7 ms·

This is what fascinates me about discussions on subjects such as basic income. BI may not be the right answer and it may not even be viable. However, the writin

This is what fascinates me about discussions on subjects such as basic income. BI may not be the right answer and it may not even be viable. However, the writing is on the wall and big changes are coming sooner than we expect.

M_Grey 10y ago
Or maybe we'll just protect useless jobs legislatively, it's hard to predict.
- serg_chernata 10y ago
  Good point but we all know money is the bottom line. All it takes is one store chain to automate for profit and others will follow suit in a hurry.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Keyword: "Legislated".
  - inanutshellus 10y ago
    It's already happening... Several restaurant chains have already released fully automated restaurants in Asia ("where it's more socially acceptable"), but apparently it's coming here too. Wendy's is said to be rolling out self-service kiosks that're supposed to help offset costs. Basically... it appears that humans are going to be too expensive to hire very soon. That's just self-service kiosks, but imagine if you were able to get your food for half-price (aka the same price before the $15/hr wage hike)? Which restaurant would you go to, really? http://www.businessinsider.com/wendys-workers-will-lose-jobs-to-robots-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/wendys-workers-will-lose-jobs...
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      Do you think Wendy's is going to pass the savings along to consumers? That aside, I think the answer is still going to be, "I'd go to somewhere that isn't Wendy's or McDonald's, or some other fast food franchise." The whole "robots cooking" thing is a lot easier to manage when "cooking" is essentially rote assembly of identical, pre-made products. That's also why the food is disgusting.
      - zardo 10y ago
        >Do you think Wendy's is going to pass the savings along to consumers? They will if they have a competition.
        M_Grey 10y ago
        You think? That assumes that consumers of fast food only look at the lowest price point, which conflicts with why Wendy's exists in the first place. It is however why every one of that type of chain has a "dollar menu". Their usual MO though isn't to pass savings alone, and they've never lacked for competition.
        zardo 10y ago
        >That assumes that consumers of fast food only look at the lowest price point No, it assumes that price is one of the things consumers look at. It's always in the seller's interest to try to move the focus to something else, but... If Wendy's has a dollar menu on their burger vending machine, and McDonald has a dime menu, Wendy's will lose the more price conscious customers.
        M_Grey 10y ago
        They already have lost the more price conscious consumer, and that's fine for them. You're not seeing the spread of more expensive places like Five Guys, In 'N Out, etc because price is king anymore. McDonald's can try an (realistically) $.89 menu I guess, but people seem willing to shell out a few more cents for the marketed illusion of quality. In fact, they shell out far more already.
        dvtv75 10y ago
        It's cute that you think competition still works. Back in 2002, Star Trek Nemesis was released in New Zealand. It had already been out in the rest of the world, the "see it again" campaign had been run, and DVD releases had hit the shelves everywhere else. But not in New Zealand. My friend there told me that he had been waiting to see it for months, then waited two weeks after its release ("to avoid the crowds") before going in to see it. His words: "I went in there on the second Thursday after opening day, clutching my twenty dollar note, and stopped to look at the billboard to find out what time it was next going to run. It wasn't. It had been whisked off the screens before two weeks were up." This particular film was apparently the catalyst of a massive lobbying campaign for their government to ban commercial imports of international DVDs within six months of the release date of a film, because that (and piracy) were the reasons people hadn't flocked to the cinema to see it and other films.
    - playbass 10y ago
      There is a McDonalds in my hometown that has a self-service ordering kiosk.
    - douche 10y ago
      I can't wait. Fast food restaurants with the order terminal flipped around so I can put my order in correctly, the first time around, without waiting for ten minutes for somebody else to get around to serving me, sounds like nirvana. I'm in these places to get some food and get out in a hurry. Streamlining that process is all good.
  - Animats 10y ago
    So far, nobody has done a successful automated restaurant. There have been many attempts. The first was AMFare, built in 1964 by American Machine and Foundry, and it was better than most of its successors.[1] McDonalds tried and failed about a decade ago. Eatsa, the SF chain, is just an automat where you can't see the kitchen. Momentum Machines in SF has a prototype hamburger-customization machine, but hasn't shipped. There's a functioning pizza-making robot from Zume. So far, though, the hardware has a narrow functional range. There's lots of automated food preparation in the plants that make frozen dinners and airline meals. But those,too, have a narrow product range. A good place to start would be at the back end. Build a robotic system which can take a tub of random dishes, tableware, and trash, separate them, apply blasts of hot soapy water to anything that needs pre-cleaning for the dishwasher, load the dishwasher trays, and start them down the conveyor to the dishwasher. Everybody hates that job. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE
    - petra 10y ago
      >> There's lots of automated food preparation in the plants that make frozen dinners and airline meals. But those,too, have a narrow product range. In france, picard does gourmet frozen foods, with very good reviews.
- inanutshellus 10y ago
  It worked for dock workers when containers were invented... but... these days there's quite a bit of nuance and a lot of money in it. Much like the legislation around not letting commercials be louder than the main content was subverted, I'd expect companies to weasel around any attempt to keep automatable jobs in human hands.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    That's possible, but look at Japan where their automotive robots have been paying union dues for decades. It can happen, although it's probably a really bad idea for it to happen.
  - Animats 10y ago
    "It worked for dock workers when containers were invented." There's a long description of that in "The Box", by Marc Levinson. It sort of worked for workers. But, in some major cases, the entire port moved. In San Francisco, the Port of San Francisco essentially shut down as a freight operation and the container traffic went to a new container port in Oakland. In London, the container traffic went to a new non-union port on the east coast, and the huge London dock complex was abandoned. (Now it's housing and the finance industry.) The Longshoreman's Union in San Francisco negotiated a "guaranteed annual income" deal, but only for two years ending in 1977.[1] They still have a good pay rate for full "class A" longshoremen: $36.68 plus various bonuses and shift differentials. It's possible to make $150K a year as a longshoreman. And you probably don't have to do heavy lifting. But there aren't that many of them left. [1] http://archive.ilwu.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/19750207.pdf http://archive.ilwu.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/19750207....
    - nickff 10y ago
      That book was good, and I agree that it worked out for longshoremen, but consumers are the ones who've paid for their job security and high salaries.
      - vkou 10y ago
        Consumers would otherwise have had to pay some other amount for their unemployment, poverty, and reliance on handouts. Laying all of them off also has costs, both financial and human. If every human being was replaced by a robot, the cost savings to consumers would be enormous. There would also not be any consumers, as nobody would have money to spend.
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  I do wished they didn't get rid of Toll Takers on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was nice to cross that bridge with cash, and not have another bill to look forward to. I don't go to San Francisco like I used to either. Now, I only go if I have to. I really wonder if certain "useless jobs" are as useless as they claim.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Toll booths are always bad, unless the human population takes a nosedive. The relative merits of getting a bill later are utterly obviated by not having to wait in traffic.
astazangasta 10y ago
Meanwhile, individuals continue to own entire corporations and the right to appropriate all of its productive output for themselves, as if this idea somehow makes any kind of sense. The fact that all of the gains from automation will go to a handful of people is a political choice we continue to make every day.
- randomgyatwork 10y ago
  Until competitive cooperatives exist as legit alternatives we don't have any other option.
  - astazangasta 10y ago
    They exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul We need to bootstrap this process: successful cooperatives dump excess profits into capital grants for new cooperatives. But this involves people making the initial effort to organize as cooperatives; I'm not sure that legal and tax structures actually support this form of organization in the US.
rusted_planet 10y ago
With automated warehouses and autonomous cars and automated fast food and everything else just think of all the jobs lost. I read articles saying the jobs will be offset with new jobs, but no one bothers to explain what. Also when everyone is unemployed how are they going to pay for these automated goods. When I was in highschool a job was to build character and get you ready to survive in the world. Maybe this is why more kids are living with their parents longer. I don't agree with basic income, because I believe like welfare people will find ways to exploit it. The people who have a drive to work will seem like they are getting less. I am not opposed to this type of automation. It is just worrisome what impacts it will have that us little guys cannot control..
- abrichr 10y ago
  I read articles saying the jobs will be offset with new jobs, but no one bothers to explain what. That's because it's impossible to know what new jobs will exist in the future. Consider the invention of the digital computer. It would have been impossible to know in the 50s that the thousands of typist jobs would be replaced by web designers, programmers, systems administrators, etc.
- aminok 10y ago
  Once upon a time the majority of people were farmers or herders. 150 years ago the majority of non-farm workers in the advanced economies were doing menial manufacturing work. Machinery that automates work allows individuals to produce more with a given amount of effort. This allow people to produce/afford more goods/services, and leads to the human role in the production process being more managerial.
- thwarted 10y ago
  I don't agree with basic income, because I believe like welfare people will find ways to exploit it. The whole point of UBI is to avoid means testing, so there's no reason to game it. Of course, if anything, we won't have actual UBI because it's most likely politically untenable because of the exact perspective you have, but some form of extended welfare, which requires some kind of means testing, which is then gameable. The people who have a drive to work will seem like they are getting less. If it's truly UBI, then these people can avoid the feeling like they are getting less by not working, or taking a job closer, or starting their own company, that doesn't require driving to work. "I don't want to drive to your office" becomes an acceptable and usable reason to quit your job because you don't actually need a job under UBI.
adventured 10y ago
They're going to tax the productive autonomous systems (whatever you want to call them, robots, AI, etc). The politicians are not going to have a solution as fast as the job losses mount. They're going to want to force-fit the solution into their existing way of thinking, into existing frameworks, what they've always known politically and that means taxation + redistribution through existing channels. If you replace a fastfood worker with a robot, as an owner you're going to pay a fee or tax for that. Politicians will justify it by saying it will go to unemployment benefits or similar. They're also going to pass laws restricting productivity gains by robots and AI. A fastfood worker can't work 24 hours per day but a robot can. Laws will start to be passed in the near future, stipulating that if you want to use autonomous systems to replace human labor, then your autonomous system can only function near the capability of a person in terms of hours worked or total output potential. It'll be called the Fairness in Autonomous Labor Act (of 2032).
- andymurd 10y ago
  I think you are quite correct, and that you've outlined a much more likely scenario than politicians implementing a workable universal basic income. Sales of socially harmful goods (such as alcohol, tobacco and petroleum) are already taxed punitively to restrict their use and implement harm reduction. It's easy to imagine politicians implementing similar laws to restrict the sale of robots. I suspect that such laws would not be very successful at addressing the problem but then I can't easily think of any laws work entirely as intended. If robots are to be taxed, it is their use which should incur the penalty, not their sale.
- restalis 10y ago
  Jobs have been automated before since the beginnings of humanity, there is nothing really different this time. When the crisis of '30s hit, the U.S. government stepped in and employed the jobless en masse for infrastructure projects on national level. Problems to absorb large amounts of manpower exist, they are only waiting to be subsidized. I'm not saying that something handicapping as penalty for the automation gained efficiency could not occur, it's just unlikely for a rational mind to recourse to that.

M_Grey 10y ago

Or maybe we'll just protect useless jobs legislatively, it's hard to predict.

serg_chernata 10y ago
Good point but we all know money is the bottom line. All it takes is one store chain to automate for profit and others will follow suit in a hurry.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Keyword: "Legislated".
- inanutshellus 10y ago
  It's already happening... Several restaurant chains have already released fully automated restaurants in Asia ("where it's more socially acceptable"), but apparently it's coming here too. Wendy's is said to be rolling out self-service kiosks that're supposed to help offset costs. Basically... it appears that humans are going to be too expensive to hire very soon. That's just self-service kiosks, but imagine if you were able to get your food for half-price (aka the same price before the $15/hr wage hike)? Which restaurant would you go to, really? http://www.businessinsider.com/wendys-workers-will-lose-jobs-to-robots-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/wendys-workers-will-lose-jobs...
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Do you think Wendy's is going to pass the savings along to consumers? That aside, I think the answer is still going to be, "I'd go to somewhere that isn't Wendy's or McDonald's, or some other fast food franchise." The whole "robots cooking" thing is a lot easier to manage when "cooking" is essentially rote assembly of identical, pre-made products. That's also why the food is disgusting.
    - zardo 10y ago
      >Do you think Wendy's is going to pass the savings along to consumers? They will if they have a competition.
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        You think? That assumes that consumers of fast food only look at the lowest price point, which conflicts with why Wendy's exists in the first place. It is however why every one of that type of chain has a "dollar menu". Their usual MO though isn't to pass savings alone, and they've never lacked for competition.
        zardo 10y ago
        >That assumes that consumers of fast food only look at the lowest price point No, it assumes that price is one of the things consumers look at. It's always in the seller's interest to try to move the focus to something else, but... If Wendy's has a dollar menu on their burger vending machine, and McDonald has a dime menu, Wendy's will lose the more price conscious customers.
        M_Grey 10y ago
        They already have lost the more price conscious consumer, and that's fine for them. You're not seeing the spread of more expensive places like Five Guys, In 'N Out, etc because price is king anymore. McDonald's can try an (realistically) $.89 menu I guess, but people seem willing to shell out a few more cents for the marketed illusion of quality. In fact, they shell out far more already.
      - dvtv75 10y ago
        It's cute that you think competition still works. Back in 2002, Star Trek Nemesis was released in New Zealand. It had already been out in the rest of the world, the "see it again" campaign had been run, and DVD releases had hit the shelves everywhere else. But not in New Zealand. My friend there told me that he had been waiting to see it for months, then waited two weeks after its release ("to avoid the crowds") before going in to see it. His words: "I went in there on the second Thursday after opening day, clutching my twenty dollar note, and stopped to look at the billboard to find out what time it was next going to run. It wasn't. It had been whisked off the screens before two weeks were up." This particular film was apparently the catalyst of a massive lobbying campaign for their government to ban commercial imports of international DVDs within six months of the release date of a film, because that (and piracy) were the reasons people hadn't flocked to the cinema to see it and other films.
  - playbass 10y ago
    There is a McDonalds in my hometown that has a self-service ordering kiosk.
  - douche 10y ago
    I can't wait. Fast food restaurants with the order terminal flipped around so I can put my order in correctly, the first time around, without waiting for ten minutes for somebody else to get around to serving me, sounds like nirvana. I'm in these places to get some food and get out in a hurry. Streamlining that process is all good.
- Animats 10y ago
  So far, nobody has done a successful automated restaurant. There have been many attempts. The first was AMFare, built in 1964 by American Machine and Foundry, and it was better than most of its successors.[1] McDonalds tried and failed about a decade ago. Eatsa, the SF chain, is just an automat where you can't see the kitchen. Momentum Machines in SF has a prototype hamburger-customization machine, but hasn't shipped. There's a functioning pizza-making robot from Zume. So far, though, the hardware has a narrow functional range. There's lots of automated food preparation in the plants that make frozen dinners and airline meals. But those,too, have a narrow product range. A good place to start would be at the back end. Build a robotic system which can take a tub of random dishes, tableware, and trash, separate them, apply blasts of hot soapy water to anything that needs pre-cleaning for the dishwasher, load the dishwasher trays, and start them down the conveyor to the dishwasher. Everybody hates that job. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE
  - petra 10y ago
    >> There's lots of automated food preparation in the plants that make frozen dinners and airline meals. But those,too, have a narrow product range. In france, picard does gourmet frozen foods, with very good reviews.
inanutshellus 10y ago
It worked for dock workers when containers were invented... but... these days there's quite a bit of nuance and a lot of money in it. Much like the legislation around not letting commercials be louder than the main content was subverted, I'd expect companies to weasel around any attempt to keep automatable jobs in human hands.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  That's possible, but look at Japan where their automotive robots have been paying union dues for decades. It can happen, although it's probably a really bad idea for it to happen.
- Animats 10y ago
  "It worked for dock workers when containers were invented." There's a long description of that in "The Box", by Marc Levinson. It sort of worked for workers. But, in some major cases, the entire port moved. In San Francisco, the Port of San Francisco essentially shut down as a freight operation and the container traffic went to a new container port in Oakland. In London, the container traffic went to a new non-union port on the east coast, and the huge London dock complex was abandoned. (Now it's housing and the finance industry.) The Longshoreman's Union in San Francisco negotiated a "guaranteed annual income" deal, but only for two years ending in 1977.[1] They still have a good pay rate for full "class A" longshoremen: $36.68 plus various bonuses and shift differentials. It's possible to make $150K a year as a longshoreman. And you probably don't have to do heavy lifting. But there aren't that many of them left. [1] http://archive.ilwu.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/19750207.pdf http://archive.ilwu.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/19750207....
  - nickff 10y ago
    That book was good, and I agree that it worked out for longshoremen, but consumers are the ones who've paid for their job security and high salaries.
    - vkou 10y ago
      Consumers would otherwise have had to pay some other amount for their unemployment, poverty, and reliance on handouts. Laying all of them off also has costs, both financial and human. If every human being was replaced by a robot, the cost savings to consumers would be enormous. There would also not be any consumers, as nobody would have money to spend.
icantdrive55 10y ago
I do wished they didn't get rid of Toll Takers on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was nice to cross that bridge with cash, and not have another bill to look forward to. I don't go to San Francisco like I used to either. Now, I only go if I have to. I really wonder if certain "useless jobs" are as useless as they claim.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Toll booths are always bad, unless the human population takes a nosedive. The relative merits of getting a bill later are utterly obviated by not having to wait in traffic.

astazangasta 10y ago

Meanwhile, individuals continue to own entire corporations and the right to appropriate all of its productive output for themselves, as if this idea somehow makes any kind of sense. The fact that all of the gains from automation will go to a handful of people is a political choice we continue to make every day.

randomgyatwork 10y ago
Until competitive cooperatives exist as legit alternatives we don't have any other option.
- astazangasta 10y ago
  They exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul We need to bootstrap this process: successful cooperatives dump excess profits into capital grants for new cooperatives. But this involves people making the initial effort to organize as cooperatives; I'm not sure that legal and tax structures actually support this form of organization in the US.

rusted_planet 10y ago

With automated warehouses and autonomous cars and automated fast food and everything else just think of all the jobs lost. I read articles saying the jobs will be offset with new jobs, but no one bothers to explain what. Also when everyone is unemployed how are they going to pay for these automated goods. When I was in highschool a job was to build character and get you ready to survive in the world. Maybe this is why more kids are living with their parents longer. I don't agree with basic income, because I believe like welfare people will find ways to exploit it. The people who have a drive to work will seem like they are getting less. I am not opposed to this type of automation. It is just worrisome what impacts it will have that us little guys cannot control..

abrichr 10y ago
I read articles saying the jobs will be offset with new jobs, but no one bothers to explain what. That's because it's impossible to know what new jobs will exist in the future. Consider the invention of the digital computer. It would have been impossible to know in the 50s that the thousands of typist jobs would be replaced by web designers, programmers, systems administrators, etc.
aminok 10y ago
Once upon a time the majority of people were farmers or herders. 150 years ago the majority of non-farm workers in the advanced economies were doing menial manufacturing work. Machinery that automates work allows individuals to produce more with a given amount of effort. This allow people to produce/afford more goods/services, and leads to the human role in the production process being more managerial.
thwarted 10y ago
I don't agree with basic income, because I believe like welfare people will find ways to exploit it. The whole point of UBI is to avoid means testing, so there's no reason to game it. Of course, if anything, we won't have actual UBI because it's most likely politically untenable because of the exact perspective you have, but some form of extended welfare, which requires some kind of means testing, which is then gameable. The people who have a drive to work will seem like they are getting less. If it's truly UBI, then these people can avoid the feeling like they are getting less by not working, or taking a job closer, or starting their own company, that doesn't require driving to work. "I don't want to drive to your office" becomes an acceptable and usable reason to quit your job because you don't actually need a job under UBI.

adventured 10y ago

They're going to tax the productive autonomous systems (whatever you want to call them, robots, AI, etc). The politicians are not going to have a solution as fast as the job losses mount. They're going to want to force-fit the solution into their existing way of thinking, into existing frameworks, what they've always known politically and that means taxation + redistribution through existing channels. If you replace a fastfood worker with a robot, as an owner you're going to pay a fee or tax for that. Politicians will justify it by saying it will go to unemployment benefits or similar. They're also going to pass laws restricting productivity gains by robots and AI. A fastfood worker can't work 24 hours per day but a robot can. Laws will start to be passed in the near future, stipulating that if you want to use autonomous systems to replace human labor, then your autonomous system can only function near the capability of a person in terms of hours worked or total output potential. It'll be called the Fairness in Autonomous Labor Act (of 2032).

andymurd 10y ago
I think you are quite correct, and that you've outlined a much more likely scenario than politicians implementing a workable universal basic income. Sales of socially harmful goods (such as alcohol, tobacco and petroleum) are already taxed punitively to restrict their use and implement harm reduction. It's easy to imagine politicians implementing similar laws to restrict the sale of robots. I suspect that such laws would not be very successful at addressing the problem but then I can't easily think of any laws work entirely as intended. If robots are to be taxed, it is their use which should incur the penalty, not their sale.
restalis 10y ago
Jobs have been automated before since the beginnings of humanity, there is nothing really different this time. When the crisis of '30s hit, the U.S. government stepped in and employed the jobless en masse for infrastructure projects on national level. Problems to absorb large amounts of manpower exist, they are only waiting to be subsidized. I'm not saying that something handicapping as penalty for the automation gained efficiency could not occur, it's just unlikely for a rational mind to recourse to that.