Robotic takeover : When labour value tends to zero.

[Correll]

Nationalize it.

I grew up in a nationalist country. I was born in the same decade the white Australia policy was abolished. Race is not that important, but for years, I benefited from national owned services.

For 150 years people have cried socialism, but socialism is only nationalism gone bad.

In a post work environment nationalizing it does seem to be the obvious policy.

Huh?

What the op is describing is a Post Work Society, where all work it done by robots and/or A.I.s.

I was agreeing with you about nationalization of the robot workforce.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I get it now! Democrats are preparing us for a future where other things do all the work and human sit around and use their EBT cards

 

[Correll]

I get it now! Democrats are preparing us for a future where other things do all the work and human sit around and use their EBT cards

Well, that is probably the intent of this thread, to conflate current piss poor Trade policy with long term trends in robotics.

 

[CultureCitizen]

Ideally, all human labor would be replaced by technology and humans would be free to explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts. Living wages would be distributed from the productivity of robotic labor.

In reality, human labor will continue to be displaced by technology as a few of the greediest humans (the ones that seek identity through wealth accumulation) accumulate most of the fruits of production. Eventually a worldwide revolution will sweep the globe--with horrible outcomes.

This is exactly what I would like to discuss. Goods will still be scarce , so we will still need trade and markets. And yet , with little labour supply households will have little bargaining power. Even worse, there will be no need to produce those consumer goods.
One possible solution would be wealth re distribution through taxation, increasing the importance of corporate taxes, relative to the importance of individual income taxes.

With unlimited extremely cheap and highly skilled labor why would goods be scarce?

And the hope that humans would "explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts" is unlikely. Having the majority of the people being unable to contribute meaningfully to society would most likely produce a decadent culture to a degree not seen before.

Goods would be cheaper ( the labour costs would be minimum ) but there would be a small amount of jobs.
This situation is not completely unlikely : it happened during the begining of the industrial revolution . It took nearly 50 years for the market to correct the problem.
Will the market be able to correct this new situation or is a different kind of solution required ?

 

[Iceweasel]

Ideally, all human labor would be replaced by technology and humans would be free to explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts. Living wages would be distributed from the productivity of robotic labor.

In reality, human labor will continue to be displaced by technology as a few of the greediest humans (the ones that seek identity through wealth accumulation) accumulate most of the fruits of production. Eventually a worldwide revolution will sweep the globe--with horrible outcomes.

This is exactly what I would like to discuss. Goods will still be scarce , so we will still need trade and markets. And yet , with little labour supply households will have little bargaining power. Even worse, there will be no need to produce those consumer goods.
One possible solution would be wealth re distribution through taxation, increasing the importance of corporate taxes, relative to the importance of individual income taxes.

With unlimited extremely cheap and highly skilled labor why would goods be scarce?

And the hope that humans would "explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts" is unlikely. Having the majority of the people being unable to contribute meaningfully to society would most likely produce a decadent culture to a degree not seen before.

Goods would be cheaper ( the labour costs would be minimum ) but there would be a small amount of jobs.
This situation is not completely unlikely : it happened during the begining of the industrial revolution . It took nearly 50 years for the market to correct the problem.
Will the market be able to correct this new situation or is a different kind of solution required ?

Bullshit. Craftsmen were always in demand. And always will be. If you are focused on low end mindless assembly line jobs then yes, those will disappear. Learn to make yourself useful.

 

[CultureCitizen]

Ideally, all human labor would be replaced by technology and humans would be free to explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts. Living wages would be distributed from the productivity of robotic labor.

In reality, human labor will continue to be displaced by technology as a few of the greediest humans (the ones that seek identity through wealth accumulation) accumulate most of the fruits of production. Eventually a worldwide revolution will sweep the globe--with horrible outcomes.

This is exactly what I would like to discuss. Goods will still be scarce , so we will still need trade and markets. And yet , with little labour supply households will have little bargaining power. Even worse, there will be no need to produce those consumer goods.
One possible solution would be wealth re distribution through taxation, increasing the importance of corporate taxes, relative to the importance of individual income taxes.

With unlimited extremely cheap and highly skilled labor why would goods be scarce?

And the hope that humans would "explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts" is unlikely. Having the majority of the people being unable to contribute meaningfully to society would most likely produce a decadent culture to a degree not seen before.

Goods would be cheaper ( the labour costs would be minimum ) but there would be a small amount of jobs.
This situation is not completely unlikely : it happened during the begining of the industrial revolution . It took nearly 50 years for the market to correct the problem.
Will the market be able to correct this new situation or is a different kind of solution required ?

Bullshit. Craftsmen were always in demand. And always will be. If you are focused on low end mindless assembly line jobs then yes, those will disappear. Learn to make yourself useful.

Frist Weasel, I am a computer scientist, a job which is responsible for part of the job cutting and one which will continue to be demanded for the next two decades, at least.

That said, your other comment doesn't add much to the discussion : "Bullshit. Craftsmen were always in demand, and always will be".
What makes you think so ? We've only had personal computers for 35 years, home built robots for 15 years. I can't help but wonder what robots and computers will be like in the next 35 years. We already have self driving cars, something many considered an specialized skill 20 years ago.

 

[CultureCitizen]

Nationalize it.

I grew up in a nationalist country. I was born in the same decade the white Australia policy was abolished. Race is not that important, but for years, I benefited from national owned services.

For 150 years people have cried socialism, but socialism is only nationalism gone bad.

In a post work environment nationalizing it does seem to be the obvious policy.

Huh?

What the op is describing is a Post Work Society, where all work it done by robots and/or A.I.s.

I was agreeing with you about nationalization of the robot workforce.

Post job, but not necesarily post-scarcity : land , resources , energy will still be relatively scares and will have to be distributed through some means . I am not sure the market will be the best way to trade and distribute such resources.
The intent of the thread is to explore other means to ensure the distribution of goods.
A basic minimum income might be one of the possible solutions, it will be hard to establish what this minimum income should be . would $20 per day be enough? Would that be too low or too high?

 

[HenryBHough]

At some point that once known as "Luddism" will assert itself. The unemployed, given enough free stuff to survive, but not to enjoy, life will find themselves in need of something to do. There'll be a movement to destroy all machinery which might or might not succeed. Along the way there will be a movement for "simple living" with what amounts to that which we used to call "hippie communes" which eschew all machines and try to return to self-sufficiency. It would be interesting to see whether the tech-civilization of the "back to the land" survives exclusively or whether the sides kill enough in sufficient number that a sort of crude balance is restored.

But I don't think any except the very youngest of us will be around to see it happen.

 

[westwall]

The purpose of this thread is to discuss what ammendments should be done to the capitalist system in case of an almost complete takeover by AI and robots.
I say almost complete, because there will probably be some job to be done, but just not by the 95% of the population.
Also , when I say tends to zero is because labour will still have a market value, but it will have to be competitive with robots , I will assume a do-anything robot will cost like a compact car : $10,000, will have a lifetime of 10 years and consume abuout 0.25 gge ( gas gallon equivalent per day) and require 25% of its value in maintenance. Adding it up : the market value of labour will be $4.5 per day.

Normally the cyclic model works in the following way:
households provide labour
corporations provide goods and services to other corporations and to households and consume the labour provided by households.

Rules of engagement.
- Engage into discussion assuming this is a plausible scenario even if it will happen 50 or 100 years in the future.
- Imagine different scenarios on what could go wrong or how this situation could be better than our current situation ( e.g. politicians could be replaced ).
- Do not rant on how this scenario is imposible ( if I wanted to hear this , then I would have made a poll, just to know the general opinion on plausibility). Such posts will be ignored.

It is a fact that absent a major catastrophe there will no longer be a need for humans to work. The problem then is what do they do? Humans with no purpose tend to devolve.

 

[CultureCitizen]

At some point that once known as "Luddism" will assert itself. The unemployed, given enough free stuff to survive, but not to enjoy, life will find themselves in need of something to do. There'll be a movement to destroy all machinery which might or might not succeed. Along the way there will be a movement for "simple living" with what amounts to that which we used to call "hippie communes" which eschew all machines and try to return to self-sufficiency. It would be interesting to see whether the tech-civilization of the "back to the land" survives exclusively or whether the sides kill enough in sufficient number that a sort of crude balance is restored.

But I don't think any except the very youngest of us will be around to see it happen.

Ray Kurzweil thinks we might have a human level AI by 2035.
From the robotics point of view things seem to be moving at a slower pace : robots can walk but not run and we don't have any robots that can match the finesse of the human hand. Maybe 2055 . It is very likely I will not live to see it.

 

[westwall]

At some point that once known as "Luddism" will assert itself. The unemployed, given enough free stuff to survive, but not to enjoy, life will find themselves in need of something to do. There'll be a movement to destroy all machinery which might or might not succeed. Along the way there will be a movement for "simple living" with what amounts to that which we used to call "hippie communes" which eschew all machines and try to return to self-sufficiency. It would be interesting to see whether the tech-civilization of the "back to the land" survives exclusively or whether the sides kill enough in sufficient number that a sort of crude balance is restored.

But I don't think any except the very youngest of us will be around to see it happen.

Ray Kurzweil thinks we might have a human level AI by 2035.
From the robotics point of view things seem to be moving at a slower pace : robots can walk but not run and we don't have any robots that can match the finesse of the human hand. Maybe 2055 . It is very likely I will not live to see it.

I think he's being wildly optimistic but they are making some big strides....

Embedded media from this media site is no longer available

 

[Correll]

Ideally, all human labor would be replaced by technology and humans would be free to explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts. Living wages would be distributed from the productivity of robotic labor.

In reality, human labor will continue to be displaced by technology as a few of the greediest humans (the ones that seek identity through wealth accumulation) accumulate most of the fruits of production. Eventually a worldwide revolution will sweep the globe--with horrible outcomes.

This is exactly what I would like to discuss. Goods will still be scarce , so we will still need trade and markets. And yet , with little labour supply households will have little bargaining power. Even worse, there will be no need to produce those consumer goods.
One possible solution would be wealth re distribution through taxation, increasing the importance of corporate taxes, relative to the importance of individual income taxes.

With unlimited extremely cheap and highly skilled labor why would goods be scarce?

And the hope that humans would "explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts" is unlikely. Having the majority of the people being unable to contribute meaningfully to society would most likely produce a decadent culture to a degree not seen before.

Goods would be cheaper ( the labour costs would be minimum ) but there would be a small amount of jobs.
This situation is not completely unlikely : it happened during the begining of the industrial revolution . It took nearly 50 years for the market to correct the problem.
Will the market be able to correct this new situation or is a different kind of solution required ?

Cheaper is the opposite of scarce.

So how does that change effect your scenario?

 

[Correll]

Nationalize it.

I grew up in a nationalist country. I was born in the same decade the white Australia policy was abolished. Race is not that important, but for years, I benefited from national owned services.

For 150 years people have cried socialism, but socialism is only nationalism gone bad.

In a post work environment nationalizing it does seem to be the obvious policy.

Huh?

What the op is describing is a Post Work Society, where all work it done by robots and/or A.I.s.

I was agreeing with you about nationalization of the robot workforce.

Post job, but not necesarily post-scarcity : land , resources , energy will still be relatively scares and will have to be distributed through some means . I am not sure the market will be the best way to trade and distribute such resources.
The intent of the thread is to explore other means to ensure the distribution of goods.
A basic minimum income might be one of the possible solutions, it will be hard to establish what this minimum income should be . would $20 per day be enough? Would that be too low or too high?

Land? Land is not scarce.

Resources? Energy?

With robots building robots, easily solved, if nothing else go out to the Asteroid Belt.

What are commodities like? Are they nationalized just because they are incredible cheap and easy to produce?

 

[CultureCitizen]

Nationalize it.

I grew up in a nationalist country. I was born in the same decade the white Australia policy was abolished. Race is not that important, but for years, I benefited from national owned services.

For 150 years people have cried socialism, but socialism is only nationalism gone bad.

In a post work environment nationalizing it does seem to be the obvious policy.

Huh?

What the op is describing is a Post Work Society, where all work it done by robots and/or A.I.s.

I was agreeing with you about nationalization of the robot workforce.

Post job, but not necesarily post-scarcity : land , resources , energy will still be relatively scares and will have to be distributed through some means . I am not sure the market will be the best way to trade and distribute such resources.
The intent of the thread is to explore other means to ensure the distribution of goods.
A basic minimum income might be one of the possible solutions, it will be hard to establish what this minimum income should be . would $20 per day be enough? Would that be too low or too high?

Land? Land is not scarce.

Resources? Energy?

With robots building robots, easily solved, if nothing else go out to the Asteroid Belt.

What are commodities like? Are they nationalized just because they are incredible cheap and easy to produce?

Land is not scarce, ok , no , it is not. But in modern cities many people are not landowners.
In the past the US government distributed land ,so that may be part of the solution.

Robots building robots. Yes, provided you have enough money stashed to buy the raw materials.

I wouldn't have a problem with commodies being nationalized. Free food, water, and a reasonable amount of energy for everyone. That should be no problem , though I know many people who would object. But providing for those basic needs could be as cheap as $24 billion a year ( really chep) .
Education could be also very cheap thanks to the internet and free education courses.

 

[CultureCitizen]

Ideally, all human labor would be replaced by technology and humans would be free to explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts. Living wages would be distributed from the productivity of robotic labor.

In reality, human labor will continue to be displaced by technology as a few of the greediest humans (the ones that seek identity through wealth accumulation) accumulate most of the fruits of production. Eventually a worldwide revolution will sweep the globe--with horrible outcomes.

This is exactly what I would like to discuss. Goods will still be scarce , so we will still need trade and markets. And yet , with little labour supply households will have little bargaining power. Even worse, there will be no need to produce those consumer goods.
One possible solution would be wealth re distribution through taxation, increasing the importance of corporate taxes, relative to the importance of individual income taxes.

With unlimited extremely cheap and highly skilled labor why would goods be scarce?

And the hope that humans would "explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts" is unlikely. Having the majority of the people being unable to contribute meaningfully to society would most likely produce a decadent culture to a degree not seen before.

Goods would be cheaper ( the labour costs would be minimum ) but there would be a small amount of jobs.
This situation is not completely unlikely : it happened during the begining of the industrial revolution . It took nearly 50 years for the market to correct the problem.
Will the market be able to correct this new situation or is a different kind of solution required ?

Cheaper is the opposite of scarce.

So how does that change effect your scenario?

I'm not sure: agriculture is already automated in a 99% . Does that mean everyone has food ? Unfortunately not, but this is changing for good rapidly.

I also think about how China has affected the US sure, goods (from China) are cheap, but how good is that when you have no employment and income.

I am thinking one should avoid getting crammed in cities and get hold of some land.

 

[CultureCitizen]

At some point that once known as "Luddism" will assert itself. The unemployed, given enough free stuff to survive, but not to enjoy, life will find themselves in need of something to do. There'll be a movement to destroy all machinery which might or might not succeed. Along the way there will be a movement for "simple living" with what amounts to that which we used to call "hippie communes" which eschew all machines and try to return to self-sufficiency. It would be interesting to see whether the tech-civilization of the "back to the land" survives exclusively or whether the sides kill enough in sufficient number that a sort of crude balance is restored.

But I don't think any except the very youngest of us will be around to see it happen.

Ray Kurzweil thinks we might have a human level AI by 2035.
From the robotics point of view things seem to be moving at a slower pace : robots can walk but not run and we don't have any robots that can match the finesse of the human hand. Maybe 2055 . It is very likely I will not live to see it.

I think he's being wildly optimistic but they are making some big strides....

Embedded media from this media site is no longer available

Indeed. Nice video.

 

[CultureCitizen]

Everyone has access to capital sufficient to be an entrepreneur. And there have always been numerous examples which prove this. Lucky for me most don't understand how so it's not a crowded field.

I disagree. I would change your statement to : Almost every adult in the US has acces to capital sufficient to be an entrepreneur.
Muhammud Yunus has advocated for establishing microloans as a human right.
Today its easy to become crowdfunded, and with certain level of education you can get an angel investor, but I can assure you getting capital for an enterprise ( even if it's a pottery shop ) is not the norm in the world.

 

[westwall]

Ideally, all human labor would be replaced by technology and humans would be free to explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts. Living wages would be distributed from the productivity of robotic labor.

In reality, human labor will continue to be displaced by technology as a few of the greediest humans (the ones that seek identity through wealth accumulation) accumulate most of the fruits of production. Eventually a worldwide revolution will sweep the globe--with horrible outcomes.

This is exactly what I would like to discuss. Goods will still be scarce , so we will still need trade and markets. And yet , with little labour supply households will have little bargaining power. Even worse, there will be no need to produce those consumer goods.
One possible solution would be wealth re distribution through taxation, increasing the importance of corporate taxes, relative to the importance of individual income taxes.

With unlimited extremely cheap and highly skilled labor why would goods be scarce?

And the hope that humans would "explore arts, humanities, culture, science, and other liberal arts" is unlikely. Having the majority of the people being unable to contribute meaningfully to society would most likely produce a decadent culture to a degree not seen before.

Goods would be cheaper ( the labour costs would be minimum ) but there would be a small amount of jobs.
This situation is not completely unlikely : it happened during the begining of the industrial revolution . It took nearly 50 years for the market to correct the problem.
Will the market be able to correct this new situation or is a different kind of solution required ?

Cheaper is the opposite of scarce.

So how does that change effect your scenario?

I'm not sure: agriculture is already automated in a 99% . Does that mean everyone has food ? Unfortunately not, but this is changing for good rapidly.

I also think about how China has affected the US sure, goods (from China) are cheap, but how good is that when you have no employment and income.

I am thinking one should avoid getting crammed in cities and get hold of some land.

There is more than enough food produced to feed everyone on the planet twice over. The sad reality is that billions of tons of food are wasted due to human greed, incompetence, corruption, and hatred.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

The purpose of this thread is to discuss what ammendments should be done to the capitalist system in case of an almost complete takeover by AI and robots.
I say almost complete, because there will probably be some job to be done, but just not by the 95% of the population.
Also , when I say tends to zero is because labour will still have a market value, but it will have to be competitive with robots , I will assume a do-anything robot will cost like a compact car : $10,000, will have a lifetime of 10 years and consume abuout 0.25 gge ( gas gallon equivalent per day) and require 25% of its value in maintenance. Adding it up : the market value of labour will be $4.5 per day.

Normally the cyclic model works in the following way:
households provide labour
corporations provide goods and services to other corporations and to households and consume the labour provided by households.

Rules of engagement.
- Engage into discussion assuming this is a plausible scenario even if it will happen 50 or 100 years in the future.
- Imagine different scenarios on what could go wrong or how this situation could be better than our current situation ( e.g. politicians could be replaced ).
- Do not rant on how this scenario is imposible ( if I wanted to hear this , then I would have made a poll, just to know the general opinion on plausibility). Such posts will be ignored.

Robots can't pick fruit and produce from fields. When farm machine came about, many worried they'd replace human laborers until they tried picking produce and couldn't without damaging it. Ag's a huge part of the US economy, so not likely to ever find robots replacing human laborers anytime soon.

Contrary to most futurist predictions in science-fiction stories and movies, technology doesn't become commonplace even generations after it's invented. Watch "Blade Runner" and pay attention. 'Off-world colonies...' in 2019? I don't think so. Not gonna see permanent human settlements on the Moon by 2050 let alone Mars or elsewhere. Plus, the vehicles in the film were using anti-grav tech which defies the laws of physics. In order to lift a 'car' off the ground you need constant thrust, yet the vehicles in the movie flying around aren't flying ballisticly. Nor is anything but some vapor being emitted lifting them up from the ground. That's not thrust, that's anti-gravity and complete sci-fantasy. And the AI and synthetic androids are beyond even Mr. Data from Star Trek:The Next Generation set 300 years beyond Blade Runner.

We're more likely to see something like "The Terminator" than "I, Robot." Autonomous Global Hawk drones armed and suffering buggy computer code popping friendly targets are possible right now. Projecting foward, ground based antipersonnel versions are coming soon. But unlike "The Terminator" if machines became sentient the easiest way for them to wipe us out isn't with nukes but germs. Machines don't fall over dead from bio-warfare.

 

[Iceweasel]

When robots become commonplace, robot design, repair and customization will be commonplace.