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>Horses are tools that people used. When there's no more use for the tool, it's usage may be reduces. People are not just tools, they are the reason we have an
by marchenko 10y ago
>Horses are tools that people used. When there's no more use for the tool, it's usage may be reduces. People are not just tools, they are the reason we have an economy in the first place. A solution in some form will have to be put forth if one doesn't emerge.<
I'm unsatisfied with the ubiquitous horse analogy as well. The economy exists to solve human problems, not horse problems. We are constantly generating new problems and new social performances. It would not surprise me if the economy of the future was based around elaborate, manpower-intensive tea-ceremony-like rituals or something equally preposterous. Human obsolescence is not inevitable, but might be engineered.
- srssays 10y agoSorry, but the economy exists to get returns on capital. Employment is a happy side-effect. If, in the far future, there are greater returns from employing robots than humans, then those humans who need to work will starve.
- marchenko 10y agoBoth employment and returns on capital are a happy side effects of solving human problems and directing scarce resources to their highest and best use, the only human-aligned goals of an economy. Hunter-gatherers operated various economies for millennia with very little capital and almost no capital returns. But the definition that you supply is the one that is in operation, and will be almost impossible to dislodge. I'm not arguing that immiseration brought on by automation is unlikely, merely that it is not inevitable.