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I have to disagree about the demographics. The job market will not improve. It will continue to deteriorate. China may have a growing middle class, but there a

• kenferry 11y ago
  > By the time these countries have been exploited, then robotics will have taken over and most everyone will be unemployed. Do you think the world is running out of problems to be solved? I don't particularly, so automation doesn't concern me per se. I am concerned that we need to address mobility and people's chances to learn new things, so that people are able to work on whatever problems need working on.
  • hwstar 11y ago
    No. The world isn't running out of problems to solve, but if we are not careful, we may not be allowed to take on the challenge and solve them. Either the rich will do this by force using their agents (e.g police, military, mercenaries, security robots) , or the intelligent robots will do it.
• cpursley 11y ago
  > By the time these countries have been exploited. While I agree with many of your points, and certainly there are many people who get exploited. But overall, if employers and employees are agreeing to mutual employment terms without coercion, then by definition it is not exploitation. Additionally, things robotics and 3D printing are different than events like the industrial revolution which a large amount of capital was required. The owners of robotics and computing will be much more distributed and require less capital. Brining people into the middle class with the modern infrastructure and stability that comes with is a really great thing. Robotics will only augment the quality of life for these people, freeing up massive amounts of human potential.
  • philipov 11y ago
    > But overall, if employers and employees are agreeing to mutual employment terms without coercion, then by definition it is not exploitation. However, not all coercion is someone putting a literal gun to your head. Labor is systemically coerced due to having an inferior negotiating position. It is called exploitation when it is much more important for the employees to get (and keep) the job so they can survive, especially when people are living paycheck-to-paycheck. They can't afford to negotiate, because even trying to do so might get you denied the job, and not be able to eat.
    • hwstar 11y ago
      Absolutely spot on! Nobody talks about it, and it is a very important issue. In the US, the balance of employer/employee power is heavily tilted in the employer's favor.
      • zanny 11y ago
        This is where you insert of the arguments about basic income to balance the employee / employer negotiating position and progressively ward off the failing of market economics while scarcity goes away.
  • cpursley 11y ago
    The example I like is the farming revolution. There was a point when only 97% of people worked on farms. Now that's flipped. Only 3% of people work on farms. Are those 97% without jobs and nothing to do? No, of course not. The economy expanded and new industries emerged that nobody expected. The (farming) machines unlocked massive amounts of human potential. I don't expect the robotic/software/3D revolution to be any different. I'm pretty optimistic about what's coming.
    • wstrange 11y ago
      Previous innovations have essentially automated human (or animal) muscle power. A tractor is vastly more powerful than a horse. AI (or whatever you want to call it), is coming - perhaps not as fast as its proponents would like, but I think we can agree it will happen. This is the first technology that automates the power of the human mind. The range of jobs that can't be done by a machine is going to get increasingly narrow
• yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Lets think this through in terms of goods and services. Supposing jobs are all fully automated, we will have two categories of good in the world - robots and consumer goods. Presumably the rich own the robots and direct the robots to produce consumer goods which are sold to the non-rich. Why is this "misery" for the rest of the world? If we redistributed, then people would now own some shares of Robot Production, Inc. How does that eliminate "misery"?
  • wstrange 11y ago
    How will those non-rich people buy consumer goods if they have no money? Our current economic system does not work in an age of increasing automation. The gains in wealth are being further concentrated in the hands of a few. There is an answer to this dilemma -in the form of a guaranteed living income for all - but we seem to be rapidly moving in the opposite direction.
    • yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Money is irrelevant. The question is actually, "how will these non-rich people obtain consumer goods if they produce nothing of value to trade for them". That's a good question. If the rich are not producing goods for the non-rich, then they must be privately interacting with their robots. That's economically equivalent to the rich and the robots not existing at all. So what stops the non-rich from forming their own perfect inequality-free economy?
      • wstrange 11y ago
        Law enforcement, retained by the wealthy to shield them from the unpleasantness of the masses.
        • yummyfajitas 11y ago
          I'm confused. Why do the rich use law enforcement to interfere with the non-rich economy? I can see why they might have law enforcement (or robots) vigorously police the borders of their mansions, but that's a different question. And there is no point having law enforcement exploit the non-poor (e.g., slavery) since robots do the job just as well.
• littletimmy 11y ago
  I disagree. When labor is truly obsolete, I think there will be a concerted effort to reduce the world's population through an engineered epidemic. Not a conspiracy theorist; I only say that because that's what I'd advocate for if I were rich at that time.