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Why should energy, unlike any other service or industry, require no labor to provide

gottorf 3y ago
I may have misunderstood, but I think GP's point is that the ideal number of jobs for any productive endeavor is zero, i.e. "fully automated luxury gay space communism". If technology advances to the point where it's the equivalent of waving a magic wand to get energy, food, and resources, that's the ideal state.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  Even in other scenarios e.g. ""semi-automated exploitative capitalism", as CEO, if I can replace expensive human workers with cheaper automated systems, I have reduced costs and the board and shareholders will like it. I think that grandparent's point is that the ideal "limiting case" of this trend is zero human workers. Ideals are not necessarily attainable, but they point the direction of travel. Optimising for "more jobs, more payroll" is not what does or should happen. _edit_ other commenters have pointed out that "clean power makes jobs!" is a political not economic or business reply to "what about the coal jobs?". And if it's true (as seems likely), then it's a stronger statement: "despite efficiency, this is a jobs growth area". If the clean energy sector could be cheaply 100% automated, it would be done for business reasons, leaving the politicians to deal with the fallout of unemployed voters. But then, exactly the same is true of coal energy. Or anything else, really. Aren't there a lot fewer jobs assembling cars now than there used to be? Why is the "rust belt" called that?
SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
As a CEO of any service or industry, why should I aspire to a higher expenditure on wages?
Analemma_ 3y ago
Because people are really, really expensive to employ. The fewer people it takes to generate 1 kW of energy, the cheaper that energy can be sold on the market, and to a first-order approximation, economic growth and increase in standard of living are mostly because energy got cheaper (and these things stop happening when energy stops getting cheaper). Note that for most other goods, it's uncontroversial that the reason people can afford it now, thus bettering their standard of living, is that it takes fewer people to make them than it used to (because of automation).

I may have misunderstood, but I think GP's point is that the ideal number of jobs for any productive endeavor is zero, i.e. "fully automated luxury gay space communism". If technology advances to the point where it's the equivalent of waving a magic wand to get energy, food, and resources, that's the ideal state.

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
Even in other scenarios e.g. ""semi-automated exploitative capitalism", as CEO, if I can replace expensive human workers with cheaper automated systems, I have reduced costs and the board and shareholders will like it. I think that grandparent's point is that the ideal "limiting case" of this trend is zero human workers. Ideals are not necessarily attainable, but they point the direction of travel. Optimising for "more jobs, more payroll" is not what does or should happen. _edit_ other commenters have pointed out that "clean power makes jobs!" is a political not economic or business reply to "what about the coal jobs?". And if it's true (as seems likely), then it's a stronger statement: "despite efficiency, this is a jobs growth area". If the clean energy sector could be cheaply 100% automated, it would be done for business reasons, leaving the politicians to deal with the fallout of unemployed voters. But then, exactly the same is true of coal energy. Or anything else, really. Aren't there a lot fewer jobs assembling cars now than there used to be? Why is the "rust belt" called that?

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago

As a CEO of any service or industry, why should I aspire to a higher expenditure on wages?

Analemma_ 3y ago

Because people are really, really expensive to employ. The fewer people it takes to generate 1 kW of energy, the cheaper that energy can be sold on the market, and to a first-order approximation, economic growth and increase in standard of living are mostly because energy got cheaper (and these things stop happening when energy stops getting cheaper). Note that for most other goods, it's uncontroversial that the reason people can afford it now, thus bettering their standard of living, is that it takes fewer people to make them than it used to (because of automation).