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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 ga

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.
    - ubernostrum 11y ago
      > Why do the rich use law enforcement to interfere with the non-rich economy? Because they will see the confiscation of land and resources by the non-rich (a necessary step to establishing a new economy from which they won't be excluded) as a threat to themselves. Remember we are dealing here with irrational, imperfectly-informed people, not with perfectly-informed, perfectly-rational frictionless spherical humanoids in uniform economic motion.
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        Why would they care? As long as they are left with sufficient amounts to provide for their own (miniscule) consumption, they have no reason to stress. And why is confiscating land and resources a necessary step?
        ubernostrum 11y ago
        Again, you assume perfectly-rational, perfectly-informed spherical frictionless humans. This is why you don't understand the criticism you receive, and why others do not understand you.
        yummyfajitas 11y ago
        You repeatedly appeal to one specific irrationality, and don't explain why that irrational behavior (as opposed to many others) will occur. Nor do you explain why redistribution is necessary. Assuming the masses can control law enforcement well enough to impose redistribution, why can't the masses also simply prevent the rich from harming them and form their own economy? Let me guess - more finely tuned irrationality? It seems like your alleged irrationalities conspire in odd ways to make your very specific policy prescription the only possible solution. [edit: my mistake on this paragraph, I did indeed confuse you with another poster.]
        ubernostrum 11y ago
        I haven't advocated any policy. Perhaps you're confused?
        zanny 11y ago
        Except that isn't how you get rich or powerful, or stay rich and powerful. You do not give away your power, and land is power. Look no further than the middle ages and the age of serfdom to see the extreme of the power you can have owning land.
- DonaldFisk 11y ago
  They don't own the means of production.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Yes, we've established that the rich own robots that only produce goods for consumption by the rich. This does not prevent the non-rich from building non-robotic production methods like 1800s era factories.
    - chongli 11y ago
      The rich don't just own robots, they also own the mines, the factories, the railroads, the self-driving transport trucks and the cargo ships. The non-rich don't own any of that stuff. So how are the non-rich going to make anything?
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        Build their own. Essentially this hypothetical is a scenario where the rich have "gone Galt" (stopped producing useful things for the rest of the world). Your fear of the rich abandoning the rest of us to our own devices is very Randian.
        zanny 11y ago
        Except the rich do not just leave to paradise to never return. At the sign of wealth to be had, at profit to be made, they probably will return to reap the fields and use their market-destroying automation power to crush "competition". That, and as has been said elsewhere, I highly doubt the elites just go to an island. Ownership of land is a tremendous wealth, and while the elites have captured it they will not relinquish it willingly.
        yummyfajitas 11y ago
        How will the rich make any profit? The premise underlying this conversation is that the labor of the non-rich humans is completely worthless. Robots do everything they can do for less money. So the rich may swoop in, use robots to produce goods for their own consumption, and then leave. But how does this prevent non-rich humans from producing goods for other non-rich humans? The rich have no incentive to compete with those human producers, since the consumers have nothing of value to buy with. You seem to be suggesting that the rich will direct their robots to fulfill the needs of non-rich humans for no personal gain. Is that correct?
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Access to natural resources. How do you expect the non-rich to get land area, energy and materials to produce anything at all?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    What are the rich going to do with the vast tracts of land that they apparently claim, and then let lie fallow? Remember, in this hypothetical, all the rich need to do is provide for their own consumption. This scenario being described here is exactly the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged - the rich (and their robots) all retire to Galt's Gulch and the rest of the world goes to hell. It's surprising to see so many Ayn Rand fans in one comment thread.
    - zanny 11y ago
      Except that isn't playing out. There is no motivation to move to Elysium or Galt's Gulch because it takes a lot of money and effort to transport the worlds elite to one place. And to be elite is to be superior to peers. A huge part of the ethos of power is that you need the powerless to prove your position. The rich and powerful already own tremendous vast swathes of the world under the control of governments recognizing private property rights. (adjusted for land value, because I'm mostly talking about owning inner cities, but they also own the industrial complexes and megafarms). Again, supply and demand sets in, and when you use real estate as an investment and asset and are constricting its supply in most parts of the world as a source of revenue and profit, you aren't going to give that away any more than you will give away the robots. The property market is as bad as the labor market in how concentrated power is becoming. And property is not competitive at all since its a fixed resource and the value of it is only relative to its location which cannot be reproduced or innovated upon. Easily, at least.
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        So if we have a distributed Galt's Gulch (e.g. some expensive towers in NYC and SF), how does that change things? How does a rich person owning a brownstone on my block prevent me from selling my labor to other non-rich people? When you discuss rich people owning inner cities, those inner cities have value because people want to live in them and have resources to trade for the right to live there. In this hypothetical dystopia, no one will have any resources to trade for living space, so those inner cities will become valueless. (Or perhaps the rich will enjoy walking through uninhabited cities.) There is plenty more land available at low cost in other locations - Detroit, Kansas, etc. What prevents the non-rich folks from building their own industrial complexes and inner cities in those locations? The rich and their robots can entirely occupy the abandoned city of Manhattan, but what prevents non-rich people from buying up $5,000 houses in Detroit and building a new utopia there?
function_seven 11y ago
> How will those non-rich people buy consumer goods if they have no money? How will those rich people sell consumer goods if the poor don't have 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. Absolutely true. I'd like to think that you and I are both as clueless as the agrarian citizens at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. And maybe we are. But something about this wave of automation seems quantitatively different than the last one—as though there's no new economic sectors to replace those that are being automated away > 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. I like to frame that as a negative income tax, rather than a guaranteed income. It seems like less of a "government program", which might help it sell. The beauty of a negative income tax is that it can be easily† adjusted as needed to suit an evolving economy. It's not a separate program that is established and lives on. If (US) brackets are [10, 15, 25, 28, 33] (i think?), the new brackets could be [-50, -10, 0, 10, ...], with a 20k starter. So if you do absolutely nothing, you get 20k. If you make an additional 5k a year on the side, you'd be "taxed" at -50 on that and end up with 27.5k. At some level as your earnings increase, the subsidy fades off and is replaced with taxes. †Technically-speaking, maybe not politically. But then again, this whole thing is a pipe-dream at present.
- zanny 11y ago
  > as though there's no new economic sectors to replace those that are being automated away Before, it was always "I'd like to build houses / learn to plumb / build widgets in a factory, but I need food, so I'm tilling land". Now its "I'd like to do pretty much anything, but nobody will pay me to do it, because the robots are better at everything I can do". Unless your labor is intellectual, your function in society as a bag of meat with limbs and a bunch of neurons that make you very easy to program instructions into is going the way of the horse in the early 20th century.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > How will those rich people sell consumer goods if the poor don't have money? But how will the poor have any money if they have to pay money to the rich in order to afford basic necessities. Also, if they had money they wouldn't be poor, now would they? Another way to look at it is, just look at what happens at extremes -- really poor in developing countries. Well, lucky for the rich and powerful, it turns out the poor have kidneys, muscles, blood, the can work for the rich, they can sell their bodies to the rich. So have no fear, the rich will figure out a way to take advantage of the poor even after the poor don't have any pieces of green paper or stamped metal circles left.

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.
  - ubernostrum 11y ago
    > Why do the rich use law enforcement to interfere with the non-rich economy? Because they will see the confiscation of land and resources by the non-rich (a necessary step to establishing a new economy from which they won't be excluded) as a threat to themselves. Remember we are dealing here with irrational, imperfectly-informed people, not with perfectly-informed, perfectly-rational frictionless spherical humanoids in uniform economic motion.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Why would they care? As long as they are left with sufficient amounts to provide for their own (miniscule) consumption, they have no reason to stress. And why is confiscating land and resources a necessary step?
      - ubernostrum 11y ago
        Again, you assume perfectly-rational, perfectly-informed spherical frictionless humans. This is why you don't understand the criticism you receive, and why others do not understand you.
        yummyfajitas 11y ago
        You repeatedly appeal to one specific irrationality, and don't explain why that irrational behavior (as opposed to many others) will occur. Nor do you explain why redistribution is necessary. Assuming the masses can control law enforcement well enough to impose redistribution, why can't the masses also simply prevent the rich from harming them and form their own economy? Let me guess - more finely tuned irrationality? It seems like your alleged irrationalities conspire in odd ways to make your very specific policy prescription the only possible solution. [edit: my mistake on this paragraph, I did indeed confuse you with another poster.]
        ubernostrum 11y ago
        I haven't advocated any policy. Perhaps you're confused?
      - zanny 11y ago
        Except that isn't how you get rich or powerful, or stay rich and powerful. You do not give away your power, and land is power. Look no further than the middle ages and the age of serfdom to see the extreme of the power you can have owning land.
DonaldFisk 11y ago
They don't own the means of production.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Yes, we've established that the rich own robots that only produce goods for consumption by the rich. This does not prevent the non-rich from building non-robotic production methods like 1800s era factories.
  - chongli 11y ago
    The rich don't just own robots, they also own the mines, the factories, the railroads, the self-driving transport trucks and the cargo ships. The non-rich don't own any of that stuff. So how are the non-rich going to make anything?
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Build their own. Essentially this hypothetical is a scenario where the rich have "gone Galt" (stopped producing useful things for the rest of the world). Your fear of the rich abandoning the rest of us to our own devices is very Randian.
      - zanny 11y ago
        Except the rich do not just leave to paradise to never return. At the sign of wealth to be had, at profit to be made, they probably will return to reap the fields and use their market-destroying automation power to crush "competition". That, and as has been said elsewhere, I highly doubt the elites just go to an island. Ownership of land is a tremendous wealth, and while the elites have captured it they will not relinquish it willingly.
        yummyfajitas 11y ago
        How will the rich make any profit? The premise underlying this conversation is that the labor of the non-rich humans is completely worthless. Robots do everything they can do for less money. So the rich may swoop in, use robots to produce goods for their own consumption, and then leave. But how does this prevent non-rich humans from producing goods for other non-rich humans? The rich have no incentive to compete with those human producers, since the consumers have nothing of value to buy with. You seem to be suggesting that the rich will direct their robots to fulfill the needs of non-rich humans for no personal gain. Is that correct?
marcosdumay 11y ago
Access to natural resources. How do you expect the non-rich to get land area, energy and materials to produce anything at all?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  What are the rich going to do with the vast tracts of land that they apparently claim, and then let lie fallow? Remember, in this hypothetical, all the rich need to do is provide for their own consumption. This scenario being described here is exactly the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged - the rich (and their robots) all retire to Galt's Gulch and the rest of the world goes to hell. It's surprising to see so many Ayn Rand fans in one comment thread.
  - zanny 11y ago
    Except that isn't playing out. There is no motivation to move to Elysium or Galt's Gulch because it takes a lot of money and effort to transport the worlds elite to one place. And to be elite is to be superior to peers. A huge part of the ethos of power is that you need the powerless to prove your position. The rich and powerful already own tremendous vast swathes of the world under the control of governments recognizing private property rights. (adjusted for land value, because I'm mostly talking about owning inner cities, but they also own the industrial complexes and megafarms). Again, supply and demand sets in, and when you use real estate as an investment and asset and are constricting its supply in most parts of the world as a source of revenue and profit, you aren't going to give that away any more than you will give away the robots. The property market is as bad as the labor market in how concentrated power is becoming. And property is not competitive at all since its a fixed resource and the value of it is only relative to its location which cannot be reproduced or innovated upon. Easily, at least.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      So if we have a distributed Galt's Gulch (e.g. some expensive towers in NYC and SF), how does that change things? How does a rich person owning a brownstone on my block prevent me from selling my labor to other non-rich people? When you discuss rich people owning inner cities, those inner cities have value because people want to live in them and have resources to trade for the right to live there. In this hypothetical dystopia, no one will have any resources to trade for living space, so those inner cities will become valueless. (Or perhaps the rich will enjoy walking through uninhabited cities.) There is plenty more land available at low cost in other locations - Detroit, Kansas, etc. What prevents the non-rich folks from building their own industrial complexes and inner cities in those locations? The rich and their robots can entirely occupy the abandoned city of Manhattan, but what prevents non-rich people from buying up $5,000 houses in Detroit and building a new utopia there?

function_seven 11y ago

> How will those non-rich people buy consumer goods if they have no money? How will those rich people sell consumer goods if the poor don't have 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. Absolutely true. I'd like to think that you and I are both as clueless as the agrarian citizens at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. And maybe we are. But something about this wave of automation seems quantitatively different than the last one—as though there's no new economic sectors to replace those that are being automated away > 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. I like to frame that as a negative income tax, rather than a guaranteed income. It seems like less of a "government program", which might help it sell. The beauty of a negative income tax is that it can be easily† adjusted as needed to suit an evolving economy. It's not a separate program that is established and lives on. If (US) brackets are [10, 15, 25, 28, 33] (i think?), the new brackets could be [-50, -10, 0, 10, ...], with a 20k starter. So if you do absolutely nothing, you get 20k. If you make an additional 5k a year on the side, you'd be "taxed" at -50 on that and end up with 27.5k. At some level as your earnings increase, the subsidy fades off and is replaced with taxes. †Technically-speaking, maybe not politically. But then again, this whole thing is a pipe-dream at present.

zanny 11y ago
> as though there's no new economic sectors to replace those that are being automated away Before, it was always "I'd like to build houses / learn to plumb / build widgets in a factory, but I need food, so I'm tilling land". Now its "I'd like to do pretty much anything, but nobody will pay me to do it, because the robots are better at everything I can do". Unless your labor is intellectual, your function in society as a bag of meat with limbs and a bunch of neurons that make you very easy to program instructions into is going the way of the horse in the early 20th century.
rdtsc 11y ago
> How will those rich people sell consumer goods if the poor don't have money? But how will the poor have any money if they have to pay money to the rich in order to afford basic necessities. Also, if they had money they wouldn't be poor, now would they? Another way to look at it is, just look at what happens at extremes -- really poor in developing countries. Well, lucky for the rich and powerful, it turns out the poor have kidneys, muscles, blood, the can work for the rich, they can sell their bodies to the rich. So have no fear, the rich will figure out a way to take advantage of the poor even after the poor don't have any pieces of green paper or stamped metal circles left.