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First of all, we're far away from robots having feelings and taking over. I don't even think that the 0:1 "if-then" calculations that make up the basic fundamentals of our computing technology could ever "have feelings" or progress beyond what it is no matter how advanced it gets. That fundamental building block would have to change.
Secondly, there is still a lot of human work to be done - it just gets done outside the developed world now and we don't think about it.
The problem is our culture of capitalism. Not capitalism per se but our culture of it. When we start thinking from a starting point of "how do we take care of everyone?" we'll do it. Simple as that. That is not currently our culture and it's why we have poverty. We have more than enough resources to provide somewhere between 1.5 and 3 billion people with a pretty comfortable lifestyle, but not 7 - at least not with our current philosophy towards resources.
As someone else said, it'll probably require a collapse to get people to think differently.
If it doesn't, though, it'll eventually equalize. The world population will eventually start to decline. As more technology becomes more important to the economy, people will get more education. More education always results in lower birth rates, especially if it's women getting education. More education means that woman has fewer children, that has been true since the middle ages.
I think we have veered off a little with the "robot emotion" issue. I think true emotions may be impossible and are almost certainly undesirable in making optimal decisions. However, self preservation is something that is getting programmed in. It is just getting out of the way and not hitting things, as in the automated cars. Getting from that to having a car run over someone who was trying to disconnect the battery is not something it would just decide to do.
Speaking of the cars, they bring up a few issues. A recent survey shows most people don't trust them. This is despite the recent release of information on accident statistics. In half the accidents, the human was driving so they were irrelevant. In the other half, a human driver in another vehicle hit an automated car while it was stopped or moving it a very slow speed. There were no high speed accidents and none where the machine was judged to be at fault. Anyway, acceptance is a big hurdle.
Another issue with them is that the human drivers were required to take over fairly often. For them to work well, we need some infrastructure changes.
They will work best when most or all other vehicles on the road are also automated. They could communicate intended turns and merges well in advance. For example, backing off the car in front a block before it turns into a parking lot so it doesn't have to stop suddenly. Not having humans would also eliminate the speeding problem. Right now the automated cars get tailgated a lot because nearly everyone goes a little over the limit when traffic allows it. The limits could get raised also.
Back on the jobs front, it is true that when you replace people with machines the machines have to be manufactured and maintained, but if you think the ratio of people employed to do that versus jobs lost to the automation is more than 20% you are kidding yourself. Long term, it would probably be much lower than 20%. If we were to go to automated cars it would be a bonanza for the car makers for a few years and then sales would fall off a cliff. With almost no accidents and automated systems not only driving but also monitoring and getting maintenance done as needed, cars would last much longer. Body shops would go out of business.
We have only had a few experiences with this in the past but none on the scale of what could happen in the future. Telephone operators, elevator operators and gas station attendants were really small segments of the job market. Tellers are an example of a job that has been automated for simple transactions but a human is still needed for more complex issues (and it's a comfort thing for a lot of people). Imagine every cashier getting replaced in 5 years with only 10% of the jobs eliminated being added to service the robots that took their place. This could very easily happen.
Last edited by ReachTheBeach; 07-17-2015 at 05:44 AM..
We have only had a few experiences with this in the past but none on the scale of what could happen in the future. Telephone operators, elevator operators and gas station attendants were really small segments of the job market. Tellers are an example of a job that has been automated for simple transactions but a human is still needed for more complex issues (and it's a comfort thing for a lot of people). Imagine every cashier getting replaced in 5 years with only 10% of the jobs eliminated being added to service the robots that took their place. This could very easily happen.
Automation doesn't just remove jobs it also de-skills them.
I have a machine that measures complex parts, it needs an experienced engineer to use it.
That machine will be replaced in a couple of months, its replacement will be able to basically program itself and analyse its own data removing the requirement for the engineer to operate it. It will still need an operator to load it with parts but thats an unskilled job.
The future unskilled operator will be more productive and far more accurate then the current engineer but the pay will be considerably reduced.
Something else I should have mentioned when I referred to gas station attendants. When they first started having self service, there were still full service pumps also. When you used the self service, the attendant often still had to reset the pump for your purchase and you still had to pay the attendant when you finished. Now think back to when you saw the first "pay at the pump" appear and how long after that it was before they were everywhere. They still needed someone there most of the time if not all, so they all became convenience stores also. In the last few years, some of the stations near me have switched to always having pumps operational even when the store is closed. There were convenience stores and gas stations before you started seeing them merged; there might be more of them now, but the cashier at the store was a job that already existed. Gas station attendant has essentially been eliminated as a job in most of the US.
Look at the bolded statement. I think that is important because so many people seem to think that this sort of thing will happen slowly. One of the few examples we have did not take long at all. ATMs were a little slower but not dramatically so; it was a huge problem for a bank if the competitor had ATMs and you didn't. In a lot of industries it will happen this way; if your competitor automates and cuts costs they can put you out of business. I think we will see substantial unemployment in the next 10 years no matter who is elected and what they do to address it.
I think we have veered off a little with the "robot emotion" issue. I think true emotions may be impossible and are almost certainly undesirable in making optimal decisions. However, self preservation is something that is getting programmed in. It is just getting out of the way and not hitting things, as in the automated cars. Getting from that to having a car run over someone who was trying to disconnect the battery is not something it would just decide to do.
Speaking of the cars, they bring up a few issues. A recent survey shows most people don't trust them. This is despite the recent release of information on accident statistics. In half the accidents, the human was driving so they were irrelevant. In the other half, a human driver in another vehicle hit an automated car while it was stopped or moving it a very slow speed. There were no high speed accidents and none where the machine was judged to be at fault. Anyway, acceptance is a big hurdle.
Another issue with them is that the human drivers were required to take over fairly often. For them to work well, we need some infrastructure changes.
They will work best when most or all other vehicles on the road are also automated. They could communicate intended turns and merges well in advance. For example, backing off the car in front a block before it turns into a parking lot so it doesn't have to stop suddenly. Not having humans would also eliminate the speeding problem. Right now the automated cars get tailgated a lot because nearly everyone goes a little over the limit when traffic allows it. The limits could get raised also.
Back on the jobs front, it is true that when you replace people with machines the machines have to be manufactured and maintained, but if you think the ratio of people employed to do that versus jobs lost to the automation is more than 20% you are kidding yourself. Long term, it would probably be much lower than 20%. If we were to go to automated cars it would be a bonanza for the car makers for a few years and then sales would fall off a cliff. With almost no accidents and automated systems not only driving but also monitoring and getting maintenance done as needed, cars would last much longer. Body shops would go out of business.
We have only had a few experiences with this in the past but none on the scale of what could happen in the future. Telephone operators, elevator operators and gas station attendants were really small segments of the job market. Tellers are an example of a job that has been automated for simple transactions but a human is still needed for more complex issues (and it's a comfort thing for a lot of people). Imagine every cashier getting replaced in 5 years with only 10% of the jobs eliminated being added to service the robots that took their place. This could very easily happen.
Well if it happens in a democracy, those people are voters, right? The short term solution would be some sort of basic income. Sooner or later people would eventually vote for a party that would promise such a thing, especially if jobs got replaced at the rate you're suggesting.
There was a breaking point during the Great Depression where people realized there simply weren't enough jobs and no matter how hard you looked there weren't enough for everyone. They demanded that the government just make some.
At that point there might be some kind of a paradigm shift in the way people think about economics in general.
I've watched some of the humans show thats been mentioned. The most telling part in a way is the daughter who asks why study when you can just download the skills into a synth?
And shes right. People here talk about ti being 50-100 years away. I dont think so. I think that its a LOT closer then folks realize. Most estimates put the ability of a computer to have the same processing power as a human, at a cost of $1,000 to be in the 2025 range.
I believe that. maybe as late as 2030.
And we're starting to see automation take hold in minor ways. Self driving vehicles could have a massive impact, as well as automated fast food. Then look at things like Amazon. They're automating as well, with their factories becoming increasingly automated.
In the end, I really do see something like a basic income as being inevitable. The only issue is that the demand for it will come FAR more rapidly then the ability for most people to comprehend it being a good idea.
We'll keep hearing from folks "If only you poor people tried harder" for far longer then we should. People have a hard time dealing with rapid change. And its not going to get any slower.
I've watched some of the humans show thats been mentioned. The most telling part in a way is the daughter who asks why study when you can just download the skills into a synth?
And shes right. People here talk about ti being 50-100 years away. I dont think so. I think that its a LOT closer then folks realize. Most estimates put the ability of a computer to have the same processing power as a human, at a cost of $1,000 to be in the 2025 range.
I believe that. maybe as late as 2030.
And we're starting to see automation take hold in minor ways. Self driving vehicles could have a massive impact, as well as automated fast food. Then look at things like Amazon. They're automating as well, with their factories becoming increasingly automated.
In the end, I really do see something like a basic income as being inevitable. The only issue is that the demand for it will come FAR more rapidly then the ability for most people to comprehend it being a good idea.
We'll keep hearing from folks "If only you poor people tried harder" for far longer then we should. People have a hard time dealing with rapid change. And its not going to get any slower.
I think how government gets funded needs to be overhauled to address the "on my dime" perception also. Letting the money get into people's hands and then asking for it back is a really bad idea. The psychological implications of this sort of shift are as much an issue as the logistics. I really don't get why people can't see this coming. I get that they wish it wasn't and want to try to limit impact on themselves. But how anyone can actually believe that enough new jobs will be invented is beyond me.
I am quoting myself to give my fellow posters context regarding a message that was sent to me via rep points;
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector1
Half baked utopian weak sauce from someone clearly devoid of the horrible results of socialism/communism.
Both economic models have resulted in more human misery and death than any other.
`
The person replied as follow;
Then it's win either way. Socialism fixes things or it kills so many that it prevents global collapse from overpopulation
Thanks for the rep points, but
It never fails to amaze me that people out there actually think like this. They are either devoid of history, or are so coddled in the safety American society provides(run on capitalism) that they have no idea of what true human misery.
Granted I have not been tortured or staved to the brink of death, but I certainly have studied and continue to do so on what evils humans perpetrate upon each other. In most instances in modern history of the last 200 years, socialism/communism has been responsible for more death and misery than any other form of economy.
Heck I just finished reading an eye opening book about North Korean prison camps entitled "Escape from Camp 14" by Blaine Harden.
It is about the life of a young man who was born in the camp, and the inhuman treatment that caused him to snitch on his family, which resulted in his mother and brother being shot and hung. All so he could get some food.
That is right, this kid who committed no crime, but was doomed to live a life of hard labor because he was born in the camp, and was acting like an animal because he didn't know anything else.
For example, if someone accidently spilled a bit of soup on the floor during meal service, he would race to the floor and lick it up as quickly as possible before others would beat him to it. When working in the fields, he would keep his eye peeled on a cow, hoping that when it pooped, he could rush over and pick out any undigested corn and eat it.
All I can say is educate yourself on the ills of the liberal utopian dreams of socialism/communism. It is not all it is cracked up to be.
To be specific, the future you outline is one where machines can replace the vast majority of human labor and can manufacture on-site all the basic goods of living. This is purely a product of advanced technology; since that can happen under any economic system, the question of economic system is irrelevant. Now, I would vociferously argue that some economic systems are far more likely to produce such advanced technology, but for our purposes it makes no difference.
In such a scenario such machinery would progress like cellular phones, starting expensive but steadily going down in price over time until they become dirt-cheap (most third world people can afford cell phones today). Logically cell phones will eventually become like transistors and online storage space*, and the price will drop so low it can safely be rounded down to zero. At this point anyone that wants one will get one without regard for financial means - so it would be with the OP's machines. The worst-case scenario in this future is everyone's income dropping to zero, but if the cost of living is zero that fact becomes irrelevant.
*See Chris Anderson's book Free: The Future of a Radical Price; free basic goods increases business for less-basic goods that people can charge money for. Thus as the line between free basic goods and not-free complex goods moves steadily upwards people will need steadily less nominal income to advance their standards of living. Whole industries will become demonetized and eventually profit opportunity will be gone, but that won't stop the economy, since those industries will be populated by people who like doing the work. Colleges have always been dominated by non-profits and are doing quite well under capitalism, and we even see this in internet browsers; the browser I'm sending this on is developed by the Mozilla Foundation, which is not out for profits.
I actually think Star Trek provides a surprisingly realistic portrayal of such an economy. Ex Astris Scientia has the best summary on the web of the Star Trek economy. Despite common perception that it has a form of socialism or communism, the Federation by all appearances has a free economy, we see quite a few market transactions versus no examples of mass-scale economic planning, and private property appears to be alive and well. Replicators and advanced industrial automation mean basic and consumer goods are ubiquitous and cost virtually nothing to produce, so there is no longer any such thing as cost of living, thus poverty is eliminated and money is decoupled from living costs and is no longer used day-to-day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by knowledgeiskey
Yes, but there would have to be government safety nets.
In such a future, welfare and government safety nets of all kinds can safely and surely be eliminated. If machines that are produced and given free of charge (which they would be when sufficiently advanced) can produce enough consumer goods to live above the poverty level for no cost, why would anyone even take government benefits in the first place, let alone vote to maintain such an obviously outdated and unneeded system? Also, to those arguing over tax, if you have machinery capable of manufacturing for next to nothing anything government would provide to the population, why would you still be collecting taxes? Government wouldn't need money to operate, or if it did it would be an amount small enough to collect without taxation.
All of you are wallowing in the old assumptions of the past; with this technology there will be no need to create jobs for anybody, but at the same time no one will need a job. Being a wage employee will be as relevant to these people as being a vassal is to us; both will be/are obsolete, irrelevant, unneeded, and undesired relationships. You people work under the false assumptions that government safety nets will always be needed no matter what, that technology once it becomes available to the rich will never become available to everyone else, that people need jobs to live, that without deprivation there is no profit, and that without profit no one will bother to do anything even if it is desirable.
Another way of thinking of it is that those rarefied enclaves of old money already live a lifestyle where all labor is outsourced, and have for many generations. Now, their labor is done by other humans rather than machines but it's functionally the same relationship. Notice that they are neither impoverished for lack of jobs nor have they gone mad from boredom or uselessness nor do they miss the need for doing wage labor. They do the work they want to do and use their passive income to pay for the production and labor costs.
If wage growth resumes at a normal rate someday people will eventually acquire enough income to make investments, and eventually those investments will yield enough returns to obviate the need for wage work; this will steadily work its way down the income scale until even the people in extreme poverty can dispense with wage labor if they so choose. Advancing technology decreasing the cost of goods and replacing human labor with machine labor will steadily lower the amount of passive income one needs to live on. This means that even if there is no wage growth this point will eventually be reached, though much later (perhaps even centuries later) than if there was good wage and GDP growth (it takes longer for technology to get down to a poorer society's price point).
To be specific, the future you outline is one where machines can replace the vast majority of human labor and can manufacture on-site all the basic goods of living. This is purely a product of advanced technology; since that can happen under any economic system, the question of economic system is irrelevant. Now, I would vociferously argue that some economic systems are far more likely to produce such advanced technology, but for our purposes it makes no difference.
Then what are "our purposes"? The original question I asked is whether this could be accomplished without socialism and you indicate your belief that some systems are far more likely to get there, so I would think it is relevant. Further in your post you talk about the government giving away machines; if that isn't a social program, I don't know what is. Don't get me wrong; I doubt that we get there without finding a way for all to benefit so in many respects I agree with you. But I don't understand this:
Quote:
In such a future, welfare and government safety nets of all kinds can safely and surely be eliminated. If machines that are produced and given free of charge (which they would be when sufficiently advanced) can produce enough consumer goods to live above the poverty level for no cost, why would anyone even take government benefits in the first place, let alone vote to maintain such an obviously outdated and unneeded system? Also, to those arguing over tax, if you have machinery capable of manufacturing for next to nothing anything government would provide to the population, why would you still be collecting taxes? Government wouldn't need money to operate, or if it did it would be an amount small enough to collect without taxation.
Government wouldn't need money? Who is paying for the technology giveaway? What is their motivation?
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