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Not the least of which is mass automation, which removes one of the worst aspects of socialism and communism; the permanent working underclass. A friend of min

Not the least of which is mass automation, which removes one of the worst aspects of socialism and communism; the permanent working underclass. A friend of mine says Communism arrived 100 years too early, I'd say that's an excellent way to put it.

davemp 9y ago
I'm curious as to where this mass automation story originated. I haven't seen any real evidence that anything besides the most basic repetitive tasks will be automated in the future. This automation would also likely just lead to a new set of low pay, desirable jobs. Sure, Moore's law and advancements in machine learning/vision push to make automation more economically viable for certain areas that were already good candidates. For other areas where human's adaptability is even moderately valuable, technology is a long ways away from coming anywhere close to beating out humans. Technology breaking the chains of toil is a very idealistic thought. I can see technology augmenting more jobs and allowing humans to toil more efficiently, but not total automation.
- jrochkind1 9y ago
  I guess the question is what portion of the population is employed in these "most basic repetitive tasks", and with those automated, how many people getting paid are actually neccesary for capitalist production? If a lot fewer than the people who exist... what is to become of them? Some tech types say "Universal Basic Income" as an attempt at a solution to that.
- jrs95 9y ago
  Trucking, fast food, and retail could face huge amounts of automation in the next few decades, and thats a massive amount of low end jobs that could disappear. I think the idea of "fully automated luxury communism" is pretty silly, but there's almost definitely going to be substantial job losses, and I think we're approaching a limit where we don't have good low skill jobs to replace them.
  - davemp 9y ago
    I think the problem comes down to simple economic factors. How much will it cost upfront to automate a specific area and how long will it take for such automation to turn a profit vs human alternatives. Right now: - the upfront costs are high - continued maintenance and update costs are uncertain - human are really not that expensive for what they can do My view is that humans are actually a much more valuable resource than most HN/reddit/social media users seem to think. Solutions that fail to account for the __massive__ available decision making and processing power of the ~7 billion existing humans will just not be competitive. Someone will always find a way to harness the human resource and put people to work. I just hope the people get compensated fairly and the work won't be miserable.
pdonis 9y ago
> mass automation, which removes one of the worst aspects of socialism and communism; the permanent working underclass Mass automation doesn't remove the underclass; it just makes it a non-working underclass instead of a working underclass. That is not an improvement. > A friend of mine says Communism arrived 100 years too early, I'd say that's an excellent way to put it. Only if you think that Communism is potentially workable. It isn't. See my response to jrs95 upthread.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  > Mass automation doesn't remove the underclass; it just makes it a non-working underclass instead of a working underclass. That is not an improvement. How is that not an improvement? So we have a certain segment of the population that doesn't produce, when we have such a small portion of the population producing such wealth, does it really matter? This whole argument is based on the predication that everyone must "earn their keep" and in the days where the hunters would leave the village daily to kill food, that was true, but when 2 of the hunters in our village bring home enough daily to feed the entire village 10 times over, is it really relevant the contribution of the other 20 hunters? Or is it more beneficial to the village to have them doing other things that while not intrinsically valuable, could improve the lives of the other villagers, the 2 hunters included? It's a little hyperbolic I admit, but I'd like to think that once we reach the point where less and less actual work is required that we'll branch out into other things, not simply let people who aren't working die off in the streets. Man was not made to toil daily for his meager wage and die.
  - pdonis 9y ago
    You are basically limiting "produce" to mean produce basic subsistence items like food, clothing, and shelter. Yes, of course the fraction of people that need to work to produce those things will decrease with automation--that's been happening for most of human history, and has been happening a lot faster since the Industrial Revolution. In the US in the late 19th century, IIRC, something like 19 out of 20 people worked on farms. Now it's about 1 in 20. But there are two things that can happen with the surplus capacity available. One is for people to, as you say, "branch out into other things"--produce things other than food, clothing, and shelter. There is a basically limitless demand for goods and services, and once one of them gets automated, people just find other things to demand that aren't automated yet. In other words, just as you say, you have people doing things that improve the lives of everyone. The other thing that can happen with the surplus capacity available is that it gets wasted. People who find they don't need to work to make a living, do nothing that improves the lives of anyone, including their own. The best case of this is that they sit all day watching soap operas, or something like that. The worst case is that they start doing things that worsen the lives of everyone, like committing crimes. The question is, which of the two possibilities above is the default outcome of mass automation, if mass automation actually does remove the need for the underclass to work at basic subsistence production? You seem to think it will be #1; but my money is on #2. If we want #1 to happen (and I certainly agree that #1 is vastly preferable to #2), we are going to have to give people an incentive to produce things that improve people's lives. I don't think most people will do it without such an incentive, and historically the only incentive we know works is the need to earn a living.

davemp 9y ago

I'm curious as to where this mass automation story originated. I haven't seen any real evidence that anything besides the most basic repetitive tasks will be automated in the future. This automation would also likely just lead to a new set of low pay, desirable jobs. Sure, Moore's law and advancements in machine learning/vision push to make automation more economically viable for certain areas that were already good candidates. For other areas where human's adaptability is even moderately valuable, technology is a long ways away from coming anywhere close to beating out humans. Technology breaking the chains of toil is a very idealistic thought. I can see technology augmenting more jobs and allowing humans to toil more efficiently, but not total automation.

jrochkind1 9y ago
I guess the question is what portion of the population is employed in these "most basic repetitive tasks", and with those automated, how many people getting paid are actually neccesary for capitalist production? If a lot fewer than the people who exist... what is to become of them? Some tech types say "Universal Basic Income" as an attempt at a solution to that.
jrs95 9y ago
Trucking, fast food, and retail could face huge amounts of automation in the next few decades, and thats a massive amount of low end jobs that could disappear. I think the idea of "fully automated luxury communism" is pretty silly, but there's almost definitely going to be substantial job losses, and I think we're approaching a limit where we don't have good low skill jobs to replace them.
- davemp 9y ago
  I think the problem comes down to simple economic factors. How much will it cost upfront to automate a specific area and how long will it take for such automation to turn a profit vs human alternatives. Right now: - the upfront costs are high - continued maintenance and update costs are uncertain - human are really not that expensive for what they can do My view is that humans are actually a much more valuable resource than most HN/reddit/social media users seem to think. Solutions that fail to account for the __massive__ available decision making and processing power of the ~7 billion existing humans will just not be competitive. Someone will always find a way to harness the human resource and put people to work. I just hope the people get compensated fairly and the work won't be miserable.

pdonis 9y ago

> mass automation, which removes one of the worst aspects of socialism and communism; the permanent working underclass Mass automation doesn't remove the underclass; it just makes it a non-working underclass instead of a working underclass. That is not an improvement. > A friend of mine says Communism arrived 100 years too early, I'd say that's an excellent way to put it. Only if you think that Communism is potentially workable. It isn't. See my response to jrs95 upthread.

FussyZeus 9y ago
> Mass automation doesn't remove the underclass; it just makes it a non-working underclass instead of a working underclass. That is not an improvement. How is that not an improvement? So we have a certain segment of the population that doesn't produce, when we have such a small portion of the population producing such wealth, does it really matter? This whole argument is based on the predication that everyone must "earn their keep" and in the days where the hunters would leave the village daily to kill food, that was true, but when 2 of the hunters in our village bring home enough daily to feed the entire village 10 times over, is it really relevant the contribution of the other 20 hunters? Or is it more beneficial to the village to have them doing other things that while not intrinsically valuable, could improve the lives of the other villagers, the 2 hunters included? It's a little hyperbolic I admit, but I'd like to think that once we reach the point where less and less actual work is required that we'll branch out into other things, not simply let people who aren't working die off in the streets. Man was not made to toil daily for his meager wage and die.
- pdonis 9y ago
  You are basically limiting "produce" to mean produce basic subsistence items like food, clothing, and shelter. Yes, of course the fraction of people that need to work to produce those things will decrease with automation--that's been happening for most of human history, and has been happening a lot faster since the Industrial Revolution. In the US in the late 19th century, IIRC, something like 19 out of 20 people worked on farms. Now it's about 1 in 20. But there are two things that can happen with the surplus capacity available. One is for people to, as you say, "branch out into other things"--produce things other than food, clothing, and shelter. There is a basically limitless demand for goods and services, and once one of them gets automated, people just find other things to demand that aren't automated yet. In other words, just as you say, you have people doing things that improve the lives of everyone. The other thing that can happen with the surplus capacity available is that it gets wasted. People who find they don't need to work to make a living, do nothing that improves the lives of anyone, including their own. The best case of this is that they sit all day watching soap operas, or something like that. The worst case is that they start doing things that worsen the lives of everyone, like committing crimes. The question is, which of the two possibilities above is the default outcome of mass automation, if mass automation actually does remove the need for the underclass to work at basic subsistence production? You seem to think it will be #1; but my money is on #2. If we want #1 to happen (and I certainly agree that #1 is vastly preferable to #2), we are going to have to give people an incentive to produce things that improve people's lives. I don't think most people will do it without such an incentive, and historically the only incentive we know works is the need to earn a living.