I look at him I don't think he was a success. How can that be? HE MADE A LOT OF MONEY. True he did. He was an awful parent who left his family stuff instead of himself. Contrast that to a father who was actually present who valued his wife and children, who made real sacrifices for them out of love. I don't envy his family in any way. I'd like more cash because there are things I could do with it, but I'm not consumed by it like our culture who talk about people like they were merely dollar signs. That is the legacy I wish for them, to be able to care for themselves and at the same time remain human in a less than grubbing way. They get it. They love each other and us. They have empathy and character and are no fools. What better inheritance can I give them? A trust fund? No.

It is said that it is empathy that makes us truly human and that causes something of a dilemma. Competition destroys empathy. Everybody's at the gym working out and practicing other arts of self perfection. I remember when I was a kid laying on the grass watching the clouds and was perfection itself. We have lost our way some of us. Maybe we will be able to explain to the machines that what we really long for is being. I wonder what a machine would make of that.

 

[realibrad]

It is said that it is empathy that makes us truly human and that causes something of a dilemma. Competition destroys empathy. Everybody's at the gym working out and practicing other arts of self perfection. I remember when I was a kid laying on the grass watching the clouds and was perfection itself. We have lost our way some of us. Maybe we will be able to explain to the machines that what we really long for is being. I wonder what a machine would make of that.

Well, when you look at the world as a terrible place, you are bound to see only terrible things.

People at the gym, who are improving themselves must only benefit the individual right? I mean, a firefighter who is keeping in shape is only doing it as a benefit to himself. A student who studies all night and spends most of his free time learning to be a Dr. only benefits himself.

You dont have a very good understanding of the free market. To be fair, most others do not as well. When individuals do things in their self interest, they can and very often do benefit the society in a greater way than if they had acted to benefit the society first. This is a difficult concept, because we value intent over outcome.

Religious extremest often do extreme things supported by their idea that they are following the will of their god(s). The intent is to get society to improve themselves. The motive comes from a good idea, and that is wanting to help society. The outcome for extremest actions tend to be some of the most horrific things in our world.

It is true that an individual who tries to benefit themselves may hurt society as well. Robbery helps the individual at the cost of others. Capitalism is not flawless, but its better than every other system that we have come up with. But the idea that people acting only for themselves only benefit themselves is wrong.

 

[Bitek]

And what is the "waste" of labor. Are we talking about folk who have no way to survive? Do we just let them die? All this talk of snowflakes strikes me as nothing but projection. You never see yourselves as the ones who are going to die. Your talents are so snowflake special. You will all be buried by people even more special than you, those who are the coldest and most emotionally dead, perhaps even by a machine. How very like them we are.

When I mean waste, I mean it in a very specific way:

Thus my Star Trek Matter Replicator analogy. Much of the cost of goods that people need are attributed to a combination of these wastes. In an ideal state, all of this is eliminated.

Most of what we consider as "jobs" are doing wasteful work. Do we still have to do it? Yes, we don't have the tech to get rid of it, yet. We talk about losing the assembly jobs to China, but the "knowledge" jobs we have are still wasteful. A logisitics manager is a skillful and high knowledge-req job, but its still about managing the waste of inventory and motion. Get rid of this waste and you get rid of the job, but also the cost.

Should we really be sorrowful for this ambition?

The question is answered by asking if one ever really aspired to be a Logistics Manager, who needs to also commute, sit in office/mtgs/etc. (more waste...) No. One only does it as they need some way for income, which is required as the cost of necessary goods are still too high.

In my opinion, this struggle for survival is God's curse. We only have to struggle as goods are too expensive. When we eliminate the costs, we create freedom for ourselves.

We don't have total liberation yet, and won't for a long while, but we arguably have more freedom than we have had in the past. Death from starvation is a rarity. Children do not have to work in fields and factories. Parents come home and have time for leisure with family. Homes for even modest families are relatively inexpensive and low maintenance (much of what we buy is energy.) We have huge amts of our time able to be devoted to "non-value generating" activities like sports/hobbies/TV/neffing on AT

Watch an episode of "Survivorman." Living in Nature is brutal. Around the clock scavenging for food, warmth, shelter and safety. Lots of busy work, lots of labor, but a miserable existence (unless you like bug bites and sunburns.)

But hey, our tech has allowed you freedom to pursue this lifestyle if you want it, and jump back do luxury when you are done.

 

[Bitek]

As everything become cheaper and cheaper, the thing that remains to be cut is profit. As profit tends toward zero so would the number of wealthy. If you want to eat you won't be able to compete with a machine owned business it would seem to me.

The other part of your dilemma is what to do with people who's wasteful work we have cut.

For the most part, there is always more waste that needs doing, so we have always moved on and adapted. From following the buffalo, to farms, to factories, to offices, to home offices, to who knows what all next, something.

For a segment of people, we have created enough freedom where large numbers of people can pursue creative interests and not starve to death. The more we cut waste, the more people can pursue their true interests.

For the others caught in the middle, don't have needed "waste-managing" skills, nor create value from creative endeavors (art, writing, youtube unboxing video hosts, tech bloggers, etc.) then we need social policy.

I have no problem in reasonable measures of socialism and welfare. Glenn, maybe not so much. But these are political choices, not technology constraints.

We have every way of providing a basic level of existence for those unable/unwilling to work really hard doing wasteful work we haven't figured out to eliminate yet.

You can curse them for this, maybe be envious. If they have found their nirvana in their level of existence, maybe that is enviable.

Ideally we could get to a state where no one has to work hard labor unless we wanted to, and all of our needs were met as the cost of goods were so low. Greedy people only hoard things of value. If nothing had value anymore due to abundance, then everyone's needs can be met. Until then we have to learn to share a bit.

 

[glenn1]

For the others caught in the middle, don't have needed "waste-managing" skills, nor create value from creative endeavors (art, writing, youtube unboxing video hosts, tech bloggers, etc.) then we need social policy.

I have no problem in reasonable measures of socialism and welfare. Glenn, maybe not so much. But these are political choices, not technology constraints.

I don't have a problem with basic, survival levels of welfare. What I'm saying is that still doesn't provide a sense of worth, purpose, or accomplishment to those who receive it. Even the left doesn't even bother to pretend there is huge untapped human capital in the people who they want to give money to - witness how every discussion about welfare dissolves into an admission that without it, the proles would riot and kill all the urban rich?

Whether the social environment is one of Jean Valjean doing 18 years in French prison for stealing a loaf of bread, or generations of unemployed welfare recipients burning cars when their team wins a basketball championship or a policeman who shoots someone doesn't get indicted, what's the difference? What the fuck is the purpose of the Great Society and spending trillions of dollars over decades if the only difference it's made is that the people looting in Ferguson are a bit better fed because Democrats raised their welfare checks by a few bucks a month? There is effectively no job that's not some "dig a hole and fill it in" waste of funds that most of them can do, because they gave up on themselves years ago. There's effectively no employment value in an uneducated, illiterate, drug dealing inner city youth in today's modern economy.

 

[Moonbeam]

Well, when you look at the world as a terrible place, you are bound to see only terrible things.

People at the gym, who are improving themselves must only benefit the individual right? I mean, a firefighter who is keeping in shape is only doing it as a benefit to himself. A student who studies all night and spends most of his free time learning to be a Dr. only benefits himself.

You dont have a very good understanding of the free market. To be fair, most others do not as well. When individuals do things in their self interest, they can and very often do benefit the society in a greater way than if they had acted to benefit the society first. This is a difficult concept, because we value intent over outcome.

Religious extremest often do extreme things supported by their idea that they are following the will of their god(s). The intent is to get society to improve themselves. The motive comes from a good idea, and that is wanting to help society. The outcome for extremest actions tend to be some of the most horrific things in our world.

It is true that an individual who tries to benefit themselves may hurt society as well. Robbery helps the individual at the cost of others. Capitalism is not flawless, but its better than every other system that we have come up with. But the idea that people acting only for themselves only benefit themselves is wrong.

I started the thread to float the notion that the current political discussion over unemployment that emphasizes job growth as the solution, the obvious one, could in fact be doomed by ever accelerating technological innovation. My premise was that our current capitalist system, its structure and fundamental principles, may be maladapted to accommodate that change and that we are looking for solutions down the wrong end of the gun.

I wasn't looking to get into a argument over the value of capitalism, the work ethic, welfare, or any of the push button sore toe issues people put out there to get stepped on so they can fight for their favorite cause. I didn't start the thread to sacrifice anybody's favorite goat. I didn't intend to attack progress or technological advances or be a downer with a negative attitude.

I see a world with problems, one of which is the unemployment problem. I assume it actually exists since it gets so much attention, and is not a creation of some desire to see the bad side of things. I am perfectly aware, for example, that improving oneself can benefit others.

We live in a society that is dependent on jobs and a livable income to function and it would seem to me that if we lose more and more labor needs do to technological advances we are going to have to do something about the way we have built our society to keep us all alive.

I think that as change accelerates it will outstrip our ability to adapt economically to that change, that, not just manual, but intellectual work will become less and less needed. We have adapted so far, in some parts of the world, but what kinds of adaptions will be needed in the future?

If there is less and less work for people to do, we will have to get out from under the fact that currently we are structured to have jobs to survive. What happens if we don't? It seems to me we turn the world into a ghetto full of useless people who will give up but will love to tear down.

The sword of God, the empty bellies of the poor. A saying

Victorian Gray offered this one earlier: "Birth control, self discipline and cooperation." and it makes a lot of sense, but the problem becomes how to manifest those things in an unemployed population. They seem to happen almost naturally where people have money.

 

[Moonbeam]

I don't have a problem with basic, survival levels of welfare. What I'm saying is that still doesn't provide a sense of worth, purpose, or accomplishment to those who receive it. Even the left doesn't even bother to pretend there is huge untapped human capital in the people who they want to give money to - witness how every discussion about welfare dissolves into an admission that without it, the proles would riot and kill all the urban rich?

Whether the social environment is one of Jean Valjean doing 18 years in French prison for stealing a loaf of bread, or generations of unemployed welfare recipients burning cars when their team wins a basketball championship or a policeman who shoots someone doesn't get indicted, what's the difference? What the fuck is the purpose of the Great Society and spending trillions of dollars over decades if the only difference it's made is that the people looting in Ferguson are a bit better fed because Democrats raised their welfare checks by a few bucks a month? There is effectively no job that's not some "dig a hole and fill it in" waste of funds that most of them can do, because they gave up on themselves years ago. There's effectively no employment value in an uneducated, illiterate, drug dealing inner city youth in today's modern economy.

I have devoted countless posts to make this point. This is all about the problems caused by self hate. What goes unrecognized is that we create the world of inferior people and all the problems they breed as a product of our own unconscious feelings of inferiority, and we can't fix the problem because we can't see, won't see, that the problem is us.

Denial of ones own self hate creates a world of insanity. What solutions to the problems of self hate are we likely to find for the worst cases among us when we don't want to know that we all have that disease so badly that we would rather die than see it? You have no idea what you are up against because you have no idea what you really feel.

I think we should stick to the much easier problem of speculating on what to do about unemployment, whether finding work for all is going to be possible or if we need to change the rules we have created for personal success.

As biological beings we are always going to have to compete to survive. We will have to compete with microbes, the climate, with old age and death. But evolutionarily we adapted a strategy that lead to high success, cooperation among individuals. We are a social animal of a social group of maybe thirty associated or linked to related groups of similar size. We were successful because we divided up labor and shared. Everything we owned could be relatively easily replicated and was never more than we could carry. Competition with each other was for territory so we spread all over the earth.

Now we compete as individual against individual in big state run tribes but it's still tribe against tribe.

The compulsion to succeed in commercial enterprise has led to global trade and the emerging notion that 'I succeed best when the other does too', simply a matter of rational self interest of the business class. The way we see the nature of competition is changing. Perhaps one day we will look at ghettos as an affront to our own dignity and devote some attention to fixing the mentality that exists in them. It will take, in my opinion, a vast growth of wisdom.

 

[moonbogg]

Can we learn a little from history? What happens when a group of individuals is out performed by a group of competitors?

"Even a slight competitive advantage on the part of modern humans could account for Neanderthals' replacement by anatomically modern humans on a timescale of 10,000–20,000 years"

That is a slight advantage that took only about 15,000 years to eliminate the currently dominant species of the time. What would happen if the advantage was extremely severe, as seen today when comparing humans who own machines to humans who don't?

A new species is being born. It is evolving from us. We are the old and experiencing the pain of being replaced by the new. Its going to hurt and get worse. This isn't science fiction or some random idea. This is what actually happens when a group of individuals out performs the competition.

Modern humans use machines to out compete other modern humans. They use the machines as an extension of themselves, giving them an advantage. The advantage is severe and so are the consequences for those who have no ownership of such machines.

Eventually, the man will either become the machine or the man will go extinct and the machine will be left to reign supreme. I don't see it as even being a machine. After all, we are machines too. We are experiencing the pain of obsolescence, trying to figure out how to stop it. It won't stop. Whether we become our replacements or not remains to be seen, but we are being replaced.

 

[SMOGZINN]

The drive for cheaper and cheaper labor drives the robot industry and technological advances are asymptotically accelerating. The day is coming when human labor will be relatively superfluous. Everything will be produced very cheaply but nobody will have any money to buy anything.

Except the robots!

Eventually, the man will either become the machine or the man will go extinct and the machine will be left to reign supreme. I don't see it as even being a machine. After all, we are machines too. We are experiencing the pain of obsolescence, trying to figure out how to stop it. It won't stop. Whether we become our replacements or not remains to be seen, but we are being replaced.

This is why I have chosen to become a robot. Beep-Boop-Beep.

 

[realibrad]

I started the thread to float the notion that the current political discussion over unemployment that emphasizes job growth as the solution, the obvious one, could in fact be doomed by ever accelerating technological innovation. My premise was that our current capitalist system, its structure and fundamental principles, may be maladapted to accommodate that change and that we are looking for solutions down the wrong end of the gun.

I wasn't looking to get into a argument over the value of capitalism, the work ethic, welfare, or any of the push button sore toe issues people put out there to get stepped on so they can fight for their favorite cause. I didn't start the thread to sacrifice anybody's favorite goat. I didn't intend to attack progress or technological advances or be a downer with a negative attitude..

You did not intend, but it is the logical conclusion of your beliefs.

...a need to radically alter our economic system...

That is an accusation. That is why I started by asking if you had any details to how it was that you got to your belief. Your points are all based on presuppositions about how jobs will be lost as the world changes. That presupposition is not justified by history, so where are you getting that idea?

 

[moonbogg]

Except the robots!



This is why I have chosen to become a robot. Beep-Boop-Beep.

Enjoy the jokes and denial. I know I am. I love it all. Its funny how we take ourselves so seriously, think so many things to be important, consider so much to have long term effects that matter. A being who can comprehend this thread from every angle and in its entirety, in less than a second, and then move on to 100 different things of far greater significance might not be laughing, nor care. So laugh. We might be among the last several generations to do so in original fashion.

 

[BoberFett]

This is a fascinating topic to me, and Bitek has a lot of interesting insight. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time right now to dig in, and the thread kind went to Tardtown pretty quickly...

 

[Moonbeam]

This is a fascinating topic to me, and Bitek has a lot of interesting insight. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time right now to dig in, and the thread kind went to Tardtown pretty quickly...

He did indeed.

When Mulla Nasrudin went to town to sell some chickens, he grew tired carrying them so he put the crate down and opened it. When he started for town again and the chickens didn't follow, he asked them how it was they knew when the sun would come up but couldn't figure out where he was going. It seems if you drop a rock in a pond the ripples go off in every direction. Maybe we can't see the pond for the ripples.

 

[moonbogg]

This is a fascinating topic to me, and Bitek has a lot of interesting insight. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time right now to dig in, and the thread kind went to Tardtown pretty quickly...