The essay suffers from Ted-talk disease: lots of grand gestures and bromides, not as much rigorous thinking. The underlying problem is an important one, however.
A little-discussed solution to this problem is one I would like to see tried, distributism:
It's good to be able to put a name to this. I had come to the same conclusion privately but never knew the term to point to.
The real question is "when?". The costs of distributed manufacturing currently make distributionism less-than-viable (see: communes), but those costs decrease as technology advances, while the rents imposed by centralization do not, and perhaps even increase. There will be a crossing point.
Services are the sticky bit. Goods alone can't replace doctors, lawyers, and the like, at least not yet. On the timescale of the "crossing point" I'm less sure. Fortunately, they might not have to -- anything we can do to decrease the urgency of the "mandate to make money" serves as a relief valve for the oversupply of labor and decreases the toxicity of the market, even if it doesn't eliminate it.
> Under such a system, most people would be able to earn a living without having to rely on the use of the property of others to do so. Examples of people earning a living in this way would be farmers who own their own land and related machinery, plumbers who own their own tools, software developers who own their own computer
Nonsense. Our abundance is increased by specialization not a lack of it. Specialization and trade allow for higher-order goods to be used as inputs to produce lower-order goods. Farming doesn't just require a tractor and some land. You need fuel to run the tractor, other industries to come together to make the tractor, a merchant to purchase the tractor from, and on and on.
It does not follow that owning more things related to a trade will produce more things. The opposite is the case, it's cheaper for the farmer to buy the tractor than produce tractors himself.
Generally speaking, I agree with the overall content of your post. However your first and last sentences really emphasise for me the real problem: oversimplifying and stratifying the discussion.
"Nonsense" is an extreme overstatement, there are nuances to both arguments.
"This is economics 101" is exactly the problem: we're dealing with an economic system that isn't working. Questioning economics 101 is precisely what's needed, and I'd argue that while your arguments are sound, they've been treated as absolutes, which they're not.
A farmer needs to buy their tractor from a tractor manufacturer and fuel it from a fuel extractor/generator, but not everyone need be involved in this cycle and not every step need be specialised in a completely unary manner. Also, the emphasis on individual economic efficiency over efficiency of communal benefit is important: if a farmer can produce less - but sufficient - food, for less - but sufficient - material profit, while not producing negative impacts for others elsewhere in the economic system at large, that's a more "efficient" overall system.
The most important word in the excerpt you quoted is "most"
This is what social norms are for. Slavery is for now still mostly frowned upon, and in some circles even racism is. Even though using either usually results in huge personnal gains for some.
Slavery is a great example to work with. It has been made so costly to own slaves that no one in the western world can or wants to do it. In most areas just the social of ramifications of attempting to acquire slaves will cause all your customers to leave and employers to fire you. Then if you somehow do get a few slaves law enforcement or military agencies will try to stop you. Since they generally enforce their monopoly on violence they will probably succeed at stopping you.
Only in the places most removed from these incentives do we see slavery. Look at North Korea, much of the population can be seen as slaves (The subsistence farmers for example). The costs of keeping the slaves can be thought of as the cost of running their propaganda machine, arming their military, controlling the border and the loss in relations with the rest of the world. As long the leaders fail to gain a sense of compassion then the only thing that matters to them is their slaves make more than they cost.
A more modern and relevant example would be the foreign workers from the indian subcontinent on most of the middle east construction sites building the sky scrapers or the next FIFA cup facilities. (withheld pay, life threatening living conditions, confiscated passports). These is modern slavery. Aided and abetted by the state.
You may also want to look at the few stories of "domestic workers" and "maid" abuse that make the headlines from time to time in your own country (works in any country with a free press).
As said in another comment, slavery is alive and well. It is only frowned upon.
Really? In Northern Europe I would argue we have this working decently well. To point where we have a health care system and educational system which is both less expensive than some and more productive/effective at the same time.
What's notable is that Northern European economies have among the freest, most "market capitalist" economies on Earth. There's a substantial amount of tax-and-redistribute to them, but very little in the way of economic planning, or actual-socialist communalism. Mostly it's just a large welfare state.
Because it doesn't run counter to human nature. If I had a dollar for every time someone rolled out that painful, tired line... It's utterly baseless. Again, it comes down to oversimplification.
bjelkeman-again has a fair point re: northern Europe; some very good examples to the contrary.
Not so. Tribal societies inherently function on everyone in the tribe working for the overall good rather than their individual gain. Socially, this is how we function by default - people will make sacrifices, extend loans, give gifts, and generally help out those close to them (family, friends, tribe members) without an expectation of something in return.
Yes, in small groups such as tribes. There is reciprocal altruism at play, where helping other members of the group can reasonably expected to be repaid in future, so it can be a win win.
In our modern world it is often going to be the case that you won't deal with the same people again, or the transaction is completed completely impersonally.
When I extend a loan to a friend, I do it because I value the relationship with that friend more than the timely receipt of payment. This is a selfish action on my part, is it not?
"This is economics 101" is exactly the problem: we're dealing with an economic system that isn't working. Questioning economics 101 is precisely what's needed, and I'd argue that while your arguments are sound, they've been treated as absolutes, which they're not.
This makes as much sense as saying "You say that my magical spacecraft won't work due to the laws of physics, but physics is exactly the problem: We can't travel to Alpha Centauri yet. Questioning the laws of physics is precisely what's needed...".
You don't get to ignore facts simply because they're inconvenient.
Begging the question; economics is not a physical science where you can run A/B tests on an economy and find results. It's a social study, mostly. As someone who studied it for years, institutionally and on my own, I can tell you that economists do not agree on any basic laws except that people have a long list of wants and that not all of them can be satisfied.
Many economists are questioning their 101s lately. Look closely in the various journals and you'll see evidence of that, both explicitly and implicitly.
And if you ask biblical literalists, they'll tell you that there was no big bang but the world was instead created in six days. There are always some people with counterfactual beliefs.
Yes, and we should ask Lysenkoists about effective growing of crops.
Marx contributed massively to sociology. He contributed nothing of note to economics that's really relevant to this day (not that his effort was not commendable). Sticking to orthodox marxist economics in 2016 is more dogma than science.
Marx's contributions to sociology are definitely relevant today, even if they're not in vogue. Even if they're wrong. This is human behavior we're talking about, and people have memories that they act upon.
Marx was an Economist. I forget the exact amount of pages he wrote on sociology, history, or philosophy; I believe it was ten pages of this thoughts. And that's what people remember.
He wrote 10,000 pages of economic theory. I can't say they are wrong, or right--I haven't read his complete work.
I doubt Russia bothered to read, and implement his theories to the tee.
I don't think we can honestly evaluate wether he might be wrong, or right.
(I wonder if his plan might work if they could ever take nepotism, and corruption out of the equation. It seems like nepotism, and corruption taint every economic theory?)
Citing economic theory that has been discredited as evidence that economics is not a science makes about as much sense as citing Ptolemy's Geocentric model as evidence that astronomy isn't a science.
If the law stands in isolation. But there are more questions that arise. To whom? For how long? In which way? Etc. etc.
The side effects must be investigated because that's largely where we are in the public discourse right now. We're in a big adjustment period. We're learning about consequences; good and bad.
Can you give one (preferably two) specific examples of respected economists who are questioning 101 level econ principles?
I've studied economics at the college level. I follow economics news and am not aware of economists questioning 101 level principles. Many of these are relatively simple and intuitively obvious ones (once you wrap your head around them), much like 101 level maths.
Consequently I am inclined to disbelieve the claim that economists are questioning econ 101 principles, unless you can provide some examples. More than one example would be most convincing since you're claiming this is a general trend. Journal article links would be appreciated.
(I am not an economist, never took a class in economics, but am interested in the field and like to read about it, so talke all of this w/ a grain of salt)
It is not so much about questioning economics 101 principles as much as questioning their validity in the various economies. Taking the example of comparative advantage and more general trade theory, there are well known, respected economists (e.g. D. Rodrik) who have argued against the scope of their validity.
There also seems to be a debate about how 101 is taught in schools, see e.g. [1].
You're right, it's a larger question of validity in these nuances. I knew I'd get in trouble saying "101", but I hope people will read that in a sympathetic light. (Ha!)
Please accept my apologies: I'm taking a Mary Poppins approach by "not explaining anything." We're all capable of looking for examples that'll confirm our own suspicions; an attempt at confirming or disconfirming what I've blurted out above can be an exercise for the diligent reader.
I want to push back on the idea that economics is a way to divinate the truth of how to generate and share happiness. It's a piece of the puzzle, but a very small one.
Most (all?) bad economic policies come from denial of economics 101. For example, fixed currency exchange rates. And, of course, wage and price controls.
No, economic policies come from observation that policies are sociological. Economics tells us what is, not what is desirable. Policies are applied economics, intended to distribute value in unnatural but desirable ways. Price controls and other "bad" economic policies are akin to a rocket ship's gravity controls that generate huge amounts of entropy to lift a metal box off the ground: They sacrifice some measure of global optimality in exchange for local improvements.
> economics is not a physical science where you can run A/B tests on an economy and find results
The is broadly true of Macro Economics. This might even be impossible as a science, since the object of study (world economy and markets) is aware of its findings, and adapts around them.
Micro Economics, or "Price Theory" as it maybe should be called, is OTOH a very powerful science that gives deep and counter intuitive insights into how the world works.
Seriously, though, your econ mind is on the same track as mine. "Economics" is a pretty broad brush, and it's difficult engaging in meaningful discussion.
You make a great point: The "economic system" is conscious and reacts/adapts to internal and external changes, which changes the rules, and the meta rules, and the meta meta meta....
Are you sure about microeconomics? AFAIK, only recently have economists started to use behavioral economics (psychology & game theory) to logically explain empirical behaviours that were previously thought of as irrational. It doesn't really seem to be a solved problem.
I'm not a real economist, just a really interested amateur.
My impression is that "behavioral" economics is a promising field that can help explain some unusual phenomena. But it doesn't change the solid core of the science.
I think it gets talked about like that sometimes by people who don't like the implications of the established science. Much like what happens with Climate Change and Evolution when any seemingly contradictory study appears.
If we're talking about supply and demand, price elasticity, and things like that, I can't think of any loopholes. Knowing how these things work only makes people make more informed decisions.
Take the pricing of anything. Its greed pricing vs how much greed is tolerated. Take fish for example. In our local market prices basically increase roughly every 2 or 3 weeks. Sellers quote high when they are not desperate for money. They don't care if it doesn't sell. Now they may lie to other sellers that they sold at higher price and then others try their luck at pushing price high. Sales may be down for initial two three days but then people start buying at higher price. Fish supply hasn't changed, cost of catching it haven't changed cost of living didn't change, wages earned by buyers didn't change.
That is pure capitalism at play as it is a free market without government regulations.
Similarly some drugs that are priced at crazy multiples of real cost to produce it(including RnD and healthy profit) by the likes of martin shkreli.
So its basically how much the individuals in an economy values money. When the seller quotes high and I as a buyer has truck load of money, I wouldn't even bother to bargain. When I don't have cash, I try to bargain it to the bottom levels and sellers would probably not even be able to cover their cost.
Pricing that varies over the day in ecommerce websites is another example. Time during which people are more likely to rush into buying, things are priced high.
These examples don't actually disprove anything about microeconomics though.
Your example of the fish markets is just a good example of the fact that people have varying marginal utilities of money. Of course people try to get the highest price they can get - taking into account, of course, the time they'll be receiving the money. Obviously people will see if they can raise the price, but they're still in competition with other sellers; the price cannot be raised indefinitely. And it's not always clear whether other factors have changed - things like fish supply and catching are notoriously dependent on the weather, demand for fish varies seasonally and with changing fashions; it's a perishable good with not-super-fungible markets - maybe the prices know something about fish that you don't.
You give the example of super-high pricing for drugs such as the Daraprim case with Martin Shkreli. Note that this market is overseen and hugely, hugely regulated by the FDA, which imposes very lengthy and costly approval processes on drugs (even different manufacturers of off-patent "generics".) More generally, these drugs are on-patent - both of these situations are a de-facto monopoly that grants exactly the kind of economic rents that microeconomics predicts.
Ecommerce pricing also doesn't disprove anything. You could, for example, explain this by other factors, such as that ecommerce warehouses and logistics chains are capacity-limited, so "surge pricing" would make good sense to smooth demand peaks. But that's besides the point, really, because microeconomics would absolutely predict that if people, on average, have a preference for shopping at a particular time, then a seller may attempt to capture this preference in the price. This isn't done in brick-and-mortar retail, since changing the prices hourly would be a huge hassle. But in ecommerce, it's easy, so prices modulate with demand. And stores have always changed their prices over time, it's just that the internet makes it easy to go for a smaller granularity.
That's a bit of a silly comparison. 'Economics 101' is not a hard-and-fast set of physical rules; if it were, we'd probably be doing a much better job of managing it!
And economics often operates under the assumption that all actors act rationally and with perfect and complete information, which of course we know is not true.
Essentially zero actual economists assert or believe that actual humans in actual economies are, or behave like, homo economicus. Essentially all are aware that it is a limited model, which attempts to approach certain important features of reality, but cannot always do so due to limits on information, comprehension, and subjective values. Meteorology is still a valid field of science even if its models are limited and incomplete. Likewise with economics.
"Economists think homo economicus is literally true" is a ludicrous strawman.
I said nothing about ignoring economics 101. I'm talking about application of principles in moderation, accounting for nuance, and it's again been framed as an extreme absolute.
That said, as other commenters have pointed it, it is a little rich comparing economics to physics
> we're dealing with an economic system that isn't working.
Can you explain this statement further? North Korea and Venezuela's economic systems aren't working. America and most of Europe simply don't allow everyone to consume as much as they would prefer to consume.
It sounds like you mean "isn't working" in the sense of "an iPhone 5 isn't working as well as an iPhone 7", not "my car isn't working so I can't get to work."
I would say "isn't working" in the sense that the vast majority are struggling to achieve or retain financial security, while a tiny minority have concentrated most of the weath for themselves. Also, the trend continues to concentrate wealth further, making it ever more difficult for the majority.
This is a recurring cycle, which has happened many times throughout history. Pretty much every time it ends with the elites killed, their wealth stolen, civilization collapsed or set back significantly, and a new cycle begins. I don't understand why the elites never see this coming, or take adequate steps to prevent it. All they have to do is be somewhat less greedy.
Are you implying that people have had to struggle less to achieve or retain financial security in the past? During what time period and in what country? Can you share some specific data substantiating the claim?
Average wealth has increased in America over the last 50 years, and real family income has been rising overall since the 1950s. Wealth concentration today is lower than it was in the 1930s. Poverty has fallen since the 1960s. I excerpted these facts from (1). While it is also true that income and wealth inequality has been rising during this time as well, the fact of the rich being well off doesn't necessarily hurt the non-rich, especially if both groups are becoming richer over time, which the data shows is happening in the US.
People are becoming better off over time. Why is our economic system failing us?
Note as well that the average person today has a better quality of life than medieval kings did. Near the official government poverty level, most Americans live quite comfortably (2), and have amenities such as housing, air conditioning, cable TV, mobile phones, etc.
> government surveys show that most of the persons whom the government defines as “in poverty” are not poor in any ordinary sense of the term. The overwhelming majority of the poor have air conditioning, cable TV, and a host of other modern amenities. They are well housed, have an adequate and reasonably steady supply of food, and have met their other basic needs, including medical care. (2)
>Note as well that the average person today has a better quality of life than medieval kings did.
Shut up poor people, you have sanitation and refrigeration!
When people who make arguments like this are dragged from their beds kicking and screaming they will only have their own hubris to blame.
Edit: Those who down vote forget that we once had an elite ruling class in this country.
"what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure."
Technical progress has brought about any of the perceived benefits you mention; the economic system has only caused those benefits to be disproportionately applied. While the median quality of life has improved, the extremes continue to widen making that metric less and less relevant. The "average person" you talk about has become a tiny minority.
Your comparison of wealth concentration to the 1930s is also disingenuous: wealth concentration spiked massively toward the end of the 1920s, it was far lower than now before and after that. That particular point in history isn't a particularly ambitious bar to set.
Though if you're linking heritage.org while keeping a straight face, I fear this may fall on deaf ears...
the fact of the rich being well off doesn't necessarily hurt the non-rich
That's debatable. Human beings have a pretty significant natural tendency to look at the relative well-being rather than their absolute well-being. It makes sense, given that for any social animal, relative well-being aka ranking in the group hierarchy, is essential.
Some people are more affected by this and other less, but even all else equal, increased inequality can reduce people's quality of life.
Add to that the effect of mass media which allows an easy comparison to some of the most wealthy and powerful people in society, and you have a recipe for widespread unhappiness.
>>Average wealth has increased in America over the last 50 years
Average wealth doesn't matter. Relative wealth does. The reason is simple: wealth is a proxy for political power.
Let's say Bob had 10 dubloons yesterday and Alex had 20, and today Bob has 20 and Alex has 100. Sure, Bob is twice as wealthy as he was, but Alex is five times as wealthy and also five times wealthier than Bob (as opposed to twice).
Now replace "wealth" in the above paragraph with "power" and you'll see the issue.
Wealth has nothing to do with gold coins or green pieces of paper.
Wealth is about the total amount and quality of goods and services you consume.
Your house is of much higher quality than the houses of the 1950s. Just because the mansions are even bigger and better, This doesn't take away the quality of life improvement of you owning a better house or car or your ability to be cured of diseases that were incurable in 1950.
The apartment I'm living in now is in a renovated factory which was built in the 30's. Very solid brick and concrete construction. There's a new apartment building not far from me; they built a two-story concrete structure with a slab on top, and then put a stick-built four-story building on top of that. Wood stud and foam exterior walls, and metal studs and drywall inside. Looks like a firetrap, and the noise from other apartments must be awful.
Before I lived here I was in a single-family house, also built in the 30's, also very sturdy. I've seen other houses being built nearby, McMansion style. They look nice (new, anyway) but they use the same shoddy materials and construction techniques.
Prior to that, I lived in a new condo. I bought it while it was still under construction. (Big mistake.) The builder neglected a few details, like flashing on all of the windows. When it rained, water poured in around my window casings. People on the top floor had their whole ceilings cave in. I managed to get out of there, but a year or two later after the lawsuits the entire brick exterior had to be ripped down to fix the windows, then put back up.
So I disagree that today's houses are "much higher quality" than the houses of the 1950s. An older house, with modern upgrades, is more likely to be high quality than a new house with the same features.
That's all besides the point, because without wealth, without those gold coins and green pieces of paper, you can't afford the nice house, or better car, or the healthcare. Without wealth (in all senses) you don't have financial security, and without financial security you're forced to make decisions about how you use your limited resources. You buy lower-quality goods, you skimp on maintenance, you don't upgrade things, you hold off on preventative care until you need emergency care. Your quality of life is lower, despite having (potential) access to much better things than you might have had in the past.
And medieval peasants were orders of magnitude better off than people living in the stone-age. You can always find comparisons showing anything, the question is how relevant they are.
In this case I'd argue your comparisons are apparently not relevant for a lot of people - or else, if everything is so wonderful, how do you explain trump?
Or alternatively, implement something to stop the "elites killed, their wealth stolen [etc]" bit.
Completely co-incidentally :), technology to monitor/influence large numbers of people seems to be happening, and research/development/manufacturing of automated weaponry for the er... "self defence" of said elites seems to be on the agenda.
Gee, that sounds like it'll end well doesn't it. :(
By "isn't working", I mean "is actively causing massive poverty despite enormous technical progress to the point where we should technically have the means and resources to provide everything everyone needs to be comfortable".
If 5 companies all invest R&D in developing smartphones that fulfill essentially the same purpose, is 4/5ths of the R&D money wasted? I'd say not -- competition decreases prices and increases quality. Even if it's "morally" redundant as compared to a world run by a benevolent supercomputer, it serves a concrete purpose with concrete benefits.
Similarly, if a tractor can prevent Joe from working a miserable low-skill job in a world where the supply of labor dramatically exceeds demand, it's a good investment for Joe. Even if it's "morally" just as redundant as the R&D dollars, it serves a concrete purpose with concrete benefits.
Of course, Joe would have to buy a great deal more than a tractor to realize this dream, not to mention that the fabled "tractor" which could actually free Joe from working harder than a minimum wage job doesn't exist yet, and probably bears little resemblance to the "car for farming" we've been talking about. Currently the cost of centralized production (the rent-seeking it enables) is small compared to the benefits. I don't think that's in question. I do think it's a function of manufacturing technology, though, and I don't think the scales are destined to forever tip the way they do now.
Agreed. Take something relatively recent, water resistance in modern smart phones, had Samsung R&D not gone down that rabbit hole it would not be nearly as ubiquitous.
Old phones weren't really resistant; but less sensitive. My Samsung Wave 723 took a plunge once, water got inside but almost didn't harm it (almost; something SMTc wasn't properly functioning after 1h of use). Kinda like ThinkPads, they can leak water outside a bit, but they're not water tight sealed.
I think open source software was much more effective in solving the problem of duplication, albeit a slightly different problem (not as effective with hardware). As an aside, does anyone building software these days not have quite a lot of FOSS in their tech stack? Imagine if we had to pay for Windows NT 2011 to run our containers. :)
Specialization is (mostly) orthogonal from self-ownership. Distributism is concerned not primarily with autarkic relationships, but rather with reducing the amount of usury, rent and wage slavery.
Yes, self reliance (and sustainability) is more emphasized than it is in modern liberal western economics, but that doesn't denigrate the concept of specialization, it just elevates other aspects of political economy as well.
It's a set of ideas worth approaching with an open mind, in my opinion. John Medaille's books is very well written, even if you don't agree with much of it.
That's definitely a problem in the limit. However, we are nowhere close to that limit: our economy now mostly consists of vertically-integrated monopolies and oligopolies. Just think about, say, Comcast, which is simultaneously the most hated firm in America and yet subject to neither government regulation nor market competition.
Among simple and easy slogans for solving our problems, "break them all up" is actually a pretty good one.
It's impossible to have both "neither government regulation nor market competition". (This is clearly the case with Comcast.) The reason for the lack of competition is exactly the presence of government regulation.
> Our abundance is increased by specialization not a lack of it. Specialization and trade allow for higher-order goods to be used as inputs to produce lower-order goods. Farming doesn't just require a tractor and some land. You need fuel to run the tractor, other industries to come together to make the tractor, a merchant to purchase the tractor from, and on and on.
Agree with this. And, as jobs are replaced by computers/automation, there will be other jobs created through specialization; however those new jobs will be new niches that will require people to learn new skills or be trained, and unless the money is there for that retraining, then you have a risk of years of unemployment.
Yes of course, specialization increases abundance. But if you read the given examples it wasn't suggested that farmers make their own diesel. But rather that they own their land and equipment. Same for plumbers, it's advocated that they own their own tools.
Basically it's lamenting the lack of small businesses. That's not really wrong either. Diversity in business ownership might not be maximally "efficient" in certain regards but I think most folks would prefer that there isn't just one farming conglomerate, one nationwide plumbing service, etc.
What's special about energy that makes it OK to rent, but not a tractor? (I can't buy a lifetime supply of diesel any more or less than I can pre-pay for a lifetime tractor rental)
You don't rent energy, you buy it. You go to the pump and buy a gallon of fuel. When you buy electricity you pay for a kWh, you don't rent the kWh and give it back when you're done.
I don't see the problem with a person buying a house to live in or a car to drive.
I don't see a problem with a programmer buying a computer to start a software business instead of renting it.
So why should plumbers be employed by others who own the tools and the brand? Why should farmers not attempt to own their land and tools?
Why are people here so down on "normal" people owning small businesses but startups are totally great?
The "own your own stuff" part is a misdirection. What matters more is that there should be a competitive market for consumer / small business stuff, so no one pays usurious/extortionate rents.
I don't see the point of Distributism. Capitalism in reality doesn't work like that and no methods are laid out on how to achieve that kind of different capitalism. I personally don't even think it's possible.
In my own thinking I've been leaning towards representing the commons, with some institution, as the sole owner of property, aiming for a good distribution by renting instead. I see some similarities of sentiment.
Perhaps even the same thought taken to an extreme?
The distribution coming from two aspects. The income form rent is itself distributed evenly constituting a basic income for all. Some form of auctioning should ensure that the rent represents the current value, it also ensures the resource being allocated to the highest bidder (the one capable of providing the highest value use for the resource). Since resources must be rented also avoiding the feedback loops that encourage hoarding of capital just for rent extraction.
I agree with your assessment of a lack of rigor in the Aeon article, I'll reserve judgment on the topic until I can peruse the book (which presumably takes the time to build a foundation for some of the claims made in the article).
That said, the central notion of Distributism is property ownership, and that it was one of the philosophy's of the founding fathers for the US that property ownership, and property ownership rights, were fundamental to preserving the independence of the individual. (here is an article attributed to Madison [http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/library/madison-proper...] but this topic comes up often in the Federalist Papers)
The challenge of course is that most of this thinking was done in the 'goods' economy and not in the 'information' economy. Using distributism to illustrate a topic that is often robustly debated here, consider the computer programmer who writes a program on his computer. The fruit of his property (the program) is just as much his property in the founding father's view as is the corn from a farmer's field. And yet this "property of the mind" or intellectual property is often criticized as being a fiction created in order to support rent seeking practices. The for argument starts from the notion of property, the against argument starts from the notion that information has no intrinsic value.
Turning this around yet a third way, and why I believe that Dr. Livingston is incorrect in his conclusions, when you invalidate or work around legal restrictions on profiting from ones property (as AirBnB and Uber have done), you see a rapid uptick in GDP from works using their property for additional income.
While I find Livingston's observations compelling, my interpretation is more along with Piketty's in that the regulation of labor in favor of structures which are more rent seeking creates artificial barriers to entry. And work ethic or not, most people work, it seems, in order to trade their skills for a currency that lets them trade back for other needs where they lack the skill or the time to procure.
Either way, its a complex topic and if you're really interested in the topic spend some time on Google's newspaper archives (https://news.google.com/newspapers) and browse stories written during the great depression about how the world was doomed and people would never work again because of the permanent displacement of labor.
> "Around the start of the 20th century, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc drew together the disparate experiences of the various cooperatives and friendly societies in Northern England, Ireland, and Northern Europe into a coherent political ideology which specifically advocated widespread private ownership of housing and control of industry through owner-operated small businesses and worker-controlled cooperatives. In the United States in the 1930s, distributism was treated in numerous essays by Chesterton, Belloc and others in The American Review, published and edited by Seward Collins. Pivotal among Belloc's and Chesterton's other works regarding distributism are The Servile State,[33] and Outline of Sanity.[34]"
That's interesting that Chesterton was an advocate of distributism. I've read a couple of his books, but but I wasn't aware of his political/social views.
Distributivism is the classic American Dream: own your own home and small business. It's a "balance of power" that resists hegemony.
To create a distributive economy: taxing the wealth, and have strong anti-trust law, and strong individual rights (but not "Koch/Soros" style individual writes to extreme amounts of speech rights in the form of lobbying dollars).
America's greatest success has come from its distributive policies. Sadly, we are moving away from those.
At this point I've already come to accept that fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it.
The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations?
This is a huge question in human history and it remains to be seen how we as a species are going to answer it.
[My hope regarding the labor is that it meaningless work can be replaced with research and development]
We'll have "enough" full time labor when everybody it fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money.*
Until then, if there's not enough jobs, that's an artificially induced shortage (e.g. austerity).
* Excepting natural resources - e.g. "more" beachfront property.
"everybody it [is] fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money."
That's the idea. Let's for the moment, just assume that AI and robots and some other technologies are ridiculously productive sometime in the future and we solve all sorts of problems and have the resources to provide everyone with everything they want.
At that point it's not a question of giving everyone jobs it's a question of whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources (and a question of, should we?).
Of course, I don't think the time has arrived yet for all this to happen. But as mentioned earlier, I do think it is going to happen (if we don't have some horrible nuclear war or some other megadisaster that kills everyone first)
> whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources
You can already decide to do this today, and the government will even reward you for doing so. What you're really talking about is redistributing others' resources.
A non-zero number of businesses already do this. For example, where I presently work I don't get paid for overtime or public holidays in spite of the law requiring that I do.
I complained, and I was told that if I don't like it I can quit. I said that I would be going to the regulatory body, and I was outright threatened with physical harm: "Bad things happen to people who do that."
Automation is getting cheaper by the year, and more open. People will be able to benefit directly from automation after the transit period, and won't need UBI forever. At some point it's going to be free to cover the needs, especially if we can use raw materials that are in abundance in nature. After the first self replicating factory is going to be made, any country or region could bootstrap itself out of poverty.
Self replication is closer than AGI, it's just a matter of digitizing the industrial process and developing accessible materials. Human society, the ecosystem and the cell are self replicating factories too. We need to compile a factory in itself, to bootstrap the whole material process. Just like a DNA molecule is replicating all it needs to survive and reproduce, such a factory would be able to make "babies".
Maintaining the system of resource allocation we use today known as "property" takes resources and violence. If we can create one that is cheaper, less cruel, and has better outcomes then the current one, we should do it. Arguing that its wrong because this system says it is wrong is backwards circular thinking.
I can imagine a future where the basic standard of living for everyone is like what we give senior citizens today. Everyone is clothed, fed, has a roof over their heads, and has access to medical care.
But if you want more than basic, then you have to perform labour of some sort. Want to take the trip to Mars? Gotta work for it.
Yes, there will be a difference between those who labour and those who don't, but I still think it would be a huge win if noone in society would ever struggle to put food on their table.
There's a struggle between retired pensioners and everyone else in society about how much retired citizens should get, but there's still an understanding on both sides that past labour has some value, but that that value is less than present labour, so there's a balance. I hope the same would be true in a post-labour society.
And, of course, the difference between the labourers and the not-labourers would be an incentive to reach post-scarcity where that difference is wiped out.
> I can imagine a future where the basic standard of living for everyone is like what we give senior citizens today. Everyone is clothed, fed, has a roof over their heads, and has access to medical care.
This is already a reality in many countries. It would be very easy to also make it a reality in the US. The resources are there.
I'm saying that austerity is being disguised as near-post-scarcity. Jobs are hard to come by in the US at the same time that infrastructure is crumbling. That's a lack of jobs not a lack of necessary work.
It's a pretty flimsy disguise though. If people are simultaneously complaining about bad infrastructure and high taxes, then they are simply saying that they want their earned money themselves more than they want to use it for shared infrastructure projects. People would just rather have the latest iPhone than good highways. :-/
>If people are simultaneously complaining about bad infrastructure and high taxes, then they are simply saying that they want their earned money themselves more than they want to use it for shared infrastructure projects.
Sure, and the American people picked Trump as leader because they thought he was the most qualified person in the entire country.
It's a lack of political will to enforce the deal between the state and corporation (edit: and citizens). Governments grant tax cuts to corporations (edit: and citizens), even thought it hurts the very infrastructure and society that enabled corporations to extract the money from the environment.
The current taxation systems nowhere pays for all the externalities. If a company made a dollar in a country, a fair share of it should get back to the state for providing the environment that made it possible. Education, security, infrastructure.
Prices for goods just need to keep dropping, as they have already been doing to.
If they keep dropping, then our existing welfare system will handle the rest.
If the percent money that society spends in welfare state the same, and goods get cheaper and cheaper, then that means that living off welfare will eventually be a pretty sweet deal, able to provide all your wants and needs.
There are more goods than just smartphones. Arguably more important ones too.
Rent, food, energy, all the things you need to live are getting more expensive with inflation. The welfare system is lagging behind and the benefits need to be bumped a little every year or so or it gets harder and harder to live on them. Unfortunately we apparently can't always seem to afford to increase the benefits. For instance student benefits in Finland were "cut" by simply not increasing them in accordance with the index.
> The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations?
In the United States it will be the class warfare/starving thing. You don't deserve anything here unless you pay for it. Many people believe that taking unemployment compensation is shameful.
> Sculptor Fabian Brunsing brought a satirical eye to the issue by creating the “pay bench”, an art installation of a park bench that retracts its metal spikes for a limited time when the prospective sitter feeds it a coin. Chinese officials, completely missing the joke, thought that this was a great idea and installed similar benches in Yantai Park of the Shangdong province.
>You don't deserve anything here unless you pay for it.
So true. Even things like safety, cleanliness, education quality, etc. are things we must pay for here, in stark contrast to other countries in the world.
You mean made to work for insulting wages and subsistence in prison sweatshops. Prison population is a captive source of cheap labor, easily abused and exploited.
>The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations?
We already have class warfare and mass hunger (the number of people who go partially hungry despite food-stamps and food banks is atrocious, let alone the number who would starve without such programs). The current answer from the lower classes has been the revival of organized labor among Fight for 15 and other movements. It's our job in the "higher" working class, having more education and leeway to operate, to throw out economic and political force behind both the social movements of the lower classes and behind "full unemployment" measures such as universal health-care and reduced working hours.
> fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it.
and from the article
> there’s not enough work to go around
I disagree.
There's not enough paid employment to go around, but there is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done!
Our entire society needs to be weaned off its carbon dependence if we want humans to survive the next century. This will involve at the very least the wholesale transformation of our transport and energy systems, and probably construction too. We should be putting massive numbers of people to work on solving and fixing this, and there's no point leaving people unemployed while there's still work that needs to be done. Whether we can organise society in time to achieve this is the real question. Once we've fixed the environment and created a truly sustainable civilization, then we can talk about labor that is surplus.
Other work that will be in increasing demand is healthcare and elderly care (especially given the aging populations of most countries). I don't see robots replacing humans for this any time soon, and we are far from the point where we have enough health / personal care for everyone. Plenty more examples of work that's needed but not currently being done can be found with a bit of creative thought...
The constant supply solar of energy (and finite supply of mineral energy sources) also means that we won't be able to grow the economy indefinitely and need to find a way to transition to a system that thrives at equilibrium.
I'll leave that problem to my great-great-grandchildren. For now, I'm more concerned with pulling off the fossil-to-solar transition without breaking down in the process.
The rate of CO2 emission per GDP is already decreasing thanks to technological advances. There's no fundamental reason why the same couldn't happen to the ratio of energy use per GDP. So finite supply of resources is not a problem per se, and certainly won't be within our lifetimes, which is what we need to deal with.
You can't be more than 100% energy efficient, so, while there may be some headroom in that direction, there's a hard limit as well.
Edit: Also, while there seems to be a positive correlation between GDP per capita and energy efficiency, the most efficient nations in the world have a very low GDP per capita... I wonder why it is the case.
Yes, you can, practically speaking. The amount of energy needed to produce a given amount of value to humans is not fixed; it can be decreased, and in principle can be made as small as we like given sufficient advances in technology. That means the amount of value to humans that can be produced with a fixed amount of energy can increase, in principle as much as we like. That's what the parent to your post was saying.
Obviously it will be a while before we have technology advanced to the point where, say, the amount of value currently being produced per year on Earth can be produced with one tenth or one hundredth or less of the energy it currently takes. But we also have a while before we hit any hard limits of the sort you are referring to.
Given that the total of humanity produces all necessary food, consumables and other services today, it seems that humanity generates and requires an amount of work that seems to be in some sort of equilibrium right now. The rest is just a matter of distribution.
Humanity is divided, especially around wealth, and the new technologies will make the rich richer in the short to medium term, which will make the poor poorer especially now that they lose their jobs. How will we handle that situation?
> there's no point leaving people unemployed while there's still work that needs to be done
Yes, and the government can compensate for unemployment by investing in public works, at least until the automation reaches a level where UBI needs to be implemented.
I agree, and an extensive program like this might permit for a clean transition as even the make-work disappears; pay for public good work to doing whatever you want and sharing it with the world sounds like the ideal utopian outcome.
"At this point I've already come to accept that fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. "
This is not true.
Total workforce participation grew radically through the last 100 years - esp. because the introduction of women into different jobs.
Demographics aside, we have really quite high participation rates - even after 200 years of automation.
Also - because of demographic changes, we're already at a stage of declining labour force participation (since 2000), and we already retire at '60-ish' and live another 30 years not doing a whole lot, but amassing massive healthcare bills.
So - people more than ever need to be 'gainfully and productively employed' while they can, in order to offset the fact they'll be hanging out for quite long time not creating direct value.
There is a difference between a job you like, and a job you do because you believe "work sets you free" or because you believe work is a some sort of value or a necessary pain everybody has to take part in.
I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough.
I hear so many people yelling about moochers and parasites, it's becoming weird. Everybody wants everybody to behave like superman, yet nobody realizes you can't educate everyone to have enough qualified workers.
My great fear is that as time passes, more and more people decide to live like I do, and economies might change because people stop consuming.
>I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough.
Why do you think that you should have the right to live off of other people's work? Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of other people's paychecks.
What he thinks is irrelevant. The system is in place to allow people without jobs to survive. We either have to have that, or guarantee that everyone has a job - I come from a former communist republic that tried to do the later, it's not pretty. I would much rather live in a country that let's him live off welfare than in a country that tries to shove a job everyone's throat.
Yes, jobs are available, but they also get filled quickly. There's no shortage. The unemployed can out-bid each other in a "how-low-can-you-go" competition, but that just leads to working poor.
But isn't this idea that work is some kind of moral obligation to society exactly the problem if it's true that work is going to disappear? Do you think his contribution to society is zero or negative simply because he doesn't have a job? Perhaps it's just easier to measure if you have a job what your relative contribution to society is because you can place a dollar value on it.
It's also the money that subsidizes people to work the jobs that corporations don't pay enough wages to live off of (e.g. Wal-Mart 'Associates'). Everyone wants goods produced as cheaply as possible, but doesn't want to pay their producers living wages.
For example, because half of other people's work is bullshit. Or because a third of other people's work output is used to take them from home to work. Or because the amount on the paycheck is totally unrelated to the value a worker produces. Or because a quarter of other people's work is not about creating value, but about destroying it and driving all of us always faster towards a catastrophe.
In short, because most of world organised around work is nonsense. So getting a bit of money to live poorly without work is not any more nonsensical. That's a way to see it.
So why not try and fix the mismatch between the paycheck and the value produced by the worker rather than just abandoning the idea of producing any value at all? Even if someone is paid 10% of what they produce, I'd rather have them doing that for 40 hours a week than doing nothing and collecting a welfare check.
Because the people with a lot of power are actively opposed to any fix?
A huge number of people want this mismatch to be fixed, but are wise enough to know they have zero ability to do anything about it.
We're in the midst of discovering just how useless "consciousness raising" slacktivist campaigns are, and that was basically the last hope for being able to contribute to a solution for a lot of people.
study: "I" would rather have "them" ... in discussions like this we must exchange perspectives with all citizens. From the highest to the lowest. Even to the lowliest we must see that their fundamental needs are the same.
Because he is no longer living on the back of other people. He is living on the back of robots and machinery.
Hating him for once personal live style choices (aka salary-man) in a world that that discards those daily by the dozen- seems- slightly envious?
So right now it comes from other people's paycheck but does it have to? Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending?
Inflation is not the problem it used to be and I actually think it's a much better measure of the economy's capacity than unemployment. Would inflation of 4% be that bad for the public and financial system anyways?
In the US at least I strongly oppose tax-based welfare because I percieve it as a rigged system where the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share through loop holes and classifying their income differently than mine. But inflation in a sense is unavoidable and progressive since the more money you have the more you lose to inflation if you don't invest it. This is especially true if the cause of inflation is labor scarcity and not some other key resource like oil.
>Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending?
Printing money is equivalent to a tax on all US dollar holdings. The value of the printed money is subtracted from everyone else's holdings by inflation. Doing this excessively, e.g. to fund the entire public sector, would cause an inflationary spiral, as everyone tries to get rid of their rapidly-devaluing dollars as quickly as possible.
The rich are even more capable of evading inflation than they are evading taxes. I'm sure Warren Buffet has proportionally less of his money in cash than I do.
I don't understand you try to characterize money printing with runsway inflation. For one I am
Not arguing for unlimited money printing I am talking more about QE style money printing. You don't continue pumping money into the economy if it's already at full capacity and you have reached your inflation target. In fact the United States has printed trillions of dollars through QE but what we experience right now is a very far from runaway inflation. What I am saying is perhaps we need higher inflation to get full employment. I also don't think a 4% target is exactly Venezuela levels of inflation.
Printing money out of thin air also robs the productive part of the society out of their assets. A higher inflation without an actual increase in productivity (and thus investment returns) will reduce the value of everyone's assets. This sort of "Robin Hood" schemes have been executed by some populist governments, but I don't know of any which worked out well.
The only fundamental difference is taxing income to pay for welfare vs. taxing wealth.
So the point in an economy with underutilized resources money printing does not necessarily translate money printing to inflation directly. More importantly, the US has carried out a huge money printing scheme: QE. The federal reserve bought a couple trillion of US debt de facto reducing the amount of outstanding debt. What I am arguing for is QE with a higher tolerance for inflation.
> not print money to cover their spending? [...] Would inflation of 4% be that bad
Inflation is a tax on currency holdings. So if a person has $10,000 and inflation is 4%, they are effectively paying a $400 tax on it –– because the -4% loss of value is transferred to the one causing the inflation, i.e. the printer of money, which is the government. The people would just divest their US dollar holdings, and switch to investments with better capital preservation, and ROI.
> a rigged system where the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share [...] But inflation in a sense is unavoidable and progressive
Most people with non-trivial savings invest their money. People who have a basic level of understanding of how to manage their finances understand that cash in a bad investment. The US dollar has an effective "investment yield" of -2%. The best interest rates you can get in the US, don't exceed 2%. If I lock up my money in a 5-year CD (certificate of deposit), I get close to 0% returns. Why would I ever settle for 0% returns on such a terrible illiquid investments?
Most sensible people will invest any cash (USD/etc) they have, and will aim to maximize their investment returns, concordant with their investment goals. Most of the wealth in the world (held by people with lots of savings, and by companies/institutions) is in the form of stock/shares and bonds. Currency is just a medium for transmission/exchange of money. Most of the wealth in the world is held in stocks, bonds, and property, and not in currency.
> the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share through loop holes and classifying their income differently than mine
The solution to that is simply going back to classifying capital gains[1], dividends[2], and carried interest[3] as regular taxable income. The current regular federal income tax system[4] is very progressive and effective. Getting rid of that would be the wrong thing to do, FICA taxes are a bit regressive, but that can also be easily fixed by eliminating the Social Security wage base[5].
So I understand that the real solution is to fix the tax system but I doubt that is politically realistic.
I think you are also assuming that returns on all investments would stay the same under increased inflation which I seriously doubt.
More importantly I understand that wealthy people have a smaller portion of their wealth in cash than poor people what I am arguing for is that perhaps inflation is at most no worse than our current taxation scheme.
> Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to cover their spending?
The US is doing exactly that, and has been for decades. Since the 2008 debacle it has being doing even more of it.
> inflation in a sense is unavoidable
If you mean politically unavoidable, I agree; no government in human history has been able to avoid messing with the currency.
If you mean unavoidable period, I'm not sure why it would be. There is nothing in principle impossible about having a currency that cannot be inflated.
What do you mean by decades? The US has been borrowing money but that hardly translates to printing it. I can definitely see how quantitative easing essentially translates to printing a couple of trillion to buy outstanding debt but that has already stopped.
By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it. Especially if you are holding assets that are appreciating at a slower rate than inflation. Essentially I don't think the wealthy get to loophole or lawyer their way out of inflation the same way they can with taxes.
I meant labor scarcity not in the exonomic sense but in the sense of literally running out of people to allocate. I think it's clear that if businesses have to compete for a dwindling pool of workers prices will inevitably rise.
The US money supply has been increasing fairly steadily since WW II.
> The US has been borrowing money but that hardly translates to printing it.
The US has indeed been borrowing money. But it has also been printing it.
> I can definitely see how quantitative easing essentially translates to printing a couple of trillion to buy outstanding debt but that has already stopped.
QE is just the latest round of printing money. (More precisely three rounds, since there was QE1, QE2, and QE3.)
> By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it.
Only if the supply of currency increases. Why is that unavoidable?
> I meant labor scarcity not in the exonomic sense but in the sense of literally running out of people to allocate. I think it's clear that if businesses have to compete for a dwindling pool of workers prices will inevitably rise.
No, it's not clear at all. What is clear is that the price of labor (wages and salaries) will increase relative to the price of capital (e.g., interest rates). But that does not mean price levels in general will rise. That depends on how well businesses can substitute capital for labor. In the age of automation, that is usually "pretty well".
I can think of all the bullshit jobs people do and then come to the conclusion that it'd be better for me to do what I can to contribute to society through research, participation in free software projects, volunteering, etc.
Doing that I could be useful to thousands, maybe even millions of people. As opposed to, say, wasting the time of hundreds of people trying to sell them stupid magazines they don't need or want while leeching money off of the poor grandma who doesn't know how to say no.
Alternatively, I could spend the time to build something that somewhere down the line could become a useful product to share with the world, or a profitable business that could pay back all the tax money I used up (and more).
Doing a bullshit job 8 hours a day leaves me too exhausted to do anything particularly useful with the little free time I have.
Most jobs are honest and do people a service, you don't even need to look hard or anything.
If you want impact, and can write software, there's plenty of well-paid jobs for that in the US; Silicon Valley and elsewhere. That not only lets you contribute taxes instead of living off them, it also helps you be more productive, focused, and impactful.
Is teaching a bullshit job? Installing solar panels in people's roofs? Doing the accounting that keeps a hospital working? Cooking or waiting in a small restaurant where the firemen next door have lunch?
Interesting. Honest question, do you believe in anything other than laws as a guide for life? I suspect you do, but I don't want to assume so, given your comment. I find "if it's legal, it's okay" problematic given that laws change. If laws can change, what drives that change if not some code the laws are meant to approach?
Do you not believe in morals at all, or do you just not believe in universal morals? What about ethics?
I ask because your position takes on very different implications depending on exactly what you believe. In my experience, most people who say they don't believe in morals actually seem to believe very strongly in them; they just don't believe that the morals of the majority should be imposed on others who don't share the same values. I don't necessarily want to assume that's your position, though.
You don't believe morality exists, or is that a fancy way of saying "I don't have morals?" Because the welfare and healthcare system you are looking forward to live off exists only because of morals.
I don't think they exist because of morals. If you want a country that is thriving, lower classes should have a good living standard. The lower class is the basis of any country. Even if you have very smart people at the top, they can't do a lot if the people under them can't count or have poor health.
I believe that if you set a good minimum standard, it will trickle up.
Also if you don't want riots in the streets, you should make sure the lower classes are living decently.
That's not morals, that political intelligence. Crowds with empty stomachs are a political nightmare.
Universal free healthcare exists in Europe and not in the US, and I don't see any riots caused by it. Riots were not the reason it was established in Europe either. Same with education.
You can argue that it's economically beneficial for the higher classes in Europe, or convenient for the politicians. But even if it's the case (which is anything but obvious), that doesn't change the historical origin of those policies.
I see a lot of drug related prison sentence, and riots do happen in the US in some neighborhood, and it makes the news. Not to mention the gun violence and recent prison riots.
What I was saying is that if you want peaceful streets, you have to care for the poor, if not things will get messy. To me things are not really peaceful in the ghettos. High welfare helps "taming" the problems poverty creates.
Not sure what are you trying to say with the drug fact. Or how riots in a prison would imply the welfare state doesn't derive from morality: In a prison you don't have to work, nor pay for your healthcare. So if anything it shows the opposite of your point.
As a side note, recently there's been a drive to not normalize fascist slogans or ideas in mainstream politics. Among those, "arbeit macht frei" is a particularly offensive one, since it was written on the gates of Auschwitz.
Just saying. When someone quotes this kind of phrase to us, we should remind them where they got it from and refuse to treat it as normal.
>I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough.
Good for you!
>I hear so many people yelling about moochers and parasites, it's becoming weird. Everybody wants everybody to behave like superman, yet nobody realizes you can't educate everyone to have enough qualified workers.
I don't think people want to acknowledge how much social capital goes into enabling us "supermen" who actually do work for high incomes. If all the roads get cracked and the trains break down, I'm going to be a less productive worker because I have a harder time getting to work.
Although the "Just saying" part (from the GP) irritates me. You're not "just saying," because if you were there would be no need to explain that to us. It's little more than an underscoring of the passive-aggressive intent of a statement.
No; they're a set of ideas and connotations existing in a historical and cultural context. What distinguishes words from mere sequences of letters is meaning.
What's wrong with taking the opportunity while it lasts? You can't really think of problems like that, it doesn't lead you anywhere. If there is a hole to exploit the system, it will get exploited. No matter by who.
Depending on where you are in the world living solely off benefits isn't very appealing to most. Much more likely that most will be forced into it rather than choosing it.
> there’s not enough work to go around, and what there is of it won’t pay the bills – unless of course you’ve landed a job as a drug dealer or a Wall Street banker, becoming a gangster either way.
This kind of lazy discourse from someone who has authored a whole book on the topic under discussion is remarkable.
The things he lists to justify calling Wall Street that are real, however:
"
When I see, for example, that you’re making millions by laundering drug-cartel money (HSBC), or pushing bad paper on mutual fund managers (AIG, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, Citibank), or preying on low-income borrowers (Bank of America), or buying votes in Congress (all of the above) – just business as usual on Wall Street – while I’m barely making ends meet
"
So I wouldn't call it lazy when he flat out listed what they are doing to get put in that gangster category.
Maybe because they made their money playing with imaginary numbers and caused huge amounts of harm to the economy and lots of people when it all blew up in their face?
In theory you could can alter your diet and exercise regimen (not easy but doable). Good luck getting a pension fund or a mortgage not affected by the stock markets these guys blew up.
I'd say that it's disappointing, but not remarkable. Getting a book published doesn't mean nearly as much as it used to; publishers have much lower up-front costs, so they don't need to be as selective in who and what they publish.
That quote might feel right, because first world people deal with first world problems. However, the vast number of Syrian refugees make that quote somewhat inapplicable to the current day.
"These days, everybody from Left to Right – from the economist Dean Baker to the social scientist Arthur C Brooks, from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump – addresses this breakdown of the labour market by advocating ‘full employment’, as if having a job is self-evidently a good thing, no matter how dangerous, demanding or demeaning it is. "
And, when you experiment with a job guarantee program and turn it into a basic income scheme you can see why:
The increasing “feminization” of the program (caused in part by economic recovery that pulled most men out of the program and into the private sector) proved to be a political problem. Government officials adopted the attitude that the program was providing jobs to “economically inactive” women who should be at home instead of working. I won’t go into the details (in part because I am not sufficiently familiar with them) but officials created an alternative scheme by which the remaining men would be moved into an unemployment program and the women would be moved into welfare. These moves were voluntary, but higher pay in either unemployment or welfare was the attraction that helped to gut the Jefes program. One of my PhD students continued to study participants as the program was reduced—and found that women would rationally take the higher pay in welfare but continue to work in their jobs (without pay) because they found substantial benefits in the social networks they had created through work. They also wanted to contribute to their communities.
Somehow I doubt this story has permeated James Livingston's Brooklyn bubble though.
That's the biggest problem I see as well with reaching a post-labour future. Every single political party across the entire spectrum has full employment as their stated goal. Some experiment with basic income, but it's still just seen as a different way of doing welfare, and it's always assumed that the majority of government taxation will come from other people's labour. People just cannot wrap their heads around a future where taxation is based on productivity, not human labour, and where labour is optional.
>That's the biggest problem I see as well with reaching a post-labour future. Every single political party across the entire spectrum has full employment as their stated goal.
Yes, because the boring truth is that because people want jobs and we need them to do stuff.
The only reason we really have a "reserve army of the unemployed" is as an inefficient way of enforcing "labor market discipline" for private companies. That's why they lobby for austerity, etc.
No, full employment alone won't solve the problems of inequality that the essay very capably outlines.
But full employment may be necessary anyway, because having the sense of being needed and being useful may be an important factor to many people's well-being. Full employment is really just another way of saying that everyone can get this sense of being needed/useful via employment.
Maybe, but it doesn't need to be useless labor. In the town I grew up in we had automated trash collection for a few years. The town eventually voted to get rid of the automated trash collectors because of jobs.
Seriously. People that did those jobs HATED their jobs. Now a group of people have a job again that they hate. Surely we can find something that fulfills their desire to be helpful without a completely unnecessary and unfulfilling job.
There was still a driver, but all the bins and cans were ID tagged and had weight sensors installed. This was earlier technology (a lot of cities have similar things now), but it was basically a locking hydraulic lift that coupled with an interface on the cans. That picked the cans up over the truck and inverted them. So it just dumped things into the truck.
So there were no workers, just a driver.
Because of the jobs issue, they went back to having two men that pick up the cans by hand. But because everyone had the new cans with all the extra hardware now the work was harder. It was the worst of both worlds until they issued everyone new regular trash cans a few years later.
Imagine if your town took the savings from the automated trash collection and just gave them directly to the people who had to do those jobs manually. It costs the town exactly the same amount of money, and frees up those people to do whatever they want with their time. Instead, they made the system more inefficient on purpose, so that people had to perform an unnecessary manual task in order to get money.
People have a hard time getting over the concept that "purpose in life" must be given by an authority figure rather than being inherent in the way we're built as social and moral organisms.
That's a social construct that requires social reconditioning. Indeed, if everyone around me was pursuing their own interests free of concern, I might cast aspersions away from them and toward my own lot, asking what the hell I was doing wasting my life away in a crummy job when I just want to work on cars all day.
It's going to take probably 100 years to get there, but frankly we have no choice. It's either get with the program or buy into some form of population control.
Your response is kind of frustrating because I feel we're on the same side of this, but you're just not getting it. It's like you have a knee-jerk reaction about what a job is, and there's a blindspot where you don't envision what it could be.
When a plumber gets satisfaction from a good day's work of fixing piping in people's houses, do they get their purpose in life / sense of being needed and useful (note: not the same thing!) from an authority figure? Hell no, unless you think clients are authority figures.
But they are getting this sense from their work.
Heck, even in standard office jobs, I doubt that too many people get their sense of being needed and useful from their bosses or other authority figures (if they get it at all - you don't have to tell me about bullshit jobs). They get this sense from coworkers, clients, or other aspects of the work itself. That's certainly my personal experience. We're social beings, not obedient worker drones.
And I don't know how to put that in a way that gets the point across, but I think a lot of techy types are actually quite arrogant and selfish when they dismiss full employment and think that a UBI would solve all problems.
I get it, most of us would happily work on random open source projects or whatever if we had sufficient UBI, and a lot of that work would be useful to many people. But we should be aware of how rare that is and how lucky that makes us.
Most people don't have that drive or that opportunity, but would still benefit from a social framework in which they are nudged towards doing useful things that they can take pride in and get rewards for (both monetary and psychological). It's like going to the gym: most people don't have the drive, but would ultimately benefit from the offer and a bit of nudging.
Full employment can offer such a social framework (if done right, of course), while a UBI can't (no matter how it is implemented). Who are you to deny this to other people just because they're different from you?
>When a plumber gets satisfaction from a good day's work of fixing piping in people's houses, do they get their purpose in life / sense of being needed and useful (note: not the same thing!) from an authority figure? Hell no, unless you think clients are authority figures.
>But they are getting this sense from their work.
I guess I wouldn't say that self-employed professionals have a job. I think of it as a self-employed versus wage-labor distinction.
>Full employment can offer such a social framework (if done right, of course), while a UBI can't (no matter how it is implemented). Who are you to deny this to other people just because they're different from you?
This is, of course, where we actually disagree. I think that while a UBI is by no means a perfect solution to human worth or psychological needs, it's a much better solution than "full" employment to people's material needs, while many many alternatives remain besides employment for the psychological needs. It's a continuous tradeoff made under uncertainty, and we should talk about where we believe the tradeoffs are.
That's a bit of a cop-out, isn't it, because you're only talking about psychological needs which are inextricably linked with material needs, and there was never any argument about the fact that UBI does solve those.
If that's really the best you can come up with, I think it's safe to say that UBI doesn't offer any solutions for human worth or psychological needs. (I also partially get it; solving material needs is easy compared to psychology.)
And it's funny, I never see UBI supporters propose actual solutions for those. It's always just hand-waving, like they are prepared to give lip-service to the issue, but they're not really interested in solving it. It's self-serving politics by an elite who already has all the frameworks for solving their own psychological needs, as long as the material ones are satisfied. At least you have to give the full employment/Job Guarantee folks credit for actually trying to come up with something.
For what it's worth, it's not like those things are in conflict anyway. UBI and full employment are complementary policies, they don't contradict each other.
>And it's funny, I never see UBI supporters propose actual solutions for those. It's always just hand-waving, like they are prepared to give lip-service to the issue, but they're not really interested in solving it. It's self-serving politics by an elite who already has all the frameworks for solving their own psychological needs, as long as the material ones are satisfied. At least you have to give the full employment/Job Guarantee folks credit for actually trying to come up with something.
I guess I don't give so much credit because I'm a weirdo who doesn't get a lot of his psychological self-worth from his work. Yes, work can be interesting and engaging sometimes. So can any number of other things in my life, none of which pay me wages.
I also don't think that assembly-line jobs ever actually provided for people's psychological needs. That's part of why the '60s and '70s had so much wildcat worker militancy: people found that while they were glad to have their material needs met, they had absolute psychological needs beyond what their jobs could ever meet. So to turn it around: I think that "jobs for everyone" is likewise the self-serving politics of an elite who already gain far more life-satisfaction from their professional work than the masses ever will from manufacturing or services.
>For what it's worth, it's not like those things are in conflict anyway. UBI and full employment are complementary policies, they don't contradict each other.
> having the sense of being needed and being useful
Often, it can be the opposite. Many people would describe their daily tasks as useless or marginally useful for humanity, while finding meaning in unpaid volunteering.
There will always be work maybe not paid work, but there's always work to do. A lot of "work" will be automated by robots, and even if we get AI and don't have to "work" ourself, we will still invent work, but we will not work because we need to, we will work because we want to.
No physical system is uniformly distributed, and dynamical systems ensure that it will stay that way, therefore enough differences are baked into the system that it's effectively impossible have equally functional systems everywhere.
Some people can just lift more stuff than others, or think about numbers faster or whatever happens to need to be done and their labor is more valuable because it's more efficient. Therefore inequality.
Clearly their ability to lift is not why there are millions without clean drinking water, for example.
You are right that there are difference built-in to humanity, but we have already overcome those with fairly common technology already. Now inequality is more about who your parents were instead of where you are born or other purely physical problems.
We can ship drinking water to anyplace on the planet. We just aren't incentivized to do so. The person leading a team building the roads that will support that effort could be a wheelchair bound parapalegic.
Our systems don't need to be perfect they just need to be better than they are now.
Our systems don't need to be perfect they just need to be better than they are now.
You make a great point here, and one I hope you continue to push for. Statements like Why must inequality be forever? will obscure this point as it doesn't include the nuance of "not perfect, just better". You will always find people who will argue that "Why must inequality be forever" is naïve at best, needlessly preventing you from finding solutions you might agree on.
That doesn't really account for the degree of inequality. Innate differences between human beings are the same in Sweden as they are in the USA, and yet Sweden has the lowest degree of inequality in the world (approximately), while the USA's numbers get listed alongside African dictatorships. The Swedes have just chosen to regularize away factors like family wealth or differences between school districts which create inequality but don't contribute to society positively in exchange. Americans are treating that statistical noise as meaningful information about "who deserves what" and conditioning on it.
The result is that Americans are just broadly doing worse, because our social system is irrational.
Suppose you give everybody the same universal revenue (let us postulate everybody has the same rights).
The issue at stake, is that unless you also engineer them to be similar in every aspect (looks, intelligence, physical capability), there will be differences, and those differences will enable a new hierarchy, with people who have more, and others who have less, thus recreating a unequal base situation.
You don't get to solve the problem by making every human's base situation identical, you solve it by making the inequality device and the means to use it available to everybody.
All basic income does is define a minimum possible level of income. And, for economic purposes it really doesn't matter whether you measure income in goods or currency (economic sustainability remains the same either way).
So what you're really saying is that it's not possible to guarantee any minimum level of living at all, at least not in a way that's economically sustainable. Conversely this would imply that a functioning economy requires some people to fail to reach any standard of living whatsoever (basically they die from lack of food, housing, medical care, etc.).
So sure, any level of basic income might be economically unsustainable, but if so then a functioning economy seems rather overrated.
Forget the word "job" and instead use the word "value" to understand just how silly this idea is.
What he's saying is that no one needs to do anything of value anymore. You know, like the guy who built the house you live in, chopped down the trees it was built with, managed the project to build it, inspected the building to make sure it was put together correctly, etc...
Hundreds of people had jobs to make the shelter you value. They want something in exchange for that value. These pseudo intellectuals can't seem to understand this basic underpinning of civilization.
The exchange of value is as old as time and nothing is going to change that for a long time.
They're trying to develop a rationale for the managed decline. They desperately want this to make sense because stopping everything is a necessary condition of addressing the anxieties they dwell on; primarily their worries about the environment.
Meanwhile, actual citizens have moved on; right or wrong they've empowered people that they think can make more "jerbs," so the ladder removal operation is on hold for the time being.
Perhaps if you read the article without the intent to argue everything written because it contradicts your ideology?
> What he's saying is that no one needs to do anything of value anymore.
Can you point to the particular sentence where this is stated? Didn't think so.
The article I read said that the majority of jobs aren't paid at a level appropriate to their value, and that without the (rather limited US) welfare programs to support them, the bulk of employees would be below the poverty line, and with the impending automation of almost 50% of available jobs it'll be those bottom-line jobs that go.
The article then tells us that we'll need to redefine our attitudes to both income and work, but nowhere can I find the statement that "no one needs to do anything of value anymore." It tells us that almost half of the population already don't do anything of sufficient value, and many of those jobs are going to go away.
"In short, it lets us say: enough already. Fuck work."
I feel like that's pretty clear.
You're right though, it does contradict my "ideology". I'm willing to be enlightened though but there were no rational arguments in this article to sway me.
I think to many people on HN, houses might have no value. It's practically impossible to build any in California, since the existing residents do all they can to ban any new ones.
Maybe use office buildings or food delivery startups for your examples.
Today most people work for companies they don't own. In the future, the unemployed will become self employed and work directly to support themselves. Some have land, and can cultivate food. Others can make furniture, or give medical consultations, or teach children. Even owning a small solar farm could be a source of income.
All of them were formerly professionals, now jobless and moneyless. So they have to work directly for themselves and barter products and services. It will evolve into a bazaar of companies and professionals, offering products and services to each other, maybe even with its own currency.
We might not have money but we have work power and are not stupid, and are motivated to find a solution. If nobody will hire you or give you free stuff, what are you going to do? You got to work for yourself, like it's always been since there are people on this planet. But this time, after you earn some money, you can buy your own robot, or get your friends with a small fab to make one for you.
So, coming automation, people will migrate from employment into self employment. By relying on each other, maybe with some help from the government as well, people can make it.
Rule #1 : Anything that can be economically automated will be.
Corollary: Anything that is automated is not economically sensible for a human to do.
- Freelancing and consulting gigs have huge overhead.
- Uber drivers (for now) own the car but don't make most of the money. And they will be made redundant by self driving cars.
- Medical services have the most overhead and require years of expensive training.
- Making artisanal furniture might feed one or two person per town, but that's no way to feed a family.
- Farming is also getting automated in vertical greenhouses.
If you have health problem, or cannot make something with your hands or your brain _that people are willing to exchange enough money for_, should you be left out to die?
> Anything that can be economically automated will be.
Yes, but when you can't pay the wonderful automated hospital its fees, you hire the local unemployed doctor (replaced by an automatic diagnostic system) and in lieu of payment, you go and fix his roof.
My point is that there are going to be lots of unemployed people and they are going to work for themselves because they need to survive, because they got no money or jobs. Automation will make it cheaper for corporations to manufacture things, but people are not going to buy their products because they don't have hard money. They only have barter money. And companies don't take that as payment.
The alternative, UBI, requires that companies realize they actually want UBI. UBI would be like a pot of gold they can sink their hands into. People would buy shit and they would make profits. Of course, UBI comes out of their pockets, but hopefully they make more profit than the competition and win. Also, hopefully, with automation there is enough increase in productivity to cover UBI and some profits for the industries. If UBI doesn't come, they are busted. Rich people can't satiate economy's demand for customers. They can only eat so much food, and sleep on so much bed, and use so much car. The larger the UBI, the more money on the table each year.
But for people it's going to be great to become more self reliant, even acquire automation and support themselves by directly benefiting. Automation is going to become much cheaper and an open-source community of makers is going to appear. We won't need to buy much except generic computers and raw materials. Or the government will subsidize buying commercial automation for self reliance, as a cheaper alternative to UBI. Automated farms, 3d printers and solar panels are going to empower people.
The trouble with all that is that we don't think about an alternative to "corporation extract the maximum economic value they can" (a.k.a profit).
One hope is that with sufficient automation and competition, the marginal cost on providing a diagnostic or other services might fall to close enough to 0 to be free. The value provided to society would be very high. The profits might be astronomical?
I agree that UBI or something like it is a necessity, but I'd rather live in a Star Trek "all needs provided for without currency exchange or social stigma" society rather than 5 trillionnaire families and 9 billions peoples surviving/mooching on UBI.
Increased automation has a high chance to be very expensive, in the "printer cartridge" kind of way. Cheap "robot". Expensive maintenance and consumables.
I wish you're right, and that corporations will not go full "Bacigalupi" and patent everything from the plant we are allowed to grow to the brand of electrons we're allowed to put in our robots.
If you believe that anyone, including business, is always seeking the lowest cost, then you've never worked in a company that blows its money on useless shit - starting with executives and ending with subcontracting at ridiculously expensive rates just so that there's no employee cost on the books.
But what of the risk to your mental health if you end up realizing that how much money you make isn't measuring how much value you provide to society?
Or that, there are inherent contradictions in capitalism and therefore people have lied to you. The system is more complex and less rational than you thought. That would mean that we aren't in Fukuyama's post-ideological, end-of-history era!
Sounds terrifying, maybe it is better to avoid becoming an educated adult.
This should be aimed at me just as much then. My comment was more snide if anything.
Also, I disagree, irony has its place and one of them is to poke fun at commonly held but profoundly mistaken beliefs that result in widespread suffering. Even if that has a high chance of offending people who don't like smart ass comments chipping away at the pedestal holding up their privilege.
I'm sure you meant well, and I'm not attack you. I have noticed that often cutting jokes are considered acceptable here only when they align with certain political beliefs, and I feel it's eminently constructive to politely push back on that, so please take this as my intent.
Agreed. Though to be honest the political alignment doesn't matter to me so much. I see so much acrimony on both sides which I've tried to push back against in general. I'm sure I unconsciously push back on one side more than another, but I have tried to be even handed and civil (as you have, and I thank you for that) when I do so.
I very much disagree that they do nothing to promote constructive discussion. They put a fine point on the absurdities of the position mocked -- hardly unconstructive.
We're there already. There are vast numbers of people who cannot make an economic contribution large enough to cover their costs.
Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as many computers as needed doing it. The US has already hit "peak school" in terms of economic benefit. About half of college graduates take jobs that don't really require a college education. Trade schools do even worse.
The classic solutions are lots of poor people in slums and dying towns, and ethnic cleansing.
>About half of college graduates take jobs that don't really require a college education. Trade schools do even worse.
Do you have a source for this statistic? Because there are some important questions about such a study that might clarify the true meaning of such a number.
1.) How many of the graduates employed in "jobs that don't really require a college education" move on to a job that does, how long does it take them to do so? What does that look like vs. a person without a college education?
2.) What is defined as a "job that doesn't really require a college education"? Does it mean the employer did not require a college education to apply? Does it mean that the surveyor has decided the job(s) in question don't require a college education, even though the employers filter out applicants who lack one?
3.) What is the definition of a college education? As of 2014, only ~32% of people over the age of 25 have a bachelor's degree [0]. Are you comparing anyone who ever went to college with everyone who didn't?
Most notably, the number comes from self-reporting. So this could range from "barista" to "sales" to "software engineer".
I'm not particularly surprised when someone's first job out of college doesn't make use of their education. But there's a huge difference between a business major going into sales to learn an industry (or a code monkey stuck on a boring project they could've worked on in high school), and an English major becoming a taxi driver.
In short, from the data, it's impossible to distinguish between "putting in your time" or "bad first assignment", and "actually under-utilized".
* This doesn't generalize well to STEM graduates, where the numbers are closer to 75%.
IMO the GP's assessment that we've reached "peak school" is absolutely incorrect. Rather, we've seen a big shift in the type of labor that's needed in a short time frame. If a freshly minted college grad can fetch $100,000+ and great benefits, then "peak school" isn't a real problem yet.
'Opening a restaurant' does not require a Uni education, but I'd rather the person be smarter, more educated, understand aesthetics, customers, finance etc. - and be college educated.
You don't need 'high school education' to do a lot of construction work, but I'd rather hire high school graduates.
There's a lot of intelligence that goes into many of these kinds of jobs. As people are smarter, the quality of the output goes up.
Do the schools cause the intelligence, or does achievement just measure it? Cause if level of schooling acts more like a measure of certain aptitudes, with the actual information learned being largely useless, then we still are faced with the problem of some people being increasingly unemployable.
You could argue then that only few need to go past grade 4 :).
I think that Uni develops character, opens horizons, builds esteem and competence in some areas, helps people organize their ideas, 'think bigger' , expose them to all sorts of ideas and disciplines they may have never heard of.
People are sometimes smug about 'MBAs'. I was an Eng. - and never took an Econ course in my life. My MBA was mind-altering (granted I also did it overseas and that provided some other kind of exposure).
Uni is usually worth it if the kids try to get something out of it.
"Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as many computers as needed doing it. "
This is pragmatically not true.
There are tons and tons of jobs that can't be done by computers.
The 'entertainment sector' was not even a part of the economy 100 years ago. Now it's a big chunk.
Think of how big sports are. That was all 'unpaid amateur' stuff before.
It's worth examining how much we ought to work and not, but we also should understand there will always be work to do.
Also - the industrial revolution had a far greater direct impact upon 'labour' than the computing revolution.
'Machines' could do the work of thousands of men - and the economic translation was direct - not 'soft' as we have with computers.
And yet what happened? Consumer surpluses found their way into the economy, and 'people did other stuff'.
Paradoxically - through the entire history of 'automation' unskilled labour has been getting more expensive, not less.
The whole "computers can do anything" theme in the original post and the comments is borderline retarded and describing a mythical state always one or two decades in the future.
Teaching a computer to do anything is fucking HARD. And most of the time the problems are just unsolvable.
Sure you see cool demos like one that can cook for you. That shit is awesome. So uhhh... where are they? They're demos and proofs of concept, so expensive, require maintenance and programmers (gasp!). Don't except to see real ones mass produced and taking over for a good 30-40-50 years.
We can do a lot with computers and automation but IMHO every article that starts with, "If you don't agree then you're an idiot" is immediately sitting on a faulty foundation.
Whenever anyone talks about 'the singularity' (i.e. computer consciousness) I usually respond with "get your bot to make me a goddam ham sandwich and clean my toilet!" - then we can talk!
Of course a robot could do those things. Those are very easy things to do. The problem is, you wouldn't want to pay thousands of dollars for a robot to make you a sandwich or clean your toilet because those are things you can easily do yourself for free. And there's no economy of scale to offset the cost, because it's just doing it for only you.
How about "get your bot to build my microprocessors" or "get your bot to route my package through a warehouse" or "get your bot to weld a car"? There you can get robots to do amazing things, and they can cost whatever the company wants to charge because those robots are making money. If a robot can build a modern CPU, it could clean your toilet. That's not the problem.
Even still, there are household robots that are fairly common. I've got one running upstairs right now. It's called a Roomba.
Making a sandwich or cleaning a toilet is certainly not an easy thing to do. Getting a robot that can understand a scene, any scene and plan motions within it has been very difficult to do. Far more difficult than playing Go at a superhuman level for example. This is known by various names, with one common being the Moravec Paradox. The problem of energy storage further multiplies this difficulty.
I think we're getting confused on the definition of how the robot accomplishes its task. To clean a toilet like a human would, yeah that's difficult. To clean a toilet like a robot would, it's not. A toilet cleaning robot would have a spinning brush like a drill and would circle the bowl of the toilet a couple of times. Really, really easy thing to do. If a Roomba can clean my entire house, not fall down the stairs, and find its way back to its dock by itself, you can put it on stilts and attach a spinning brush to the bottom and let it find the toilet.
Likewise for a sandwich, if the meat and cheese and bread are all in robot-compatible forms, it's just layering them together. Not much more complicated than a printer that can pull from multiple paper trays. You can even combine the two for maximum efficiency.
What's hard is making a robot behave like a human, because even humans struggle at behaving like a human. IMO there's no purpose to making a robot have the same physical constraints as a human. Our bodies are pretty shitty when you think about it. Robots can be much more elegant.
If you don't think there are sandwich-making robots that actually exist, I'd wonder how you think gas station ham sandwiches are made. Hint: it's a conveyor belt that drops bread, then cheese, then ham, then more bread. That's a robot that makes sandwiches. I'd sell you one for $1m, but you'd probably say "I can make my own for free, thank you!"
> A toilet cleaning robot would have a spinning brush like a drill and would circle the bowl of the toilet a couple of times.
But that robot can't refill its consumables, it can't mop up the floor, and it can't deal with the mess after your semi-demented grandpa missed half the bowl. This solution is useful for a large rest stop with a dozen toilettes and thousands of customers per day (and employees that do the above tasks), and utterly useless for your own home.
> IMO there's no purpose to making a robot have the same physical constraints as a human. Our bodies are pretty shitty when you think about it. Robots can be much more elegant.
Our bodies have a huge advantage: they are incredibly flexible, and surprisingly strong for their dexterity. No robot we have ever built even comes close. You can have lots of robots in your home (Roomba, toilet bowl cleaner, dish washer, sandwich maker, a kitchen machine, uuh, is there anything else you can automate?) and you'll still need a human doing a lot of work. Or you can have a single human working half-time in your home, and you don't need a single robot. Give me a robot that can do 90% of all household chores, and I'm sold.
Wasn't the original discussion about robots replacing human labor? A single human can do those things.
I think it's another discussion whether we can make robots who each do one thing well. Roomba, etc.
Besides the space constraints with multiple robots, I think it's clear there are significant advantages in having just 1 entity that can perform all the required cleaning tasks. Much like single-purpose hardware has given way (mostly) to software, except in areas with interesting requirements (GPu etc.)
The comment which originated this subthread was about telling a bot to get a sandwich and clean the toilet. This implies a single bot and the verbiage implies an agent with strong autonomy.
The disadvantage of the specialized machines you speak of is their limited to no adaptability, inflexibility to novel situations and obsolescence upon changing environments. There's need for actually smart appliances (which is what the kind of robots you spoke would be) but they'd be best suited to easily circumscribable tasks. Not what many have in mind when they think robots.
I agree with the idea that we are 20 years away from a walking talking robot. One that could find the fridge, figure out which mayo is the good one, and which mayo has gone bad. The get the right ham, not the crap the kids like, and find the knives. Where are all the knives? And then put the stuff away, so nobody complains later....
I own 2 welding robots.(Miller-Panasonic Prefab Welding Cell) They are time consuming to program, and you do have to 'touch up' the program all the time. They are both 7 axis machines, with the capability of running another 13 axis each. The complexity of a setup is much much higher than a self driving car, which has go/stop/left/right as possible inputs. A self drive car is only 2 axis of movement.
In order to deal with 900 types of sandwiches in another factory, humans are used, not machines . http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sandwich-factory-worker... . They don't do it because they like paying humans. It is too complex to handle the high mix of products (900 sandwich types) for automation.
Are you saying that everything in the food industry is done by humans? Watch an episode of Unwrapped on Food Network and you'll see that everything you've just said is false. Robots make a lot more of your food than you might think.
Again, they just don't do it in a "human" way. They do it like robots do it. Driving a car is infinitely harder because you have to do it the human way.
Again, you're thinking of making an android: something that resembles a human and has fingers and hands and would spread butter with a knife. That's a far cry from "a robot that makes a sandwich". Those have existed for longer than the Internet has.
That would be Item #130001 from Integrated Food Services.[1] "Today IFS and their affiliates own and operate a state-of-the-art facility which includes two USDA processing plants, a wholesale bakery and a dry warehouse which total over 100,000 square feet on five acres. We are located in the greater Los Angeles area, almost equidistant from downtown, LAX and the Port of Los Angeles." Most of the prepackaged sandwiches in Southern California come from those plants. Here's an automated sandwich assembly line.[2]
Interesting point, I hadn't realized there were manufacturing/assembly lines for food. Makes sense.
Do you think it's likely we'll see robots making high quality goods like this, or will they always be commoditized and (my opinion) fully disgusting?
Robots clearly do well with mechanical items like cars. There doesn't seem to be any immediate reasons they can't make an artisan sandwich. Maybe it's a limitation of ingredient spoilage / exposure to air during the process?
Curious what you think -- will robots making food continue to be McDonalds level, or will we have good food coming from machines?
Everyone moved to advertising; since useful work ran out, its all about the zero-sum competition for eyeballs and capturing the biggest possible chunk of consumer spending.
But that's just it. Sports (and entertainment, your other example) are tiny, because only the top .001% are valued. Everyone else is basically slaving away for free in the hopes that they make it to that top echelon. Even the amount of support jobs is teeny compared to other industries.
The problem with advanced automation is that it eliminates sectors that have huge employment bases (think of how many people that drive for a living) and replaces them with sectors that tend to be much smaller in comparison.
You're talking about athletes and singers. But the vast majority of those employed in these industries are not the pretty faces. They are the producers, the audio technicians, the trainers, the vendors at the stadium, the men who swap kegs at the game. The lighting directors on the movie set. The CGI artists. The bouncers at your favorite venue.
My point still stands. (1) All of those support jobs are still tiny compared to the employment of other industries. (2) Many of those support jobs can be either automated away, or barely pay minimum wage. (3) Most of the support jobs that DO pay well still have the dynamic where a top tiny percent make the lion's share of income. The best CGI artists make multiples more than good ones. Same thing with Hollywood personal trainers, same thing with lighting directors.
> The 'entertainment sector' was not even a part of the economy 100 years ago. Now it's a big chunk.
Computer sector is younger and bigger. What is your point?
> There are tons and tons of jobs that can't be done by computers.
Not really, less and less all the time. Automation has been a trend since Industrial age. It is now expanding into knowledge work. Translation, copywriting, all sorts of analysis & prediction, navigation/driving (for fun look up how many truck driver jobs that will be automated in 10-20 years). IBM Watson isn't just a research project lark, IBM is developing a product to automate thinking and reasoning. Google all over it too.
> Think of how big sports are. That was all 'unpaid amateur' stuff before.
Do you believe there is more than an insignificant fraction of people employed by "sports"? btw there use to be people compiling stats, doing betting. They have been replaced by machines.
> unskilled labour has been getting more expensive, not less.
unskilled is misnomer, its un-automatable labour. Humans can't compete with machines. And more and more activities are being automated. Even labour such as medical, legal and acting.
I wonder how far we are from peak entertainment (in developed countries, I mean). With a fixed population size and a fixed number of hours in the day for each person, there is a hard limit on the number of hours of entertainment that can be delivered by industry.
And I'm not even sure I would spend anything more than I do now on entertainment even if all my working hours suddenly became leisure time (unless you're going to start counting activities like home improvement and amateur science and engineering projects as entertainment).
So what are suggesting for when the vast majority of job sectors vanish? "Everybody relax and wait for the coffin?" When there's nothing to do anymore in the traditional sense, we receive an opportunity: millions, possibly billions of intelligent beings with nothing to do. Until they realize that they've got a whole to do, inside themselves. The brain is a magnificent thing that most people never really get to explore in their lifetimes. However, such exploration can only happen in tandem with education, otherwise there is nothing to explore.
The jobcalypse would give us the time needed to become better humans instead of better marginally intelligent machines. Make music, draw, sow, be creative. Lovingly tend to your garden. Develop crazy new theories about stuff and discuss them with like-minded individuals. Spend weeks on end in a library, not because you need the knowledge, but because you suddenly took a fancy to ancient Nordic literature. Come out to find that other people are interested in the subject and teach them. What about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything? Are we going to find that by watching TV all day because "education won't help"?
It's not so much that we will be entering a post-work society, but rather one where the value of labour as a commodity continues to fall. Let's hope this means more meaningfull, non-alienating work.
> Most jobs aren’t created by private, corporate investment, so raising taxes on corporate income won’t affect employment.
But won't raising taxes on corporate income drive corporation to other jurisdiction? So employment in that company then won't just slowly trail off, but will look like a cliff, dropping to 0.
So isn't that idea ignoring the fact that companies don't have to stick into one place and so we arbitrarily tax them and then provide basic income to everyone in that community?
It goes the other way as well. In some places like West Virginia they've bent backward to accommodate coal mines, easing EPA regulation, destroying the environment and so on. Just to keep companies around. It is like a bad abusive relationship.
Other states for example know the game so they would court and offer incentive for companies to move to their state. I've seen that happen and it was painful for the original community to lose all those jobs.
I agree that we need something like basic income and the accounting is not the only problem, the social and moral aspect is a just as big.
The pessimist in me says we couldn't even meaningfully have a decent health insurance system like other civilized countries. We are a long way from any kind of distributism.
It is good there is talk and discussion about this. The ideological re-framing of this might have to be done very carefully.
One quick example I can think off the top of my head is how in Alaska there was redistribution of income from natural resources. People there probably don't think in terms of "socialism" or "handouts". Well at least the people I know there didn't a few years ago...
Wonder if basic income can be advocated in those terms - "You deserve this because we've created the automation / robots to work for all of us..." or "We want to free people's time so they can volunteer and help their own communities...". Some will play video games and consume drugs perhaps all day, some will decide maybe they want to visit some lonely elderly person in a nursing home or help in the hospital or soup kitchen some more.
1) how do you get people to accept the existence of basic income without perceiving the beneficiaries as moochers.
2) what do people on basic do?
Right now your example of people visiting the elderly is in some place paid work but can also be performed by volunteer. However volunteers should be vetted.
My guess is that when everybody is on basic, you can earn "social credits" for volunteering. But should that grant you access to more resources, or should that be like "Achievements" in video games? And how do you avoid turning that into the Black Mirror episode "15 millions Merits".
But even "social credit" cannot prevent the paid workers to look down on the moochers on basic.
Well, we already have a form of "social credits". It's called money. We're just not used to thinking of it that way, but that's really what money is.
So replace "social credits" in your line of thinking by money, and you've basically arrived at the idea of a Job Guarantee. And somebody who works for their money is no longer a moocher, so...
The flaw in this analogy is that the current top earners (CEO, traders, White collar) net contribution to society has no correlation with the money they extract from the system. Does a CEO improving his company market value by firing people have the same contribution to society as a paramedic saving a life, a nanny taking care of a baby so the parents can work or a teacher educating kids?
These are highly valuable services provided to society that are not rewarded in either status or the current social credits.
> Does a CEO improving his company market value by firing people have the same contribution to society as a paramedic saving a life, a nanny taking care of a baby so the parents can work or a teacher educating kids?
According to society's value system, as reflected by market pricing, I believe the answer is generally yes, the CEO is valued more.
The CEO is valued more because their work affects the company they lead as a whole and the work of many other people at the company - such as by determining what to work on, what initiatives to invest in strategically, or by obtaining funding for the company from investors. Poor decisions by the CEO can cause the entire company to fail; good decisions can create 100x as many jobs at the company, and increase its value by 100x.
It is more difficult for people to grasp the value of CEOs because their effect is spread out over a lot of people and abstract concepts like company success. It is easier to grasp the value of a nanny who spends time with your kids. But the fact that the nanny's work is much more concrete and obvious does not mean that it's more valuable. Consider: how much will you personally spend on a nanny? Would you spend 30-50% of your income on a fantastic nanny (the way that many people will spend that amount buying a house?) Most people don't value a nanny that much.
For a comparison, think about the effect that a good or bad president will have on the entire US. They can make a tremendous difference to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. A good CEO can do the same for their company, and all of their workers and investors. A bad CEO can do the opposite, and run the company into the ground.
Nannys and CEOs operate at entirely different scales. A CEO can destroy billions in value, or create billions in value. This is why companies and their boards and investors value good CEOs highly and pay them well. They want the best possible person for the job, and the best people demand high compensation.
There are also factors of supply and demand to consider. Most adult humans are intrinsically equipped to be nannies - to care for children. We're evolved to do it. No specific qualifications are necessary beyond not being a shitty or unreliable person. By comparison, not many people are equipped to be an effective CEO of a large, medium, or even small company. Thus, nannies earn less because there is a large supply of people who can act as nannies (almost the entire adult population), and a substantially smaller supply of effective CEOs. They need intelligence, drive, education, charisma, leadership capability, experience, vision, and other qualities.
Regarding your specific point about CEOs cutting jobs, sometimes that needs to happen. Lines of business don't always remain profitable. Sometimes a company needs to shut down unprofitable business units entirely, and exit the business. Sometimes a company needs to lay off workers and find a different approach to remain profitable.
Sometimes a job that was done by humans before will be automated tomorrow. For example, the company Hostess that makes Twinkies used to employ 22,000 workers. The company went bankrupt, and people bought its ashes and restarted it. The new hostess now heavily takes advantage of automation and employs only 1,170 people. (1)
A lot of people got laid off in that transition. The layoffs were also necessary for the company to continue at all; otherwise it would have gone under for good. They had a non-viable economic model for producing their baked goods. The leaders in charge of the transition took the only reasonable action (in hindsight) to prevent the company from cratering. (1)
CEOs are the people in charge of making the best decision for their stakeholders in really tough circumstances. Sometimes layoffs are the best possible outcome among many worse outcomes. No CEO would prefer to lay off their people - it's a horrible thing to have to do - but when the company is in dire financial straights, sometimes there is no better alternat...
It's also why so many CEOs get fired with "golden parachutes" - the value of getting rid of them quickly vastly exceeds the amount of money they get as severance.
I agree, in reality, "the market" thinks the CEO ought to be rewarded more, (I agree with the principle but not with the current levels). However if a CEO destroys billions of dollars of value, he gets a golden parachute or a new title. The employees get a pink slip.
If the CEO creates billions of dollars of value, the employees sometimes get a (tiny) bonus (medium bonus for bankers).
But what really is the value of Twinky to society compared to the life of a human being? (millions of $ vs $0?) And that is the fundamental place where I think we disagree.
I have a strong disagreement with the main tenet of this line of reasoning (this might become a strawman argument): that maximizing profit and financial success (or jobs) is the desirable goal for society. If you look at it in the sense that society should be organized such that "all men are created equal" with the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", maximizing profit (or jobs) is perpendicular if not antithetical to the pursuit of happiness, at least for the many.
The CEO's happiness might be perfectly served by the current system, but what about the worker's? Also, what was the cost of the failure of the (previous) management teams to the CEOs vs the employees?
I confess that I've only read about "working" alternatives to the current system in fiction.
As the article points out, we are running out of jobs. Maybe now would be a good time for a rethink before we hit the crunch?
> Does a CEO improving his company market value by firing people have the same contribution to society as a paramedic saving a life, a nanny taking care of a baby so the parents can work or a teacher educating kids?
Yes, by firing people who don't provide much value at this company they can go on and provide more value at other companies. It will make their lives tougher for a while, but redistributing labor can provide immense value.
For example, lets say that a CEO over many hospitals cleaned up bureaucracy in them. This lead to increased efficiency, and now many people are just doing busywork and aren't really needed. The CEO then fires thousands of healthcare workers who can go on and work at other hospitals. This will drive down costs and help more people get the healthcare they need. His work is surely more important than the work of an individual healthcare worker.
That is absolutely a flaw, but I don't think it kills the analogy. If you look at other attempts at building some kind of social credits system, e.g. karma or points on sites like Reddit, you'll notice that people often benefit from a similar kind of feedback loop and get outsize rewards.
The point is that rather than trying to follow NIH syndrome and building a new system from scratch, repeating all the same mistakes, perhaps one could try to fix the existing system?
Otherwise, the parallel social credits system will most likely either remain a parallel system with social stigma attached to it, or it will end up having the same problems as the already existing social credits system (i.e. money).
I think it would be interesting if it is divorced from money and they'd be (ideally) impossibly to buy it with money.
Maybe social credit could be used to run for office. Or it can be used to weight votes -- those with more social credit can cast 5 votes in elections.
Think of a high ranking CEO and how maybe some airlines would invite them to fly for free just to get free advertising. Or might get invited to White House dinners and such. Maybe nurses, firefighters or teachers who achieved higher social credits would be treated the same way.
Money interacts with rent, starts unfairly allocated, and largely maintains is imbalanced allocation due to how it discourages helping those with little in favor of those with plenty. The evidence is in social mobility rates.
An allocated credit (for example), that could only be transferred once before going into artificial sinks, would function very differently, and encourage activities that help a much broader population.
> But even "social credit" cannot prevent the paid workers to look down on the moochers on basic.
That I believe is going to be a very divisive subject. Wasn't the 80's the years of the "welfare queen boogeyman" (or I guess "boogeywoman..."). It started around Reagan's times where they tried to paint welfare recipients as opportunists, lazy, downright criminal and how they were responsible for all possible waste and other evils.
That will stratify the society into those who work and those who don't. I believe people will always have this competitive streak and will want things to be "fair". If they see someone not working and getting by and they are the ones working, they might antagonize them.
> or should that be like "Achievements" in video games? And how do you avoid turning that into the Black Mirror episode "15 millions Merits".
Ah interesting. Heh, it would be like karma here on HN or Reddit. Can't do much with it, but get access to more places perhaps. Can't buy food with it, but can influence the public discourse with it (can upvote, downvote more...).
Yeah I like this idea (but I'd also have to watch Black Mirror).
> how do you get people to accept the existence of basic income without perceiving the beneficiaries as moochers.
Land value tax and Pigovian taxes. UBI would then be compensation for allowing others to monopolize our society's collective resources (eg. land). Every citizen is a shareholder, and UBI is a dividend.
A possible solution to the "raising taxes on corporation will drive them to other jurisdictions" problem is to make the taxes the same everywhere, at least within the same country, ideally at the world's level, for a truly level playing field. Another would be to say "we prevent you from doing business here if you don't do something here" (the india / china strategy).
Yes, try remove the arbitrage opportunity. That should help. Usually one would say competition is good, so different states with different tax laws is good. However, in many cases it is the workers and small communities that end up suffering as result.
The author lost my interest after stating 6% unemployment is good without even mentioning the Labor Participation Rate. It would be if the Labor Participation Rate [1] hadn't fallen as much as it has. The US economy has lost 3.2M jobs since Jan 2006 thru Oct 2016.
tl;dr The unemployment rate is falling because people are losing their benefits and falling out of the labor force, and no longer being counted as unemployed.
I agree with the characterization of investment bankers and hedge fund managers as 'gangsters'.
I'm tired of hearing these people rationalize their work as being 'to allocate capital efficiently' - Their real job description is 'to dilute real value and centralize capital'. These people don't create jobs; they transfer jobs from small businesses to big corporations.
Those big corporations gain market share not by offering a superior product for a lower price; they do so by manipulating the markets and using the media to project a false image of quality...
If you go to MacDonald's and get a burger, if you forget that you're eating a Big Mac for a second and try to think about it objectively; it's very poor quality; the meat actually tastes like wet cardboard and the bun is like 70% air!
I don't think people rationalize it like that. I think they rationalize it as "I can make a lot of money here so I will". The only way it gets better if you can disincentivize people from acting in self-interest which doesn't really work in a capitalist society.
Maybe, but I think they should. That's what it means to have a conscience.
I worked for a major gambling (sports betting) corporation as a software engineer (for 6 months). The job was enjoyable (and extremely well paid) but it was obviously bad for society. I don't have a problem admitting that what I did was evil. I was a small fish, but it's no excuse.
Essentially, I took money from people who were not as smart as me. Maybe I caused people to lose their homes, maybe they got divorced or maybe some even committed suicide (there were stories in the office). I think it's important to acknowledge these things and try to fix them (by quitting, for example).
You can always rationalize that people are responsible for their own actions, but when you are guilty of manipulating people's minds, I don't think it's reasonable to do so.
Sometimes you do have to do a little bit for the common good.
But most of the time it's not black-and-white and people are really good at rationalizing. If you work at a hedge fund chances are a good chunk of the assets come from pension funds, foundations, and university endowments. You can feel good about that! Alternatively, if you work at Apple improving iOS for blind users you still have to deal with the fact that the phones are made by mistreated, underpaid workers in China.
I had kind of the opposite experience as you. I worked at a company that I felt good about, but over time they took on projects I was less on-board with for various reasons (money, political capital). Eventually it got to the point where it was no longer worth the lower paycheck.
Being a business owner is much more lucrative than being an employee. Unfortunately, because of the stranglehold they have on the media, corporations are making it almost impossible for people to start their own businesses to compete (relative to before) so there are fewer opportunities for people to make real money.
Maybe a better approach is how can we spend the surplus labour? There are lots of things I see need doing looking around my neighbourhood - public parks need cleaning up, old houses could be torn down and make some nice new ones, old roads could be fixed. Probably stacks of other things. Maybe some creative accounting will enable us to do these things? I know national parks near me have great paths that were built in the depression as a job creation scheme. Maybe this is the new status quo, there are still jobs that need skills and some are in shortage, though people with labour skills are in abundance - maybe use them instead of having people sit around while there's stuff to do but society can't put the two together.
Seems to me that everyone basically agrees about a subset of the beneficial ways that surplus could be spent. The problem is how society would need to be reorganized to make that happen. There is some concentrated power out there that is very opposed to this kind of change.
I agree with this sentiment. There is a lot of work that needs doing. There are also a lot of parents out there with young children who could use a nanny. There's a need for more therapists, or just people to talk to.
There's a lot of work that needs doing. There's an abundance of people to do the work, and I feel like we have plenty of natural resources. It seems to me that we could build housing for everyone, we have the capability to do it. It's just that our economic model isn't about the betterment of manking, providing the people what they need, etc.
If you told an unemployed man that he could have guaranteed food, clothing, medical care, lodging and basic income for his family if he goes work a job where he builds houses for other family in need, I think that would be a very appealing offer.
Heck, even if you made that proposition to a fast food worker that he could do meaningful work instead of smelling like fried stuff all the time and always be worried about working enough hours for a crappy boss and no future, or to a janitor that he could help someone instead of cleaning pee all day, maybe they would do that instead. Maybe even to an office drone, who knows.
Right now people work because otherwise they die, socially in civilized continental Europe, possibly literally in "modern" America (and possibly the UK).
> Heck, even if you made that proposition to a fast food worker that he could do meaningful work instead of smelling like fried stuff all the time and always be worried about working enough hours for a crappy boss and no future, or to a janitor that he could help someone instead of cleaning pee all day, maybe they would do that instead. Maybe even to an office drone, who knows.
You imply that being a fast food worker, janitor, or "office drone" is not meaningful work. To many people it is. Your comment comes across as demeaning.
I'm willing to give GP the benefit of the doubt and was only speaking of the people who don't like, or are not suited for, those positions. I think there's enough people that fit that description in any reasonably sized profession to make it a valid statement in that context.
Almost by definition, there are aspects of work that you don't like. The trick is to find meaning in your work so that you have the strength to complete it.
The post seems to be suggesting that we should just eliminate all of the "least desirable" jobs, which is a fine idea as long as you realize that the next tier of jobs will then immediately become the "least desirable".
Everyone could be happier doing something else. The main point is: if you want other people to maintain the apartment building where you live, drive you around on the bus, grow your food and deliver it to the supermarket - you need to be prepared to do something useful in return.
"Being" a fast food worker, a janitor or "office drone" is not socially nor financially rewarded to a measure commensurate with the toll exerted on the soul or body of the human _occupying the function_.
Also, you're not your job, you're employed, however tenuously by the fast food industry.
As I said in another comment, "being" a fast food worker is not "feeding people". Working in a soup kitchen is feeding people.
The janitorial function is a necessity in any specialized society which doesn't reward you for cleaning after yourself.
And you really have never heard of someone in an office job that is soul sucking? Like say people organizing layoffs, or accepting/denying coverage at HMO, or call center employees trying to ensare retiree into getting extra fees for services they never use etc...
Don't you think society would be better served if these kind of jobs could not find warm bodies because there was more morally satisfying and equally (or better) financially rewarding proposition around?
if you made that proposition to a fast food worker that he could do meaningful work instead of smelling like fried stuff all the time and always be worried about working enough hours for a crappy boss and no future, or to a janitor that he could help someone instead of cleaning pee all day, maybe they would do that instead
Are you saying that making food for people is meaningless? That cleaning doesn't help anyone?
Humans are always going to regard someone as being "at the bottom", just because that's how we think.
The reason those jobs haven't been automated is because automating a job is an expensive and difficult process, not out of charity for the people doing those jobs.
I've often thought about how meaningful my own work is, in the sense that: what if people just didn't buy my company's stupid product? Would anybody be worse off? Not really.
The only meaning I've found is the satisfaction of doing my job well, on its own terms - whether that's sweeping the floors at a burger joint, or making software builds.
I'm saying that churning out barely edible mater for a highly structured organization that pays you less that living wages and provides no benefits of any kind (maybe a free meal once in a while?) and treat you less well that the consumables that comes in, is not something that people aspire to.
If you want to meaningfully feed people, I believe it's called working at a soup kitchen. Usually staffed by volunteers. The reward for most meaningful work is often only in the human element. It sure ain't in the pocketbook.
Working in the fast food industry is not "making food for people," it's being a cog in a machine that transform the maximum amount of uncaring for its employees and products into the maximum of profits.
Janitorial work is necessary but not paid in proportion to the social good it provides.
And I take offense at your comment about "Humans are always going to regard someone as being "at the bottom", just because that's how we think.", it's not human nature, it's a social construct.
There is no need for additional construction to meet housing demand. In the continental US there are something like 6 empty units for every homeless person in the country. In turn this means there is no pent up demand for building materials, so putting people to work in forestry, quarry, cement, steel, etc is also a non-starter. Global food surplus indicates there is no pressing need to put additional people to work in agriculture. I'm not certain that there is pent up demand for 3.5 million new nannies or therapists in the country, which is a relevant number as that's roughly how many OTR truckers that are on the cusp of losing their livelihoods to automation. There simply isn't enough work to go around.
I'm sure there are many who live in New York who want to move out but can't because of the work. Certainly that's the case in London.
Desires change through life. Sure when I was 20-something I'd be happy living in manhattan, but in my 30s I want somewhere in the country with a nice small school for the kids. When I'm in my 50s I suspect a house by the beach would be good, maybe even abroad. When it comes to my 70s and I've got grandkids I'll want to be near them.
How many people want to live in Ny to live the "friends" lifestyle, find out reality doesn't meet expectation, then want to leave but can't due to work?
The cost per sq ft is higher. You often hit aquifers. Less light. More difficult egress in an emergency. (Just giving some reasons why building down isn't done more, but it is happening.)
Yes it is happening I know, I remember a 99% Invisible podcast episode talking about it. Also there was a documentary on London millionaires doing it.
I find it striking it is not done even more. I recognize the technical difficulties but the costs are surely lower than the potential value of easily doubling the sq ft.
There are interesting tricks you can do with fibre optic cable and mirrors to send daylight down there. Not to mention CoeLux and similar products.
I admit I just want this because the idea of hidden labyrinths behind our cities is just intrinsically appealing to me. There could be shops! Neon signs! It would be cyberpunk and then I would know the future has arrived :-)
The monetary payoff does seem to be there. I wonder if the delay in transformations of this sort might have a lot to do with a lack of 3D expertise among builders.
Dissagree. Technolgy works best when augmented with humans, however the training needed for ppl (ie truck drivers) may take longer to retool their minds then they have life left. So there may be a generation gap in jobs. Also consider space as the final frontier. How much work will be needed to build fleets of ships to colonize space and all that entails?
Yes, that's the point. "The market" is not a system that is suited for this. The market is not going to get people to make cool paths through parks, clean up the neighbourhood, etc. because the market doesn't derive shareholder profits from that at current wages. That work though is indisputably valuable stuff that could be done. Clearly, we have proven that there is plenty more work to go around and that the market is "wrong" about this.
I'm fairly certain that no proof of any kind has been presented that there is plenty of work just lying around waiting to be done. Idle speculation certainly, but proof?
It's trivially true. Garbage men could pick up the trash 5x as often. Individual people could come cook for everyone. Parks could be maintained 10x as much. Trash collectors could clean up the streets all the time. More people could help the IRS catch crooks. etc. All of those things happen but 5x more people could do those jobs as well, but that would make them unprofitable to shareholders i.e. not worth paying someone minimum wage to do it. So this system doesn't get people to do that work.
Do you have citations, particularly for housing? I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm genuinely interested in the sources because I have a sense that you're right but have never found great evidence to back it up. The raw number of residential-zoned buildings vs the number of homeless people is not as useful as it could be. I'd love to see some deeper analysis.
I initially ran across those numbers in a comment thread somewhere and spent some time researching them. To date I haven't come across a reputable source like the New York Times quoting them online but also wasn't able to find a snopes article demolishing the claim. I spent some additional time this evening looking up the base numbers:
Do you have citations, particularly for housing? I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm genuinely interested in the sources because I have a sense that you're right but have never found great evidence to back it up. The raw number of residential-zoned buildings vs the number of homeless people is not as useful as it could be. I'd love to see some deeper analysis.
There are a lot of musicians, playwrights, authors, and visual artists of various stripes who would love to practice their craft full time but work crappy jobs to pay the bills.
And don't even get me started on large-scale planet-care projects— is there a way we can pay people to reclaim destroyed farmland, to grow things locally and organically, replant forests, study and clean up the ocean garbage patches, etc etc.
I resent the idea that my surplus labour is anyone's but mine to spend.
Certainly you could create infinite amounts of "paid" makework but in the end it amounts to keeping a system going for its own sake, and wasting people's potential by allocating them "dig a hole and fill it in" jobs when they could be being creative.
I think you've take the uncharitable view of an implication that everyone is forced to work to fill up hours.
Realistically there are loads of things that could be done to make the world a better place. Equally there are lots of people out of work. If someone can provide the funds to marry those things together, it's a win win. But who pays? Maybe Apple could go all philanthropic and depart with all that cash they're carrying.
I'm much more concerned that everyone is forced to work on things that aren't what they want to do and is still running under the whip of starvation. I want that whip entirely removed. I want people free to follow their passion. And I want these things for myself, because I selfishly object to having my life wasted.
This is not the same as resolving the Great Depression. The goal is to create jobs that do work that is not getting done; not creating faux-jobs to feed people.
I don't think the author of the original article would agree with that goal.
The problem with "creating jobs" is that someone (the government) has to decide (for its citizens) what kind of work is worth doing. The no-longer-needed workers are then forced into those non-essential jobs to earn their right for bare survival. They won't have time to do what they think is important.
The underlying assumption is that unpaid work is somehow worthless to society. And that people cannot decide for themselves how the spend the time freed up by automation.
The irony is that government is already arm-twisting private industry to do this.
Whether it's a New Deal style public works program, or the new car plant opening that isn't yet fully automated because the government gave them tax breaks, it's makework and a distraction from what people would do if they could work their vocations.
this would be lovely, but it's utopian. uber drivers drive someone to a place, and if they dont they dont get paid.
the sorts of jobs you're talking about arent always all so clearly verified/verifiable. you'd need other government workers just to verify that the job was done properly... ufff I can see the waste now
It's just as hard or possibly even simpler to just make drones that pick up litter and robots that rake leaves.
The problem with large scale low skilled jobs (e.g. fast food) becoming automated is that these jobs aren't really special as jobs, even if they have a very important socioeconomic role in our society - it's not yet cost effective to automate them, but when it will, then at the same time (roughly speaking, +/- 10 years) all other low skilled jobs will be ripe for automation as well.
A good semi-trailer truck driver will have his job for years to come, but when it does happen, then all the reasonable jobs to which he could currently shift would have their own downsizing due to their own automation and an excessive supply potential workers of poor ex-drivers who were shed years before the good driver.
The biggest labor need in the next 40 years will be caring for the elderly. When my father was out of the hospital after an operation and needed live in care it was insanely difficult to find at any cost. This is work that cannot be automated.
I presume what the poster wanted to say is that BH6 made them believe even robots can look and feel humane (and possibly also that they can be made soft, translating in less injuries for the people they care of)
This is why Japan is so clean and orderly. Look closer and you'll see someone cleaning some hand railing in the train station in some corner of your peripheral vision.
Yes I was stunned to see how much low level and seemingly unnecessary labour there when visited Tokyo.
There are people literally inviting you to escalators in the airport. An empty train station would have half a dozen attendants. Road repair, in the middle of the night, 6 people directing foot traffic, with only two (us) pedestrians in sight.
This was surprising against the stereotype of machine-based Japanese efficiency. I assume it's some half employment, half social support programme going on.
No better addition to the subject than David Graeber's piece: On Bullshit Jobs (http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ - click the "here" link on that idiotic splash page)
The Economist does miss the point a bit by concentrating on a comparison between industrial jobs from a century ago and clerical jobs today. The author discards any notion that workers are intelligent enough to be affected by the true meaning and value to society their job creates, instead comparing physical pain from a industrial age factory job to the tedium of killing time on facebook at a cushy office job.
That's a cheap hack reframing in order to make a point in my opinion, either a sign of dishonesty or just being completely out of touch. Graeber is very clear that the meaninglessness of these tasks is important.
Free money for everybody! Cool now to go buy some groceries... hey where's the food? Oh I guess the farmer realized they didn't have to work any more either... it's almost like money isn't some magical thing that automatically has value, but merely serves as a medium of exchanging value, something this author completely misses.
575 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 356 ms ] threadA little-discussed solution to this problem is one I would like to see tried, distributism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
A book I am currently reading (and enjoying) on it is:
https://www.amazon.com/Toward-Truly-Free-Market-Distributist...
The real question is "when?". The costs of distributed manufacturing currently make distributionism less-than-viable (see: communes), but those costs decrease as technology advances, while the rents imposed by centralization do not, and perhaps even increase. There will be a crossing point.
Services are the sticky bit. Goods alone can't replace doctors, lawyers, and the like, at least not yet. On the timescale of the "crossing point" I'm less sure. Fortunately, they might not have to -- anything we can do to decrease the urgency of the "mandate to make money" serves as a relief valve for the oversupply of labor and decreases the toxicity of the market, even if it doesn't eliminate it.
Nonsense. Our abundance is increased by specialization not a lack of it. Specialization and trade allow for higher-order goods to be used as inputs to produce lower-order goods. Farming doesn't just require a tractor and some land. You need fuel to run the tractor, other industries to come together to make the tractor, a merchant to purchase the tractor from, and on and on.
It does not follow that owning more things related to a trade will produce more things. The opposite is the case, it's cheaper for the farmer to buy the tractor than produce tractors himself.
"Nonsense" is an extreme overstatement, there are nuances to both arguments.
"This is economics 101" is exactly the problem: we're dealing with an economic system that isn't working. Questioning economics 101 is precisely what's needed, and I'd argue that while your arguments are sound, they've been treated as absolutes, which they're not.
A farmer needs to buy their tractor from a tractor manufacturer and fuel it from a fuel extractor/generator, but not everyone need be involved in this cycle and not every step need be specialised in a completely unary manner. Also, the emphasis on individual economic efficiency over efficiency of communal benefit is important: if a farmer can produce less - but sufficient - food, for less - but sufficient - material profit, while not producing negative impacts for others elsewhere in the economic system at large, that's a more "efficient" overall system.
The most important word in the excerpt you quoted is "most"
That runs entirely counter to human nature. If you can solve that you may have something workable, but without it "Nonsense" is as good a word as any.
b) Is it really human nature?
This is what social norms are for. Slavery is for now still mostly frowned upon, and in some circles even racism is. Even though using either usually results in huge personnal gains for some.
Only in the places most removed from these incentives do we see slavery. Look at North Korea, much of the population can be seen as slaves (The subsistence farmers for example). The costs of keeping the slaves can be thought of as the cost of running their propaganda machine, arming their military, controlling the border and the loss in relations with the rest of the world. As long the leaders fail to gain a sense of compassion then the only thing that matters to them is their slaves make more than they cost.
Its callous.
Human trafficking is still organized, global, and wildly profitable. There are people in slavery near you, no matter where you are. It's real.
You may also want to look at the few stories of "domestic workers" and "maid" abuse that make the headlines from time to time in your own country (works in any country with a free press).
As said in another comment, slavery is alive and well. It is only frowned upon.
bjelkeman-again has a fair point re: northern Europe; some very good examples to the contrary.
Not so. Tribal societies inherently function on everyone in the tribe working for the overall good rather than their individual gain. Socially, this is how we function by default - people will make sacrifices, extend loans, give gifts, and generally help out those close to them (family, friends, tribe members) without an expectation of something in return.
In our modern world it is often going to be the case that you won't deal with the same people again, or the transaction is completed completely impersonally.
This makes as much sense as saying "You say that my magical spacecraft won't work due to the laws of physics, but physics is exactly the problem: We can't travel to Alpha Centauri yet. Questioning the laws of physics is precisely what's needed...".
You don't get to ignore facts simply because they're inconvenient.
Many economists are questioning their 101s lately. Look closely in the various journals and you'll see evidence of that, both explicitly and implicitly.
Marx contributed massively to sociology. He contributed nothing of note to economics that's really relevant to this day (not that his effort was not commendable). Sticking to orthodox marxist economics in 2016 is more dogma than science.
He wrote 10,000 pages of economic theory. I can't say they are wrong, or right--I haven't read his complete work.
I doubt Russia bothered to read, and implement his theories to the tee.
I don't think we can honestly evaluate wether he might be wrong, or right.
(I wonder if his plan might work if they could ever take nepotism, and corruption out of the equation. It seems like nepotism, and corruption taint every economic theory?)
Markets aren't forces of nature. That's propaganda.
The side effects must be investigated because that's largely where we are in the public discourse right now. We're in a big adjustment period. We're learning about consequences; good and bad.
Reminds me of Keyne's famous long-run quote.
They did? How so?
[1] Which they, in actual fact, very seldom do.
I've studied economics at the college level. I follow economics news and am not aware of economists questioning 101 level principles. Many of these are relatively simple and intuitively obvious ones (once you wrap your head around them), much like 101 level maths.
Consequently I am inclined to disbelieve the claim that economists are questioning econ 101 principles, unless you can provide some examples. More than one example would be most convincing since you're claiming this is a general trend. Journal article links would be appreciated.
It is not so much about questioning economics 101 principles as much as questioning their validity in the various economies. Taking the example of comparative advantage and more general trade theory, there are well known, respected economists (e.g. D. Rodrik) who have argued against the scope of their validity.
There also seems to be a debate about how 101 is taught in schools, see e.g. [1].
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/05/13/...
I want to push back on the idea that economics is a way to divinate the truth of how to generate and share happiness. It's a piece of the puzzle, but a very small one.
The is broadly true of Macro Economics. This might even be impossible as a science, since the object of study (world economy and markets) is aware of its findings, and adapts around them.
Micro Economics, or "Price Theory" as it maybe should be called, is OTOH a very powerful science that gives deep and counter intuitive insights into how the world works.
It is also largely ignore by decision makers :)
Seriously, though, your econ mind is on the same track as mine. "Economics" is a pretty broad brush, and it's difficult engaging in meaningful discussion.
You make a great point: The "economic system" is conscious and reacts/adapts to internal and external changes, which changes the rules, and the meta rules, and the meta meta meta....
My impression is that "behavioral" economics is a promising field that can help explain some unusual phenomena. But it doesn't change the solid core of the science.
I think it gets talked about like that sometimes by people who don't like the implications of the established science. Much like what happens with Climate Change and Evolution when any seemingly contradictory study appears.
If we're talking about supply and demand, price elasticity, and things like that, I can't think of any loopholes. Knowing how these things work only makes people make more informed decisions.
That is pure capitalism at play as it is a free market without government regulations.
Similarly some drugs that are priced at crazy multiples of real cost to produce it(including RnD and healthy profit) by the likes of martin shkreli.
So its basically how much the individuals in an economy values money. When the seller quotes high and I as a buyer has truck load of money, I wouldn't even bother to bargain. When I don't have cash, I try to bargain it to the bottom levels and sellers would probably not even be able to cover their cost.
Pricing that varies over the day in ecommerce websites is another example. Time during which people are more likely to rush into buying, things are priced high.
Your example of the fish markets is just a good example of the fact that people have varying marginal utilities of money. Of course people try to get the highest price they can get - taking into account, of course, the time they'll be receiving the money. Obviously people will see if they can raise the price, but they're still in competition with other sellers; the price cannot be raised indefinitely. And it's not always clear whether other factors have changed - things like fish supply and catching are notoriously dependent on the weather, demand for fish varies seasonally and with changing fashions; it's a perishable good with not-super-fungible markets - maybe the prices know something about fish that you don't.
You give the example of super-high pricing for drugs such as the Daraprim case with Martin Shkreli. Note that this market is overseen and hugely, hugely regulated by the FDA, which imposes very lengthy and costly approval processes on drugs (even different manufacturers of off-patent "generics".) More generally, these drugs are on-patent - both of these situations are a de-facto monopoly that grants exactly the kind of economic rents that microeconomics predicts.
Ecommerce pricing also doesn't disprove anything. You could, for example, explain this by other factors, such as that ecommerce warehouses and logistics chains are capacity-limited, so "surge pricing" would make good sense to smooth demand peaks. But that's besides the point, really, because microeconomics would absolutely predict that if people, on average, have a preference for shopping at a particular time, then a seller may attempt to capture this preference in the price. This isn't done in brick-and-mortar retail, since changing the prices hourly would be a huge hassle. But in ecommerce, it's easy, so prices modulate with demand. And stores have always changed their prices over time, it's just that the internet makes it easy to go for a smaller granularity.
(editted for clarity, grammar and spelling)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus
"Economists think homo economicus is literally true" is a ludicrous strawman.
That said, as other commenters have pointed it, it is a little rich comparing economics to physics
Can you explain this statement further? North Korea and Venezuela's economic systems aren't working. America and most of Europe simply don't allow everyone to consume as much as they would prefer to consume.
It sounds like you mean "isn't working" in the sense of "an iPhone 5 isn't working as well as an iPhone 7", not "my car isn't working so I can't get to work."
This is a recurring cycle, which has happened many times throughout history. Pretty much every time it ends with the elites killed, their wealth stolen, civilization collapsed or set back significantly, and a new cycle begins. I don't understand why the elites never see this coming, or take adequate steps to prevent it. All they have to do is be somewhat less greedy.
Average wealth has increased in America over the last 50 years, and real family income has been rising overall since the 1950s. Wealth concentration today is lower than it was in the 1930s. Poverty has fallen since the 1960s. I excerpted these facts from (1). While it is also true that income and wealth inequality has been rising during this time as well, the fact of the rich being well off doesn't necessarily hurt the non-rich, especially if both groups are becoming richer over time, which the data shows is happening in the US.
People are becoming better off over time. Why is our economic system failing us?
Note as well that the average person today has a better quality of life than medieval kings did. Near the official government poverty level, most Americans live quite comfortably (2), and have amenities such as housing, air conditioning, cable TV, mobile phones, etc.
> government surveys show that most of the persons whom the government defines as “in poverty” are not poor in any ordinary sense of the term. The overwhelming majority of the poor have air conditioning, cable TV, and a host of other modern amenities. They are well housed, have an adequate and reasonably steady supply of food, and have met their other basic needs, including medical care. (2)
(1) http://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-...
(2) http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-pov...
Shut up poor people, you have sanitation and refrigeration!
When people who make arguments like this are dragged from their beds kicking and screaming they will only have their own hubris to blame.
Edit: Those who down vote forget that we once had an elite ruling class in this country.
"what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure."
-Thomas Jefferson
Your comparison of wealth concentration to the 1930s is also disingenuous: wealth concentration spiked massively toward the end of the 1920s, it was far lower than now before and after that. That particular point in history isn't a particularly ambitious bar to set.
Though if you're linking heritage.org while keeping a straight face, I fear this may fall on deaf ears...
nice bait
That's debatable. Human beings have a pretty significant natural tendency to look at the relative well-being rather than their absolute well-being. It makes sense, given that for any social animal, relative well-being aka ranking in the group hierarchy, is essential.
Some people are more affected by this and other less, but even all else equal, increased inequality can reduce people's quality of life.
Add to that the effect of mass media which allows an easy comparison to some of the most wealthy and powerful people in society, and you have a recipe for widespread unhappiness.
Average wealth doesn't matter. Relative wealth does. The reason is simple: wealth is a proxy for political power.
Let's say Bob had 10 dubloons yesterday and Alex had 20, and today Bob has 20 and Alex has 100. Sure, Bob is twice as wealthy as he was, but Alex is five times as wealthy and also five times wealthier than Bob (as opposed to twice).
Now replace "wealth" in the above paragraph with "power" and you'll see the issue.
Wealth is about the total amount and quality of goods and services you consume.
Your house is of much higher quality than the houses of the 1950s. Just because the mansions are even bigger and better, This doesn't take away the quality of life improvement of you owning a better house or car or your ability to be cured of diseases that were incurable in 1950.
Before I lived here I was in a single-family house, also built in the 30's, also very sturdy. I've seen other houses being built nearby, McMansion style. They look nice (new, anyway) but they use the same shoddy materials and construction techniques.
Prior to that, I lived in a new condo. I bought it while it was still under construction. (Big mistake.) The builder neglected a few details, like flashing on all of the windows. When it rained, water poured in around my window casings. People on the top floor had their whole ceilings cave in. I managed to get out of there, but a year or two later after the lawsuits the entire brick exterior had to be ripped down to fix the windows, then put back up.
So I disagree that today's houses are "much higher quality" than the houses of the 1950s. An older house, with modern upgrades, is more likely to be high quality than a new house with the same features.
That's all besides the point, because without wealth, without those gold coins and green pieces of paper, you can't afford the nice house, or better car, or the healthcare. Without wealth (in all senses) you don't have financial security, and without financial security you're forced to make decisions about how you use your limited resources. You buy lower-quality goods, you skimp on maintenance, you don't upgrade things, you hold off on preventative care until you need emergency care. Your quality of life is lower, despite having (potential) access to much better things than you might have had in the past.
That doesn't means that we should set by and let modern kings steal most of our economic surplus.
And American wealth has grown at the expense of creating enemies who are in a growing position to exact retribution.
In this case I'd argue your comparisons are apparently not relevant for a lot of people - or else, if everything is so wonderful, how do you explain trump?
Or alternatively, implement something to stop the "elites killed, their wealth stolen [etc]" bit.
Completely co-incidentally :), technology to monitor/influence large numbers of people seems to be happening, and research/development/manufacturing of automated weaponry for the er... "self defence" of said elites seems to be on the agenda.
Gee, that sounds like it'll end well doesn't it. :(
In fact you can plant seeds with a stick and skip the critters.
Similarly, if a tractor can prevent Joe from working a miserable low-skill job in a world where the supply of labor dramatically exceeds demand, it's a good investment for Joe. Even if it's "morally" just as redundant as the R&D dollars, it serves a concrete purpose with concrete benefits.
Of course, Joe would have to buy a great deal more than a tractor to realize this dream, not to mention that the fabled "tractor" which could actually free Joe from working harder than a minimum wage job doesn't exist yet, and probably bears little resemblance to the "car for farming" we've been talking about. Currently the cost of centralized production (the rent-seeking it enables) is small compared to the benefits. I don't think that's in question. I do think it's a function of manufacturing technology, though, and I don't think the scales are destined to forever tip the way they do now.
This line of reasoning is amusingly similar to NIH-syndrome.
I was about to say the board was probably empty, but turns out it's not that simple http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-shGknjKjPWE/TzJGOwQLVcI/AAAAAAAAAE...
Old phones weren't really resistant; but less sensitive. My Samsung Wave 723 took a plunge once, water got inside but almost didn't harm it (almost; something SMTc wasn't properly functioning after 1h of use). Kinda like ThinkPads, they can leak water outside a bit, but they're not water tight sealed.
Uselessly duplicated efforts due to secrecy are the problem patents were supposed to solve, btw.
https://aws.amazon.com/windows/resources/licensing/
Yes, self reliance (and sustainability) is more emphasized than it is in modern liberal western economics, but that doesn't denigrate the concept of specialization, it just elevates other aspects of political economy as well.
It's a set of ideas worth approaching with an open mind, in my opinion. John Medaille's books is very well written, even if you don't agree with much of it.
Among simple and easy slogans for solving our problems, "break them all up" is actually a pretty good one.
Agree with this. And, as jobs are replaced by computers/automation, there will be other jobs created through specialization; however those new jobs will be new niches that will require people to learn new skills or be trained, and unless the money is there for that retraining, then you have a risk of years of unemployment.
Basically it's lamenting the lack of small businesses. That's not really wrong either. Diversity in business ownership might not be maximally "efficient" in certain regards but I think most folks would prefer that there isn't just one farming conglomerate, one nationwide plumbing service, etc.
I don't see the problem with a person buying a house to live in or a car to drive.
I don't see a problem with a programmer buying a computer to start a software business instead of renting it.
So why should plumbers be employed by others who own the tools and the brand? Why should farmers not attempt to own their land and tools?
Why are people here so down on "normal" people owning small businesses but startups are totally great?
Most Ted-presenters can be characterized as people trying to become thought-leaders. Not sure if it is the case here.
The Youtube comments enhance the experience.
It's just another form of utopian idealism.
In my own thinking I've been leaning towards representing the commons, with some institution, as the sole owner of property, aiming for a good distribution by renting instead. I see some similarities of sentiment.
Perhaps even the same thought taken to an extreme?
The distribution coming from two aspects. The income form rent is itself distributed evenly constituting a basic income for all. Some form of auctioning should ensure that the rent represents the current value, it also ensures the resource being allocated to the highest bidder (the one capable of providing the highest value use for the resource). Since resources must be rented also avoiding the feedback loops that encourage hoarding of capital just for rent extraction.
Thoughts in that direction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism
That said, the central notion of Distributism is property ownership, and that it was one of the philosophy's of the founding fathers for the US that property ownership, and property ownership rights, were fundamental to preserving the independence of the individual. (here is an article attributed to Madison [http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/library/madison-proper...] but this topic comes up often in the Federalist Papers)
The challenge of course is that most of this thinking was done in the 'goods' economy and not in the 'information' economy. Using distributism to illustrate a topic that is often robustly debated here, consider the computer programmer who writes a program on his computer. The fruit of his property (the program) is just as much his property in the founding father's view as is the corn from a farmer's field. And yet this "property of the mind" or intellectual property is often criticized as being a fiction created in order to support rent seeking practices. The for argument starts from the notion of property, the against argument starts from the notion that information has no intrinsic value.
Turning this around yet a third way, and why I believe that Dr. Livingston is incorrect in his conclusions, when you invalidate or work around legal restrictions on profiting from ones property (as AirBnB and Uber have done), you see a rapid uptick in GDP from works using their property for additional income.
While I find Livingston's observations compelling, my interpretation is more along with Piketty's in that the regulation of labor in favor of structures which are more rent seeking creates artificial barriers to entry. And work ethic or not, most people work, it seems, in order to trade their skills for a currency that lets them trade back for other needs where they lack the skill or the time to procure.
Either way, its a complex topic and if you're really interested in the topic spend some time on Google's newspaper archives (https://news.google.com/newspapers) and browse stories written during the great depression about how the world was doomed and people would never work again because of the permanent displacement of labor.
That's interesting that Chesterton was an advocate of distributism. I've read a couple of his books, but but I wasn't aware of his political/social views.
distributism > communism
altright > fascism
To create a distributive economy: taxing the wealth, and have strong anti-trust law, and strong individual rights (but not "Koch/Soros" style individual writes to extreme amounts of speech rights in the form of lobbying dollars).
America's greatest success has come from its distributive policies. Sadly, we are moving away from those.
The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations?
This is a huge question in human history and it remains to be seen how we as a species are going to answer it.
[My hope regarding the labor is that it meaningless work can be replaced with research and development]
Until then, if there's not enough jobs, that's an artificially induced shortage (e.g. austerity).
* Excepting natural resources - e.g. "more" beachfront property.
That's the idea. Let's for the moment, just assume that AI and robots and some other technologies are ridiculously productive sometime in the future and we solve all sorts of problems and have the resources to provide everyone with everything they want.
At that point it's not a question of giving everyone jobs it's a question of whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources (and a question of, should we?).
Of course, I don't think the time has arrived yet for all this to happen. But as mentioned earlier, I do think it is going to happen (if we don't have some horrible nuclear war or some other megadisaster that kills everyone first)
You can already decide to do this today, and the government will even reward you for doing so. What you're really talking about is redistributing others' resources.
I complained, and I was told that if I don't like it I can quit. I said that I would be going to the regulatory body, and I was outright threatened with physical harm: "Bad things happen to people who do that."
Automation is getting cheaper by the year, and more open. People will be able to benefit directly from automation after the transit period, and won't need UBI forever. At some point it's going to be free to cover the needs, especially if we can use raw materials that are in abundance in nature. After the first self replicating factory is going to be made, any country or region could bootstrap itself out of poverty.
Self replication is closer than AGI, it's just a matter of digitizing the industrial process and developing accessible materials. Human society, the ecosystem and the cell are self replicating factories too. We need to compile a factory in itself, to bootstrap the whole material process. Just like a DNA molecule is replicating all it needs to survive and reproduce, such a factory would be able to make "babies".
Hmm, that's interesting, I hope it's not true.
But if you want more than basic, then you have to perform labour of some sort. Want to take the trip to Mars? Gotta work for it.
Yes, there will be a difference between those who labour and those who don't, but I still think it would be a huge win if noone in society would ever struggle to put food on their table.
There's a struggle between retired pensioners and everyone else in society about how much retired citizens should get, but there's still an understanding on both sides that past labour has some value, but that that value is less than present labour, so there's a balance. I hope the same would be true in a post-labour society.
And, of course, the difference between the labourers and the not-labourers would be an incentive to reach post-scarcity where that difference is wiped out.
This is already a reality in many countries. It would be very easy to also make it a reality in the US. The resources are there.
It's a pretty flimsy disguise though. If people are simultaneously complaining about bad infrastructure and high taxes, then they are simply saying that they want their earned money themselves more than they want to use it for shared infrastructure projects. People would just rather have the latest iPhone than good highways. :-/
Sure, and the American people picked Trump as leader because they thought he was the most qualified person in the entire country.
The current taxation systems nowhere pays for all the externalities. If a company made a dollar in a country, a fair share of it should get back to the state for providing the environment that made it possible. Education, security, infrastructure.
Prices for goods just need to keep dropping, as they have already been doing to.
If they keep dropping, then our existing welfare system will handle the rest.
If the percent money that society spends in welfare state the same, and goods get cheaper and cheaper, then that means that living off welfare will eventually be a pretty sweet deal, able to provide all your wants and needs.
Rent, food, energy, all the things you need to live are getting more expensive with inflation. The welfare system is lagging behind and the benefits need to be bumped a little every year or so or it gets harder and harder to live on them. Unfortunately we apparently can't always seem to afford to increase the benefits. For instance student benefits in Finland were "cut" by simply not increasing them in accordance with the index.
In the United States it will be the class warfare/starving thing. You don't deserve anything here unless you pay for it. Many people believe that taking unemployment compensation is shameful.
I think a lot of us will be fed in prisons.
EDIT: In some places you have to pay to not be vertical. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/18/defensive-ar...
> Sculptor Fabian Brunsing brought a satirical eye to the issue by creating the “pay bench”, an art installation of a park bench that retracts its metal spikes for a limited time when the prospective sitter feeds it a coin. Chinese officials, completely missing the joke, thought that this was a great idea and installed similar benches in Yantai Park of the Shangdong province.
So true. Even things like safety, cleanliness, education quality, etc. are things we must pay for here, in stark contrast to other countries in the world.
TANSTAAFL
We already have class warfare and mass hunger (the number of people who go partially hungry despite food-stamps and food banks is atrocious, let alone the number who would starve without such programs). The current answer from the lower classes has been the revival of organized labor among Fight for 15 and other movements. It's our job in the "higher" working class, having more education and leeway to operate, to throw out economic and political force behind both the social movements of the lower classes and behind "full unemployment" measures such as universal health-care and reduced working hours.
and from the article
> there’s not enough work to go around
I disagree.
There's not enough paid employment to go around, but there is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done!
Our entire society needs to be weaned off its carbon dependence if we want humans to survive the next century. This will involve at the very least the wholesale transformation of our transport and energy systems, and probably construction too. We should be putting massive numbers of people to work on solving and fixing this, and there's no point leaving people unemployed while there's still work that needs to be done. Whether we can organise society in time to achieve this is the real question. Once we've fixed the environment and created a truly sustainable civilization, then we can talk about labor that is surplus.
Other work that will be in increasing demand is healthcare and elderly care (especially given the aging populations of most countries). I don't see robots replacing humans for this any time soon, and we are far from the point where we have enough health / personal care for everyone. Plenty more examples of work that's needed but not currently being done can be found with a bit of creative thought...
Edit: Also, while there seems to be a positive correlation between GDP per capita and energy efficiency, the most efficient nations in the world have a very low GDP per capita... I wonder why it is the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity#Economic_ener...
Yes, you can, practically speaking. The amount of energy needed to produce a given amount of value to humans is not fixed; it can be decreased, and in principle can be made as small as we like given sufficient advances in technology. That means the amount of value to humans that can be produced with a fixed amount of energy can increase, in principle as much as we like. That's what the parent to your post was saying.
Obviously it will be a while before we have technology advanced to the point where, say, the amount of value currently being produced per year on Earth can be produced with one tenth or one hundredth or less of the energy it currently takes. But we also have a while before we hit any hard limits of the sort you are referring to.
The economy can grow by a million X before we start running into physical limitations on solar energy.
We could grow our economy by literally 1000x and still not have any worry of running out of energy coming from the sun.
Your comment sounds like someone who says we shouldn't bother doing anything due to the inevitable heat death of the universe.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Current_status...
Yes, and the government can compensate for unemployment by investing in public works, at least until the automation reaches a level where UBI needs to be implemented.
This is not true.
Total workforce participation grew radically through the last 100 years - esp. because the introduction of women into different jobs.
Demographics aside, we have really quite high participation rates - even after 200 years of automation.
Also - because of demographic changes, we're already at a stage of declining labour force participation (since 2000), and we already retire at '60-ish' and live another 30 years not doing a whole lot, but amassing massive healthcare bills.
So - people more than ever need to be 'gainfully and productively employed' while they can, in order to offset the fact they'll be hanging out for quite long time not creating direct value.
I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough.
I hear so many people yelling about moochers and parasites, it's becoming weird. Everybody wants everybody to behave like superman, yet nobody realizes you can't educate everyone to have enough qualified workers.
My great fear is that as time passes, more and more people decide to live like I do, and economies might change because people stop consuming.
Why do you think that you should have the right to live off of other people's work? Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of other people's paychecks.
Yes, jobs are available, but they also get filled quickly. There's no shortage. The unemployed can out-bid each other in a "how-low-can-you-go" competition, but that just leads to working poor.
That's true, but I increasingly don't mind. It's also money that came from your own paycheck if you were a high earner in the past.
In short, because most of world organised around work is nonsense. So getting a bit of money to live poorly without work is not any more nonsensical. That's a way to see it.
A huge number of people want this mismatch to be fixed, but are wise enough to know they have zero ability to do anything about it.
We're in the midst of discovering just how useless "consciousness raising" slacktivist campaigns are, and that was basically the last hope for being able to contribute to a solution for a lot of people.
You only have a natural right to the things that you make with your hands. Money that's handed to you is not a right, it's a privilege.
Inflation is not the problem it used to be and I actually think it's a much better measure of the economy's capacity than unemployment. Would inflation of 4% be that bad for the public and financial system anyways?
In the US at least I strongly oppose tax-based welfare because I percieve it as a rigged system where the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share through loop holes and classifying their income differently than mine. But inflation in a sense is unavoidable and progressive since the more money you have the more you lose to inflation if you don't invest it. This is especially true if the cause of inflation is labor scarcity and not some other key resource like oil.
Printing money is equivalent to a tax on all US dollar holdings. The value of the printed money is subtracted from everyone else's holdings by inflation. Doing this excessively, e.g. to fund the entire public sector, would cause an inflationary spiral, as everyone tries to get rid of their rapidly-devaluing dollars as quickly as possible.
The only fundamental difference is taxing income to pay for welfare vs. taxing wealth.
Inflation is a tax on currency holdings. So if a person has $10,000 and inflation is 4%, they are effectively paying a $400 tax on it –– because the -4% loss of value is transferred to the one causing the inflation, i.e. the printer of money, which is the government. The people would just divest their US dollar holdings, and switch to investments with better capital preservation, and ROI.
> a rigged system where the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share [...] But inflation in a sense is unavoidable and progressive
Most people with non-trivial savings invest their money. People who have a basic level of understanding of how to manage their finances understand that cash in a bad investment. The US dollar has an effective "investment yield" of -2%. The best interest rates you can get in the US, don't exceed 2%. If I lock up my money in a 5-year CD (certificate of deposit), I get close to 0% returns. Why would I ever settle for 0% returns on such a terrible illiquid investments?
Most sensible people will invest any cash (USD/etc) they have, and will aim to maximize their investment returns, concordant with their investment goals. Most of the wealth in the world (held by people with lots of savings, and by companies/institutions) is in the form of stock/shares and bonds. Currency is just a medium for transmission/exchange of money. Most of the wealth in the world is held in stocks, bonds, and property, and not in currency.
> the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share through loop holes and classifying their income differently than mine
The solution to that is simply going back to classifying capital gains[1], dividends[2], and carried interest[3] as regular taxable income. The current regular federal income tax system[4] is very progressive and effective. Getting rid of that would be the wrong thing to do, FICA taxes are a bit regressive, but that can also be easily fixed by eliminating the Social Security wage base[5].
References:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_Unite...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_tax#United_States
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carried_interest#United_States
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_schedule_(federal_income_...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Wage_Base
I think you are also assuming that returns on all investments would stay the same under increased inflation which I seriously doubt.
More importantly I understand that wealthy people have a smaller portion of their wealth in cash than poor people what I am arguing for is that perhaps inflation is at most no worse than our current taxation scheme.
The two words that are most likely to cause a old-fashioned Hacker News libertarian-slash-armchair-economist freakout: "print money."
The US is doing exactly that, and has been for decades. Since the 2008 debacle it has being doing even more of it.
> inflation in a sense is unavoidable
If you mean politically unavoidable, I agree; no government in human history has been able to avoid messing with the currency.
If you mean unavoidable period, I'm not sure why it would be. There is nothing in principle impossible about having a currency that cannot be inflated.
> if the cause of inflation is labor scarcity
How does labor scarcity cause inflation?
By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it. Especially if you are holding assets that are appreciating at a slower rate than inflation. Essentially I don't think the wealthy get to loophole or lawyer their way out of inflation the same way they can with taxes.
I meant labor scarcity not in the exonomic sense but in the sense of literally running out of people to allocate. I think it's clear that if businesses have to compete for a dwindling pool of workers prices will inevitably rise.
The US money supply has been increasing fairly steadily since WW II.
> The US has been borrowing money but that hardly translates to printing it.
The US has indeed been borrowing money. But it has also been printing it.
> I can definitely see how quantitative easing essentially translates to printing a couple of trillion to buy outstanding debt but that has already stopped.
QE is just the latest round of printing money. (More precisely three rounds, since there was QE1, QE2, and QE3.)
> By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it.
Only if the supply of currency increases. Why is that unavoidable?
> I meant labor scarcity not in the exonomic sense but in the sense of literally running out of people to allocate. I think it's clear that if businesses have to compete for a dwindling pool of workers prices will inevitably rise.
No, it's not clear at all. What is clear is that the price of labor (wages and salaries) will increase relative to the price of capital (e.g., interest rates). But that does not mean price levels in general will rise. That depends on how well businesses can substitute capital for labor. In the age of automation, that is usually "pretty well".
So your argument is solely a moral one. Jobs are mostly a first served problem or the result of privilege: education, network, etc.
No they aren't, the easiest way to get a job is to get really good at something.
Doing that I could be useful to thousands, maybe even millions of people. As opposed to, say, wasting the time of hundreds of people trying to sell them stupid magazines they don't need or want while leeching money off of the poor grandma who doesn't know how to say no.
Alternatively, I could spend the time to build something that somewhere down the line could become a useful product to share with the world, or a profitable business that could pay back all the tax money I used up (and more).
Doing a bullshit job 8 hours a day leaves me too exhausted to do anything particularly useful with the little free time I have.
If you want impact, and can write software, there's plenty of well-paid jobs for that in the US; Silicon Valley and elsewhere. That not only lets you contribute taxes instead of living off them, it also helps you be more productive, focused, and impactful.
Is teaching a bullshit job? Installing solar panels in people's roofs? Doing the accounting that keeps a hospital working? Cooking or waiting in a small restaurant where the firemen next door have lunch?
Waiting tables means you live on tips. It's not a job you can do for life.
To install solar panels you don't need more than a training course, it doesn't require more education than any factory job. Same for cooking.
> what drives that change
Congress I think
I ask because your position takes on very different implications depending on exactly what you believe. In my experience, most people who say they don't believe in morals actually seem to believe very strongly in them; they just don't believe that the morals of the majority should be imposed on others who don't share the same values. I don't necessarily want to assume that's your position, though.
I believe that if you set a good minimum standard, it will trickle up.
Also if you don't want riots in the streets, you should make sure the lower classes are living decently.
That's not morals, that political intelligence. Crowds with empty stomachs are a political nightmare.
You can argue that it's economically beneficial for the higher classes in Europe, or convenient for the politicians. But even if it's the case (which is anything but obvious), that doesn't change the historical origin of those policies.
What I was saying is that if you want peaceful streets, you have to care for the poor, if not things will get messy. To me things are not really peaceful in the ghettos. High welfare helps "taming" the problems poverty creates.
As a side note, recently there's been a drive to not normalize fascist slogans or ideas in mainstream politics. Among those, "arbeit macht frei" is a particularly offensive one, since it was written on the gates of Auschwitz.
Just saying. When someone quotes this kind of phrase to us, we should remind them where they got it from and refuse to treat it as normal.
>I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough.
Good for you!
>I hear so many people yelling about moochers and parasites, it's becoming weird. Everybody wants everybody to behave like superman, yet nobody realizes you can't educate everyone to have enough qualified workers.
I don't think people want to acknowledge how much social capital goes into enabling us "supermen" who actually do work for high incomes. If all the roads get cracked and the trains break down, I'm going to be a less productive worker because I have a harder time getting to work.
Although the "Just saying" part (from the GP) irritates me. You're not "just saying," because if you were there would be no need to explain that to us. It's little more than an underscoring of the passive-aggressive intent of a statement.
That's why I used it
Are you banking on the tax payers never reaching that mindset as well? Because it kind of breaks down if that happens.
How an economy heavily based on excessive consumption is a good thing?
Just like planned obsolescence has its set of advantages, even if it is a despicable practice.
This kind of lazy discourse from someone who has authored a whole book on the topic under discussion is remarkable.
" When I see, for example, that you’re making millions by laundering drug-cartel money (HSBC), or pushing bad paper on mutual fund managers (AIG, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, Citibank), or preying on low-income borrowers (Bank of America), or buying votes in Congress (all of the above) – just business as usual on Wall Street – while I’m barely making ends meet "
So I wouldn't call it lazy when he flat out listed what they are doing to get put in that gangster category.
Not just wall street doing unethical stuff so why pick on them and call them gangsters?
And as through your life you travel, Yes, as through your life you roam, You won't never see an outlaw Drive a family from their home."
-- Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie
And, when you experiment with a job guarantee program and turn it into a basic income scheme you can see why:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/randy-wray-the-job-gu...
The increasing “feminization” of the program (caused in part by economic recovery that pulled most men out of the program and into the private sector) proved to be a political problem. Government officials adopted the attitude that the program was providing jobs to “economically inactive” women who should be at home instead of working. I won’t go into the details (in part because I am not sufficiently familiar with them) but officials created an alternative scheme by which the remaining men would be moved into an unemployment program and the women would be moved into welfare. These moves were voluntary, but higher pay in either unemployment or welfare was the attraction that helped to gut the Jefes program. One of my PhD students continued to study participants as the program was reduced—and found that women would rationally take the higher pay in welfare but continue to work in their jobs (without pay) because they found substantial benefits in the social networks they had created through work. They also wanted to contribute to their communities.
Somehow I doubt this story has permeated James Livingston's Brooklyn bubble though.
Yes, because the boring truth is that because people want jobs and we need them to do stuff.
The only reason we really have a "reserve army of the unemployed" is as an inefficient way of enforcing "labor market discipline" for private companies. That's why they lobby for austerity, etc.
Self-worth through jobs is an important point.
No, full employment alone won't solve the problems of inequality that the essay very capably outlines.
But full employment may be necessary anyway, because having the sense of being needed and being useful may be an important factor to many people's well-being. Full employment is really just another way of saying that everyone can get this sense of being needed/useful via employment.
Seriously. People that did those jobs HATED their jobs. Now a group of people have a job again that they hate. Surely we can find something that fulfills their desire to be helpful without a completely unnecessary and unfulfilling job.
So there were no workers, just a driver.
Because of the jobs issue, they went back to having two men that pick up the cans by hand. But because everyone had the new cans with all the extra hardware now the work was harder. It was the worst of both worlds until they issued everyone new regular trash cans a few years later.
It's going to take probably 100 years to get there, but frankly we have no choice. It's either get with the program or buy into some form of population control.
When a plumber gets satisfaction from a good day's work of fixing piping in people's houses, do they get their purpose in life / sense of being needed and useful (note: not the same thing!) from an authority figure? Hell no, unless you think clients are authority figures.
But they are getting this sense from their work.
Heck, even in standard office jobs, I doubt that too many people get their sense of being needed and useful from their bosses or other authority figures (if they get it at all - you don't have to tell me about bullshit jobs). They get this sense from coworkers, clients, or other aspects of the work itself. That's certainly my personal experience. We're social beings, not obedient worker drones.
And I don't know how to put that in a way that gets the point across, but I think a lot of techy types are actually quite arrogant and selfish when they dismiss full employment and think that a UBI would solve all problems.
I get it, most of us would happily work on random open source projects or whatever if we had sufficient UBI, and a lot of that work would be useful to many people. But we should be aware of how rare that is and how lucky that makes us.
Most people don't have that drive or that opportunity, but would still benefit from a social framework in which they are nudged towards doing useful things that they can take pride in and get rewards for (both monetary and psychological). It's like going to the gym: most people don't have the drive, but would ultimately benefit from the offer and a bit of nudging.
Full employment can offer such a social framework (if done right, of course), while a UBI can't (no matter how it is implemented). Who are you to deny this to other people just because they're different from you?
>But they are getting this sense from their work.
I guess I wouldn't say that self-employed professionals have a job. I think of it as a self-employed versus wage-labor distinction.
>Full employment can offer such a social framework (if done right, of course), while a UBI can't (no matter how it is implemented). Who are you to deny this to other people just because they're different from you?
This is, of course, where we actually disagree. I think that while a UBI is by no means a perfect solution to human worth or psychological needs, it's a much better solution than "full" employment to people's material needs, while many many alternatives remain besides employment for the psychological needs. It's a continuous tradeoff made under uncertainty, and we should talk about where we believe the tradeoffs are.
If that's really the best you can come up with, I think it's safe to say that UBI doesn't offer any solutions for human worth or psychological needs. (I also partially get it; solving material needs is easy compared to psychology.)
And it's funny, I never see UBI supporters propose actual solutions for those. It's always just hand-waving, like they are prepared to give lip-service to the issue, but they're not really interested in solving it. It's self-serving politics by an elite who already has all the frameworks for solving their own psychological needs, as long as the material ones are satisfied. At least you have to give the full employment/Job Guarantee folks credit for actually trying to come up with something.
For what it's worth, it's not like those things are in conflict anyway. UBI and full employment are complementary policies, they don't contradict each other.
I guess I don't give so much credit because I'm a weirdo who doesn't get a lot of his psychological self-worth from his work. Yes, work can be interesting and engaging sometimes. So can any number of other things in my life, none of which pay me wages.
I also don't think that assembly-line jobs ever actually provided for people's psychological needs. That's part of why the '60s and '70s had so much wildcat worker militancy: people found that while they were glad to have their material needs met, they had absolute psychological needs beyond what their jobs could ever meet. So to turn it around: I think that "jobs for everyone" is likewise the self-serving politics of an elite who already gain far more life-satisfaction from their professional work than the masses ever will from manufacturing or services.
>For what it's worth, it's not like those things are in conflict anyway. UBI and full employment are complementary policies, they don't contradict each other.
Very true, and we should probably support both.
Often, it can be the opposite. Many people would describe their daily tasks as useless or marginally useful for humanity, while finding meaning in unpaid volunteering.
Basic income is economically unsustainable.
Some people can just lift more stuff than others, or think about numbers faster or whatever happens to need to be done and their labor is more valuable because it's more efficient. Therefore inequality.
You are right that there are difference built-in to humanity, but we have already overcome those with fairly common technology already. Now inequality is more about who your parents were instead of where you are born or other purely physical problems.
We can ship drinking water to anyplace on the planet. We just aren't incentivized to do so. The person leading a team building the roads that will support that effort could be a wheelchair bound parapalegic.
Our systems don't need to be perfect they just need to be better than they are now.
You make a great point here, and one I hope you continue to push for. Statements like Why must inequality be forever? will obscure this point as it doesn't include the nuance of "not perfect, just better". You will always find people who will argue that "Why must inequality be forever" is naïve at best, needlessly preventing you from finding solutions you might agree on.
The result is that Americans are just broadly doing worse, because our social system is irrational.
The issue at stake, is that unless you also engineer them to be similar in every aspect (looks, intelligence, physical capability), there will be differences, and those differences will enable a new hierarchy, with people who have more, and others who have less, thus recreating a unequal base situation.
You don't get to solve the problem by making every human's base situation identical, you solve it by making the inequality device and the means to use it available to everybody.
So what you're really saying is that it's not possible to guarantee any minimum level of living at all, at least not in a way that's economically sustainable. Conversely this would imply that a functioning economy requires some people to fail to reach any standard of living whatsoever (basically they die from lack of food, housing, medical care, etc.).
So sure, any level of basic income might be economically unsustainable, but if so then a functioning economy seems rather overrated.
What he's saying is that no one needs to do anything of value anymore. You know, like the guy who built the house you live in, chopped down the trees it was built with, managed the project to build it, inspected the building to make sure it was put together correctly, etc...
Hundreds of people had jobs to make the shelter you value. They want something in exchange for that value. These pseudo intellectuals can't seem to understand this basic underpinning of civilization.
The exchange of value is as old as time and nothing is going to change that for a long time.
Meanwhile, actual citizens have moved on; right or wrong they've empowered people that they think can make more "jerbs," so the ladder removal operation is on hold for the time being.
> What he's saying is that no one needs to do anything of value anymore.
Can you point to the particular sentence where this is stated? Didn't think so.
The article I read said that the majority of jobs aren't paid at a level appropriate to their value, and that without the (rather limited US) welfare programs to support them, the bulk of employees would be below the poverty line, and with the impending automation of almost 50% of available jobs it'll be those bottom-line jobs that go.
The article then tells us that we'll need to redefine our attitudes to both income and work, but nowhere can I find the statement that "no one needs to do anything of value anymore." It tells us that almost half of the population already don't do anything of sufficient value, and many of those jobs are going to go away.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle-class-...
I feel like that's pretty clear.
You're right though, it does contradict my "ideology". I'm willing to be enlightened though but there were no rational arguments in this article to sway me.
Maybe use office buildings or food delivery startups for your examples.
All of them were formerly professionals, now jobless and moneyless. So they have to work directly for themselves and barter products and services. It will evolve into a bazaar of companies and professionals, offering products and services to each other, maybe even with its own currency.
We might not have money but we have work power and are not stupid, and are motivated to find a solution. If nobody will hire you or give you free stuff, what are you going to do? You got to work for yourself, like it's always been since there are people on this planet. But this time, after you earn some money, you can buy your own robot, or get your friends with a small fab to make one for you.
So, coming automation, people will migrate from employment into self employment. By relying on each other, maybe with some help from the government as well, people can make it.
Corollary: Anything that is automated is not economically sensible for a human to do.
- Freelancing and consulting gigs have huge overhead.
- Uber drivers (for now) own the car but don't make most of the money. And they will be made redundant by self driving cars.
- Medical services have the most overhead and require years of expensive training.
- Making artisanal furniture might feed one or two person per town, but that's no way to feed a family.
- Farming is also getting automated in vertical greenhouses.
If you have health problem, or cannot make something with your hands or your brain _that people are willing to exchange enough money for_, should you be left out to die?
Yes, but when you can't pay the wonderful automated hospital its fees, you hire the local unemployed doctor (replaced by an automatic diagnostic system) and in lieu of payment, you go and fix his roof.
My point is that there are going to be lots of unemployed people and they are going to work for themselves because they need to survive, because they got no money or jobs. Automation will make it cheaper for corporations to manufacture things, but people are not going to buy their products because they don't have hard money. They only have barter money. And companies don't take that as payment.
The alternative, UBI, requires that companies realize they actually want UBI. UBI would be like a pot of gold they can sink their hands into. People would buy shit and they would make profits. Of course, UBI comes out of their pockets, but hopefully they make more profit than the competition and win. Also, hopefully, with automation there is enough increase in productivity to cover UBI and some profits for the industries. If UBI doesn't come, they are busted. Rich people can't satiate economy's demand for customers. They can only eat so much food, and sleep on so much bed, and use so much car. The larger the UBI, the more money on the table each year.
But for people it's going to be great to become more self reliant, even acquire automation and support themselves by directly benefiting. Automation is going to become much cheaper and an open-source community of makers is going to appear. We won't need to buy much except generic computers and raw materials. Or the government will subsidize buying commercial automation for self reliance, as a cheaper alternative to UBI. Automated farms, 3d printers and solar panels are going to empower people.
One hope is that with sufficient automation and competition, the marginal cost on providing a diagnostic or other services might fall to close enough to 0 to be free. The value provided to society would be very high. The profits might be astronomical?
I agree that UBI or something like it is a necessity, but I'd rather live in a Star Trek "all needs provided for without currency exchange or social stigma" society rather than 5 trillionnaire families and 9 billions peoples surviving/mooching on UBI.
Increased automation has a high chance to be very expensive, in the "printer cartridge" kind of way. Cheap "robot". Expensive maintenance and consumables.
I wish you're right, and that corporations will not go full "Bacigalupi" and patent everything from the plant we are allowed to grow to the brand of electrons we're allowed to put in our robots.
Or that, there are inherent contradictions in capitalism and therefore people have lied to you. The system is more complex and less rational than you thought. That would mean that we aren't in Fukuyama's post-ideological, end-of-history era!
Sounds terrifying, maybe it is better to avoid becoming an educated adult.
Also, I disagree, irony has its place and one of them is to poke fun at commonly held but profoundly mistaken beliefs that result in widespread suffering. Even if that has a high chance of offending people who don't like smart ass comments chipping away at the pedestal holding up their privilege.
I'm sure you meant well, and I'm not attack you. I have noticed that often cutting jokes are considered acceptable here only when they align with certain political beliefs, and I feel it's eminently constructive to politely push back on that, so please take this as my intent.
Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as many computers as needed doing it. The US has already hit "peak school" in terms of economic benefit. About half of college graduates take jobs that don't really require a college education. Trade schools do even worse.
The classic solutions are lots of poor people in slums and dying towns, and ethnic cleansing.
Do you have a source for this statistic? Because there are some important questions about such a study that might clarify the true meaning of such a number.
1.) How many of the graduates employed in "jobs that don't really require a college education" move on to a job that does, how long does it take them to do so? What does that look like vs. a person without a college education?
2.) What is defined as a "job that doesn't really require a college education"? Does it mean the employer did not require a college education to apply? Does it mean that the surveyor has decided the job(s) in question don't require a college education, even though the employers filter out applicants who lack one?
3.) What is the definition of a college education? As of 2014, only ~32% of people over the age of 25 have a bachelor's degree [0]. Are you comparing anyone who ever went to college with everyone who didn't?
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... (Source is US gov't)
Most notably, the number comes from self-reporting. So this could range from "barista" to "sales" to "software engineer".
I'm not particularly surprised when someone's first job out of college doesn't make use of their education. But there's a huge difference between a business major going into sales to learn an industry (or a code monkey stuck on a boring project they could've worked on in high school), and an English major becoming a taxi driver.
In short, from the data, it's impossible to distinguish between "putting in your time" or "bad first assignment", and "actually under-utilized".
* This doesn't generalize well to STEM graduates, where the numbers are closer to 75%.
IMO the GP's assessment that we've reached "peak school" is absolutely incorrect. Rather, we've seen a big shift in the type of labor that's needed in a short time frame. If a freshly minted college grad can fetch $100,000+ and great benefits, then "peak school" isn't a real problem yet.
'Opening a restaurant' does not require a Uni education, but I'd rather the person be smarter, more educated, understand aesthetics, customers, finance etc. - and be college educated.
You don't need 'high school education' to do a lot of construction work, but I'd rather hire high school graduates.
There's a lot of intelligence that goes into many of these kinds of jobs. As people are smarter, the quality of the output goes up.
I think that Uni develops character, opens horizons, builds esteem and competence in some areas, helps people organize their ideas, 'think bigger' , expose them to all sorts of ideas and disciplines they may have never heard of.
People are sometimes smug about 'MBAs'. I was an Eng. - and never took an Econ course in my life. My MBA was mind-altering (granted I also did it overseas and that provided some other kind of exposure).
Uni is usually worth it if the kids try to get something out of it.
This is pragmatically not true.
There are tons and tons of jobs that can't be done by computers.
The 'entertainment sector' was not even a part of the economy 100 years ago. Now it's a big chunk.
Think of how big sports are. That was all 'unpaid amateur' stuff before.
It's worth examining how much we ought to work and not, but we also should understand there will always be work to do.
Also - the industrial revolution had a far greater direct impact upon 'labour' than the computing revolution.
'Machines' could do the work of thousands of men - and the economic translation was direct - not 'soft' as we have with computers.
And yet what happened? Consumer surpluses found their way into the economy, and 'people did other stuff'.
Paradoxically - through the entire history of 'automation' unskilled labour has been getting more expensive, not less.
Teaching a computer to do anything is fucking HARD. And most of the time the problems are just unsolvable.
Sure you see cool demos like one that can cook for you. That shit is awesome. So uhhh... where are they? They're demos and proofs of concept, so expensive, require maintenance and programmers (gasp!). Don't except to see real ones mass produced and taking over for a good 30-40-50 years.
We can do a lot with computers and automation but IMHO every article that starts with, "If you don't agree then you're an idiot" is immediately sitting on a faulty foundation.
Whenever anyone talks about 'the singularity' (i.e. computer consciousness) I usually respond with "get your bot to make me a goddam ham sandwich and clean my toilet!" - then we can talk!
But let's avoid calling people 'retarded', eh :)
How about "get your bot to build my microprocessors" or "get your bot to route my package through a warehouse" or "get your bot to weld a car"? There you can get robots to do amazing things, and they can cost whatever the company wants to charge because those robots are making money. If a robot can build a modern CPU, it could clean your toilet. That's not the problem.
Even still, there are household robots that are fairly common. I've got one running upstairs right now. It's called a Roomba.
Likewise for a sandwich, if the meat and cheese and bread are all in robot-compatible forms, it's just layering them together. Not much more complicated than a printer that can pull from multiple paper trays. You can even combine the two for maximum efficiency.
What's hard is making a robot behave like a human, because even humans struggle at behaving like a human. IMO there's no purpose to making a robot have the same physical constraints as a human. Our bodies are pretty shitty when you think about it. Robots can be much more elegant.
If you don't think there are sandwich-making robots that actually exist, I'd wonder how you think gas station ham sandwiches are made. Hint: it's a conveyor belt that drops bread, then cheese, then ham, then more bread. That's a robot that makes sandwiches. I'd sell you one for $1m, but you'd probably say "I can make my own for free, thank you!"
But that robot can't refill its consumables, it can't mop up the floor, and it can't deal with the mess after your semi-demented grandpa missed half the bowl. This solution is useful for a large rest stop with a dozen toilettes and thousands of customers per day (and employees that do the above tasks), and utterly useless for your own home.
> IMO there's no purpose to making a robot have the same physical constraints as a human. Our bodies are pretty shitty when you think about it. Robots can be much more elegant.
Our bodies have a huge advantage: they are incredibly flexible, and surprisingly strong for their dexterity. No robot we have ever built even comes close. You can have lots of robots in your home (Roomba, toilet bowl cleaner, dish washer, sandwich maker, a kitchen machine, uuh, is there anything else you can automate?) and you'll still need a human doing a lot of work. Or you can have a single human working half-time in your home, and you don't need a single robot. Give me a robot that can do 90% of all household chores, and I'm sold.
I think it's another discussion whether we can make robots who each do one thing well. Roomba, etc.
Besides the space constraints with multiple robots, I think it's clear there are significant advantages in having just 1 entity that can perform all the required cleaning tasks. Much like single-purpose hardware has given way (mostly) to software, except in areas with interesting requirements (GPu etc.)
The disadvantage of the specialized machines you speak of is their limited to no adaptability, inflexibility to novel situations and obsolescence upon changing environments. There's need for actually smart appliances (which is what the kind of robots you spoke would be) but they'd be best suited to easily circumscribable tasks. Not what many have in mind when they think robots.
Sorry, but no. Very, very hard.
+ Find my fridge + Open it + Find the meat + Find the bread + Open the mayo + Get a knife + Spread it
etc. etc. etc.
Even if you do it 'the machines way' it's extremely difficult.
No way. Not for quite a while.
Much harder than 'driving a car'.
Without proving it directly - let me do it indirectly:
Factories would love to have robots with such intelligence and dexterity. It's definitely worth '10's of thousands of dollars' per machine to do that.
If machines could do that ... even Chinese labourers would be out of a job.
We can barely make robotic arms that 'hold stuff' of any weight reasonably without getting out of balance.
Go ahead and look at industrial grade robot-arms - you'll see these powerful steel machines - max load: 5 lbs (!).
McDonald's would be having robots prep your burgers - even ina a controlled/machine setting - and they don't do it - because it's a ways off.
There are so many issues with that one, it's a long way off.
I agree with the idea that we are 20 years away from a walking talking robot. One that could find the fridge, figure out which mayo is the good one, and which mayo has gone bad. The get the right ham, not the crap the kids like, and find the knives. Where are all the knives? And then put the stuff away, so nobody complains later....
I own 2 welding robots.(Miller-Panasonic Prefab Welding Cell) They are time consuming to program, and you do have to 'touch up' the program all the time. They are both 7 axis machines, with the capability of running another 13 axis each. The complexity of a setup is much much higher than a self driving car, which has go/stop/left/right as possible inputs. A self drive car is only 2 axis of movement.
In order to deal with 900 types of sandwiches in another factory, humans are used, not machines . http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sandwich-factory-worker... . They don't do it because they like paying humans. It is too complex to handle the high mix of products (900 sandwich types) for automation.
Those are some of the worst sandwiches I've ever seen – which confirms your point, I suppose.
Again, they just don't do it in a "human" way. They do it like robots do it. Driving a car is infinitely harder because you have to do it the human way.
Again, you're thinking of making an android: something that resembles a human and has fingers and hands and would spread butter with a knife. That's a far cry from "a robot that makes a sandwich". Those have existed for longer than the Internet has.
That would be Item #130001 from Integrated Food Services.[1] "Today IFS and their affiliates own and operate a state-of-the-art facility which includes two USDA processing plants, a wholesale bakery and a dry warehouse which total over 100,000 square feet on five acres. We are located in the greater Los Angeles area, almost equidistant from downtown, LAX and the Port of Los Angeles." Most of the prepackaged sandwiches in Southern California come from those plants. Here's an automated sandwich assembly line.[2]
[1] http://integratedfoodservice.com [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8D9YE26QEs
Do you think it's likely we'll see robots making high quality goods like this, or will they always be commoditized and (my opinion) fully disgusting?
Robots clearly do well with mechanical items like cars. There doesn't seem to be any immediate reasons they can't make an artisan sandwich. Maybe it's a limitation of ingredient spoilage / exposure to air during the process?
Curious what you think -- will robots making food continue to be McDonalds level, or will we have good food coming from machines?
But that's just it. Sports (and entertainment, your other example) are tiny, because only the top .001% are valued. Everyone else is basically slaving away for free in the hopes that they make it to that top echelon. Even the amount of support jobs is teeny compared to other industries.
The problem with advanced automation is that it eliminates sectors that have huge employment bases (think of how many people that drive for a living) and replaces them with sectors that tend to be much smaller in comparison.
Computer sector is younger and bigger. What is your point?
> There are tons and tons of jobs that can't be done by computers.
Not really, less and less all the time. Automation has been a trend since Industrial age. It is now expanding into knowledge work. Translation, copywriting, all sorts of analysis & prediction, navigation/driving (for fun look up how many truck driver jobs that will be automated in 10-20 years). IBM Watson isn't just a research project lark, IBM is developing a product to automate thinking and reasoning. Google all over it too.
> Think of how big sports are. That was all 'unpaid amateur' stuff before.
Do you believe there is more than an insignificant fraction of people employed by "sports"? btw there use to be people compiling stats, doing betting. They have been replaced by machines.
> unskilled labour has been getting more expensive, not less.
unskilled is misnomer, its un-automatable labour. Humans can't compete with machines. And more and more activities are being automated. Even labour such as medical, legal and acting.
I wonder how far we are from peak entertainment (in developed countries, I mean). With a fixed population size and a fixed number of hours in the day for each person, there is a hard limit on the number of hours of entertainment that can be delivered by industry.
And I'm not even sure I would spend anything more than I do now on entertainment even if all my working hours suddenly became leisure time (unless you're going to start counting activities like home improvement and amateur science and engineering projects as entertainment).
"Economic contribution" is hardly a factor if you discuss morality.
There are plenty of jobs that are just plain harmful.
There is also a difference in subjective value if a job is done by a computer or a human being; computers do not suffer.
Those jobs exist because someone finds them beneficial.
I'm not sure what you mean with perfectly aligned interests. What would those be?
The jobcalypse would give us the time needed to become better humans instead of better marginally intelligent machines. Make music, draw, sow, be creative. Lovingly tend to your garden. Develop crazy new theories about stuff and discuss them with like-minded individuals. Spend weeks on end in a library, not because you need the knowledge, but because you suddenly took a fancy to ancient Nordic literature. Come out to find that other people are interested in the subject and teach them. What about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything? Are we going to find that by watching TV all day because "education won't help"?
There is stuff do. Lots of it. It's in our heads.
But won't raising taxes on corporate income drive corporation to other jurisdiction? So employment in that company then won't just slowly trail off, but will look like a cliff, dropping to 0.
So isn't that idea ignoring the fact that companies don't have to stick into one place and so we arbitrarily tax them and then provide basic income to everyone in that community?
It goes the other way as well. In some places like West Virginia they've bent backward to accommodate coal mines, easing EPA regulation, destroying the environment and so on. Just to keep companies around. It is like a bad abusive relationship.
Other states for example know the game so they would court and offer incentive for companies to move to their state. I've seen that happen and it was painful for the original community to lose all those jobs.
I agree that we need something like basic income and the accounting is not the only problem, the social and moral aspect is a just as big.
The pessimist in me says we couldn't even meaningfully have a decent health insurance system like other civilized countries. We are a long way from any kind of distributism.
It is good there is talk and discussion about this. The ideological re-framing of this might have to be done very carefully.
One quick example I can think off the top of my head is how in Alaska there was redistribution of income from natural resources. People there probably don't think in terms of "socialism" or "handouts". Well at least the people I know there didn't a few years ago...
Wonder if basic income can be advocated in those terms - "You deserve this because we've created the automation / robots to work for all of us..." or "We want to free people's time so they can volunteer and help their own communities...". Some will play video games and consume drugs perhaps all day, some will decide maybe they want to visit some lonely elderly person in a nursing home or help in the hospital or soup kitchen some more.
1) how do you get people to accept the existence of basic income without perceiving the beneficiaries as moochers.
2) what do people on basic do?
Right now your example of people visiting the elderly is in some place paid work but can also be performed by volunteer. However volunteers should be vetted.
My guess is that when everybody is on basic, you can earn "social credits" for volunteering. But should that grant you access to more resources, or should that be like "Achievements" in video games? And how do you avoid turning that into the Black Mirror episode "15 millions Merits".
But even "social credit" cannot prevent the paid workers to look down on the moochers on basic.
How do we get to the star trek society utopia...?
So replace "social credits" in your line of thinking by money, and you've basically arrived at the idea of a Job Guarantee. And somebody who works for their money is no longer a moocher, so...
These are highly valuable services provided to society that are not rewarded in either status or the current social credits.
According to society's value system, as reflected by market pricing, I believe the answer is generally yes, the CEO is valued more.
The CEO is valued more because their work affects the company they lead as a whole and the work of many other people at the company - such as by determining what to work on, what initiatives to invest in strategically, or by obtaining funding for the company from investors. Poor decisions by the CEO can cause the entire company to fail; good decisions can create 100x as many jobs at the company, and increase its value by 100x.
It is more difficult for people to grasp the value of CEOs because their effect is spread out over a lot of people and abstract concepts like company success. It is easier to grasp the value of a nanny who spends time with your kids. But the fact that the nanny's work is much more concrete and obvious does not mean that it's more valuable. Consider: how much will you personally spend on a nanny? Would you spend 30-50% of your income on a fantastic nanny (the way that many people will spend that amount buying a house?) Most people don't value a nanny that much.
For a comparison, think about the effect that a good or bad president will have on the entire US. They can make a tremendous difference to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. A good CEO can do the same for their company, and all of their workers and investors. A bad CEO can do the opposite, and run the company into the ground.
Nannys and CEOs operate at entirely different scales. A CEO can destroy billions in value, or create billions in value. This is why companies and their boards and investors value good CEOs highly and pay them well. They want the best possible person for the job, and the best people demand high compensation.
There are also factors of supply and demand to consider. Most adult humans are intrinsically equipped to be nannies - to care for children. We're evolved to do it. No specific qualifications are necessary beyond not being a shitty or unreliable person. By comparison, not many people are equipped to be an effective CEO of a large, medium, or even small company. Thus, nannies earn less because there is a large supply of people who can act as nannies (almost the entire adult population), and a substantially smaller supply of effective CEOs. They need intelligence, drive, education, charisma, leadership capability, experience, vision, and other qualities.
Regarding your specific point about CEOs cutting jobs, sometimes that needs to happen. Lines of business don't always remain profitable. Sometimes a company needs to shut down unprofitable business units entirely, and exit the business. Sometimes a company needs to lay off workers and find a different approach to remain profitable.
Sometimes a job that was done by humans before will be automated tomorrow. For example, the company Hostess that makes Twinkies used to employ 22,000 workers. The company went bankrupt, and people bought its ashes and restarted it. The new hostess now heavily takes advantage of automation and employs only 1,170 people. (1)
A lot of people got laid off in that transition. The layoffs were also necessary for the company to continue at all; otherwise it would have gone under for good. They had a non-viable economic model for producing their baked goods. The leaders in charge of the transition took the only reasonable action (in hindsight) to prevent the company from cratering. (1)
CEOs are the people in charge of making the best decision for their stakeholders in really tough circumstances. Sometimes layoffs are the best possible outcome among many worse outcomes. No CEO would prefer to lay off their people - it's a horrible thing to have to do - but when the company is in dire financial straights, sometimes there is no better alternat...
I agree, in reality, "the market" thinks the CEO ought to be rewarded more, (I agree with the principle but not with the current levels). However if a CEO destroys billions of dollars of value, he gets a golden parachute or a new title. The employees get a pink slip.
If the CEO creates billions of dollars of value, the employees sometimes get a (tiny) bonus (medium bonus for bankers).
But what really is the value of Twinky to society compared to the life of a human being? (millions of $ vs $0?) And that is the fundamental place where I think we disagree.
I have a strong disagreement with the main tenet of this line of reasoning (this might become a strawman argument): that maximizing profit and financial success (or jobs) is the desirable goal for society. If you look at it in the sense that society should be organized such that "all men are created equal" with the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", maximizing profit (or jobs) is perpendicular if not antithetical to the pursuit of happiness, at least for the many.
The CEO's happiness might be perfectly served by the current system, but what about the worker's? Also, what was the cost of the failure of the (previous) management teams to the CEOs vs the employees?
I confess that I've only read about "working" alternatives to the current system in fiction.
As the article points out, we are running out of jobs. Maybe now would be a good time for a rethink before we hit the crunch?
Yes, by firing people who don't provide much value at this company they can go on and provide more value at other companies. It will make their lives tougher for a while, but redistributing labor can provide immense value.
For example, lets say that a CEO over many hospitals cleaned up bureaucracy in them. This lead to increased efficiency, and now many people are just doing busywork and aren't really needed. The CEO then fires thousands of healthcare workers who can go on and work at other hospitals. This will drive down costs and help more people get the healthcare they need. His work is surely more important than the work of an individual healthcare worker.
The point is that rather than trying to follow NIH syndrome and building a new system from scratch, repeating all the same mistakes, perhaps one could try to fix the existing system?
Otherwise, the parallel social credits system will most likely either remain a parallel system with social stigma attached to it, or it will end up having the same problems as the already existing social credits system (i.e. money).
Maybe social credit could be used to run for office. Or it can be used to weight votes -- those with more social credit can cast 5 votes in elections.
Think of a high ranking CEO and how maybe some airlines would invite them to fly for free just to get free advertising. Or might get invited to White House dinners and such. Maybe nurses, firefighters or teachers who achieved higher social credits would be treated the same way.
An allocated credit (for example), that could only be transferred once before going into artificial sinks, would function very differently, and encourage activities that help a much broader population.
That I believe is going to be a very divisive subject. Wasn't the 80's the years of the "welfare queen boogeyman" (or I guess "boogeywoman..."). It started around Reagan's times where they tried to paint welfare recipients as opportunists, lazy, downright criminal and how they were responsible for all possible waste and other evils.
That will stratify the society into those who work and those who don't. I believe people will always have this competitive streak and will want things to be "fair". If they see someone not working and getting by and they are the ones working, they might antagonize them.
> or should that be like "Achievements" in video games? And how do you avoid turning that into the Black Mirror episode "15 millions Merits".
Ah interesting. Heh, it would be like karma here on HN or Reddit. Can't do much with it, but get access to more places perhaps. Can't buy food with it, but can influence the public discourse with it (can upvote, downvote more...).
Yeah I like this idea (but I'd also have to watch Black Mirror).
Land value tax and Pigovian taxes. UBI would then be compensation for allowing others to monopolize our society's collective resources (eg. land). Every citizen is a shareholder, and UBI is a dividend.
Yes, try remove the arbitrage opportunity. That should help. Usually one would say competition is good, so different states with different tax laws is good. However, in many cases it is the workers and small communities that end up suffering as result.
tl;dr The unemployment rate is falling because people are losing their benefits and falling out of the labor force, and no longer being counted as unemployed.
[1] http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
(editted for grammar)
This started in 2000 coincident with the downturn.
The big drop in 2008 was mostly the crash.
I'm tired of hearing these people rationalize their work as being 'to allocate capital efficiently' - Their real job description is 'to dilute real value and centralize capital'. These people don't create jobs; they transfer jobs from small businesses to big corporations.
Those big corporations gain market share not by offering a superior product for a lower price; they do so by manipulating the markets and using the media to project a false image of quality...
If you go to MacDonald's and get a burger, if you forget that you're eating a Big Mac for a second and try to think about it objectively; it's very poor quality; the meat actually tastes like wet cardboard and the bun is like 70% air!
I worked for a major gambling (sports betting) corporation as a software engineer (for 6 months). The job was enjoyable (and extremely well paid) but it was obviously bad for society. I don't have a problem admitting that what I did was evil. I was a small fish, but it's no excuse.
Essentially, I took money from people who were not as smart as me. Maybe I caused people to lose their homes, maybe they got divorced or maybe some even committed suicide (there were stories in the office). I think it's important to acknowledge these things and try to fix them (by quitting, for example).
You can always rationalize that people are responsible for their own actions, but when you are guilty of manipulating people's minds, I don't think it's reasonable to do so.
Sometimes you do have to do a little bit for the common good.
I had kind of the opposite experience as you. I worked at a company that I felt good about, but over time they took on projects I was less on-board with for various reasons (money, political capital). Eventually it got to the point where it was no longer worth the lower paycheck.
What's wrong with that? I want a job that pays well, I don't care how many people share ownership or how large the separate units of ownership are.
What's wrong with that? I want a job that pays well, I don't care how many people share ownership or how large the separate units of ownership are.
There's a lot of work that needs doing. There's an abundance of people to do the work, and I feel like we have plenty of natural resources. It seems to me that we could build housing for everyone, we have the capability to do it. It's just that our economic model isn't about the betterment of manking, providing the people what they need, etc.
If you told an unemployed man that he could have guaranteed food, clothing, medical care, lodging and basic income for his family if he goes work a job where he builds houses for other family in need, I think that would be a very appealing offer.
Right now people work because otherwise they die, socially in civilized continental Europe, possibly literally in "modern" America (and possibly the UK).
You imply that being a fast food worker, janitor, or "office drone" is not meaningful work. To many people it is. Your comment comes across as demeaning.
The post seems to be suggesting that we should just eliminate all of the "least desirable" jobs, which is a fine idea as long as you realize that the next tier of jobs will then immediately become the "least desirable".
Also, you're not your job, you're employed, however tenuously by the fast food industry.
As I said in another comment, "being" a fast food worker is not "feeding people". Working in a soup kitchen is feeding people.
The janitorial function is a necessity in any specialized society which doesn't reward you for cleaning after yourself.
And you really have never heard of someone in an office job that is soul sucking? Like say people organizing layoffs, or accepting/denying coverage at HMO, or call center employees trying to ensare retiree into getting extra fees for services they never use etc...
Don't you think society would be better served if these kind of jobs could not find warm bodies because there was more morally satisfying and equally (or better) financially rewarding proposition around?
Are you saying that making food for people is meaningless? That cleaning doesn't help anyone?
Humans are always going to regard someone as being "at the bottom", just because that's how we think.
I've often thought about how meaningful my own work is, in the sense that: what if people just didn't buy my company's stupid product? Would anybody be worse off? Not really.
The only meaning I've found is the satisfaction of doing my job well, on its own terms - whether that's sweeping the floors at a burger joint, or making software builds.
If you want to meaningfully feed people, I believe it's called working at a soup kitchen. Usually staffed by volunteers. The reward for most meaningful work is often only in the human element. It sure ain't in the pocketbook.
Working in the fast food industry is not "making food for people," it's being a cog in a machine that transform the maximum amount of uncaring for its employees and products into the maximum of profits.
Janitorial work is necessary but not paid in proportion to the social good it provides.
And I take offense at your comment about "Humans are always going to regard someone as being "at the bottom", just because that's how we think.", it's not human nature, it's a social construct.
There is absolutely a housing shortage in popular metropolitan areas (take your pick) . If there wasn't, then prices wouldn't be so high.
Movies and TV shows are filmed in NY because it's a world class, iconic city. It didn't become that because of media.
Desires change through life. Sure when I was 20-something I'd be happy living in manhattan, but in my 30s I want somewhere in the country with a nice small school for the kids. When I'm in my 50s I suspect a house by the beach would be good, maybe even abroad. When it comes to my 70s and I've got grandkids I'll want to be near them.
How many people want to live in Ny to live the "friends" lifestyle, find out reality doesn't meet expectation, then want to leave but can't due to work?
Each plot owns the land beneath, yes?
So build downwards if zoning prohibits building up.
I find it striking it is not done even more. I recognize the technical difficulties but the costs are surely lower than the potential value of easily doubling the sq ft.
There are interesting tricks you can do with fibre optic cable and mirrors to send daylight down there. Not to mention CoeLux and similar products.
For example, an apartment is required to have a window or fresh air source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLJ0zZQb9x0
I admit I just want this because the idea of hidden labyrinths behind our cities is just intrinsically appealing to me. There could be shops! Neon signs! It would be cyberpunk and then I would know the future has arrived :-)
The monetary payoff does seem to be there. I wonder if the delay in transformations of this sort might have a lot to do with a lack of 3D expertise among builders.
Dissagree. Technolgy works best when augmented with humans, however the training needed for ppl (ie truck drivers) may take longer to retool their minds then they have life left. So there may be a generation gap in jobs. Also consider space as the final frontier. How much work will be needed to build fleets of ships to colonize space and all that entails?
Vacant units in 2016: http://www.realtytrac.com/news/foreclosure-trends/u-s-q1-201...
Snapshot of US homeless numbers (likely low): http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/SOH2016
Assuming these numbers are in any way accurate that leaves us with roughly 2 and a third houses per reported homeless person in the US.
So it looks like the initial statement may not be accurate but a housing surplus certainly exists.
And don't even get me started on large-scale planet-care projects— is there a way we can pay people to reclaim destroyed farmland, to grow things locally and organically, replant forests, study and clean up the ocean garbage patches, etc etc.
Certainly you could create infinite amounts of "paid" makework but in the end it amounts to keeping a system going for its own sake, and wasting people's potential by allocating them "dig a hole and fill it in" jobs when they could be being creative.
Realistically there are loads of things that could be done to make the world a better place. Equally there are lots of people out of work. If someone can provide the funds to marry those things together, it's a win win. But who pays? Maybe Apple could go all philanthropic and depart with all that cash they're carrying.
The problem with "creating jobs" is that someone (the government) has to decide (for its citizens) what kind of work is worth doing. The no-longer-needed workers are then forced into those non-essential jobs to earn their right for bare survival. They won't have time to do what they think is important.
The underlying assumption is that unpaid work is somehow worthless to society. And that people cannot decide for themselves how the spend the time freed up by automation.
Whether it's a New Deal style public works program, or the new car plant opening that isn't yet fully automated because the government gave them tax breaks, it's makework and a distraction from what people would do if they could work their vocations.
There's no spots for talented people to work on shit like the failed $30 million IBM census disaster.
But smoking pot and filling in holes with low lives? You betcha! You better earn your welfare and enjoy it or you'll be reported!
There are a lot of people out there with a lot of free time who are willing to work for very little.
Maybe the Govt should make an app that people can use their phone to sign up and do jobs like cleaning up parks etc.. and the Govt can pay them.
the sorts of jobs you're talking about arent always all so clearly verified/verifiable. you'd need other government workers just to verify that the job was done properly... ufff I can see the waste now
The problem with large scale low skilled jobs (e.g. fast food) becoming automated is that these jobs aren't really special as jobs, even if they have a very important socioeconomic role in our society - it's not yet cost effective to automate them, but when it will, then at the same time (roughly speaking, +/- 10 years) all other low skilled jobs will be ripe for automation as well.
A good semi-trailer truck driver will have his job for years to come, but when it does happen, then all the reasonable jobs to which he could currently shift would have their own downsizing due to their own automation and an excessive supply potential workers of poor ex-drivers who were shed years before the good driver.
What in Big Hero Six says anything about the tractability of automating elderly care in the real world?
There are people literally inviting you to escalators in the airport. An empty train station would have half a dozen attendants. Road repair, in the middle of the night, 6 people directing foot traffic, with only two (us) pedestrians in sight.
This was surprising against the stereotype of machine-based Japanese efficiency. I assume it's some half employment, half social support programme going on.
automated jobs could spell out the end of capitalism.
but idk
And an interesting evaluation from The Economist (http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-m...)
The Economist does miss the point a bit by concentrating on a comparison between industrial jobs from a century ago and clerical jobs today. The author discards any notion that workers are intelligent enough to be affected by the true meaning and value to society their job creates, instead comparing physical pain from a industrial age factory job to the tedium of killing time on facebook at a cushy office job.
That's a cheap hack reframing in order to make a point in my opinion, either a sign of dishonesty or just being completely out of touch. Graeber is very clear that the meaninglessness of these tasks is important.