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> I want an economy where we can celebrate automation and distribute the profits evenly. In such an economy there's no incentive to work on further automation.
by ajuc 6y ago
> I want an economy where we can celebrate automation and distribute the profits evenly.
In such an economy there's no incentive to work on further automation. In particular if there's a part of world where profits aren't distributed evenly - the innovation and manufacturing will move there.
- Retric 6y agoIt’s a question of implementation. Consider say a 10% dividend on the economy, in the US that’s 6,300$ per year per person. Which does not sound like much to live on, but historically represents a significant income. Not that the US would adopt such a system, but it could by cutting back other spending like social programs. A tiny group might try to live in it, but more would see seasonal jobs as enough. As automation improves in general people would work less over their lifetime. Critically this would likely slow down the economy in the short term, but the constant minor labor shortage would presumably push for ever more automation to offset this. Unfortunately, it needs to be a pay go system based on a fixed economic percentage to really work. But, assuming it was the general population would suddenly have a huge incentive to promote automation and economic growth.
- ajuc 6y ago10% of billions of dollars is plenty enough to cause the companies to move to some tax heaven. You can fight that with tariffs, but the end game is being outproduced by orders of magnitude and losing any influence over global market.
- Retric 6y agoAutomation goes beyond manufacturing. Even a simile spell checker saves a lot of time over doing it manually. That said, labor has been cheaper outside the US for decades, yet manufacturing is still 2+ Trillion dollars per year in the US. In part it’s because you can’t simply move farms, oil wells, or forests etc. But, business friendly regulations, educated workers, efficient transportation, etc are also huge contributors.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoApparently we can win the cold war, but can't sort out tax accounts of a coffee company. Starbucks can report record profits to wallstreet, and losses to the exchequer in the same month. Read about industrialisation of United States and history of tarrifs. US had plenty of them when the British Empire was the industrial powerhouse.
- ta17711771 6y agoHaven
- dorgo 6y ago>In such an economy there's no incentive to work on further automation. And no need if the work on further automation is automated.
- carapace 6y agoBingo! The runaway feedback loop driving the singularity (which was John von Neumann's idea originally FWIW.)
- vsareto 6y agoYou'll eventually get someone that improves it for its own sake and wants to learn for the sake of learning.
- machiaweliczny 6y agoAnd you end up with foss software ux :) Some incentive and "chore" work is needed to polish rough edges.
- asjw 6y agoWhy not? What's the incentive for millions of people working for free on open source projects?