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So if I invest money into a manufacturing process and build an automated factory that can do with 100 people what used to take 500 people, and then I therefore

• unclebucknasty 9y ago
  In some ways, yes, it actually is bad. Depends on your perspective. As a very simple example, imagine that you were able to fully automate, such that you required zero workers. Imagine further that all other businesses did the same.
  • harryh 9y ago
    If literally all imaginable human work was 100% automated then the cost of goods and services compared to today would be tiny. The poorest member of that society would live like a king from our present day world.
    • unclebucknasty 9y ago
      >If literally all imaginable human work was 100% automated then the cost of goods and services compared to today would be tiny Well, that assumption is pretty general and doesn't account for natural resources/raw materials, energy inputs required for production, or other factors. It would also vary per sector, such that the statement is far from universally true. >The poorest member of that society would live like a king from our present day world But, regardless, there would be some cost for goods. How do you propose the now 100% unemployed population pay for anything, let alone "live like kings"? The answer is that you would need to devise a method of wealth distribution that is orthogonal to capitalism. Say, for instance, a tax that subsidizes everyone else. That, of course, would not be capitalism. The point is that wage labor is fundamental to capitalism. Somewhere between our present state and 100% automation, a capitalist system requires so much intervention that it breaks down.
      • chii 9y ago
        I think taxing property ownership is the only natural conclusion i can draw from such an ultimate end-state. If you own any property, you pay a tax, and that tax is fed to those who do not own property, in such a way that they survive.
    • codexon 9y ago
      The problem is, the plebians would not be able to get a job to pay for the goods/services no matter how cheap they may become. If you had robots making everything you could possibly want, why would you bother selling any of it to people who don't have any land, natural resources, or rare skills? They wouldn't have anything you want.
      • adrianN 9y ago
        Why bother selling it at all? You could just give away the things for free. The marginal cost of an item is just the energy needed to produce it. With robots building solar panels or something like that, those costs are negligible.
        • codexon 9y ago
          Because it still takes effort to give things away for free and as a robot owner, natural resources, land, rare skills can't be automated away.
          • Chris2048 9y ago
            Effort is a human skill, which the premise states is already automated. As are rare skills.
            • codexon 9y ago
              If you can even automate giving things away without worrying about people hacking/stealing/vandalizing your robots, then wouldn't it also be likely for you to spend all your resources on combat robots to take resources/land from other robot owners instead of wasting them on people that aren't giving you anything you want?
              • Chris2048 9y ago
                Why would the elite worry about that, life is good in a monopoly, no need to upset the balance.
    • chongli 9y ago
      The cost would be low, but since nobody would have a job the prices would be astronomical. Multiply people's purchasing power by a million, great, but a million times zero is still zero.
    • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      No, capitalism would eat itself, you can't run an economy without consumers.
      • ddnb 9y ago
        One could say it would hang itself by its own rope.
    • morugin 9y ago
      >The poorest member of that society would live like a king from our present day world. You forget things such as: meaningful work, respect from society, crime, cultural differences between the poor and the rich, interclass upward mobility (see any sociology textbook), intellectual stimulation.
  • lazaroclapp 9y ago
    Sounds like a post-scarcity utopia to me, depending on how large the set of "all businesses" is and what we do with the surplus in production :)
    • unclebucknasty 9y ago
      Ha! Sign me up. Actually, I like the idea of work. But, at some point, we will have to "artificially" employ people or, of course, implement a UBI. But, even with the latter, we'll have to re-imagine our relationship to work and its role as a source of self-worth. There's this idea that without work, we'd all just instantly self-actualize and write poetry or paint masterpieces. Not sure why we imagine this vs. the more likely reality that we'd instead sit around sharing cat memes, making heinous YouTube comments, and generally getting dumber. I'm not sure if society is really ready for a post-work world.
      • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
        I'd rather people sat around watching cat videos than we forced them to dig holes and fill them in again.
        • unclebucknasty 9y ago
          Well, that "artificial" employment I mentioned would presumably be at least somewhat fulfilling--i.e. pretty much what you see today. By artificial, I didn't mean running in hamster wheels or digging holes. I meant more that we employ people for jobs that we could technically automate. Of course, that's not ideal either. My main point was that a UBI (or not having to work) wouldn't be the instant panacea that some suggest, leading to a sudden heightening of the human race as we are collectively released to pursue our higher purposes.
        • Chris2048 9y ago
          On the other hand, I'd sooner they dig the holes, than make more youtube videos..
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • nkrisc 9y ago
    I think at that point we could say we "finished" capitalism and we'd have to move on to another system to keep society functioning.
• yorwba 9y ago
  It's not bad. If I had my way (and implementation weren't impractical), you would still pay a special tax, specifically balanced to cover for the unemployment benefits of the 400 workers you fired (or never hired in the first place). Of course not all of them will be unemployed, so you only have to pay for 100 + (unemployment rate) × 400 people. If the cost of your efficiency increase is not too high, you get to pocket the difference. Unless your automation is as expensive as hundreds of workers, this will likely still be a large sum.
  • chii 9y ago
    how about a flat tax for re-education for obsolete workers instead?
    • lossolo 9y ago
      If we automate most of the manufacturing and other low skill jobs then you will be left with part of society that do not have predispositions/are not smart enough for creative/high skill jobs. And this accounts for a LOT of people. Education will not help in that, this are the people that couldn't get through education system in the first place, that's why they don't have any/low education.
      • VLM 9y ago
        A lot of service jobs are driven out by high cost of doing business; entrenched existing businesses are the source of re-election funding. My neighbor bakes nice cookies. I have programmer money. You can guess whats supposed to happen here, but legally can't happen. Some education might help a little with WRT food safety, but it doesn't matter because the purpose of the government is to prevent her from going into the cookie baking business and compete with existing processed food factories. The ultimate micro-brew isn't some multinational corporation spending lots of money on branding, but its the guy down the block. That of course is incredibly illegal, because the multinational corporation decides whats legal or illegal. My wife's favorite hairdresser became unemployed due to the cost of health insurance; for awhile she cut hair at home on the side, but the .gov comes down heavy on that for obvious financial reasons. Some sort of ideal world for lower IQ / lower functioning people would require better government. Rather than the government existing solely to protect Nabisco Inc sales, you'd have to refocus it entirely on safety and small business support services so my neighbor can sell cookies. If my neighbor did all the homemade baked goods for my entire subdivision, I'm not entirely sure she's be poor, either. If she ran a 50% profit margin and everyone in my subdivision dropped $2/day for baked goods service (like she'd hand deliver you a hot loaf of bread every day?) that would be 6012500*0.50=$180K profit per year, not bad for an area where the median household income is a hair under $60K. Of course the purpose of the government it to annihilate small businesses in favor of large businesses.
• NTDF9 9y ago
  Yes. You built an automated factory by accruing profits originally from workers. That profit either needs to be given back to the workers by compensation or taxation. You specifically didn't do much. Your workers did. If they make you rich and lose their jobs in the process, you pay them back.
  • harryh 9y ago
    Yes, workers with increased productivity almost always get paid more.
    • and0 9y ago
      That's very clearly untrue. There are plenty of studies showing this is not the case. Almost all workers are significantly more productive but wages have remained flat for a long time.
      • harryh 9y ago
        Mean productivity has increased while median wages have stayed flat. What people think is a story about wages decoupling from productivity is actually a story about the variation of productivity among workers getting higher. You can tell this is true because labor's share of income (vs capital's share) has remained fairly constant. It's the distribution of this share between different workers that has changed.
        • and0 9y ago
          Do you have any examples of these jobs that are now more vs less productive? I'd say the average Starbucks / fast food worker are significantly more productive while making less comparatively. Labor's share of income vs capital's has not remained constant. Not even close.
          • harryh 9y ago
            Labor's share of income vs capital's has not remained constant. Not even close. Sure it has: https://taxfoundation.org/walkthrough-gross-domestic-income https://taxfoundation.org/walkthrough-gross-domestic-income
• lossolo 9y ago
  Yes, or you will have no one to buy this things from you when everyone will automate everything, then most people would have no job. System works now because some of the money goes to middle and lower classes, not all is accumulated on the top. If you accumulate all the wealth in the top without any mechanism of distributing it in lower classes then whole system will collapse and you (as someone on top) will probably end up like in other revolutions in human history, hanging up from the tree.
  • sethrin 9y ago
    What level of wealth inequality is necessary for revolution? How has that changed over time?
    • pm90 9y ago
      This is an interesting question. In general, if you leave a huge chunk of your population in miserable conditions, at some point they will say, with legitimate reason, that the current system is fucked up, and with no way to remedy that, will not obey the laws any more. e.g. the French and Russian revolutions, as well as Communist Chinese one, were caused by the huge tax burden being placed on the poor while the wealthy often paid very little, or used their political influence to get tax breaks, which left the state broke and unable to raise revenue. A weak state + unhappy populace == revolution. This is why the Chinese government is very concerned with keeping economic growth high. This is why India has 0% tax on farmers/agricultural goods (so the State can't be held responsible for their misery). This is why Republican/Libertarian efforts to eliminate or reduce Government is so fucking scary. Of course there are legitimate reasons to be concerned with limiting govt. overreach. But the Govt. is a required political social entity and we've gotta keep going. Whats baffling to me is that so many wealthy people don't get this. If the Government goes away, their wealth is gonna get torched/taken. Anyways to answer your question: I don't know what the proportion would be, but likely indicators would be... unemployment level and uninsured rates. People with no healthcare and no jobs/money === desperate people whose survival instincts will kick in.
      • sethrin 9y ago