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[T]here was a type of employee at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution whose job and livelihood largely vanished in the early twentieth century. This was
by Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
[T]here was a type of employee at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution whose job and livelihood largely vanished in the early twentieth century. This was the horse. The population of working horses actually peaked in England long after the Industrial Revolution, in 1901, when 3.25 million were at work. Though they had been replaced by rail for long-distance haulage and by steam engines for driving machinery, they still plowed fields, hauled wagons and carriages short distances, pulled boats on the canals, toiled in the pits, and carried armies into battle. But the arrival of the internal combustion engine in the late nineteenth century rapidly displaced these workers, so that by 1924 there were fewer than two million. There was always a wage at which all these horses could have remained employed. But that wage was so low that it did not pay for their feed.
-- Greg Clark, A Farewell to Alms
The "Lump of Work fallacy" does seem to be a fallacy. However, that didn't help the horse. Why is that? The invention of "Artificial General Muscles" in the form of the internal combustion engine was a better-than-perfect replacement for all forms of horse labour. We should expect artificial general intelligence technology to do much the same to humans. There is no law in economics that prevents human wages from declining below subsistence. And a perfect substitute for human labour that requires no wages and is more intelligent would certainly vastly lower the value of human labour.
- ojbyrne 11y agoThe problem of excess workers will probably be solved the same way it was for horses - they'll be refashioned as cannon fodder for wars, much as horses were in WW1.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- vectorjohn 11y agoYeah, and it's too bad horses don't exist anymore. Oh wait. They are fine. They're just not used as constant slave labor all the time anymore, much like human labor.
- okcgwv 11y agomicrowave lasagne - i.e. Findus beef lasagne containing 100% horse meat (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21375594 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21375594) perhaps due to cheaper horse price due to European banning horse-drawn carts on roads (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1578965/Horses-left-to-starve-after-Romania-bans-carts.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1578965/Horses-lef...)
- monknomo 11y agoThose that weren't turned to dogfood. I'm fairly certain we have a considerably reduced population of horses
- vectorjohn 11y agoSo what? We don't need as many. It doesn't make life any worse (in fact, probably better) for the ones we have now. Those pre-industrial-revolution horses would have been dead by now of old age if not turned into dog food.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- infinite8s 11y agoThat's the whole point of the parent argument. What do we do with people who's work output we don't need anymore?
- vectorjohn 11y agoWe don't do anything. We'll have to take care of them, which is where things like a basic income help. It won't happen all at once instantly, and it's not like our only option is to grind them into soylent green. Horses may get turned into food, but that's because they're horses and not people. We eat animals, so it's not very compelling to say "oh no, we ate all the horses or turned them into glue". Who cares. The point is there are horses now and there will probably continue to be horses. Many of them with a life of mostly leisure and good care instead of being worked to death. Sounds good to me.