Socialism Is Inevitable

[expat_panama]

...Technological advances will create whole new industries, but not necessarily a lot of jobs...

Predicting is easy and being ready for what happens is hard. It's smarter to be ready for what's happened over and over than to go to a lot of effort to prepare for something that's never happened in similar situations. Over decades and centuries technological advances have always come with more jobs and higher incomes.

...Neither the increase in human intelligence nor education can keep up with technology...

As with jobs and incomes, higher educational levels have come with tech advances. Nothing has come up to indicate that somehow this time is different.

 

[Unkotare]

Not much more tiresome than some nitwit who just read the Cliffs Notes to The Communist Manefesto...

 

[SigTurner]

Two realities we're dealing with here, one is that percapita incomes adjusted for inflation are far higher now than 20 years ago, and the other is that no matter what good thing happens there will always be some way you can say it's bad.

We are dealing with only one reality here, namely, that you are missing the point.

"Per capita income adjusted for inflation" has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the fact that if the current technological trend continues, most people may very well be out of a job in 100 years. Why are you being so deliberately obtuse? The present paradigm is approaching the end of its age. This is the point. Inflation, deflation, conflation is completely irrelevant to the issue.

We can talk about focusing after you've made up your mind on time frames.

The gist of my argument, like the OP's argument, has always been focused on the future. When I referenced back 20 years I meant it as a starting point for an observable trend that can be expected to continue and accelerate into the not-too-distant future.

 

[Brutus]

most people may very well be out of a job in 100 years.

How is that possible unless you repeal the law of supply and demand?? This is econ. 101 I'm afraid. The Republican industrial revolution created and destroyed millions and milions of jobs but the number of jobs has always equaled the number of people, except of course when there had been too much liberal interference.

 

[Brutus]

The demand-side justification for this is that the capital would remain idle (or be invested only in financial shell-games) if left in the private sector,

of course that is perfectly stupid and liberal . The rich spend their money as consumers thereby creating sustained demand as opposed to liberal government bubble demand or they save it in banks or the equivalent where it is profitably and sustain ably lent out to grow the economy in sustainable ways.

while government can invest it so as to generate real wealth

99% of inventions that got us from stone age to here came from private hands experimenting in capitalistic fashion over decades and decades. Libturd bureaucrats are not inventors nor venture capitalists with other peoples money. The Soviet Union and Red China learned this. Our libturds still don't know it.

 

[Oddball]

This follows from the supply-side premise. Government spending takes capital from the private economy (through taxes) and invests it in whatever. The demand-side justification for this is that the capital would remain idle (or be invested only in financial shell-games) if left in the private sector, while government can invest it so as to generate real wealth (this argument is made during economic downturns, of course, and does not apply in boom times). The supply-side assumption is that all capital that exists will be properly invested, and so government stimulus is robbing Peter to pay Paul (while inserting the inefficiency that comes with government operations, according to an article of faith among economic conservatives).

This follows from the naïveté of the pimps for the socialist central planners.

Politicians "invest" the money they expropriate into one, and only one, area: Buying votes in order to maintain their power.

The inefficiency of the political/bureaucratic class isn't a matter of blind faith...It's a matter of fact that the moochers not only bear no economic responsibility for their misallocations of funds and failed social experimentation, but actually claim that their failures are evidence that they need even more money and power over the proles.

 

[Flopper]

...Technological advances will create whole new industries, but not necessarily a lot of jobs...

Predicting is easy and being ready for what happens is hard. It's smarter to be ready for what's happened over and over than to go to a lot of effort to prepare for something that's never happened in similar situations. Over decades and centuries technological advances have always come with more jobs and higher incomes.

...Neither the increase in human intelligence nor education can keep up with technology...

As with jobs and incomes, higher educational levels have come with tech advances. Nothing has come up to indicate that somehow this time is different.

I think there is a change. Overall unemployment has been cyclic for over a century with no really strong pattern. However if you look at the lowest income quartile, a group that traditionally benefits strongly from economic expansion, over the last 50 years, this group has seen meager benefit from economic expansion both in the percent employed and income. In the higher income groups the reverse is the case. With economic expansion both percent employment and income has risen sharply as business expands.

I think what we see happening is that improved productivity through technological advancement and globalization has raised the employment bar shutting more and more people in lower economic classes out of the labor market and at the same time increasing employment opportunity for the higher economic group. I see nothing that will change this. Demand for high end workers should increase substantial with the next business expansion with only meager increases for semiskilled workers.

The improvements in robotics and AI, will surely eliminate many if not most jobs in the consumer sectors in this century.

 

[Toro]

The demand-side justification for this is that the capital would remain idle (or be invested only in financial shell-games) if left in the private sector,

of course that is perfectly stupid and liberal . The rich spend their money as consumers thereby creating sustained demand as opposed to liberal government bubble demand or they save it in banks or the equivalent where it is profitably and sustain ably lent out to grow the economy in sustainable ways.

while government can invest it so as to generate real wealth

99% of inventions that got us from stone age to here came from private hands experimenting in capitalistic fashion over decades and decades. Libturd bureaucrats are not inventors nor venture capitalists with other peoples money. The Soviet Union and Red China learned this. Our libturds still don't know it.

Much of America's innovation has come through publicly funded universities and government spending on the military.

 

[Oddball]

Much of America's innovation has come through publicly funded universities and government spending on the military.

Could you be a little more vague?

 

[whitehall]

The fact is that capitalism is inevitable. If people are given the choice they will always ....without exception... choose capitalism and freedom. Freedom goes hand in hand with capitalism. Socialism is a restrictive form of government that keeps power....at the point of a gun.

 

[SigTurner]

The fact is that capitalism is inevitable. If people are given the choice they will always ....without exception... choose capitalism and freedom. Freedom goes hand in hand with capitalism. Socialism is a restrictive form of government that keeps power....at the point of a gun.

And what is fascism if not the complete usurping of government by private interests?

Too much capitalism--especially of the multinational, monolithic sort--does not represent nor manifest freedom for the average citizen. It also holds power at the point of a gun, while at the same time holding title to the land and everything on it or of it.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Socialism is a failed system. is that what you want?

 

[expat_panama]

most people may very well be out of a job in 100 years.

How is that possible unless you repeal the law of supply and demand?? ....

Ahhh, that explains it, it was the thinking that gov't can do anything!! Even today we hear zealots say Obama can control the sea, but wiser gov't leaders going back to King Knute know there are some laws that can't be repealed.

 

[SigTurner]

Socialism is a failed system. is that what you want?

The problem with socialism as it has traditionally been practiced is that it lacked both political checks and balances (thus it was unable to correct itself) and an internal mechanism for competitiveness (thus it became bogged down in bureacratic inefficiency and economic stagnation).

The fact that socialism failed in the past is irrelevant to the fact that our present system is approaching the end of its age, due largely to its own success. Let's face it, we have outgrown our own clothes.

 

[expat_panama]

...Overall unemployment has been cyclic for over a century with no really strong pattern. However if you look at...

Wait a second. Before talking about the nature of unemployment for over a century we should actually look at it.

--and the blatantly obvious "really strong pattern" is that our generation's stability is much better than the hellish chaos of a hundred years ago.

 

[SigTurner]

most people may very well be out of a job in 100 years.

How is that possible unless you repeal the law of supply and demand?? ....

Ahhh, that explains it, it was the thinking that gov't can do anything!! Even today we hear zealots say Obama can control the sea, but wiser gov't leaders going back to King Knute know there are some laws that can't be repealed.

King Knute had no experience with A.I. and hi-tech robotics.

The law of supply and demand is about to be repealed by the descendants of Asimo.

How so, you ask?

Because there will be very little demand for human labor. Thus, there will be very little profit to be made on the supply side in an age where most people have no employable raison d'etre and thus no income.

So long, capitalism!​

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Socialism is a failed system. is that what you want?

The problem with socialism as it has traditionally been practiced is that it lacked both political checks and balances (thus it was unable to correct itself) and an internal mechanism for competitiveness (thus it became bogged down in bureacratic inefficiency and economic stagnation).

The fact that socialism failed in the past is irrelevant to the fact that our present system is approaching the end of its age, due largely to its own success. Let's face it, we have outgrown our own clothes.

Hold the horses You say

The fact that socialism failed in the past is irrelevant to the fact that our present system is approaching the end of its age

The fact that socialism has failed does make it relevant

Let's face it, we have outgrown our own clothes

.

I don't think so,

 

[editec]

A simple thought, set out in numbered points.

1) An industrial economy requires broadly dispersed wealth in order to generate the consumer demand necessary for prosperity. Without that, inventory cannot be sold, and the economy breaks down.

Agreed, assuming that the imbalance between what is produced and the incomes derived from production are too far out of balance

2) The main method used in a capitalist economy to distribute wealth is wages paid for work. Although some wealth is dispersed by other methods, wages for work is the way that the vast majority of wealth distribution takes place.

Yes, but that formula is getting further and further out of balance as the decline in unionism and foolish free trade p[olicies have stagnated wages, and as the FEDEERAL government's social services have been picking up the slack.

3) As long as production requires full employment, and as long as wages are kept high through such means as labor unions and worker protection laws, distribution of wealth in a capitalist economy works reasonably well.

Or not.

IF unionism gained far more control than it has EVER HAD, it is possible that the imbalance could go the other way. In that case DEMAND exceeds SUPPLY, thus causing REAL inflation.

OR conversely, if there is no mechanism to increase the amount of specie in circulation? Then when DEMAND excedes SUPPLY that means REAL SHORTAGES OF GOODS AND SERVICES (think the Soviet Union as an example of that)

4) However, over time a capitalist economy shows a trend of replacing labor with automation. We have seen this happen in both the agricultural and manufacturing sectors. As agriculture was mechanized, displaced farm workers moved into the factories. As manufacturing has been mechanized (and outsourced), displaced factory workers have moved into the service industries.

Yes

5) With advanced computer and artificial-information technologies, it becomes increasingly possible to automate service industries, too. Already many sales clerks, grocery clerks, legal assistants, typists, bank tellers, and customer-service telephone agents have been replaced by computerized, automated services.

Yes

6) If all three sectors of the economy, farming, manufacturing, and services, become highly automated, we will see a permanent reduction in the number of paid jobs. Those three sectors are all of the economy there is. While there will certainly be some jobs that cannot be automated or aren't worth automating, the number of remaining jobs will be drastically reduced.

Right again

7) See point number 3. A capitalist economy's way of distributing wealth, wages for work, depends on full employment. If we no longer have full employment due to automation, a capitalist economy will break down in a permanent depression.

Not immediatly. WE go though a GUILDED AGE first. WE went though one of those around 1890 before UNIONS brought the supply and demand back into some kind of balance.

And now, thanks to FREE TRADE and TECHNOLOGY, we've moved back into a GUILDED AGE, where the supply side (read capital) have far more of the worlds aggregate wealth, than is healthy for a consumer diven economic system

8) The only way to restore prosperity under those circumstances when labor has become far less necessary to create wealth, and so no longer serves to distribute wealth, is to render today's privately-owned publicly-traded corporations into publicly-owned operations, and distribute the profits to the people as an owner's share.

It is NOT the only way we can restore balance.

What you are proposing is to NATIONALIZE (read steal) the means of production and impose a SOCIALIST system.


There are far better ways to fix this system in my opinion. Ways that don't nationalize the means of production.

Profit sharing is a damned good way, for example. STronger Unions would help, and sensible TRADE policies would also do much to correct the problems we face, today, too.

Thus: socialism is inevitable.

No it isn't.

Socialism comes with its own problems. Problems that are build right into that system, too.

Most obvious of the problem of socialism is that it centralizes bothy WEALTH and POWER into far too few hands.

AS power corrupts regardless of what economic system or what system of governance we employ, any system which centralizes both government power and control of the nation resources is BOUND to become inefficient.

 

[expat_panama]

...The law of supply and demand is about to be repealed by the descendants of Asimo. How so, you ask? Because there will be very little demand for human labor. Thus, there will be very little profit to be made on the supply side in an age where most people have no employable raison d'etre and thus no income...

Poor old Asimo, he's eleven years old (equal to 44 in human years) and still lives at home with his mother; don't hold your breath on him getting a place of his own much less having any descendants. While a lot of people got hired by Honda to work on him, a much better Azimov spinoff is iRobot Corporation selling robots that actually pay their way (6 million sold worldwide). The company's hiring and can be contacted at iRobot Corporation: Careers.

Robots + markets = high paying jobs.

 

[Toro]

...The law of supply and demand is about to be repealed by the descendants of Asimo. How so, you ask? Because there will be very little demand for human labor. Thus, there will be very little profit to be made on the supply side in an age where most people have no employable raison d'etre and thus no income...

There are more people working in the world this year than last.

And more people in the world worked last year than the year before.

And more people in the world worked that year than the year before that.

And more people in the world worked that year than the year before that.

And more people in the world worked that year than the year before that.

And so on.