7 ms·

> There would be a lot more work happening on material things, not less Who will do all the hard, unpleasant work then? Who will pick strawberries, work retail

> There would be a lot more work happening on material things, not less Who will do all the hard, unpleasant work then? Who will pick strawberries, work retail, or do hard labour, for anything less than a fortune? What substitute to the current "don't starve/end up homeless" incentive structure will motivate people to do these jobs? Productivity improvements aren't universal, they're specific. We've not improved productivity for strawberry pickers because we've not come up with a way to automate the picking of strawberries. The least productive work tends to pay minimum wage.

zozbot234 5y ago
Who picks strawberries today in high-income countries/locations, where strawberry pickers have all sorts of alternatives available? There's your answer. It tends to cost more, but not much more. And the increased cost is offset to a large extent by improved specialization in those lines of work, and the ensuing productivity.
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  Migrant labourers mostly, and in places where these are not available (like Japan), strawberries cost a lot more, making them a "special occasion" treat for middle classes, and putting them mostly out of reach of poorer people.
  - CraigJPerry 5y ago
    So less strawberries but you get to bin US healthcare and replace it with Japanese style healthcare instead? That’s an easy yes.
    - thegrimmest 5y ago
      Not just less strawberries, but less everything that involves domestic/UBI-competing labour, which is a lot. If we did this worldwide, it would be everything.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        Again, this is exactly what happens in high-productivity locations. Local, labor-intensive services like haircuts, waiting tables at restaurants etc. are paid more, because the workers have alternative opportunities in high-paying sectors. The flip side is that quality tends to improve as well due to efficiency-wage effects. It's hardly a disaster.
        tekknik 5y ago
        So this makes everybody poorer. Nobody is being lifted up here. If things cost more then your money doesn’t go as far. That’s called inflation. UBI seems like a great idea on paper but you’re pointing out its problem as a feature.
        CraigJPerry 5y ago
        >> everybody poorer The people who are currently not able to make ends meet are suddenly succeeding. So not everyone is poorer. You’re confusing “things will be vastly different” - which is not disputed. The richest today will be relatively less rich.
        tekknik 5y ago
        No, you’re either taking from the rich and killing innovation, and thereby jobs, or you make everything state owned and go full on socialism, or you cause inflation. All of these make everybody poorer.
        CraigJPerry 5y ago
        Or - you do the other thing, the UBI thing, which is none of those things you mentioned. Anarchist capitalism is probably the closest as far as i can see so far.
        tekknik 5y ago
Kim_Bruning 5y ago
If you make human labor more expensive, those jobs get replaced by machines. (see in broad lines eg. US North (machines) vs South (slavery) in first half of 19th century)
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  Or they just cease to be done, and the business that rely on their labour shutter, reducing access to the goods/services that the produced. If we were to increase the minimum wage 10x, what do you think would change about the economy? Do you think goods that are heavily labour-reliant would still cost what they do today? Any change like this will have an impact, it's just a matter of degree.
  - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
    Often cheap labor is the thing holding back the automation of particular tasks. The greeks and romans seem to have been technologically capable of creating an industrial civilisation, but they simply never had the incentives. Imagine what would have happened if they had voted to outlaw slavery? If you increase the minimum wage by 10x, well... quite some low wage work wouldn't actually cost 10x a single person's wage to automate. Depending on the nature of the good or service, the price might go up a bit at first to recover development costs, and later it might go down drastically once those costs are recovered.
    - thegrimmest 5y ago
      > greeks and romans seem to have been technologically capable of creating an industrial civilisation This is highly speculative, and almost certainly false. The requisite developments in chemistry and metallurgy were nowhere close to realized during classical antiquity. > quite some low wage work wouldn't actually cost 10x a single person's wage to automate What about the rest of it?
      - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
        I'm not sure that chemistry or metallurgy are strict requirements for industrialization. My impression is that any form of mechanization is very helpful. For example, the Netherlands started out industrializing on wind power using wood and rope and cloth, ...actually they still use a lot of wind power today, though now with exotic composites. (At some point in between there were traditional windmills that were still being updated with odd things like aviation leading edge slats made of aluminium up to something like the 1950s! ) So -while speculative and certainly open to discussion- in some alternate history Romans could have had some sort of industrial system, though it might not look like something we would immediately recognize. I'm trying to convey the intuition that if you have a perfectly workable society based on slavery (the cheapest form of labor), you don't have as strong an incentive to start using machines instead. Conversely, I have the impression that the abolition of slavery in the 19th century is one of the big contributors to our modern industrial society. I'm just being cautious wrt saying that most low wage work wouldn't cost 10x to automate. One can never be sure one hasn't missed an example somewhere. Of course, if we find some examples of low wage work that really do cost more than 10X the cost of the work needed to automate it, possibly we've been under-valuing those tasks all along.

zozbot234 5y ago

Who picks strawberries today in high-income countries/locations, where strawberry pickers have all sorts of alternatives available? There's your answer. It tends to cost more, but not much more. And the increased cost is offset to a large extent by improved specialization in those lines of work, and the ensuing productivity.

thegrimmest 5y ago
Migrant labourers mostly, and in places where these are not available (like Japan), strawberries cost a lot more, making them a "special occasion" treat for middle classes, and putting them mostly out of reach of poorer people.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  So less strawberries but you get to bin US healthcare and replace it with Japanese style healthcare instead? That’s an easy yes.
  - thegrimmest 5y ago
    Not just less strawberries, but less everything that involves domestic/UBI-competing labour, which is a lot. If we did this worldwide, it would be everything.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      Again, this is exactly what happens in high-productivity locations. Local, labor-intensive services like haircuts, waiting tables at restaurants etc. are paid more, because the workers have alternative opportunities in high-paying sectors. The flip side is that quality tends to improve as well due to efficiency-wage effects. It's hardly a disaster.
      - tekknik 5y ago
        So this makes everybody poorer. Nobody is being lifted up here. If things cost more then your money doesn’t go as far. That’s called inflation. UBI seems like a great idea on paper but you’re pointing out its problem as a feature.
        CraigJPerry 5y ago
        >> everybody poorer The people who are currently not able to make ends meet are suddenly succeeding. So not everyone is poorer. You’re confusing “things will be vastly different” - which is not disputed. The richest today will be relatively less rich.
        tekknik 5y ago
        No, you’re either taking from the rich and killing innovation, and thereby jobs, or you make everything state owned and go full on socialism, or you cause inflation. All of these make everybody poorer.
        CraigJPerry 5y ago
        Or - you do the other thing, the UBI thing, which is none of those things you mentioned. Anarchist capitalism is probably the closest as far as i can see so far.
        tekknik 5y ago

Kim_Bruning 5y ago

If you make human labor more expensive, those jobs get replaced by machines. (see in broad lines eg. US North (machines) vs South (slavery) in first half of 19th century)

thegrimmest 5y ago
Or they just cease to be done, and the business that rely on their labour shutter, reducing access to the goods/services that the produced. If we were to increase the minimum wage 10x, what do you think would change about the economy? Do you think goods that are heavily labour-reliant would still cost what they do today? Any change like this will have an impact, it's just a matter of degree.
- Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  Often cheap labor is the thing holding back the automation of particular tasks. The greeks and romans seem to have been technologically capable of creating an industrial civilisation, but they simply never had the incentives. Imagine what would have happened if they had voted to outlaw slavery? If you increase the minimum wage by 10x, well... quite some low wage work wouldn't actually cost 10x a single person's wage to automate. Depending on the nature of the good or service, the price might go up a bit at first to recover development costs, and later it might go down drastically once those costs are recovered.
  - thegrimmest 5y ago
    > greeks and romans seem to have been technologically capable of creating an industrial civilisation This is highly speculative, and almost certainly false. The requisite developments in chemistry and metallurgy were nowhere close to realized during classical antiquity. > quite some low wage work wouldn't actually cost 10x a single person's wage to automate What about the rest of it?
    - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
      I'm not sure that chemistry or metallurgy are strict requirements for industrialization. My impression is that any form of mechanization is very helpful. For example, the Netherlands started out industrializing on wind power using wood and rope and cloth, ...actually they still use a lot of wind power today, though now with exotic composites. (At some point in between there were traditional windmills that were still being updated with odd things like aviation leading edge slats made of aluminium up to something like the 1950s! ) So -while speculative and certainly open to discussion- in some alternate history Romans could have had some sort of industrial system, though it might not look like something we would immediately recognize. I'm trying to convey the intuition that if you have a perfectly workable society based on slavery (the cheapest form of labor), you don't have as strong an incentive to start using machines instead. Conversely, I have the impression that the abolition of slavery in the 19th century is one of the big contributors to our modern industrial society. I'm just being cautious wrt saying that most low wage work wouldn't cost 10x to automate. One can never be sure one hasn't missed an example somewhere. Of course, if we find some examples of low wage work that really do cost more than 10X the cost of the work needed to automate it, possibly we've been under-valuing those tasks all along.