8 ms·

What are the goals here? Is it to maximize the production of the stuff of our lives so that it is available at the highest quality and lowest price possible, re

What are the goals here? Is it to maximize the production of the stuff of our lives so that it is available at the highest quality and lowest price possible, requiring the least amount of human toil? (It helps to think about where shoes, houses, food, entertainment, clothing, medicine and all the rest comes from.) Or is the goal to inhibit change, so that people don't have to apply their minds to figure out how and where they fit into a rapidly changing (improving?) world? Let's leave aside issues of class and envy, because I think that's a related, but secondary issue that is (at least in part) resolved by the answer to the above.

carapace 7y ago
> What are the goals here? That's really the important thing to nail down, eh? Wendell Berry has a essay titled "What are People For?" (As an aside, while looking for a good link, i came across a site advertising "BUY CHEAP ESSAY Fast & Safe Academic Writing Service" expletive-deleted what a world.) Anyhoo... the answers to "what to do about rampant automation" fall out naturally once you settle the fundamental issue. FWIW, YMMV.
mmcconnell1618 7y ago
One of the big goals is to provide time for workers to either retire or retrain for different careers. Right now, a company can buy a robot (capital expense that they depreciate) and the worker is out of job with the possibility of a little severance pay and some unemployment for a short time. A tax that targeted jobs that have been automated away could be used to fund retraining programs and help those displaced workers find new careers.
- maxharris 7y ago
  Why not go the other way and encourage changes in society that reduce the cost of living? For example, here in California there is a severe housing shortage, and it is widely agreed that the difference between us cheaper places are the restrictions placed by our own laws. Supply is therefore artificially limited. This is on my mind because I am unemployed and living off of my savings. I don't want to be told what to do all day, and I don't want handouts either. I just want to have the option of going my own way, and to get a square deal on the things I buy.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    The only way we have for limiting population influx into "preferable" regions is cost. At the moment we pretty much let people duke it out economically. If you're productive enough (yes, I'm aware of the flaws there) then you get to live in X area. Without that I'm not sure how any sort ot UBI can work unless you want to have arbitrary barriers around regions. What's the path for a younger version of me to move from my hometown to London in this world in which my work is valueless?
    - carapace 7y ago
      Yeah, we still have the "top-level" issue of allocating scarce resources, even after automation "de-scarce-ifies" many things.
      - esotericn 7y ago
        Right. I don't think that proponents of universal income really 'get' this. They seem to have the idea that people will just accept their lot, forever. Personally I'd find that utterly soul destroying. Almost no-one is on top, and a good percentage of people are in tiny flats. The fact that we have stuff like historical conquests and aristocracies kicking about is manageable precisely because some mobility still exists. Just hitting the 'freeze' button on it would be bloody awful. Someone who is unemployed and has little savings in California might well just end up being shipped to a project or something.
        carapace 7y ago
        > Right. I don't think that proponents of universal income really 'get' this. :-) FWIW, I'm a proponent of UBI, and I get it. (But as I said in a sib comment, to me UBI is an alternative to mass unemployability due to rampant automation, it's not about ideology or utopian dreams.) > They seem to have the idea that people will just accept their lot, forever. Personally I'd find that utterly soul destroying. Almost no-one is on top, and a good percentage of people are in tiny flats. That's sounds to me like what we have now. I worked on the Google campus as a contractor, and two things (at least) seem relevant to this thread: First, early on I realized that this was a model for what I called "secular utopia": the Quality of Life of a Googler is IMO the baseline for what a human should expect on Earth. (Given the physical conditions: the Sun and the differential between it and the rest of the sky; 4By-old self-improving self-replicating nanotechnology; and approx. 2.25 acres per human arable land surface; ...modulus psychosis (what most people call politics) and ignorance. We have knowledge to dispel ignorance and tools to cure psychosis. So really, it's just a matter of getting in the right place and putting one's back into it.) Er, anyway, cheap and healthy food, ready transport, freedom from avoidable BS, etc.: it's a baseline. If we can get the seven or eight billion humans to a Googleplex level of QoL I would be sooooooo happy. All the other BS can be sorted out orthogonally to that simple, easy, cheap baseline (I'm factoring in Permaculture, et. al. Given land, even desert, it is not hard to bootstrap economically to this baseline.) Second, a lot of people really are happy in lives that might seem to others to be trite or "utterly soul destroying". It's subjective. The Googleplex was the first place in my life I encountered true "jobbers": people who are totally content (as far as I can tell from external cues) to get up every day, grind out the 9-to-5, go home, and do the whole da,n thing all over again the next day. One of my co-workers had a stroke. It was in the evening, so most of the cubicles were empty, but even so, nobody noticed and nobody said anything. It was ten days before I realized I hadn't seen him and asked our supervisor what had happened to him. But the most disturbing thing to me was, when he got better he came right back to work. Different strokes for different folks, eh? (Morbid humor, lol.) I didn't mean to rant at you. I've had a cold and been stuck inside.
- maxharris 7y ago
  I also question the value of retraining programs, because I think that most people are capable of learning new things. I was a D student in high school, and I didn't get my undergraduate degree until I was 30. I learn new and interesting things every single day. I really don't think I'm especially intelligent, and so if I can do it, why can't others? The things you can learn for free through Khan Academy and all sorts of other free online learning platforms are pretty incredible. We have a great number of public libraries. Just a month ago, I was able to check out two books on structural engineering from my local public library. None of this stuff cost me anything! What's the difference between me and other people? If there is one, it's that I have a different philosophical approach than some others in my cohort. I don't believe that learning is something you do for awhile before you live your real life. EDIT: On the other hand, perhaps I am wrong! I know that I have also benefitted from classroom instruction (once I had made the shift in my mind give learning another shot), and that there are others that have different learning styles. I don't mean to neglect anyone in my rubric here.
  - mmcconnell1618 7y ago
    Ironically, our school system in the US was largely designed to create passive factory line workers who did not think for themselves or take initiative. You might even say school was designed to create robots out of people who are now going be replaced by more efficient mechanical robots. I agree that most people have the capacity to learn a new trade but they haven't had to exercise that ability for many years. Retraining programs can't inject new skills into people's brains but they can setup a path for people to learn those skills if they are motivated. For the vast majority of people, being out of work is a huge motivator to do something, we just need to give them a little breathing room with their bills and life so they can focus.
vsareto 7y ago
>Or is the goal to inhibit change, so that people don't have to apply their minds to figure out how and where they fit into a rapidly changing (improving?) world? Adaptability is dependent on education and wealth and opportunity, so ideally this tax goes towards helping people who are least able to adapt to sudden automation and loss of income by giving them education and income. We should control change that has a high human livelihood cost so that we do not leave anyone under-served. There should be insurance against economic upheavals.
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > ideally this tax goes towards helping people who are least able to adapt to sudden automation and loss of income by giving them education and income. What is your estimate of the probability that that will happen contingent on a tax being enacted.
  - vsareto 7y ago
    Very low in America. We already don't pay teachers enough. Even if a large company with deep pockets (e.g. Google) were to write a check to a state's education budget (so no other government department took a slice of the tax), the increases would more than likely be caught by inflating administrative costs first for no real increases in teaching others.
CJefferson 7y ago
I wonder if the goal is instead, simply to gather taxes from a broad base of society, from those people and companies most able to afford them, so that all pay towards the cost of society. As these companies are still relying on governments and the society around them, but aren't paying the taxes associated with employees, we need other ways of getting money from them (and taxing profits is an increasingly bad way of getting money from companies, as they just arrange to have no profits).

carapace 7y ago

> What are the goals here? That's really the important thing to nail down, eh? Wendell Berry has a essay titled "What are People For?" (As an aside, while looking for a good link, i came across a site advertising "BUY CHEAP ESSAY Fast & Safe Academic Writing Service" expletive-deleted what a world.) Anyhoo... the answers to "what to do about rampant automation" fall out naturally once you settle the fundamental issue. FWIW, YMMV.

mmcconnell1618 7y ago

One of the big goals is to provide time for workers to either retire or retrain for different careers. Right now, a company can buy a robot (capital expense that they depreciate) and the worker is out of job with the possibility of a little severance pay and some unemployment for a short time. A tax that targeted jobs that have been automated away could be used to fund retraining programs and help those displaced workers find new careers.

maxharris 7y ago
Why not go the other way and encourage changes in society that reduce the cost of living? For example, here in California there is a severe housing shortage, and it is widely agreed that the difference between us cheaper places are the restrictions placed by our own laws. Supply is therefore artificially limited. This is on my mind because I am unemployed and living off of my savings. I don't want to be told what to do all day, and I don't want handouts either. I just want to have the option of going my own way, and to get a square deal on the things I buy.
- esotericn 7y ago
  The only way we have for limiting population influx into "preferable" regions is cost. At the moment we pretty much let people duke it out economically. If you're productive enough (yes, I'm aware of the flaws there) then you get to live in X area. Without that I'm not sure how any sort ot UBI can work unless you want to have arbitrary barriers around regions. What's the path for a younger version of me to move from my hometown to London in this world in which my work is valueless?
  - carapace 7y ago
    Yeah, we still have the "top-level" issue of allocating scarce resources, even after automation "de-scarce-ifies" many things.
    - esotericn 7y ago
      Right. I don't think that proponents of universal income really 'get' this. They seem to have the idea that people will just accept their lot, forever. Personally I'd find that utterly soul destroying. Almost no-one is on top, and a good percentage of people are in tiny flats. The fact that we have stuff like historical conquests and aristocracies kicking about is manageable precisely because some mobility still exists. Just hitting the 'freeze' button on it would be bloody awful. Someone who is unemployed and has little savings in California might well just end up being shipped to a project or something.
      - carapace 7y ago
        > Right. I don't think that proponents of universal income really 'get' this. :-) FWIW, I'm a proponent of UBI, and I get it. (But as I said in a sib comment, to me UBI is an alternative to mass unemployability due to rampant automation, it's not about ideology or utopian dreams.) > They seem to have the idea that people will just accept their lot, forever. Personally I'd find that utterly soul destroying. Almost no-one is on top, and a good percentage of people are in tiny flats. That's sounds to me like what we have now. I worked on the Google campus as a contractor, and two things (at least) seem relevant to this thread: First, early on I realized that this was a model for what I called "secular utopia": the Quality of Life of a Googler is IMO the baseline for what a human should expect on Earth. (Given the physical conditions: the Sun and the differential between it and the rest of the sky; 4By-old self-improving self-replicating nanotechnology; and approx. 2.25 acres per human arable land surface; ...modulus psychosis (what most people call politics) and ignorance. We have knowledge to dispel ignorance and tools to cure psychosis. So really, it's just a matter of getting in the right place and putting one's back into it.) Er, anyway, cheap and healthy food, ready transport, freedom from avoidable BS, etc.: it's a baseline. If we can get the seven or eight billion humans to a Googleplex level of QoL I would be sooooooo happy. All the other BS can be sorted out orthogonally to that simple, easy, cheap baseline (I'm factoring in Permaculture, et. al. Given land, even desert, it is not hard to bootstrap economically to this baseline.) Second, a lot of people really are happy in lives that might seem to others to be trite or "utterly soul destroying". It's subjective. The Googleplex was the first place in my life I encountered true "jobbers": people who are totally content (as far as I can tell from external cues) to get up every day, grind out the 9-to-5, go home, and do the whole da,n thing all over again the next day. One of my co-workers had a stroke. It was in the evening, so most of the cubicles were empty, but even so, nobody noticed and nobody said anything. It was ten days before I realized I hadn't seen him and asked our supervisor what had happened to him. But the most disturbing thing to me was, when he got better he came right back to work. Different strokes for different folks, eh? (Morbid humor, lol.) I didn't mean to rant at you. I've had a cold and been stuck inside.
maxharris 7y ago
I also question the value of retraining programs, because I think that most people are capable of learning new things. I was a D student in high school, and I didn't get my undergraduate degree until I was 30. I learn new and interesting things every single day. I really don't think I'm especially intelligent, and so if I can do it, why can't others? The things you can learn for free through Khan Academy and all sorts of other free online learning platforms are pretty incredible. We have a great number of public libraries. Just a month ago, I was able to check out two books on structural engineering from my local public library. None of this stuff cost me anything! What's the difference between me and other people? If there is one, it's that I have a different philosophical approach than some others in my cohort. I don't believe that learning is something you do for awhile before you live your real life. EDIT: On the other hand, perhaps I am wrong! I know that I have also benefitted from classroom instruction (once I had made the shift in my mind give learning another shot), and that there are others that have different learning styles. I don't mean to neglect anyone in my rubric here.
- mmcconnell1618 7y ago
  Ironically, our school system in the US was largely designed to create passive factory line workers who did not think for themselves or take initiative. You might even say school was designed to create robots out of people who are now going be replaced by more efficient mechanical robots. I agree that most people have the capacity to learn a new trade but they haven't had to exercise that ability for many years. Retraining programs can't inject new skills into people's brains but they can setup a path for people to learn those skills if they are motivated. For the vast majority of people, being out of work is a huge motivator to do something, we just need to give them a little breathing room with their bills and life so they can focus.

vsareto 7y ago

>Or is the goal to inhibit change, so that people don't have to apply their minds to figure out how and where they fit into a rapidly changing (improving?) world? Adaptability is dependent on education and wealth and opportunity, so ideally this tax goes towards helping people who are least able to adapt to sudden automation and loss of income by giving them education and income. We should control change that has a high human livelihood cost so that we do not leave anyone under-served. There should be insurance against economic upheavals.

nordsieck 7y ago
> ideally this tax goes towards helping people who are least able to adapt to sudden automation and loss of income by giving them education and income. What is your estimate of the probability that that will happen contingent on a tax being enacted.
- vsareto 7y ago
  Very low in America. We already don't pay teachers enough. Even if a large company with deep pockets (e.g. Google) were to write a check to a state's education budget (so no other government department took a slice of the tax), the increases would more than likely be caught by inflating administrative costs first for no real increases in teaching others.

CJefferson 7y ago

I wonder if the goal is instead, simply to gather taxes from a broad base of society, from those people and companies most able to afford them, so that all pay towards the cost of society. As these companies are still relying on governments and the society around them, but aren't paying the taxes associated with employees, we need other ways of getting money from them (and taxing profits is an increasingly bad way of getting money from companies, as they just arrange to have no profits).