Socialism Is Inevitable

[editec]

...The law of supply and demand is about to be repealed by the descendants of Asimo.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

Would that THAT were inevitably the truth of the matter.

However reality informs us that that is not always the case.

FACTS are persistently annoying in that respect.

They often put the lie to the most cherished belief systems of the faith based thinkers.

 

[Dragon]

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)

Since we are no longer on the gold standard, the amount of specie in circulation is unimportant.

The Soviet Union had a very different problem than the one that faces us and the two circumstances can't be compared. If we have a shortage of jobs, we will have a shortage of demand, not of supply. This is assuming of course that production is still going strong, with machines replacing human labor.

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

Quibbly nitpick: it's "Gilded" Age, not "guilded."

The original "Gilded Age" was what the U.S. economy experienced as we became fully industrialized. It's a common outcome of industrialization. To industrialize is much easier than maintaining a healthy industrial economy. All you really need for industrialization is technology and capital formation. The need to balance productivity and demand, and to confront the problem of maldistribution of income, arises later. (If you're industrializing via the capitalist road. If you industrialize via the socialist road, as Russia did, a different set of problems arises.)

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.

Stronger unions and profit sharing only work when people have jobs. The premise of this thread is that we are approaching a circumstance in which full employment will be impossible. With a slack labor market and persistent high double-digit unemployment, we are not going to be able to solve the problem through conventional means.

Unions were a way to get a fairer share of the wealth produced going to the working class. That won't work when there is no working class to speak of.

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.

I really made a mistake in titling this thread, but perhaps what I should do now is to go into exactly what I'm talking about. When I say "socialism" I don't mean a Soviet-style system. (ESPECIALLY not a Soviet-style POLITICAL system.)

Suppose we had:

1) Nationalization of all publicly-traded corporations. Such corporations continue to be run as for-profit enterprises; the only difference is that the profits are distributed to all citizens equally, not to private shareholders.

2) Henceforth, any small sole-proprietor business that wants to "go public" must do so by selling all its stock to the public, literally. Up to that point, privately-owned business remains as it is now.

3) The government is not permitted to micro-manage any publicly-owned business, but can impose general regulations on business activity as it does now.

4) A national capital bank (if needed) is created to supply the capital previously supplied through trade of shares on the stock exchange.

This would not be a centrally-planned economy. It would simply be an economy in which the profits of big business provide an income to everyone.Those able to find the few jobs that would still exist, or to open a successful business of their own, would generate additional income for themselves.

 

[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.

Would that THAT were inevitably the truth of the matter.

However reality informs us that that is not always the case.

FACTS are persistently annoying in that respect.

They often put the lie to the most cherished belief systems of the faith based thinkers.

Given that this has been the pattern for the past century or two, the onus is on the naysayers to show otherwise.

 

[lizzie]

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.

That's a part of it.

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.

Seems a reasonable assumption to me.

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.

A case might be made for labor unions being both good and bad in a capitalist society, since labor unions (similar to government jobs) aren't production-oriented as much as private sector non-union jobs. There's a bit of conflict with the free market concept and supply/demand issues.

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.

I'm not sure this is a capitalist economy trend as much as it is a human technological advancement trend.

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.

see above reply

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.

Generally, yes, but there will always be an ebb and flow, and there will always be jobs which cannot be automated. I don't know the numbers, but I suspect you are overestimating the number of jobs which will be reduced.

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.

It will never be permanent, for the opposite is non-sustainable.

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.

Thus: socialism is inevitable.

It won't happen in the manner you envision. Yes, socialism is inevitable to a certain extent, but it's not due to a failure of capitalism, but rather a failure of humans to live within the bounds of nature's rules. Socialism will never work long-term, because it can't economically sustain itself.

 

[SigTurner]

...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.

You are ducking the issue (and you know it).

Imagine an age where even doctors, lawyers, and accountants are replaced by software and robotics.

(I know, it sounds too good to be true, but seriously...)

If middle class professionals can be displaced. What is to become of middle class workers who are in areas of employment requiring far less specialized training?

The bottom line is "What the hell are the overwhelming majority of people going to do for a living, 100 years from now, that will not be more efficiently and more economically accomplished through robotics and software?"

The present socioeconomic paradigm is simply not amenable to such a world.

 

[expat_panama]

...Imagine an age where even doctors, lawyers, and accountants are replaced by software and robotics....

There was a time when a scalpel was so 'high tech' that it terrified primative people. Now it's the medical robot that primitives are afraid of, but they're here to stay. More doctors are working than ever, the medical robot company's hiring, and I'm making money off of both.

 

[SigTurner]

...Imagine an age where even doctors, lawyers, and accountants are replaced by software and robotics....

There was a time when a scalpel was so 'high tech' that it terrified primative people. Now it's the medical robot that primitives are afraid of, but they're here to stay. More doctors are working than ever, the medical robot company's hiring, and I'm making money off of both.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, which is where this discussion is focused (as opposed to the present, where it is not) the medical robot company will be laying off droves of employees when it retools and has all of its medical robots assembled by manufacturing robots.

You seem unable to come to terms with a basic fact of economics: Where there is no personal income (because there are no jobs) there are no markets. In other words, there is little to sell when there are few who can buy.

I foresee a future where Intuitive Surgical has to close its doors because so many people have been displaced in the job market by software and robotics that there are very few who can afford private health insurance. And without social programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are unsupportable in such an economic environment due to an almost non-existent tax base, there are few hospitals and little market for doctors (robotic or otherwise).

 

[expat_panama]

...Sometime in the not-too-distant future, which is where this discussion is focused (as opposed to the present, where it is not)....

This conversation does not focus itself, it is focused wherever you and I choose to focus it. Let's talk about the future and clarify where we agree and where we disagree. Let me know if we're together on thinking that--

• the future is going to happen
• we should get ready for it
• we don't know for sure what it will be like
• we can and should guess what it's going to be like
• we must guess carefully
• the future becomes the present all the time
• we can look at how each new present comes into being, and compare it's become to how we thought it was going to be back when it was only an imagined future.

If we're still together then we can continue.

 

[Dragon]

Sig:

Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. Thanks.

Expat_Panama gets it, too, he just lies. I refuse to waste time with him, but if you feel like it, go ahead.

 

[SigTurner]

This conversation does not focus itself, it is focused wherever you and I choose to focus it. Let's talk about the future and clarify where we agree and where we disagree.

How about if we focus on the issue?

...which is "the inevitablility of socialism", btw.

Now, about the inevitable loss of markets due to the inevitable loss of jobs. What is to become of the present socioeconomic paradigm in the not-too-distant future?

My guess is that societies around the world will have to become more and more socialized in order to maintain law and order. Those that do not will succumb to internal chaos and eventually be overtaken by the more stable societies around them.

 

[SigTurner]

Sig:

Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. Thanks.

Expat_Panama gets it, too, he just lies. I refuse to waste time with him, but if you feel like it, go ahead.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that expat is one of these deliberately obtuse trolls that one comes across from time to time.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

By the end of the century, world population is projected to increase three fold which means we need to create 3 times the number of jobs we have today. Automation in factories and farms are increasing worker productivity thus reducing the need for more workers. Only if we see very strong economic growth are there going to be enough jobs in tomorrow's world. If we don't create the jobs, there will certainly be increases in the size of welfare states.

By the end of the century, world population is projected to increase three fold

Where'd you hear that? As countries get richer, population growth declines.
Even in the Muslim world, fertility rates are declining.
In Japan and several nations in Europe, birth rates are less than replacement level.

 

[LilOlLady]

We have always been semi-sociolistic but now it's even more because we have become bigger, and need a bigger governemnt and the distance between rich and poor have widen. Get use to it or we will go communist. Works for China,etc.