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Apart from people putting out feelers about a Universal Basic Income, the next best thing I've heard is an informal proposal by Bill Gates about taxing automati

by atonse 9y ago

Apart from people putting out feelers about a Universal Basic Income, the next best thing I've heard is an informal proposal by Bill Gates about taxing automation [1] so we can better control the speed in which this stuff will upend everything, and buy more time for a more controlled transition. I say that as a developer who is one of the classes that will benefit more from automation (until we are also replaced). [1]: https://qz.com/911968/bill-gates-the-robot-that-takes-your-job-should-pay-taxes/ https://qz.com/911968/bill-gates-the-robot-that-takes-your-j...

malandrew 9y ago
That sounds like a recipe for crippling the competitiveness of the US relative to other countries. It's not like China is going to slow down on the inevitable march towards automation. The absolute best scenario is for a country to automate as much as possible as quickly as possible to capture the productivity gains available on the global scale and then figure out how to tax gains (from automation or otherwise) domestically after the fact to support those in its population that have been displaced. If you think instability from unemployment is bad, it's certainly worse if you also have the problem of not having the resources to even try and address it.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  "Competitiveness" means nothing when only a fraction of the population prosper from those gains. On paper, America is significantly richer than it was in the 80's, yet incomes for the majority have been flat, social mobility has decreased, worker leverage has nearly disappeared, and quality of life for those outside of the coastal regions has gone down. There's no reason to push for exponential growth any further until we can correct income and wealth inequality a bit.
  - malandrew 9y ago
    It's better that a fraction of the population prosper that the can act philanthropically or that rest of the country can tax. The alternative is a fraction of the population of another country prosper over which we have no power to tax and whose philanthropy likely won't benefit Americans. The former gives you options, the latter affords you none.
    - sooheon 9y ago
      Is this not FUD? Why do you assume that Chinese billionaires are any less philanthropic than US ones? America has the richest people on Earth currently, how successfully are you taxing them to take care of your needy? This is reminiscent of the prisoner's dilemma in a way. All the rich of all the countries in the world will make the same claims: "look, we don't want to fall behind big scary China or Russia do we? So cut me some slack on taxes and regulation, let's all pitch in to bail me out when I fail (just a few billion here and there--I'm too big to fail, remember?), and we'll see about redistribution once we've won the war. I promise to remember you all." A country that follows this path ends up like Korea, selling its soul to Samsung.
      - malandrew 9y ago
        I'm not assuming they are less philanthropic. I'm assuming that their philanthropy will be skewed towards benefiting Chinese people the same way the philanthropy of American billionaires and millionaires is skewed towards benefiting American citizens. You're reading malice into a statement where there is simply economic self-interest since I live in America. I don't care if there is economic unrest in China nearly as much as economic unrest in America. Do I wish economic unrest in China? No, of course not. But if I had to choose between economic unrest overseas or in my own backyard, overseas it is. I only use China as the example here because they are the only ones actually executing an economic game plan that is competitive with taking economic gains from America and Americans.
    - ryandrake 9y ago
      Relying on philanthropy is a terrible way to provide for the public good. Instead of a democratically elected body, accountable to the electorate, you leave it to a handful of rich people (who answer to nobody) to choose who benefits.
      - malandrew 9y ago
        Explain to me why you selectively chose to ignore the fact that I also mentioned taxation. Both philanthropy and taxation are important.
- s73ver 9y ago
  You don't think so? China probably has even more to lose with automation. Automation means that fewer people will need to send their manufacturing over to them. Automation means that their factories will employ fewer people, which will have a much bigger impact given the sheer amounts of people they have.
tdeck 9y ago
> Exactly how you’d do it, measure it, you know, it’s interesting for people to start talking about now. This is an interesting allusion to the fundamental problem with this proposal - it doesn't bother to define what a robot is, the value of a robot's labor, or how to tell when the robot has replaced someone's job. If you start thinking about the implications for even a moment it's clear this is absurd. If company A makes product X using 100 workers, and company B enters the market using machine C to make X at a lower cost that drives A out of business, how do we decide what to tax B? Does B pay the payroll taxes of 100 workers? What if B's lower cost expands the market for X and now they're selling ten times as much? What if the product A makes is hand-knit sweaters, and B is using knitting machine technology that's been around for a century? Are those the same products? Is the knitting machine a robot? There's a very real concern here - the concern is that technology allows the proceeds of increased productivity to all be funneled to a privileged few, leaving the rest of the workforce out in the cold. Luckily we already have a way to address that - it's called the income tax.
- sooheon 9y ago
  Yep. It's really as simple as a progressive income and capital tax. Not only is it difficult to define the surplus gains from automation, the societal problem is not automation, but the inordinate accumulation of wealth and power. Of course passing more progressive tax laws are impossible because you're asking the most rich and powerful to curtail their own wealth. Gate's proposal has any traction whatsoever because it won't touch old money. Asymmetric growth between those with and without capital (automation/AI) will only worsen. Add in a few more upcoming innovations such as human genetic and cybernetic modification, and a highly segregated (if not fully biologically divergent) world society seems unavoidable. The poor will no longer be lower castes by social fiat, they will truly become physically and mentally inferior. Revolution, which was possible in a time when the oppressed had equal capabilities and access to relatively competitive weaponry, will become impossible.
  - int_19h 9y ago
    "Capital" is the key word here. Old man Marx was right when he said that capitalism is inherently self-contradictory... it's just that it took a while for that to fully manifest, and it is not in a way he expected. Consider what capitalism is, again, from a Marxist perspective. It is an economic mode of production that has two main classes: the capitalist class, which is characterized by the ownership of the means of production (aka capital); and the worker class, which is characterized by the lack of said ownership. The capitalist class, by virtue of owning the means of production, also owns any surplus value created using them. However, because your average capitalist has too much capital to be able to utilize it to its full extent, in order to maximize the surplus value generated from that capital, they need the workers. So, they effectively rent out the means of production to the workers (note: this includes the entire managerial chain involved, up to CEOs, and even owners themselves to the extent that they operate in a managerial capacity), who generate the actual surplus value, but then pay most of it back to the owner of the capital as rent. On the other hand, the workers, without access to means of production, cannot generate surplus value for themselves. So they have to go and rent those means from the capitalists who own them. The resulting arrangement manifests as employment and wages, and that's how we nominally describe it. But fundamentally it's all about rent and rent-seeking. The reason why this arrangement works in practice is because, within this established framework (i.e. unless you dispute legality of ownership of capital), both classes need each other to get any value out of it. Consequently, the reason why it's breaking apart with advent of widespread automation is because it breaks the dependency of the capitalist class on the workers. Automation is essentially capital that generates surplus value all by itself. This means that the entire production/consumption cycle that drives the economy becomes contained to the capitalist class. Simply put, if you have a robot that can do X for free, and the other guy has a robot that can do Y for free, and both of you need X+Y, then you only need to trade between each other. You don't need to trade with (e.g. hire or contract) anyone who does not have any robot that does anything useful. Effectively, everyone who doesn't own any means of production - i.e. the majority of the population in modern societies - become economically redundant in all respects, and cut off from the economy as a result. This is the point at which the question of who owns the capital - i.e. the automation - becomes paramount. The existing owners can try to avoid pressing that point by willingly taking a part of the surplus value that automation generates for them, and sharing it with all those that don't have any capital of their own, as a direct wealth transfer. This is UBI and other similar schemes. It's probably where we're heading in the medium term, but I doubt it would be a stable arrangement for too long - there's just too many inherent questions about fairness here, and such a scheme would also have basically zero social mobility between the have-automation class and the have-nots, that would further accelerate resentment. Longer term, we're probably looking at some form of shared ownership of the means of production. Which, combined with the post-scarcity that automation should result in, would, in fact, be communism in the strictest definition of that term. If we do get there, it would be the ultimate irony in that it would be capitalism as a socioeconomic system, rather than socialism, building the road there, for all the efforts of the latter and the indifference of the former...
ctchocula 9y ago
The economist hired by Valve had something to say about this plan. He proposes a Universal Basic Dividend that purportedly more effectively taxes automation. [1] His goal is get rid of the incentive to dodge robot taxes by not taxing automation directly, but through giving everyone a portion of new IPOs. Then the capital gains attained by automation can be shared. [1]: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bill-gates-tax-on-robots-by-yanis-varoufakis-2017-02 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bill-gates-tax-...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sooheon 9y ago
  This is an elegant solution, and I like the fact that it literally gives everyone ownership in the means of production, but the author missed another easy solution: have a highly progressive income and capital tax. The former-Employer-now-turned-Robot-owner will pay tax at a higher bracket as he now earns what the now-redundant-employee used to make. Similarly, every time there is a consolidation in income (many workers earning wages to few robot owners making bank), total tax revenue will increase.

by atonse 9y ago

malandrew 9y ago

That sounds like a recipe for crippling the competitiveness of the US relative to other countries. It's not like China is going to slow down on the inevitable march towards automation. The absolute best scenario is for a country to automate as much as possible as quickly as possible to capture the productivity gains available on the global scale and then figure out how to tax gains (from automation or otherwise) domestically after the fact to support those in its population that have been displaced. If you think instability from unemployment is bad, it's certainly worse if you also have the problem of not having the resources to even try and address it.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
"Competitiveness" means nothing when only a fraction of the population prosper from those gains. On paper, America is significantly richer than it was in the 80's, yet incomes for the majority have been flat, social mobility has decreased, worker leverage has nearly disappeared, and quality of life for those outside of the coastal regions has gone down. There's no reason to push for exponential growth any further until we can correct income and wealth inequality a bit.
- malandrew 9y ago
  It's better that a fraction of the population prosper that the can act philanthropically or that rest of the country can tax. The alternative is a fraction of the population of another country prosper over which we have no power to tax and whose philanthropy likely won't benefit Americans. The former gives you options, the latter affords you none.
  - sooheon 9y ago
    Is this not FUD? Why do you assume that Chinese billionaires are any less philanthropic than US ones? America has the richest people on Earth currently, how successfully are you taxing them to take care of your needy? This is reminiscent of the prisoner's dilemma in a way. All the rich of all the countries in the world will make the same claims: "look, we don't want to fall behind big scary China or Russia do we? So cut me some slack on taxes and regulation, let's all pitch in to bail me out when I fail (just a few billion here and there--I'm too big to fail, remember?), and we'll see about redistribution once we've won the war. I promise to remember you all." A country that follows this path ends up like Korea, selling its soul to Samsung.
    - malandrew 9y ago
      I'm not assuming they are less philanthropic. I'm assuming that their philanthropy will be skewed towards benefiting Chinese people the same way the philanthropy of American billionaires and millionaires is skewed towards benefiting American citizens. You're reading malice into a statement where there is simply economic self-interest since I live in America. I don't care if there is economic unrest in China nearly as much as economic unrest in America. Do I wish economic unrest in China? No, of course not. But if I had to choose between economic unrest overseas or in my own backyard, overseas it is. I only use China as the example here because they are the only ones actually executing an economic game plan that is competitive with taking economic gains from America and Americans.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    Relying on philanthropy is a terrible way to provide for the public good. Instead of a democratically elected body, accountable to the electorate, you leave it to a handful of rich people (who answer to nobody) to choose who benefits.
    - malandrew 9y ago
      Explain to me why you selectively chose to ignore the fact that I also mentioned taxation. Both philanthropy and taxation are important.
s73ver 9y ago
You don't think so? China probably has even more to lose with automation. Automation means that fewer people will need to send their manufacturing over to them. Automation means that their factories will employ fewer people, which will have a much bigger impact given the sheer amounts of people they have.

tdeck 9y ago

> Exactly how you’d do it, measure it, you know, it’s interesting for people to start talking about now. This is an interesting allusion to the fundamental problem with this proposal - it doesn't bother to define what a robot is, the value of a robot's labor, or how to tell when the robot has replaced someone's job. If you start thinking about the implications for even a moment it's clear this is absurd. If company A makes product X using 100 workers, and company B enters the market using machine C to make X at a lower cost that drives A out of business, how do we decide what to tax B? Does B pay the payroll taxes of 100 workers? What if B's lower cost expands the market for X and now they're selling ten times as much? What if the product A makes is hand-knit sweaters, and B is using knitting machine technology that's been around for a century? Are those the same products? Is the knitting machine a robot? There's a very real concern here - the concern is that technology allows the proceeds of increased productivity to all be funneled to a privileged few, leaving the rest of the workforce out in the cold. Luckily we already have a way to address that - it's called the income tax.

sooheon 9y ago
Yep. It's really as simple as a progressive income and capital tax. Not only is it difficult to define the surplus gains from automation, the societal problem is not automation, but the inordinate accumulation of wealth and power. Of course passing more progressive tax laws are impossible because you're asking the most rich and powerful to curtail their own wealth. Gate's proposal has any traction whatsoever because it won't touch old money. Asymmetric growth between those with and without capital (automation/AI) will only worsen. Add in a few more upcoming innovations such as human genetic and cybernetic modification, and a highly segregated (if not fully biologically divergent) world society seems unavoidable. The poor will no longer be lower castes by social fiat, they will truly become physically and mentally inferior. Revolution, which was possible in a time when the oppressed had equal capabilities and access to relatively competitive weaponry, will become impossible.
- int_19h 9y ago
  "Capital" is the key word here. Old man Marx was right when he said that capitalism is inherently self-contradictory... it's just that it took a while for that to fully manifest, and it is not in a way he expected. Consider what capitalism is, again, from a Marxist perspective. It is an economic mode of production that has two main classes: the capitalist class, which is characterized by the ownership of the means of production (aka capital); and the worker class, which is characterized by the lack of said ownership. The capitalist class, by virtue of owning the means of production, also owns any surplus value created using them. However, because your average capitalist has too much capital to be able to utilize it to its full extent, in order to maximize the surplus value generated from that capital, they need the workers. So, they effectively rent out the means of production to the workers (note: this includes the entire managerial chain involved, up to CEOs, and even owners themselves to the extent that they operate in a managerial capacity), who generate the actual surplus value, but then pay most of it back to the owner of the capital as rent. On the other hand, the workers, without access to means of production, cannot generate surplus value for themselves. So they have to go and rent those means from the capitalists who own them. The resulting arrangement manifests as employment and wages, and that's how we nominally describe it. But fundamentally it's all about rent and rent-seeking. The reason why this arrangement works in practice is because, within this established framework (i.e. unless you dispute legality of ownership of capital), both classes need each other to get any value out of it. Consequently, the reason why it's breaking apart with advent of widespread automation is because it breaks the dependency of the capitalist class on the workers. Automation is essentially capital that generates surplus value all by itself. This means that the entire production/consumption cycle that drives the economy becomes contained to the capitalist class. Simply put, if you have a robot that can do X for free, and the other guy has a robot that can do Y for free, and both of you need X+Y, then you only need to trade between each other. You don't need to trade with (e.g. hire or contract) anyone who does not have any robot that does anything useful. Effectively, everyone who doesn't own any means of production - i.e. the majority of the population in modern societies - become economically redundant in all respects, and cut off from the economy as a result. This is the point at which the question of who owns the capital - i.e. the automation - becomes paramount. The existing owners can try to avoid pressing that point by willingly taking a part of the surplus value that automation generates for them, and sharing it with all those that don't have any capital of their own, as a direct wealth transfer. This is UBI and other similar schemes. It's probably where we're heading in the medium term, but I doubt it would be a stable arrangement for too long - there's just too many inherent questions about fairness here, and such a scheme would also have basically zero social mobility between the have-automation class and the have-nots, that would further accelerate resentment. Longer term, we're probably looking at some form of shared ownership of the means of production. Which, combined with the post-scarcity that automation should result in, would, in fact, be communism in the strictest definition of that term. If we do get there, it would be the ultimate irony in that it would be capitalism as a socioeconomic system, rather than socialism, building the road there, for all the efforts of the latter and the indifference of the former...

ctchocula 9y ago

The economist hired by Valve had something to say about this plan. He proposes a Universal Basic Dividend that purportedly more effectively taxes automation. [1] His goal is get rid of the incentive to dodge robot taxes by not taxing automation directly, but through giving everyone a portion of new IPOs. Then the capital gains attained by automation can be shared. [1]: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bill-gates-tax-on-robots-by-yanis-varoufakis-2017-02 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bill-gates-tax-...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sooheon 9y ago
This is an elegant solution, and I like the fact that it literally gives everyone ownership in the means of production, but the author missed another easy solution: have a highly progressive income and capital tax. The former-Employer-now-turned-Robot-owner will pay tax at a higher bracket as he now earns what the now-redundant-employee used to make. Similarly, every time there is a consolidation in income (many workers earning wages to few robot owners making bank), total tax revenue will increase.