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Robots solve one problem very, very well: Labor shortages. Rural America is poor, not because it is not rich in natural capital and real estate, but because it

Robots solve one problem very, very well: Labor shortages. Rural America is poor, not because it is not rich in natural capital and real estate, but because it suffers from a perpetual labor shortage. (14 percent of the U.S. rural are spread across 72 percent of the Nation's land area) Urbanization has a monopoly on talent at this point in time because of globalization and the wealth structure of internationalist neoliberal capitalism. (The Silicon Valley model) Robotic labor will change that, especially given the strictness of UAV laws in the US and the UK today. They are practically legislating that drones must find profitability in low-value, low-population areas. Fine. Challenge accepted. To give another example of such labor shortages, 75% of the United Arab Emirates population is Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, and Filipino immigrants doing construction jobs. The other 2.3 million native UAE nationals can't possibly engage in all of the ancillary labor opportunities that Dubai money commands. Wealthy nations are suffering from labor shortages all over the world and have been for decades. They've raced to solve these problems in the only way they know how: attracting the flow of post-colonials because of standards of living arbitrage. (Very often, people used to being so poor being treated like garbage in a wealthy nation is a significantly better prospect than staying home) In the EU, for example, they can no longer print their own currency, but each member state can still issue bonds. They are already engaging in socialist taxation regimes, so raising taxes to pay for the bonds is impossible. Therefore, you need to enrich your corporations by giving them access to cheap labor and pray you can tax them before they allocate their new found wealth in the Isle of Mann. Unfortunately, this impulse isn't such a clean transition, as most of these old world nations (with old world money) have the political, institutional, and cultural reflex to give new blood two options: Comply with your role in our social pecking order 100% or be exiled/imprisoned/exterminated. Race riots, cultural flare-ups, demographic conflict, and other Huntingtonian events can easily be exploited and exacerbated by political opportunists, ultimately destabilizing the very social configuration that made your nation attractive to begin with. No matter what the well-wishers say, when it all goes belly up, civilizations always divide themselves along ethnic (the American definition) lines. If we continue to refuse (as many have since the 1970s) addressing the labor shortage problem with our established institutions, people like me will be forced to address it technologically and your cherished institutions and the morality that they stand upon will be ground into the dirt upon its passing.

fizixer 10y ago
> If we continue to refuse (as many have since the 1970s) addressing the labor shortage problem with our established institutions, people like me will be forced to address it technologically ... What would keep you from addressing it technologically even when it is addressed with your so-called established institutions? - When tractors were widely available and cheap, did land-owners refuse to buy them, and kept hiring farm employees? - Did they ask for established institutions to help them out, instead of buying a bunch of tractors, hiring a fraction of the previous number of employees for driving the tractors, and never having to look back? - Are there farm owners out there who still long for the days established institutions solved their labor shortage problems so they don't have to buy tractors? Have you seen CGPGrey's Humans Need Not Apply? (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)
- emblem21 10y ago
  > What would keep you from addressing it technologically even when it is addressed with your so-called established institutions? A fantastic question. Socialist protectionism can absolutely drive the cost of human labor down well beyond competitive price points of even the most cheapest and sophisticated robotic labor. Cuba is a fantastic example of this. (Which I suspect will be the last place to embrace robotic labor) The Castro's have established strict price controls, which means doctors or janitors can get $6 a day while bread costs a few pennies. They have the material utopia... which sounds good, until you realize the Castro's offer their nation's labor at $20 an hour to Europe. With a 48 hour work week, the Castro's pocket $19.375 dollars PER WORKER PER HOUR while the worker takes home $0.625 per hour. They've established a familiar aristocracy under the name of actual, functional socialism. Never underestimate the power of political organization to drive human value to subslavery price points. > When tractors were widely available and cheap, did land-owners refuse to buy them, and kept hiring farm employees? > Did they ask for established institutions to help them out, instead of buying a bunch of tractors, hiring a fraction of the previous number of employees for driving the tractors, and never having to look back? For tractors to be widely available and cheap, this implies a juxtaposition with a time in which pre-tractor farming was expensive. The industrial age ultimately rendered traditional slavery too expensive compared to the common laborer due to unique combination of clever agricultural engineering, the birth of modern financial capitalism, and robust land availability via new gains in military conquest. Be it a slave, an immigrant, or a vagabond, the final price points didn't significantly affect yield, thus, the real cost of slavery (maintenance, security, lobbying, administration, etc.) was exposed and was no longer competitive. America, a major cotton exporter, fought a bloody civil war to protect that exporter status against Egypt and India, so yes, institutional assistance to preserve the previously profitable model was absolutely involved in both the enrichment of successful labor practices and replacing it with something more GDP efficient. This transition took place in a world where the first steam tractors in the 1870s weighed 30,000 pounds![1] The technical maintenance of these beasts was impossible for the average farmer. It wasn't until Ford and the gasoline revolution that tractors finally took off and were make cheap enough. By then, human organization was also in the midst of the electric light bulb, doubling human productivity, and the steel highrise, linearly scaling the productivity of a parcel of land. This massive surge of productive capacity, when paired with growth-oriented industrial capitalism, created a tremendous labor shortage. Peak tractor production didn't occur until 1951, well after America established itself as the world reserve currency. I'd be suspicious of using the tractor as a valid analog for artificial intelligence. When productive capacity skyrocketed due to these three technological innovations, farm owners did hire more employees, as did the rest of the aggregate productive forces of society. > Are there farm owners out there who still long for the days established institutions solved their labor shortage problems so they don't have to buy tractors? I believe you call them “southerners” and they are solving their labor shortages with institutional mandates (via globalization and NAFTA) that allow immigrant labor to be cheaper than native labor. > Have you seen CGPGrey's Humans Need Not Apply? I have. I'm deeply familiar with Baxter and it's ability to augment FoxConn. Notice I said augment, not replace. It's response times are still too slow, and even if it got a CUDA-powered GPU neural network, China can always engage in protectionist legislation that render all technological advantages moot. CPGrey doesn't address the ability of the Cuba's and the China's of the world to socially absorb actual labor costs due of political paranoia. I recommend studying the tale of William Lee[2] to see just how far back the political fear of automation goes. [1] https://eh.net/encyclopedia/economic-history-of-tractors-in-the-united-states/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/economic-history-of-tractors-in-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_(inventor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_(inventor)

fizixer 10y ago

> If we continue to refuse (as many have since the 1970s) addressing the labor shortage problem with our established institutions, people like me will be forced to address it technologically ... What would keep you from addressing it technologically even when it is addressed with your so-called established institutions? - When tractors were widely available and cheap, did land-owners refuse to buy them, and kept hiring farm employees? - Did they ask for established institutions to help them out, instead of buying a bunch of tractors, hiring a fraction of the previous number of employees for driving the tractors, and never having to look back? - Are there farm owners out there who still long for the days established institutions solved their labor shortage problems so they don't have to buy tractors? Have you seen CGPGrey's Humans Need Not Apply? (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

emblem21 10y ago
> What would keep you from addressing it technologically even when it is addressed with your so-called established institutions? A fantastic question. Socialist protectionism can absolutely drive the cost of human labor down well beyond competitive price points of even the most cheapest and sophisticated robotic labor. Cuba is a fantastic example of this. (Which I suspect will be the last place to embrace robotic labor) The Castro's have established strict price controls, which means doctors or janitors can get $6 a day while bread costs a few pennies. They have the material utopia... which sounds good, until you realize the Castro's offer their nation's labor at $20 an hour to Europe. With a 48 hour work week, the Castro's pocket $19.375 dollars PER WORKER PER HOUR while the worker takes home $0.625 per hour. They've established a familiar aristocracy under the name of actual, functional socialism. Never underestimate the power of political organization to drive human value to subslavery price points. > When tractors were widely available and cheap, did land-owners refuse to buy them, and kept hiring farm employees? > Did they ask for established institutions to help them out, instead of buying a bunch of tractors, hiring a fraction of the previous number of employees for driving the tractors, and never having to look back? For tractors to be widely available and cheap, this implies a juxtaposition with a time in which pre-tractor farming was expensive. The industrial age ultimately rendered traditional slavery too expensive compared to the common laborer due to unique combination of clever agricultural engineering, the birth of modern financial capitalism, and robust land availability via new gains in military conquest. Be it a slave, an immigrant, or a vagabond, the final price points didn't significantly affect yield, thus, the real cost of slavery (maintenance, security, lobbying, administration, etc.) was exposed and was no longer competitive. America, a major cotton exporter, fought a bloody civil war to protect that exporter status against Egypt and India, so yes, institutional assistance to preserve the previously profitable model was absolutely involved in both the enrichment of successful labor practices and replacing it with something more GDP efficient. This transition took place in a world where the first steam tractors in the 1870s weighed 30,000 pounds![1] The technical maintenance of these beasts was impossible for the average farmer. It wasn't until Ford and the gasoline revolution that tractors finally took off and were make cheap enough. By then, human organization was also in the midst of the electric light bulb, doubling human productivity, and the steel highrise, linearly scaling the productivity of a parcel of land. This massive surge of productive capacity, when paired with growth-oriented industrial capitalism, created a tremendous labor shortage. Peak tractor production didn't occur until 1951, well after America established itself as the world reserve currency. I'd be suspicious of using the tractor as a valid analog for artificial intelligence. When productive capacity skyrocketed due to these three technological innovations, farm owners did hire more employees, as did the rest of the aggregate productive forces of society. > Are there farm owners out there who still long for the days established institutions solved their labor shortage problems so they don't have to buy tractors? I believe you call them “southerners” and they are solving their labor shortages with institutional mandates (via globalization and NAFTA) that allow immigrant labor to be cheaper than native labor. > Have you seen CGPGrey's Humans Need Not Apply? I have. I'm deeply familiar with Baxter and it's ability to augment FoxConn. Notice I said augment, not replace. It's response times are still too slow, and even if it got a CUDA-powered GPU neural network, China can always engage in protectionist legislation that render all technological advantages moot. CPGrey doesn't address the ability of the Cuba's and the China's of the world to socially absorb actual labor costs due of political paranoia. I recommend studying the tale of William Lee[2] to see just how far back the political fear of automation goes. [1] https://eh.net/encyclopedia/economic-history-of-tractors-in-the-united-states/ https://eh.net/encyclopedia/economic-history-of-tractors-in-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_(inventor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_(inventor)