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Robots can only reduce costs of the production, but to earn any money corporations first need to be able to sell their products to someone, they need consumers.
by ivanhoe 10y ago
Robots can only reduce costs of the production, but to earn any money corporations first need to be able to sell their products to someone, they need consumers. And you can't have starving, homeless consumers. You need to come up with some jobs so that majority of people still can earn money every month, so that you can sell them things regularly and finance all those fancy robots with a stable cash flow. Without that the whole economy as we know it would break. Not to mention that there would be a revolution or something long before that point. Transition, of course, will not be nice to many currently poor and unskilled workers, they'll be victims of the progress and this will continue for the few next generations for sure. But it's just a transition, jobs will eventually shift to something new, as they did before.
- chii 10y agowhat do you say about the argument put forward by this video? https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
- Houshalter 10y agoConsumers aren't really necessary. The economy will just start to allocate resources to the people that still have money to spend. Like the rich people that own the robots, or the government. Think more yacht and tank factories.
- vixen99 10y agoWhat a thought! No shopping malls, no supermarkets, no consumer product companies, no mass transport, no advertising (so no Google or FB etc.,) and so on. Numbers of the rich will rapidly dwindle and those yachts might lack for the odd amenity while the tank & robot factories risk being stuck for spare parts. A logistics headache at the very least!
- increment_i 10y agoI've heard this argument and I think it's a fallacy. I think the point is that automation will indeed "break" the economy in a drastic fashion. Money and consumers is just an efficient abstraction - what's really happening is that two parties are exchanging value (i.e. trading). If the middle/consumer class bottoms out, and automation renders their labour valueless, the owners of the automated, robotic outfits simply need to trade within themselves to keep their endeavours worthwhile. Of course, I suppose I'm taking things to overly simple, probably dystopian logical extremes here. Nevertheless, the guy in charge of the fully robotic organic farm only needs to trade with the guy with the fleet of robotic mechanics and both parties have realized a profit. There was no need for a bunch of consumers and their cash to make this transaction.