6 ms·

I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't work as farmers anymore, as a majority of the tasks is done by machines. I agree with

by gst 15y ago

I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't work as farmers anymore, as a majority of the tasks is done by machines. I agree with the parent (of your post) that jobs will just change and people will switch to other jobs that provide a better return. But let's assume that this isn't the case and a few hundreds of people own the robots that are doing _all_ of the work (even founding startups). I'd say that this would be the perfect case: We don't need to work to survive, but we would have plenty of resources that allow us to work on things that make fun (of course most of us are doing this anyway). Of course it's pretty clear that for this to work we also would need to change the political and economic systems considerably, but this is not a bad thing - they change all the time.

dmm 15y ago
> I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't work as farmers anymore What do you mean by this? Are 90% of people farmers now? > I'd say that this would be the perfect case: Actually in that case I'd say people would be consumed by politics and trivial bs and destroy themselves in a generation. It'd be very similar to today, except rather than spending all day minus 8 hours on youtube they'll just be on there all day.
- beedogs 15y ago
  I think what he means is that there will come a point at which technology renders most occupations obsolete. What happens when 90% of the population aren't needed in the workforce?
  - khill 15y ago
    Read "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    They do something else, as the said 90% of agricultural workers did during the industrial revolution, as did typesetters in the 80s, as did computers (the profession) when computers (the machines) took over.
  - ebaysucks 15y ago
    Human desires are endless. This is why you will always have employment. Technology frees up time and humans than use part of that time for leisure and part of it for doing more meaningful, higher value work.
    - hackinthebochs 15y ago
      What do you mean by "employment"? In the far enough future, anything that's deemed profitable can be done much faster by automation. No one will pay a human a check to do something that can be done dirt cheap by a robot. The point is that our society rations limited resources through money. When resources are no longer limited, and no one can earn any money through employment, we'll require a completely different social and economic system for distributing resources.
      - nextparadigms 15y ago
        I don't think that will happen until we have "replicators". Until we can make literally everything ourselves, we'll still need jobs. We'll also need almost limitless resources, too, unless our desires will tend more and more towards virtual things rather than physical. Either way, it's really hard to predict what will happen 50 years from now, but I'm quite optimistic about the human race.
        chokolad 15y ago
        With things like MakerBot one can argue we are getting to the point where we have "replicators" pretty rapidly.
      - ebaysucks 15y ago
        Time will always be scarce. Even if we live forever.
- abrahamsen 15y ago
  No, but most people used to work in farming. Then manufacturing became dominant. Today the service sector is dominating. It is 1.4% agriculture, 20.6% industry, and 78% services. (source: Wolfram Alpha). For this reason, automatic web services probably have a larger potential for destroying jobs than robots. Hopefully nextparadigms is right that more jobs is created than destroyed by this process (I have no idea). Previous shifts seems to have worked out alright.
nextparadigms 15y ago
We have a while longer until we don't have to work anymore, if that will even happen. What happens in an economy where jobs are automated, is that even more opportunities are being created for other types of jobs. Just because farming will be replaced with robots, doesn't mean those people will sit home doing nothing. They will get other jobs instead, and pay taxes from there. If the farmers themselves are buying the robots, then their companies will pay the taxes, since they'll have a business then.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  I don't get why people seem to have confidence that we'll find new ways to employ everyone when automation takes over. The whole point of automation is that it takes an order of magnitude less human labor to produce the same output. That's a lot of people to work at a McDonalds. The end game is that there will be jobs for no one. A humanoid robot can do any manual labor job potentially hundreds of times more efficiently than a human. Most white collar jobs could probably be replaced by a sufficiently advanced AI. We need to start at least thinking about the type of society that will be needed when significant human labor is no longer required. Just brushing it off by saying "they'll get other jobs" is burying your head in the sand.
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    I remember a story from a book (could've been Innovator's Dilemma, I don't remember), where he said that around 1900's I believe, they needed 200 humans to do a job, like carrying a big lumber from a cargo ship. Then cranes came about, and they could do the same job with just a handful of people, because most of the physical work was replaced by a crane. Fast forward to today, and we have to have done alright by replacing those jobs. As long as robots are not smarter than us and can't think for themselves, I believe there will still be plenty more jobs in the future to go around. There could literally be invented hundreds or thousands of jobs by the end of this century. Robots making iPhones is not some kind of huge milestone that could put humanity on the verge of collapse. Automation already exists for making cars for example. The net result of that was positive. This is just another transition.
NumNuts 15y ago
Yes, taxes. Taxes will be a problem. I say do away with money. No money, no taxes. I won't need money. My robot will provide the things I need. Since I said that much I better elaborate. Here it goes. Most major countries do their thing. One thing is to be competitive. A company in China is employing 1 MegaBots. They will produce more and less expensive products. Another country might eventually employ more robots. Short of war there is no stopping it. Lets say there is no war. Eventually everything is automated. What will I do? Well, I like sitting here doing relatively nothing. I also like messing around in the garage. I like going on walks with my wife. I don't like working. Who will control the robots? Elected people. They will also be unpaid. They will run and be elected because they like to do such things. No money. That's the key. Who gets what? I would hope that greediness would be frowned on. No one wants to be frowned on. And social standing (getting along) will be everything. And that will not be a function of how much money I have. That's my 2 cents.

by gst 15y ago

dmm 15y ago

> I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't work as farmers anymore What do you mean by this? Are 90% of people farmers now? > I'd say that this would be the perfect case: Actually in that case I'd say people would be consumed by politics and trivial bs and destroy themselves in a generation. It'd be very similar to today, except rather than spending all day minus 8 hours on youtube they'll just be on there all day.

beedogs 15y ago
I think what he means is that there will come a point at which technology renders most occupations obsolete. What happens when 90% of the population aren't needed in the workforce?
- khill 15y ago
  Read "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut.
- mseebach 15y ago
  They do something else, as the said 90% of agricultural workers did during the industrial revolution, as did typesetters in the 80s, as did computers (the profession) when computers (the machines) took over.
- ebaysucks 15y ago
  Human desires are endless. This is why you will always have employment. Technology frees up time and humans than use part of that time for leisure and part of it for doing more meaningful, higher value work.
  - hackinthebochs 15y ago
    What do you mean by "employment"? In the far enough future, anything that's deemed profitable can be done much faster by automation. No one will pay a human a check to do something that can be done dirt cheap by a robot. The point is that our society rations limited resources through money. When resources are no longer limited, and no one can earn any money through employment, we'll require a completely different social and economic system for distributing resources.
    - nextparadigms 15y ago
      I don't think that will happen until we have "replicators". Until we can make literally everything ourselves, we'll still need jobs. We'll also need almost limitless resources, too, unless our desires will tend more and more towards virtual things rather than physical. Either way, it's really hard to predict what will happen 50 years from now, but I'm quite optimistic about the human race.
      - chokolad 15y ago
        With things like MakerBot one can argue we are getting to the point where we have "replicators" pretty rapidly.
    - ebaysucks 15y ago
      Time will always be scarce. Even if we live forever.
abrahamsen 15y ago
No, but most people used to work in farming. Then manufacturing became dominant. Today the service sector is dominating. It is 1.4% agriculture, 20.6% industry, and 78% services. (source: Wolfram Alpha). For this reason, automatic web services probably have a larger potential for destroying jobs than robots. Hopefully nextparadigms is right that more jobs is created than destroyed by this process (I have no idea). Previous shifts seems to have worked out alright.

nextparadigms 15y ago

We have a while longer until we don't have to work anymore, if that will even happen. What happens in an economy where jobs are automated, is that even more opportunities are being created for other types of jobs. Just because farming will be replaced with robots, doesn't mean those people will sit home doing nothing. They will get other jobs instead, and pay taxes from there. If the farmers themselves are buying the robots, then their companies will pay the taxes, since they'll have a business then.

hackinthebochs 15y ago
I don't get why people seem to have confidence that we'll find new ways to employ everyone when automation takes over. The whole point of automation is that it takes an order of magnitude less human labor to produce the same output. That's a lot of people to work at a McDonalds. The end game is that there will be jobs for no one. A humanoid robot can do any manual labor job potentially hundreds of times more efficiently than a human. Most white collar jobs could probably be replaced by a sufficiently advanced AI. We need to start at least thinking about the type of society that will be needed when significant human labor is no longer required. Just brushing it off by saying "they'll get other jobs" is burying your head in the sand.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  I remember a story from a book (could've been Innovator's Dilemma, I don't remember), where he said that around 1900's I believe, they needed 200 humans to do a job, like carrying a big lumber from a cargo ship. Then cranes came about, and they could do the same job with just a handful of people, because most of the physical work was replaced by a crane. Fast forward to today, and we have to have done alright by replacing those jobs. As long as robots are not smarter than us and can't think for themselves, I believe there will still be plenty more jobs in the future to go around. There could literally be invented hundreds or thousands of jobs by the end of this century. Robots making iPhones is not some kind of huge milestone that could put humanity on the verge of collapse. Automation already exists for making cars for example. The net result of that was positive. This is just another transition.

NumNuts 15y ago

Yes, taxes. Taxes will be a problem. I say do away with money. No money, no taxes. I won't need money. My robot will provide the things I need. Since I said that much I better elaborate. Here it goes. Most major countries do their thing. One thing is to be competitive. A company in China is employing 1 MegaBots. They will produce more and less expensive products. Another country might eventually employ more robots. Short of war there is no stopping it. Lets say there is no war. Eventually everything is automated. What will I do? Well, I like sitting here doing relatively nothing. I also like messing around in the garage. I like going on walks with my wife. I don't like working. Who will control the robots? Elected people. They will also be unpaid. They will run and be elected because they like to do such things. No money. That's the key. Who gets what? I would hope that greediness would be frowned on. No one wants to be frowned on. And social standing (getting along) will be everything. And that will not be a function of how much money I have. That's my 2 cents.