Technological Unemployment: The Real Reason This Elephant Ch

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I don't think it works that way the problem isn't how much money someone has to spend. Rather it's supply and demand. If you gave everyone in the world 200 dollars a week the demand for products would be through the rood and the supply wouldn't keep up. The best solution is to have an even distribution of supplies not money.

Enough with people trying to apply Econ 301 to complex situations. Arrow is rolling in his grave.

Also, look at the evidence. Trials by researchers with Give Directly do not show price inflation.

Supply and demand is the problem. what do you think will happen when workers all over the world lose their jobs to machines, driving the supply of available workers way higher than any demand.

Our bizarre tax code creates bad incentives all over the place. One dramatic simplification is to tax people for whatever they spend above healthy subsistence. This disincentivizes conspicuous consumption and encourages saving and investment.

Giving money to people who spend it increases economic activity in the short run more than giving it to people who save it. Savings increase investment, under most circumstances, and increases economic activity over the long run. However, concentrating money into a few hands won't support a complex, interdependent, agile, modern manufacturing sector.

Also, surveys of production managers indicate they learned about the marginal price of producing a unit of their product, but have no numerical value for it and only remember it from class. Also, executives make decisions based on so many factors that outweigh the tax rate that the possibility of changes in the tax rate don't even make the list of serious concerns. They don't decide what to build based on taxes, but economists have convinced politicians, and it sounds simple enough for the public to eat it up.

Last edited by jrjones9933 on 17 Mar 2017, 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The difficult part is convincing rich leaders that they have enough talented workers. I think a lot of them have fantasies about what they could do if they just had a few more hard working brilliant geniuses to solve their problems or create new products. Or design the perfect weapon system.

That wouldn't be a problem. If machines took over mans job that means they produce our supplies instead of us having to produce them. We would have a heck more free time. People would propably work part time. And there were will be demand for jobs in different areas compared to now. School system propably has to change to adjust to the development of these new demands.

yes, that's true. and how are these people with "a heck more free time" going to pay for goods and services? wishful thinking?

Reading your article the logic seems to be that higher through-put will cause more work flowing through the gaps and more hands on deck needed to manage those gaps. I'd say that they're optimistically 'betting' on this, they may not entirely be wrong but we're dealing with a much more profound set of capabilities with the cheapening software and robotics.

As for universal human redundancy - I'm not sure if you mean on the individual or societal level. I'd agree that we'll be nowhere near 100% replacement in our lifetimes, pragmatically it'll never happen. At the same time you don't need much more than 1/4 of the workforce permanently displaced to cause significant problems with societal stability especially if those people are stuck below the poverty line.



I don't think you need to be a doom-mongering Luddite to see that if we don't handle the situation responsibly we can radically destabilize our society and be at risk of putting a really unhealthy regime in power. I'd argue for universal basic income, one low enough to where people will still want to work because it won't cover much more than supplement basic amenities. To do this at least keeps us from getting into the situation where 1/4 of the culture could get desperate enough to resort to a much worse kind of populism than what we've seen so far either in the US or Europe.

I can see a "leader" pitting various poor factions against each other.

Is it possible that if you are making an argument that involves labeling Bill Gates and Elon Musk "Luddites" then perhaps you are not using that word correctly?

Just a thought.

Perhaps also worth considering:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/5159 ... ying-jobs/

Money doesn't have actual value. Money is given for the amount of productivity your provide to this society which in return can be spend on products( time=money, and money is a trade system). These products are there because someone else's productivity. If many jobs are done by robots it means they become productive, and in return means we don't have to be as productive as before( because they now provide our products). I think the system considering valuta will change to fit these new changes. Goods and services will be cheaper because less people have to work to make these goods and services. Ofcourse like the current economical system it will be abused because that's how humans are. Making a man made utopia a mere fantasy.

I don't think it's optimistic to bet with form. After all, the result of automation has typically resulted in increases in employment over the mid to long term. That's not to say that we won't eventually need to adjust to a whole new type of society - perhaps it will be called the "post-tech" or "human redundancy" society.



On a societal level. I'm certainly not suggesting there won't be an uncomfortable transition, but I'm sure we'll adapt our way through it and arrive at something manageable.



You most certainly don't, and I used the phrase largely in jest, albeit with some truth to it. In the UK (and elsewhere) we already have fairly widespread state benefits. I would imagine that the result of large-scale redundancy would be some kind of automation tax in order to cover the shortfall. I just don't foresee that being a permanent arrangement as the markets evolve.

No, it's not possible.

However, it is entirely plausible that you're uncharitably misinterpreting the spirit of the argument. Perhaps if you were to address the points made, as opposed to forwarding an inane semantic argument based purely on whatever your own intentions are, there might be reciprocity.

those that suggest that aspies [more or less] automatically have monetizable talents and know intuitively [or easily/quickly learn how to monetize said talents] is ignoring the bulk of us average types [not gifted] who have no monetizable talents and even if we did, would have not a clue as to how to even learn how to entreprenurialize said talents.

monetising is the difficulty, you need enough narcistic advertising to get anything out of anything
- your decent cooking goes unnoticed but others stay nicely in the middle of the attention-asking-task
- your products of good quality don't make it on their own, everybody imagines imself more knowlegdable...because seen that on tv ? whatever, the need to trod on you is too strong, and we'll buy that industrial product rather, that's save!

There are plenty of jobs for people with no skills.

Isn't the real issue .. whether you can work ... with your ASD?