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You are making a very large assumption about what types of work people are willing to do and dangerously that losing these opportunities is predetermined as an

by CMay 6y ago

You are making a very large assumption about what types of work people are willing to do and dangerously that losing these opportunities is predetermined as an advantage for the US. Making strong statements like that and then ridiculing any opposition in advance of a reply is antithetical to reasonable debate. Automation takes time to develop and can leave you inflexible depending on the task even with the wide variety of programmable robotics. Some products may not have profit margins, expected sales or complexity high enough where automation is worth investing in. You don't want to be in a situation where you need 300,000 of something in 3 weeks and the only way to get them is from a country that isn't an ally or refuses to trade with you. Humans can easily do some things immediately and machines can easily do other things immediately. The more universally applicable a machine is, the more expensive it may be and possibly even priced against the highest value tasks it can do. Universal Basic Income has many problems that aren't solved and there are many potential negative side effects, so it's premature to promote it confidently.

adwn 6y ago
> The more universally applicable a machine is, the more expensive it may be and possibly even priced against the highest value tasks it can do. It's even worse: The more universally applicable a machine is, the more expensive its outputs are, because it is less efficient. Have you seen an aluminum can lid stamping machine? [1] It can only produce one thing, but that thing is incredibly cheap on account of the machine producing tens of thousands of items per hour. [1] That's probably not its official name...
runeks 6y ago
> Automation takes time to develop […] And capital! The human beings who spend their time developing new technology need to be fed, which requires consuming someone’s savings. Whether automation makes sense always depends on its benefit versus the cost of development. E.g. if we spend money on feeding 100 engineers for 10 years while they develop a technology that increases the efficiency of producing something by X% is it worth it? We always need to make this calculation because the amount of savings is finite, so we have an interest in spending it in a way that creates the most gain.

by CMay 6y ago

adwn 6y ago

> The more universally applicable a machine is, the more expensive it may be and possibly even priced against the highest value tasks it can do. It's even worse: The more universally applicable a machine is, the more expensive its outputs are, because it is less efficient. Have you seen an aluminum can lid stamping machine? [1] It can only produce one thing, but that thing is incredibly cheap on account of the machine producing tens of thousands of items per hour. [1] That's probably not its official name...

runeks 6y ago

> Automation takes time to develop […] And capital! The human beings who spend their time developing new technology need to be fed, which requires consuming someone’s savings. Whether automation makes sense always depends on its benefit versus the cost of development. E.g. if we spend money on feeding 100 engineers for 10 years while they develop a technology that increases the efficiency of producing something by X% is it worth it? We always need to make this calculation because the amount of savings is finite, so we have an interest in spending it in a way that creates the most gain.