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Yes, and technology will be able to do a lot more good in the world once we have the labor shortages to justify further automation. Increasingly over the last
by Ericson2314 6y ago
Yes, and technology will be able to do a lot more good in the world once we have the labor shortages to justify further automation.
Increasingly over the last 40 years in the developed world, in a general labor and supply glut, the only reason to automate is to fuck over your precarious workforce more than your competitor. That sucks for the regular workers and automaters alike, and I can't wait for it to change.
- hermitcrab 6y agoWhen the black death killed swathes of Europe's peasants, the survivors were able to demand much better working conditions from their overlords. But I guess that is only going to happen with a declining population if there are enough jobs that robots and AI can't do.
- Ericson2314 6y agoWell the key is fighting underconsumption. Automation is a somewhat negative feedback loop in that excess labor reduces the demand for further automation. This is why anything shirt of general A.I.—which economically is automation that spills over from jobs one tries to automate to a significant portion of others—is not revolutionary. So a declining working age population could shrink the economy, and this would be the orthodox economist position which doesn't recognize a structural underconsumption problem. And with underconsumption I think it's a not of a toss-up, but if the underconsumption is prevented, I don't the the demographics will get in the way. tl;dr lock in your UBI before the population peaks.