5 ms·

Glad to see they're framing as a capital/labor question, because there are additional important considerations about robots replacing labor, in addition to incr

by 60654 9y ago

Glad to see they're framing as a capital/labor question, because there are additional important considerations about robots replacing labor, in addition to increased productivity: 1. Robots are capital, and therefore investment, while labor is a pure expense. Capital will generate income that can be reinvested back into more capital etc, generating more wealth for the owner, and they can sell those robots later to turn that investment liquid. But labor is purely an expense, and the money that a manufacturer pays to employees is wealth that they've transferred elsewhere, it doesn't compound, and it can't be owned and controlled like capital can. 2. In terms of taxation, governments in Europe and US tend to: 1. Tax labor relatively heavily (income taxes), 2. Tax capital gains relatively lightly, and 3. Do not tax capital ownership as such. So it's rational for capital owners to try to replace labor with capital if it can perform the same tasks - with tragic effects for labor. Following Piketty, it seems to make sense to introduce a small but nonzero tax on the ownership of capital (not just on capital gains at the time of a sale) to offset these changes.

colorint 9y ago
The arguably more important issue is that spending is income, in both directions. Wages are an expense to companies, but revenue to workers---and likewise, buying goods is an expense to workers and revenue to companies. Those two factors have to be relatively balanced; if you bias too far in favor of capital, you kill growth because you cut off demand for goods. And hoisting ever-increasing debt on workers only works for so long. This is probably where people start talking about universal basic income, but that runs into a different problem: if you bias income too much to labor, investment can't keep up with the increasing demand and you get accelerating inflation. So there's a tricky control systems problem here (and I prefer the job guarantee for its control theoretic formulation) that gets swept under the rug in favor of dogma about free markets or what have you.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dv_dt 9y ago
  > And hoisting ever-increasing debt on workers only works for so long. I think you are underestimating the capacity for greed as well as the effect of globalization. Even if whole nations of workers are eviscerated, it is possible to sit in comfort and growing your wealth and power with little regard to the balance or even efficiency of the overall system.
  - colorint 9y ago
    I do question the capacity for greed, in the broader sense of, what can happen before a system enters some sort of catastrophic negative feedback? In the immediate term, private debt build-up provokes financial crises. In the long run, there's another balancing factor you're forgetting about: revolution. Workers can safely ("safely") be eviscerated somewhere else, because it's very hard for them to take arms to distant owners. In the countries where the owners themselves live, it's another control system that needs to be threaded.
    - IIIIIIIIIIII 9y ago
      Revolutions require organisation - very good organisation. All you'll get from ordinary workers is, possibly, a riot, quickly subdued. You are also up against an extremely well-organised and well-armed government, but that may not even be the most salient point: A lot of people for very good reasons do not want to see the government overthrown. They know the result will only be worse. Our societies are far too organised and interconnected over large distances, with all their widely distributed and interconnected creation of everything from basic food to almost all goods except for the most primitive ones. Only if you can fully replace a government with a new one could you have a "revolution". So, elections and parties still are the best option. I think they actually work too, it's just that there is very little successful effort in organizing something better. Yes of course there have been plenty of attempts, but they all fail even more than the current system: None of those attempts manages to get enough people "on board", and they scream and insult everybody they don't like - so they are no improvement at all (not even mentioning the wild and unrealistic ideas they usually have). For example, I think an alternative new movement would have to start calmly instead of yelling loudly. The latter only attracts the crazies, while the thinking people are pushed away. So, no mass demonstrations against this or that, "being against" is not a good start for the alternative. Instead work on what and how things should/could work instead of working on how to best insult and score points against the "political opponent". Or, if you start talking about revolutions I will assume your main goal is destruction. By the way, I would posit that many people who are "greedy" are that way because of the environment, not because "that's what they are". Soooo many people, with advancing age, grow disillusioned. In particular, I know quite a few medical doctors who got into the profession with idealism - but now they actually sell "BS" to people who want it. From homeopathy to network marketing stuff like (branded) vitamins or "energy mats". Of course they don't believe in any of it, it's just that they have given up and now go with the flow.
gech 9y ago
>labor is purely an expense Unless you expand the view and see that an employee that gets paid has money to participate in the economy and buy your goods. Economics is a sham science.
- bbctol 9y ago
  That second sentence really doesn't follow the first.
- paulpauper 9y ago
  The savings from automation and outsourcing far exceeds what Apple (a common example) could earn from the increased purchasing power from US Apple employees if some of those employees had slightly more money to buy Apple products. The odds of employees taking their increased wages and ONLY buying your goods, is slim, and this logic does not work for companies such as Boeing , that make products that no possible employee could ever afford.
  - TimJYoung 9y ago
    You have to keep going and not stop at the first level (for example, who buys airline tickets ?). What you'll find is that, eventually, it all comes back to consumer demand.
    - bryondowd 9y ago
      But the people making decisions at any one company can't go beyond that level for their decision-making. While it would be beneficial to the company if consumers in general had more spending power, each company's decisions can only make a negligible influence on that, and would in fact just be providing a tiny subsidy that the rest of the market would likely eat up without returning the favor. Most owners and shareholders and such wouldn't stand for that, and whatever few eccentrics who would, wouldn't reach the critical mass necessary for it to benefit anyone much. I don't know of any way to resolve that short of government intervention or massive employee unionization, which are both rather far-fetched in the current environment, but perhaps will become more plausible as more people get their jobs automated.
neuromancer2701 9y ago
I would say that there is at least two type of human labor: humans pretending to be machines and value added labor e.g. R&D/IP generation. Labor that generates IP and new products should not be viewed as a pure expense because there is a return to that expense. Humans have better things to do than pretend to be machines.
nradov 9y ago
Robots are a depreciating capital investment, just like a lathe or forklift. They don't last forever and require a lot of maintenance. And there's very little standardization. If you try to sell a used robot expect to take a huge loss; it's not even remotely a liquid investment.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  Indeed. Robots aren't intrinsically different from, say, combines. That doesn't mean that it isn't worth looking at disruptions caused by productivity growth, but I think we'd be better off looking at what kinds of disruptions were seen in the past. This not only gets us away from the robots narrative (which seems to muddle things a bit as it feeds into present day hype), but it also allows us to look at the impact of much higher productivity growth (current productivity growth is fairly low).
- PeterisP 9y ago
  Yes, it's not liquid (mainly due to specialization, current robots designed to do something in one factory aren't that usable doing something a bit different elsewhere), but it's still a long term investment. If you pay $1M in salaries, that won't help you next year at all; if you buy robots for $1M, you'd expect at least half of them to still do useful work for you after quite a few years.
flyingfences 9y ago
> labor is a pure expense Unskilled labor in high demand is a pure expense. If your laborers require training that you provide then you could see that as an investment. If your laborers are unlikely to be able to find work in their field elsewhere then you could see your retention of them as an investment. The effect is compounded when both are true. Of course this does rely on a sense of loyalty in the workers, and it's up to the employer to create an environment that fosters that.

by 60654 9y ago

colorint 9y ago

The arguably more important issue is that spending is income, in both directions. Wages are an expense to companies, but revenue to workers---and likewise, buying goods is an expense to workers and revenue to companies. Those two factors have to be relatively balanced; if you bias too far in favor of capital, you kill growth because you cut off demand for goods. And hoisting ever-increasing debt on workers only works for so long. This is probably where people start talking about universal basic income, but that runs into a different problem: if you bias income too much to labor, investment can't keep up with the increasing demand and you get accelerating inflation. So there's a tricky control systems problem here (and I prefer the job guarantee for its control theoretic formulation) that gets swept under the rug in favor of dogma about free markets or what have you.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dv_dt 9y ago
> And hoisting ever-increasing debt on workers only works for so long. I think you are underestimating the capacity for greed as well as the effect of globalization. Even if whole nations of workers are eviscerated, it is possible to sit in comfort and growing your wealth and power with little regard to the balance or even efficiency of the overall system.
- colorint 9y ago
  I do question the capacity for greed, in the broader sense of, what can happen before a system enters some sort of catastrophic negative feedback? In the immediate term, private debt build-up provokes financial crises. In the long run, there's another balancing factor you're forgetting about: revolution. Workers can safely ("safely") be eviscerated somewhere else, because it's very hard for them to take arms to distant owners. In the countries where the owners themselves live, it's another control system that needs to be threaded.
  - IIIIIIIIIIII 9y ago
    Revolutions require organisation - very good organisation. All you'll get from ordinary workers is, possibly, a riot, quickly subdued. You are also up against an extremely well-organised and well-armed government, but that may not even be the most salient point: A lot of people for very good reasons do not want to see the government overthrown. They know the result will only be worse. Our societies are far too organised and interconnected over large distances, with all their widely distributed and interconnected creation of everything from basic food to almost all goods except for the most primitive ones. Only if you can fully replace a government with a new one could you have a "revolution". So, elections and parties still are the best option. I think they actually work too, it's just that there is very little successful effort in organizing something better. Yes of course there have been plenty of attempts, but they all fail even more than the current system: None of those attempts manages to get enough people "on board", and they scream and insult everybody they don't like - so they are no improvement at all (not even mentioning the wild and unrealistic ideas they usually have). For example, I think an alternative new movement would have to start calmly instead of yelling loudly. The latter only attracts the crazies, while the thinking people are pushed away. So, no mass demonstrations against this or that, "being against" is not a good start for the alternative. Instead work on what and how things should/could work instead of working on how to best insult and score points against the "political opponent". Or, if you start talking about revolutions I will assume your main goal is destruction. By the way, I would posit that many people who are "greedy" are that way because of the environment, not because "that's what they are". Soooo many people, with advancing age, grow disillusioned. In particular, I know quite a few medical doctors who got into the profession with idealism - but now they actually sell "BS" to people who want it. From homeopathy to network marketing stuff like (branded) vitamins or "energy mats". Of course they don't believe in any of it, it's just that they have given up and now go with the flow.

gech 9y ago

>labor is purely an expense Unless you expand the view and see that an employee that gets paid has money to participate in the economy and buy your goods. Economics is a sham science.

bbctol 9y ago
That second sentence really doesn't follow the first.
paulpauper 9y ago
The savings from automation and outsourcing far exceeds what Apple (a common example) could earn from the increased purchasing power from US Apple employees if some of those employees had slightly more money to buy Apple products. The odds of employees taking their increased wages and ONLY buying your goods, is slim, and this logic does not work for companies such as Boeing , that make products that no possible employee could ever afford.
- TimJYoung 9y ago
  You have to keep going and not stop at the first level (for example, who buys airline tickets ?). What you'll find is that, eventually, it all comes back to consumer demand.
  - bryondowd 9y ago
    But the people making decisions at any one company can't go beyond that level for their decision-making. While it would be beneficial to the company if consumers in general had more spending power, each company's decisions can only make a negligible influence on that, and would in fact just be providing a tiny subsidy that the rest of the market would likely eat up without returning the favor. Most owners and shareholders and such wouldn't stand for that, and whatever few eccentrics who would, wouldn't reach the critical mass necessary for it to benefit anyone much. I don't know of any way to resolve that short of government intervention or massive employee unionization, which are both rather far-fetched in the current environment, but perhaps will become more plausible as more people get their jobs automated.

neuromancer2701 9y ago

I would say that there is at least two type of human labor: humans pretending to be machines and value added labor e.g. R&D/IP generation. Labor that generates IP and new products should not be viewed as a pure expense because there is a return to that expense. Humans have better things to do than pretend to be machines.

nradov 9y ago

Robots are a depreciating capital investment, just like a lathe or forklift. They don't last forever and require a lot of maintenance. And there's very little standardization. If you try to sell a used robot expect to take a huge loss; it's not even remotely a liquid investment.

Chathamization 9y ago
Indeed. Robots aren't intrinsically different from, say, combines. That doesn't mean that it isn't worth looking at disruptions caused by productivity growth, but I think we'd be better off looking at what kinds of disruptions were seen in the past. This not only gets us away from the robots narrative (which seems to muddle things a bit as it feeds into present day hype), but it also allows us to look at the impact of much higher productivity growth (current productivity growth is fairly low).
PeterisP 9y ago
Yes, it's not liquid (mainly due to specialization, current robots designed to do something in one factory aren't that usable doing something a bit different elsewhere), but it's still a long term investment. If you pay $1M in salaries, that won't help you next year at all; if you buy robots for $1M, you'd expect at least half of them to still do useful work for you after quite a few years.

flyingfences 9y ago

> labor is a pure expense Unskilled labor in high demand is a pure expense. If your laborers require training that you provide then you could see that as an investment. If your laborers are unlikely to be able to find work in their field elsewhere then you could see your retention of them as an investment. The effect is compounded when both are true. Of course this does rely on a sense of loyalty in the workers, and it's up to the employer to create an environment that fosters that.