Near the beginning of the 20th century, a lot of theorists predicted that our increase in per worker productivity would leave a population with huge amounts of leisure time. The average person would only have to work a couple of hours a day for all of humanity's basic needs to be met. With robots, we may eventually reach the point where people don't need to work at all in order to meet humanity's basic needs. Unless something drastic happens to our economic system, however, I seriously doubt it will translate into a shorter work day.
I advocate a transition to a basic income grant(BIG) policy precisely because wage-earning work seems to be tapering off as a sufficient means of income for the lowest earners.
When food and retail services go automated - and that might take some more decades to be cost-effective, though it's already been piloted in various ways - we'll really be staring this problem in the face. You'll have one person manning the counter, and then perhaps nobody at all - just outsourced security, delivery, and maintenance systems. And at that point, one person could potentially run an entire chain of businesses, and have them stay open 24 hours a day, with super-high reliability. Global franchises will be demolished in the same way that national newspapers are right now.
The average person would only have to work a couple of hours a day for all of humanity's basic needs to be met. With robots, we may eventually reach the point where people don't need to work at all in order to meet humanity's basic needs.
Question: What percentage of the work done in modern Western societies actually qualifies as "meeting humanity's basic needs"?
Good collection of videos, though many corporations are finding that robots are costly to purchase, install, and maintain and are very inflexible in their tasks. People on the other hand are free to purchase, take no installation, and maintain themselves (granted you still have to pay them). Most importantly they are very flexible. You could give them a new task every day and they would adapt. If you've ever toured a Toyota factory, you would be surprised by the large amount of work not being done by machines.
This will create wealth. Wealth will mean that art, health and relaxation will be in high demand.
100 years ago over 90% of people were farmers. Now 2% of people work on farms, does that mean we have 88% unemployment?
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No we don't. Instead we have Yoga instructors who charge $80 an hour for a private lesson. We have artists who charge $500 for a hand made bowl.
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The more we have robots automate the more wealth we will have, the more wealth we have the the greater the number musicians, artists and yoga instructors we will have.
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Creating wealth doesn't destroy jobs long term, "A rising tide raises all boats", however short term many people will be displaced and have no jobs during the transition. (Short term could be many years).
But being a yoga instructor / bowl maker is just as (if not more) time consuming as being a farmer used to be. And those are insecure jobs which people have to struggle to make ends meet with.
the point I am making is there will be so much wealth more people will be able to afford yoga and the demand for yoga instructors will be much higher. This will make their work more valuable.
The farm transition was basically a direct farm->factory mass transition though. Farming declined, and masses of poor people flocked to rapidly growing cities, where they could be employed almost immediately as unskilled factory labor. Are things like yoga instruction and pottery really the question mark in the farm->factory->[?] sequence?
Its already happening. The rich and the wives of the rich already spend a bunch of money on spa treatments, yoga, art, small boutique clothes etc... This trend will continue to grow as we become a wealthier world.
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When a car factory is so cheap any joe can buy it, cars and other goods will be dirt cheap. (well this wont happen because of the availability of land and natural resources but it will go towards this direction with only the cost of land and natural resources (possibly energy) pulling it the other direction.)
This is silly. Most people on the lower end of the intelligence and creativity scale are not going to be successful as musicians, artists, or yoga instructors either. Those are not the kind of jobs that just anyone can do, nor will there be sufficient demand for those luxury goods and services regardless of how much more wealthy the upper classes become.
I'm not a Luddite, but we are going to have to find a place for those people or else we are headed for serious social unrest.
This isn't silly. Compared to 100 years ago a much greater number of people are already successful artists, musicians and yoga instructors. These people sit across the IQ distribution. Many do not have high IQs many do not have low IQs. But thats okay because a HUGE % of the population sit between 90 and 110.
> "This will create wealth. Wealth will mean that art, health and relaxation will be in high demand."
Yes, I agree to an extent. But I must ask, wealth for who? Certainty not for the people no longer employed in the jobs that were "automated away". Other labor markets must exist to absorb those that became unemployed as the result of automation.
> Now 2% of people work on farms, does that mean we have 88% unemployment?
%2 of the population is capable of producing the the labor of 88% (or any number > %2) because of the introduction of technological and methodological advances in farming. Roughly from the middle of the 19th century to the present, the production of food fundamentally changed in character from relatively small-scale primitive production (think horse-drawn plough and peasant or slave labor) to large-scale, technological production (mechanical threshers, high-yield genetically modified seeds, effective pesticides, etc). Agriculture became much like any other industry, and as such, was revolutionized. It was inevitable.
I think as someone else on this thread already pointed out, the other 88%, for the most part, had no other choice than relocate to the population centers seeking work. Many found it as unskilled factory labor. The pay was universally poor, and only through the gains made by widespread unionization of both trade (American Federation of Labor) and unskilled or semi-skilled workers (Congress of Industrial Organizations), were workers able to achieve a livable wage.
> "The more we have robots automate the more wealth we will have, the more wealth we have the the greater the number musicians, artists and yoga instructors we will have"
So basically we will have a society where current industrialists will own the overwhelming majority of robotic labor (property), whereas the rest of use will be "employed" as small scale artisans?
> Creating wealth doesn't destroy jobs long term, "A rising tide raises all boats", however short term many people will be displaced and have no jobs during the transition. (Short term could be many years).
As I said, only if other labor markets exists to absorb the newly unemployed. Whether such markets already exist or are created, is up for society to determine. It may take years for new markets to form, leading high unemployment for quite a while. Historically speaking, when power looms and other such mechanical devices were introduced into factory production, new labor markets did manifest to absorb some of the unemployed in the from of engineers and repairmen. Of course the introduction of machines was not without struggle (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Riots as an example).
>"So basically we will have a society where current industrialists will own the overwhelming majority of robotic labor (property), whereas the rest of use will be "employed" as small scale artisans?"
Well kind of. If you have an IQ over 110 you will probably still have a job in the tech industry. With your well paying job you can buy manufactured goods for cheap and still have a bunch left over to spend on artisan goods.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data on IT sector employment (http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag51.htm#workforce) the number of IT workers is relatively small compared to the rest of the population.
What about those untold millions not in IT or the sub-110 IQ "morons"? You know, the people that generally make society function? What about them? Do you think they are just going to sit idle? Or will they all be making pottery? Why should I even buy a pot made by human hands? Please.
Total Members: over 2.1 million
Total Sellers: over 200,000
Items Currently Listed: over 3.4 million
Total $ sold (Gross Merchandise Sales)
2005 = $166,000
2006 = $3.8 million
2007 = $26 million
2008 = $87.5 million
2009 = $32 million (through March)
> "Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.
Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:
Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade."
(emphasis mine).
First, to think that we will all move back--and that's what it is, backward movement--toward a day where everyone will be some sort of subsistence producing, small-scale artisan is historically, socially, and technologically ridiculous. It's almost as if society would be moving toward the point where capitalism emerged from feudalism once again, where society would be stratified into a class of techno-elites, and everybody else.
Second, what makes you think that everyone is some sort of artist? What about the mechanic, scientist, or garbage man without "artistic" talent? What happens to them?
Third, $32 million is an incredibly small number compared to the billions even one company makes. What makes you think something like etsy.com would scale? Even if it were to scale out it's operations to the point where it could generate billions, do you really think etsy.com or its brokered artisans would produce item in a one-at-a-time, handmade fashion. Most likely, a new form cottage industry would emerge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottage_industry#Cottage_indust...). But that couldn't even work, as historically speaking, cottage production was destroyed by socialized production, e.g. factory work.
Im going to try one more time and then I'm giving up on trying to explain this. I am not saying that everyone will make hand made goods. I am not saying we will have less machine made goods. I am simply saying that machine made goods are complementary goods of hand made goods. When the complementary product of hand made goods' price becomes cheap/commodity the hand made goods demand grows. This is the same reason Open Source software is good for business in the long run. Check out this article. Joel explains complementary goods http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
But you didn't address a single point that I brought up beforehand.
The original point, if I recall, was that mechanical labor will, at some point in the future be capable of performing the labor done by humans right now. The fact that machines have replaced human labor alone is not a new and certainly not revolutionary in its own right. The revolutionizing aspect of said robotic labor, is the fact that it will widely replace current human labor due to its innate level of sophistication. Think of it: robotic plumbers, teachers, mechanics, doctors, etc. The list goes on and on.
You said that it would make everyone wealthier. I rebutted, stating (quite historically I might add) only those that own the machines will benefit, at least for a time, as they are in fact, private property. Everyone made redundant by mechanized labor (of which there will be many) will need to find new employment. This is fine if a labor market exists to absorb the masses of the newly unemployed, as was the case in the mass exodus and subsequent conversion of the peasant farmer to the city factory worker. But one doesn't exist--at least, not yet.
You propose, as a solution and social necessity, that people will become artisans or instructors--people that produce their own goods or services for sale though some sort of market place. I pointed out how it is historically regressive and naive to think that such an arrangement can operate on the mass scale of manufacture that we currently have. People in this scenario are essentially relegated producing to "complementary" frivolities for society, rather than producing essential goods and services. Never mind that with such widespread mechanical labor, extremely cheap and abundant high-quality goods can be made in a factory.
> I am simply saying that machine made goods are complementary goods of hand made goods. When the complementary product of hand made goods' price becomes cheap/commodity the hand made goods demand grows
I am familiar the concept of complementary goods in neoclassical macroeconomics. Ice cream cones are a complementary good in relation to ice cream. The sale of ice cream and cones have a strong positive correlation. I understand that.
What we are talking about though are not complementary goods. Complementary good are just that--they complement other goods, to produce an amalgamated good that fulfills some need better than it's component parts.
> "machine made goods are complementary goods of hand made goods"
This is wrong. How does a hand-crafted spoon complement a factory manufactured bowl better (which is a subjective term anyway) than a factory manufactured spoon? The answer: it doesn't. I think what you are actually referring (vaguely) to is consumer preference. Only when mass manufactured goods are available cheaply and abundantly in the first place, do consumers begin to seek out the "quaintness" of handmade goods. This is how merchants of such goods differentiate their stock from that which came from a factory. As they may put it, the former was "made with care", while the latter, "rolled off of the assembly line", so to speak. Etsy and other markets like it are niche purveyors, merchants of that which is quaint. That is why they will continue to remain niche.
For whatever reason, that fact that something is hand-made seems to be synonymous with quality in your mind. Hand manufacture works for bowls and knit sweaters, but hardly scales for other, more complex goods. How, pray tell will the same system work for the manufacture of goods like cars, microprocessors, vaccines, etc? Will those kind of goods be sold through etsy.com? No. Never. There was a reason that interchangeable parts came into being--they could be manufactured on a mass scale with the kind of precision only a machine could produce.
The only way what you are describing above will work is if private property is abolished, e.g. the manufacturing segment of society--the factories--is owned and directed by the whole of society, not by the hands of a few capitalists. Those factories would, by definition, have to produce the essential goods necessary for society to function as a precondition. With such a basis then, the economy you describe would could function, as it only deals in secondary goods. As it stands now, the televisions, cars, furniture, etc, we all consume are produced not for human need, but rather for sale as commodities on the open market. The anarchy of production would have to be subjugated. But with such a scenario, why even have the secondary "handmade" market in the first place?
Okay I like what you have said above. I can tell your not just arguing with me to argue. The only point I think we disagree on is whether or not technology only benefits the rich or if the benefits trickle down to the poor/simpleton public.
>I rebutted, stating (quite historically I might add) only those that own the machines will benefit, at least for a time, as they are in fact, private property.
This isn't true. For example a man with an IQ of 90, lets name him Joe has never owned a machine that makes cpu's or computer monitors. However, in the last 50 years the cost of a computer has collapsed. Joe can buy a calculator for 99 cents. This calculator would have cost over a million dollars 50 years ago.
This happens because of competition between "the people that own the machines". If it wasn't for competition, yes Joe would be screwed. He would not be able to afford a 24" monitor or a 3ghz cpu. However a 24" monitor costs $250!!! This is because of competition. Because of competition all of the things that machines make will become commodities.
This means in the future stuff will be cheap. The worlds Wealth (manufactured goods, knowledge) will be Immense.
If the population levels out at some point (which is another problem) all this wealth has to go some where. Rich people will throw away stuff, give it to the good will. If robots are really creating everything that is mass produced, there will be so much extra tvs, computer, clothes, food etc... Not all of this will be thrown in a dumpster.
Lets say we have X people on earth right now and Y amount of wealth. Each person on earth has some % of Y wealth. lets say the really poor have 1 trillionth a percent of Y wealth.
Now lets go forward 500 years the world has maybe 2X people and has 100,000,000Y wealth. If the poor even have a hundredth Trillionth of the new Y value, they have much more wealth than you or I will ever have.
What will they do to earn money? The reason I say Art is because it is the one thing that still has value, its the only thing that isn't a commodity. I guess human interaction will also have value. But it doesn't matter the fact is with so much wealth the rich have too much money and not enough places to spend it. The poor simpletons wont be able to walk 2 feet with out being hit by away to given money. The world will be bursting at the seams with wealth. And people will realize wealth != happiness.
Take a look at this article from yesterday; "A MILLIONAIRE is giving up his £3 million ($7 million) fortune because he said they never made him happy."
He added: "For a long time, I believed that more wealth
and luxury automatically meant more happiness."
But over time, a conflicting feeling nagged at him.
He said: "More and more I heard the words: "Stop what
you are doing now - all this luxury and consumerism -
and start your real life." I had the feeling I was
working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or
need."
But it took him several years before he acted on it as he
admitted he was not "brave" enough to give up all the
trappings of his comfortable existence instantly.
The turning point came during a three-week holiday in
Hawaii with his former wife.
He said: "It was the biggest shock in my life, when I
realised how horrible, soulless and without feeling the
five-star lifestyle is.
"In those three weeks, we spent all the money you could
possibly spend. But in all that time, we had the feeling
we hadn't met a single real person - that we were all
just actors. The staff played the role of being friendly
and the guests played the role of being important and
nobody was real."
Wealth will not be an issue for simpletons or smart people, being happy will be the issue, just as it is today. So the real concern is not how will the less intelligent get by in the future but rather how do we help people now and in the future live happy lives (the answer isn't money or wealth or for that matter in the future, it was discovered by Buddha about 2500 years ago...)
If I have a good job in the tech industry, why would I waste money on artisan goods? Most artisans produce crap (take a look around any arts and crafts fair). Wealthy people like to purchase status symbol luxury goods but they don't throw money away on junk.
Are we going to end up with vast structural unemployment?
I'm playing devil's advocate a little perhaps, but would it really be a terrible thing if that happened? In the 60s and 70s it was predicted that technology would increase leisure time. Perhaps that will happen after all, through higher rates of unemployment. Would it be so bad if robots and computers did most of the work required to keep people alive, and people only did work if they really wanted to?
That'd only really work if some of the results of the robot/computer work were distributed freely, wouldn't it? If robots are doing enough work to keep everyone alive, but those robots aren't government- or charity-run robots that distribute their products to everyone for free, then humans still have to work some sort of job to get the money needed to buy the stuff from the robots' owners. If you had high unemployment, and the robot greenhouses aren't giving away their vegetables for free, how are the unemployed people supposed to get the vegetables?
The thesis is wrong, as certain types of work are automated, people will be forced into other kinds of work. My guess is that majority of people today will become online content producers (bloggers and youtubers) - if the price of everything drops significantly because of robots, you can probably live off of your meager adsense earnings. (Of course, at some point blogging and youtubing could be done by computers, but then you have AI and the singularity and nothing matters anymore).
The majority of people are incapable of producing anything that anyone would care about or watch. Adsense revenue is finite. No matter how much automation you add to the production of physical goods, natural resource constraints will prevent the price of essential goods from dropping significantly.
demand media for example gets unsavvy people to produce economically useful content.
if 99 percent of people are poor, the price of constrained things such as real estate,food,energy will still drop to floor as the rich 1 percent can't consume a significant enough chunk of it
that's also a risen for the currnet economic crisis, people assumed that even though the median wage hasn't increased for 30 years, house prices should keep going up anyway,
Can the downvoter please explain the downvote. If it's about people working as online content producers, well let me ask you - what is the most difficult task for computers to do - I would say natural language and human emotion production (which is essentially what blogging and acting are about). Hence, it's the last large occupation to be automated (there will other niches such as politicians,scientists,programmers but the majority of the population won't even try to become one of those).
Wait just a second, didn't we have an article about the exact same thing, but about how it was _worrisome_, not _amazing_, just two weeks ago? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086492)
A day ago I made a comment here about how I wasn't sure that a large population of available working-age people is the huge advantage everyone seems to think it is anymore, and this is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. Look at that flexpicker video. Bet you didn't think a robot could stack pancakes. Well baby, a robot can sure stack pancakes all right. How long before it can flip burgers? I bet they already can and it's just a matter of cost.
Wouldn't want to only have repetitive manual labor skills in about 10-15 years' time when these things drop in price to below $10k or so. Robots are going to cut through the service and manufacturing sectors like a 2 megawatt laser through room temperature butter.
It's not really a matter of cost of the robot, the limiting factor of more widespread adoption is actually just that there aren't enough people building automation systems (the robot and machine vision combination), a worker shortage.
