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Seriously? We all know who Bill Gates is, but let's just examine this proposition as if someone else said it, maybe someone anonymous or who lacks prestige. W
by zxcvvcxz 10y ago
Seriously?
We all know who Bill Gates is, but let's just examine this proposition as if someone else said it, maybe someone anonymous or who lacks prestige.
We would tell them that sewing machine aren't taxed; farm equipment isn't taxed; street sweepers aren't taxed. We would tell them that productivity through technological innovation is an essential ingredient to our economy and that human needs are ever-evolving, and new jobs will be created just like they always have been.
> I am reminded of a story that a businessman told me a few years ago. While touring China, he came upon a team of nearly 100 workers building an earthen dam with shovels. The businessman commented to a local official that, with an earth-moving machine, a single worker could create the dam in an afternoon. The official’s curious response was, “Yes, but think of all the unemployment that would create.” “Oh,” said the businessman, “I thought you were building a dam. If it’s jobs you want to create, then take away their shovels and give them spoons!”
- onion2k 10y agonew jobs will be created just like they always have been I think that hypothesis is what Bill Gates is questioning. The rate of change is far quicker than anything we've seen before, so using historical examples of how jobs have been created when technology puts people out of work as evidence of what will happen is grossly flawed. There's a possibility that we won't invent new jobs in time. We should think about what that means.
- witty_username 10y agoIf there's no way to invent jobs then we've reached an utopia where robots do everything.
- majewsky 10y agoWhich is a dystopia if any large number of people don't have enough income to pay for their basic needs.
- witty_username 10y agoIf there's no need for jobs then that means robots are doing everything and so everything is cheap. That means the small nominal income becomes a large real income.
- majewsky 10y agoBut where's the "small nominal income" coming from if there are no jobs? UBI?
- witty_username 10y agoThere are always jobs if you take a low enough wage.
- mnsc 10y ago> We should think about what that means Free market economy doesn't think ahead, that's both it's strength and weakness. Government tries to think ahead. A taxation on robots might be a way to ease the road to the future _if_ the market doesn't invent jobs in the rate robots/automation in general takes them away. If you are a person with faith in the market the argument is easy, it's non-marketist to think ahead and the market will invent jobs because supply/demand. My take on this that for the market to be able to invent those jobs the economy has to become virtual. So the solution from the Government should be heavy subsidies to VR equipment, give the extremely poor extremely powerful gaming rigs and install tubes with free food(ish) to everyone. Then the market will survive, matrix style.
- onion2k 10y agoOne of the problems with HN is that it's sometimes hard to tell when people are being serious.
- mnsc 10y agoI actually can't tell myself if I'm serious, so I guess I fit in on the internet.
- davidivadavid 10y ago> Free market economy doesn't think ahead, that's both it's strength and weakness. It's not the first time I read such a thing, but I'm curious: what makes you think free markets don't think ahead? Don't most businesses try to anticipate future demand? Do such things as futures markets not exist? Aren't stocks valued as discounted cashflows of future dividends?
- mnsc 10y agoWell I was referring to the parent comment. > There's a possibility that we won't invent new jobs in time. We should think about what that means. Of course the market ponders the future but only in order to make the largest profits and it can only think about things that easily can be reduced to money/value. So what I meant was more that it can't think about the "meaning" of a current trend, ie jobs going away. In retrospect it _can_ see what the change "meant" for the economy. What I'm saying that that we can try to think about the possibility that automatization will eat jobs at a rate greater than it creates jobs. We can hypothesize that there will be a new equilibrium in the future. If that time is decades away and during this process many people will be thrown out of a meaningful/constructive way of life where you have a job into a highly stressful hankering along on random shit it might be a good idea that we together (those who have jobs) pool a part of our income and provide something like a minimum wage (or something that we think out which is super way better) by taxation. Sacrificing a bit of the speed of which the the total capital accumulates with the 1% in order to provide a better life for the 99%.
- Oletros 10y ago> and new jobs will be created just like they always have been. I highly doubt that new jobs will be created when the trend is to automate them. And we still have the problem with the people unemployed by the automation, what we should do for them?
- walterstucco 10y agoand we'll soon have the problem of automation replacing people who automate jobs.