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>The impact of automation will be far worse for the individual in society than the impact of globalization. I have found this sentiment very common but I haven

>The impact of automation will be far worse for the individual in society than the impact of globalization. I have found this sentiment very common but I haven't heard a good enough argument to support it. If we banned all sorts of artificial energy sources like fossil fuels, solar, nuclear etc. no automation would be possible and even the ones we have would be gone. This would mean that everyone would have unlimited "jobs" (because everything currently done by machines would have to be done by hand if possible) while the standards of living would for everyone would drop significantly. So, lets say we started from that position and gradually started allowing limited amount of fuel and automation that amount of fuel would be able to do. While this would mean that some people would have to lose jobs and switch to something else, the standard of living overall would be increased. At what point would you say that there is "too much automation"?

coldtea 9y ago
>At what point would you say that there is "too much automation"? When billions of people are not needed and a minority can maintain a rich/upper middle class standard of living by itself + automation, and thus, if it weren't for causing chaos and riots, those redundant masses can be left to rot and die in slums without jobs and houses.
- s_m_t 9y ago
  I don't see how that scenario makes any sense. If the rich and upper middle class could maintain such lifestyles by themselves + automation then why wouldn't others have access to it?? Will the robots refuse to work for the poor?
  - anotherbrownguy 9y ago
    THIS. If richer people can automate their lifestyles, the companies selling automation technologies would definitely sell these automation technologies cheaply to the masses (specially given that because of automation, mass producing automation technologies would also be cheap) and everyone would be able to automate everything that can be automated. I think this would eventually lead to less inequality, not more.
    - twblalock 9y ago
      This has happened before, with vacuum cleaners, washers and dryers, dishwashers, etc. They replaced some of the labor of maids and servants in rich households, and many of the family's chores in everyone else's households. In fact, they benefitted the poor more than the rich, because the rich already paid people to do these things for them, and the poor could not.
  - drspacemonkey 9y ago
    >Will the robots refuse to work for the poor? Whoever owns the robots would likely refuse to let the robots work without the owners getting paid. And even if labour is (effectively) free, resources aren't.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - AndrewKemendo 9y ago
    Yes this was the exact scenario in Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >I don't see how that scenario makes any sense. If the rich and upper middle class could maintain such lifestyles by themselves + automation then why wouldn't others have access to it?? Will the robots refuse to work for the poor? No, the poor simply wouldn't afford either robots or one of the remaining jobs to make enough money to buy one. And nobody would care for them. They might not even get to vote anymore. It's either Star Trek style socialism, UBI (and trailer-park-like sub-par living for those receiving it) or direct slums. And those with power and privilege will tend towards the latter two. Besides, money is just a means to get material wealth and power today. If automation (+ maybe 1/10th the workers, office drones, and service workers) can maintain that material wealth, the "working economy" will be what happens between that 1/10th of the population. They wont be selling robots and other goods to the poor masses, for the same reason they don't sell houses, cars and computers to the poor masses in slums in India, Mexico and elsewhere. Either the economy needs them, and raises them from poverty (e.g. by giving them a factory job like in China or early USA), or it doesn't and it neglects them. The small new rich/upper middle class that will form wont particular care for those outside it, the same way most middle class people never care about the tens of millions of "trailer trash" in the US or the homeless. It's not like many ask themselves everyday 'why don't we help our trailer part people' or do anything about.
unclebucknasty 9y ago
I think you have to make a distinction between the benefits of automation to society and its impact on labor. When you do, I think you'll find that automation is not the problem, but our means of distributing access to resources. In other words, it's a false choice: in a different system, we could all receive the benefits of automation and have ready access to the abundant resources necessary for our individual sustenance.
ue_ 9y ago
>At what point would you say that there is "too much automation"? That's an interesting question. My main problem with automation is the way it is currently being used. Rather than being used to benefit workers, i.e to mean they must work fewer hours, in many cases the workers are simply re-purposed, none of the benefit from the machinery making its way to them. It is the pursuit of short-term profit which I think is the real problem. Now the usualy response to this is something along the lines of "that's true, but the consumers benefit". But what good is the benefit of the consumer if he must still work the same amount even with the machinery? I think it's possible to have one's cake and eat it too. The usage and appropriate advancement of machinery to the maximum (which is not currently possible) but rather than being used for profit to be used for the benefit of workers and mankind in general. Within capitalism there is a paradox: you want to automate for short-term profit, but with too much automation you run out of people to buy back the products they make, or they don't have high enough wages to do that anyway (note how very rarely can one buy back an hour of simplified labour with an hour's wage). Capitalism thrives on the fact that automation is good, but not too good. Holding back or reversing automation is completely the wrong answer. The correct answer is to use automation to reduce labour hours and make way for the enrichment of the individual, as poet and author Oscar Wilde wrote about in his book The Soul of Man Under Socialism and indeed so did Russian anarchist philosopher Kropotkin since the 19th century. That said, I am not optimistic - overproduction will continue and the crisis cycle repeats until it is no longer sustainable, either due to the environmental impact of pursuit of profit or the contradictions of capital accumulation.
- anotherbrownguy 9y ago
  >but rather than being used for profit to be used for the benefit of workers and mankind in general. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't some companies profit for benefiting mankind? In fact, why would anyone bother putting their time and energy into "benefiting mankind" when someone else could do it for profit? >Rather than being used to benefit workers, i.e to mean they must work fewer hours, in many cases the workers are simply re-purposed, none of the benefit from the machinery making its way to them. Agricultural job was the most common job for people for several millennia. Now, most of it has been automated and only 4.2% of people in developed countries are employed in that industry. And a few people who are in the industry are very rich. Do you think everyone is richer or poorer because of it? I think your assumption doesn't take into consideration the fact that wealth is not fixed. Automating farming away has taken away most of the farming jobs and that as a result has freed people to do something else like work in factories and produce things that didn't exist before. If 80-90% of people had to work in farm just for us to sustain (like it was the case before), our standard of living would be much worse because we would not have enough manpower to work on anything else. Just like our farming ancestors could not have envisioned what we now take for granted, I think we are incapable of imagining what we will accomplish when we are free of all the menial jobs that takes people's time today.
ksec 9y ago
When I was reading this, a stupid idea that just pops out of my mind. May be we should tax industrial / business uses of electricity? AI, Robots, Machine Automation are nothing without its power. We cant tax food for human consumption, we can surely tax power for machine consumption? ( But Of course globalisation means they will move to lower energy country. )
- exelius 9y ago
  How would you stop companies from just erecting solar panels and operating off the grid? Certainly generating your own power starts to make sense at some scale of data center power usage. Build a data center in the desert next to a few square miles of solar panels - companies are already doing this even without an energy tax. That's honestly why solar will replace grid power very soon: it's near impossible to regulate because you can't cut off access to the sun. It's the difference between buying a fish at the market for dinner and buying a fishing pole. The more I think on this though, the more I realize that corporations are probably going to become wealthier and stronger than most countries' ability to regulate them. They already have too much influence in government.

coldtea 9y ago

>At what point would you say that there is "too much automation"? When billions of people are not needed and a minority can maintain a rich/upper middle class standard of living by itself + automation, and thus, if it weren't for causing chaos and riots, those redundant masses can be left to rot and die in slums without jobs and houses.

s_m_t 9y ago
I don't see how that scenario makes any sense. If the rich and upper middle class could maintain such lifestyles by themselves + automation then why wouldn't others have access to it?? Will the robots refuse to work for the poor?
- anotherbrownguy 9y ago
  THIS. If richer people can automate their lifestyles, the companies selling automation technologies would definitely sell these automation technologies cheaply to the masses (specially given that because of automation, mass producing automation technologies would also be cheap) and everyone would be able to automate everything that can be automated. I think this would eventually lead to less inequality, not more.
  - twblalock 9y ago
    This has happened before, with vacuum cleaners, washers and dryers, dishwashers, etc. They replaced some of the labor of maids and servants in rich households, and many of the family's chores in everyone else's households. In fact, they benefitted the poor more than the rich, because the rich already paid people to do these things for them, and the poor could not.
- drspacemonkey 9y ago
  >Will the robots refuse to work for the poor? Whoever owns the robots would likely refuse to let the robots work without the owners getting paid. And even if labour is (effectively) free, resources aren't.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  Yes this was the exact scenario in Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >I don't see how that scenario makes any sense. If the rich and upper middle class could maintain such lifestyles by themselves + automation then why wouldn't others have access to it?? Will the robots refuse to work for the poor? No, the poor simply wouldn't afford either robots or one of the remaining jobs to make enough money to buy one. And nobody would care for them. They might not even get to vote anymore. It's either Star Trek style socialism, UBI (and trailer-park-like sub-par living for those receiving it) or direct slums. And those with power and privilege will tend towards the latter two. Besides, money is just a means to get material wealth and power today. If automation (+ maybe 1/10th the workers, office drones, and service workers) can maintain that material wealth, the "working economy" will be what happens between that 1/10th of the population. They wont be selling robots and other goods to the poor masses, for the same reason they don't sell houses, cars and computers to the poor masses in slums in India, Mexico and elsewhere. Either the economy needs them, and raises them from poverty (e.g. by giving them a factory job like in China or early USA), or it doesn't and it neglects them. The small new rich/upper middle class that will form wont particular care for those outside it, the same way most middle class people never care about the tens of millions of "trailer trash" in the US or the homeless. It's not like many ask themselves everyday 'why don't we help our trailer part people' or do anything about.

unclebucknasty 9y ago

I think you have to make a distinction between the benefits of automation to society and its impact on labor. When you do, I think you'll find that automation is not the problem, but our means of distributing access to resources. In other words, it's a false choice: in a different system, we could all receive the benefits of automation and have ready access to the abundant resources necessary for our individual sustenance.

ue_ 9y ago

>At what point would you say that there is "too much automation"? That's an interesting question. My main problem with automation is the way it is currently being used. Rather than being used to benefit workers, i.e to mean they must work fewer hours, in many cases the workers are simply re-purposed, none of the benefit from the machinery making its way to them. It is the pursuit of short-term profit which I think is the real problem. Now the usualy response to this is something along the lines of "that's true, but the consumers benefit". But what good is the benefit of the consumer if he must still work the same amount even with the machinery? I think it's possible to have one's cake and eat it too. The usage and appropriate advancement of machinery to the maximum (which is not currently possible) but rather than being used for profit to be used for the benefit of workers and mankind in general. Within capitalism there is a paradox: you want to automate for short-term profit, but with too much automation you run out of people to buy back the products they make, or they don't have high enough wages to do that anyway (note how very rarely can one buy back an hour of simplified labour with an hour's wage). Capitalism thrives on the fact that automation is good, but not too good. Holding back or reversing automation is completely the wrong answer. The correct answer is to use automation to reduce labour hours and make way for the enrichment of the individual, as poet and author Oscar Wilde wrote about in his book The Soul of Man Under Socialism and indeed so did Russian anarchist philosopher Kropotkin since the 19th century. That said, I am not optimistic - overproduction will continue and the crisis cycle repeats until it is no longer sustainable, either due to the environmental impact of pursuit of profit or the contradictions of capital accumulation.

anotherbrownguy 9y ago
>but rather than being used for profit to be used for the benefit of workers and mankind in general. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't some companies profit for benefiting mankind? In fact, why would anyone bother putting their time and energy into "benefiting mankind" when someone else could do it for profit? >Rather than being used to benefit workers, i.e to mean they must work fewer hours, in many cases the workers are simply re-purposed, none of the benefit from the machinery making its way to them. Agricultural job was the most common job for people for several millennia. Now, most of it has been automated and only 4.2% of people in developed countries are employed in that industry. And a few people who are in the industry are very rich. Do you think everyone is richer or poorer because of it? I think your assumption doesn't take into consideration the fact that wealth is not fixed. Automating farming away has taken away most of the farming jobs and that as a result has freed people to do something else like work in factories and produce things that didn't exist before. If 80-90% of people had to work in farm just for us to sustain (like it was the case before), our standard of living would be much worse because we would not have enough manpower to work on anything else. Just like our farming ancestors could not have envisioned what we now take for granted, I think we are incapable of imagining what we will accomplish when we are free of all the menial jobs that takes people's time today.

ksec 9y ago

When I was reading this, a stupid idea that just pops out of my mind. May be we should tax industrial / business uses of electricity? AI, Robots, Machine Automation are nothing without its power. We cant tax food for human consumption, we can surely tax power for machine consumption? ( But Of course globalisation means they will move to lower energy country. )

exelius 9y ago
How would you stop companies from just erecting solar panels and operating off the grid? Certainly generating your own power starts to make sense at some scale of data center power usage. Build a data center in the desert next to a few square miles of solar panels - companies are already doing this even without an energy tax. That's honestly why solar will replace grid power very soon: it's near impossible to regulate because you can't cut off access to the sun. It's the difference between buying a fish at the market for dinner and buying a fishing pole. The more I think on this though, the more I realize that corporations are probably going to become wealthier and stronger than most countries' ability to regulate them. They already have too much influence in government.