4 ms·

Human labour isn't all that important in a modern economy, what matters is the capital (hence why capitalism is so successful). To be productive, we need to be

by roenxi 2y ago

Human labour isn't all that important in a modern economy, what matters is the capital (hence why capitalism is so successful). To be productive, we need to be building/deploying new capital. The real capital investment seems to be happening in East Asia. Building productive capital in the West has typically been somewhere between discouraged and illegal in favour of playing games with numbers. In the English speaking world we've even managed to disconnect GDP from energy and now people are confused why GDP goes up but real living standards don't change all that much and everyone is shifting to fixed-pie thinking.

wesselbindt 2y ago
> capital (hence why capitalism is so successful) Could you expand on this a bit? Isn't capital important precisely because capitalism (private ownership of the means of production, i.e., capital) is the system we operate in?
- Drakim 2y ago
  The king is the sovereign because all the men obey his commands, and all the men obey his commands because he is the king.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- roenxi 2y ago
  Well the basic question here is something like "how do we maximise material comfort?". The answer is pretty obvious - machines. Humans haven't changed much in the last million-odd years, all the improvements since around year 0 AD have been improvements in what machines (ie, capital) we build. We had a long period where the people with highest social status were war-leaders and we chose them without much care (often a hereditary aristocracy). That led to pretty grim outcomes. It turns out if we award highest status to the people who own and deploy capital efficiently we get absurd amounts of capital produced and this frankly ridiculous society where a tiny group of really driven men seem to just build everything. So yes, capital is important because we declared it to be so, but we declared it to be so because the society with more capital wins wars. Sometimes by driving over the opposition in that capital, gotta respect a good tank charge. More capital is just better, and capitalism is the system that is most effective at encouraging people to build more capital.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> Human labour isn't all that important in a modern economy We keep hearing this from allegedly credible people and institutions, yet when people stop buying products (with the result of their own productivity) or worse still, go on strike, suddenly the gears of the machine stop cold and the leadership of whatever industry is crying to the government to end the strike for them because negotiation is hard. I have heard since I was a kid in the 90's how it was ludicrous to pay McDonalds workers more than $10 an hour because McDonalds wouldn't make any money that way, and those employees would be replaced with robots. Today the one nearest me is offering $15 an hour, and they kiiiind of automated the cashiers? Not really though, you can still order from a person if you want, and everyone past that step who's actually making and handing you the food is still very much a human, with seemingly little if any progress towards those positions being automated. Mind you, McDonalds is apparently not making money anymore but that was the status quo pre-pandemic when they still paid workers like complete shit. That seems to have far more to do with McDonalds corporate blowing shit tons of cash on celebrity endorsements and ineffective advertising, as well as heavy product discounting on a product that's just not kept up with industry/social trends. And all that's past the pandemic and the drama it created both with allowing many workers the time and capital for themselves to ascend out of tons of these shitty jobs which has left a gap in employment since that no one has stopped whining about. Anyway the point is the "post human labor" economy is largely a joke, for starters, if you don't have humans buying your products, you don't have a business, and nobody can buy them if nobody is working. Second, because despite the constant threat of automation levied against working class people, we really do seem to be hitting the limits, at least in present technology, of what we can make machines do. > In the English speaking world we've even managed to disconnect GDP from energy and now people are confused why GDP goes up but real living standards don't change all that much and everyone is shifting to fixed-pie thinking. I mean I don't think that's so much a result of GDP being disconnected from energy (nor do I have a solid grasp of what that means) as much as more and more of the results of productivity seem to go into the pockets of a handful of people while just getting by gets more expensive year-over-year, and people tend to notice that.
- titanomachy 2y ago
  $10 per hour in the 90s is significantly more than $15 per hour today: $18-22 depending when exactly in the 90s.
klabb3 2y ago
> Building productive capital in the West has typically been somewhere between discouraged and illegal in favour of playing games with numbers. You clearly have a different view of capital than me. Games of capital are exactly playing with numbers in my book. And especially post-Reagan new economy. The best way to make money is to have money. Or assets, rather, but same same. Even a few good years in tech or a decent inheritance lump sum + mediocre hands-off “investment” can yield higher than eg being a full time paramedic.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  Is capital that is used to "produce" more capital actually productive, though? If you do finance games to instantiate money to open, say, a mine on credit and produce iron, clearly yes by most standards. If that money is instantiated just so it can sit in a ledger and make more money to also sit in a ledger, but most of that money never actually gets used for anything "real", then maybe not. If the concept of "production" is simply equivalent to numbers in ledgers going up, then of course capital is productive. It's almost tautologically defined, you might as well call money "productivium". However, if you define "productivity" as something else like "building things" or "improving life quality", or "increasing biodiversity" (yes, those things can be in tension, like the iron mine, and you can wish for "bad" things too: killing people is "production" in war, perhaps) then it's not a foregone conclusion that all capital is inherently productive. "Ah yes", you say, "but that money that's reinvested elsewhere will eventually be used for something productive in the second sense". Perhaps, perhaps not, or maybe just some, but even if so, it's still possible for someone who doesn't live in "elsewhere" to have the sense that the capital has not been productive of practical value. And many, not all, but many, people might reasonably be wondering if there's so, so much much-vaunted "value" sloshing around, why it doesn't seem to manifest in their lives.
  - klabb3 2y ago
    Yeah that’s what I meant. Capital can be used for non-zero-sum games and increase the size of the pie. That’s certainly the narrative of the current central-bank-inflationary-fiat hegemony – some fisherman who wants to buy a boat, or a farmer buying land and equipment. That’s why we (allegedly) accept the that the money in our wallets and bank accounts lose their purchasing power. However, my understanding is that the reality is quite different. That the majority of money creation (70%+) is issued as debt for asset transfers. In either case, the idea that capital, in general, is not just a proxy for, but equivalent to “productivity”, means that the system is self-reinforcing; the only outcome is success, and the only fix is more of the same system. If I argue that say functional programming is the best way to program, I have to define an external metric in which another paradigm can win. Otherwise it’s just blind belief.
dns_snek 2y ago
> Human labour isn't all that important in a modern economy Please elaborate? While this might change in the coming decades with autonomous robots, every economy that I'm even vaguely familiar with would grind to a halt in a matter of hours if humans stopped working.
- roenxi 2y ago
  The vast majority of the value add in the economy is being done by capital. If you had a choice between 20% of the humans working/100% of the capital or 100% of the humans/20% of the capital, the low-human one would be workable but disruptive. The low capital scenario would be the worst crisis in the history of humanity.
  - yunwal 2y ago
    I don’t think this is true. Or, rather, I think this is only true if you define “losing capital” in a very specific way that isn’t consistent with reality. What “gaining” capital looks like is “we upgraded our ovens from the 1980s to brand new ones with steam” or something. So losing that capital would look the same as well. We would lose the luxuries, not just a random assortment of capital that would make everything totally disfunctional. Whereas, losing 80% of the workers generally doesn’t work ever. We’ve never seen 80% of employees go on strike at a company and the company keeps working. Maybe you could use twitter as a counter-example but I think anything more significant than a social media company (hospital, etc) would be a disaster (and I think most people would consider twitter a disaster as well).
    - roenxi 2y ago
      You didn't account for depreciation; for example the rollback to the 1980s ovens probably fails because they don't work after 45 years. > We’ve never seen 80% of employees go on strike at a company and the company keeps working. Typically because the strikers are physically blocking access to the building in the cases I've seen. The capital doesn't just sit idly because the owners are in a state of deep despair, but because the strikers are forcing it to be so. Strikes fall apart pretty quickly without government support because of dynamics like that. Naturally speaking, with plain property right logic, the strikers lose all their ability to produce, the capitalist loses a fraction of their ability. It is very lopsided.

by roenxi 2y ago

wesselbindt 2y ago

> capital (hence why capitalism is so successful) Could you expand on this a bit? Isn't capital important precisely because capitalism (private ownership of the means of production, i.e., capital) is the system we operate in?

Drakim 2y ago
The king is the sovereign because all the men obey his commands, and all the men obey his commands because he is the king.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
roenxi 2y ago
Well the basic question here is something like "how do we maximise material comfort?". The answer is pretty obvious - machines. Humans haven't changed much in the last million-odd years, all the improvements since around year 0 AD have been improvements in what machines (ie, capital) we build. We had a long period where the people with highest social status were war-leaders and we chose them without much care (often a hereditary aristocracy). That led to pretty grim outcomes. It turns out if we award highest status to the people who own and deploy capital efficiently we get absurd amounts of capital produced and this frankly ridiculous society where a tiny group of really driven men seem to just build everything. So yes, capital is important because we declared it to be so, but we declared it to be so because the society with more capital wins wars. Sometimes by driving over the opposition in that capital, gotta respect a good tank charge. More capital is just better, and capitalism is the system that is most effective at encouraging people to build more capital.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

> Human labour isn't all that important in a modern economy We keep hearing this from allegedly credible people and institutions, yet when people stop buying products (with the result of their own productivity) or worse still, go on strike, suddenly the gears of the machine stop cold and the leadership of whatever industry is crying to the government to end the strike for them because negotiation is hard. I have heard since I was a kid in the 90's how it was ludicrous to pay McDonalds workers more than $10 an hour because McDonalds wouldn't make any money that way, and those employees would be replaced with robots. Today the one nearest me is offering $15 an hour, and they kiiiind of automated the cashiers? Not really though, you can still order from a person if you want, and everyone past that step who's actually making and handing you the food is still very much a human, with seemingly little if any progress towards those positions being automated. Mind you, McDonalds is apparently not making money anymore but that was the status quo pre-pandemic when they still paid workers like complete shit. That seems to have far more to do with McDonalds corporate blowing shit tons of cash on celebrity endorsements and ineffective advertising, as well as heavy product discounting on a product that's just not kept up with industry/social trends. And all that's past the pandemic and the drama it created both with allowing many workers the time and capital for themselves to ascend out of tons of these shitty jobs which has left a gap in employment since that no one has stopped whining about. Anyway the point is the "post human labor" economy is largely a joke, for starters, if you don't have humans buying your products, you don't have a business, and nobody can buy them if nobody is working. Second, because despite the constant threat of automation levied against working class people, we really do seem to be hitting the limits, at least in present technology, of what we can make machines do. > In the English speaking world we've even managed to disconnect GDP from energy and now people are confused why GDP goes up but real living standards don't change all that much and everyone is shifting to fixed-pie thinking. I mean I don't think that's so much a result of GDP being disconnected from energy (nor do I have a solid grasp of what that means) as much as more and more of the results of productivity seem to go into the pockets of a handful of people while just getting by gets more expensive year-over-year, and people tend to notice that.

titanomachy 2y ago
$10 per hour in the 90s is significantly more than $15 per hour today: $18-22 depending when exactly in the 90s.

klabb3 2y ago

> Building productive capital in the West has typically been somewhere between discouraged and illegal in favour of playing games with numbers. You clearly have a different view of capital than me. Games of capital are exactly playing with numbers in my book. And especially post-Reagan new economy. The best way to make money is to have money. Or assets, rather, but same same. Even a few good years in tech or a decent inheritance lump sum + mediocre hands-off “investment” can yield higher than eg being a full time paramedic.

grues-dinner 2y ago
Is capital that is used to "produce" more capital actually productive, though? If you do finance games to instantiate money to open, say, a mine on credit and produce iron, clearly yes by most standards. If that money is instantiated just so it can sit in a ledger and make more money to also sit in a ledger, but most of that money never actually gets used for anything "real", then maybe not. If the concept of "production" is simply equivalent to numbers in ledgers going up, then of course capital is productive. It's almost tautologically defined, you might as well call money "productivium". However, if you define "productivity" as something else like "building things" or "improving life quality", or "increasing biodiversity" (yes, those things can be in tension, like the iron mine, and you can wish for "bad" things too: killing people is "production" in war, perhaps) then it's not a foregone conclusion that all capital is inherently productive. "Ah yes", you say, "but that money that's reinvested elsewhere will eventually be used for something productive in the second sense". Perhaps, perhaps not, or maybe just some, but even if so, it's still possible for someone who doesn't live in "elsewhere" to have the sense that the capital has not been productive of practical value. And many, not all, but many, people might reasonably be wondering if there's so, so much much-vaunted "value" sloshing around, why it doesn't seem to manifest in their lives.
- klabb3 2y ago
  Yeah that’s what I meant. Capital can be used for non-zero-sum games and increase the size of the pie. That’s certainly the narrative of the current central-bank-inflationary-fiat hegemony – some fisherman who wants to buy a boat, or a farmer buying land and equipment. That’s why we (allegedly) accept the that the money in our wallets and bank accounts lose their purchasing power. However, my understanding is that the reality is quite different. That the majority of money creation (70%+) is issued as debt for asset transfers. In either case, the idea that capital, in general, is not just a proxy for, but equivalent to “productivity”, means that the system is self-reinforcing; the only outcome is success, and the only fix is more of the same system. If I argue that say functional programming is the best way to program, I have to define an external metric in which another paradigm can win. Otherwise it’s just blind belief.

dns_snek 2y ago

> Human labour isn't all that important in a modern economy Please elaborate? While this might change in the coming decades with autonomous robots, every economy that I'm even vaguely familiar with would grind to a halt in a matter of hours if humans stopped working.

roenxi 2y ago
The vast majority of the value add in the economy is being done by capital. If you had a choice between 20% of the humans working/100% of the capital or 100% of the humans/20% of the capital, the low-human one would be workable but disruptive. The low capital scenario would be the worst crisis in the history of humanity.
- yunwal 2y ago
  I don’t think this is true. Or, rather, I think this is only true if you define “losing capital” in a very specific way that isn’t consistent with reality. What “gaining” capital looks like is “we upgraded our ovens from the 1980s to brand new ones with steam” or something. So losing that capital would look the same as well. We would lose the luxuries, not just a random assortment of capital that would make everything totally disfunctional. Whereas, losing 80% of the workers generally doesn’t work ever. We’ve never seen 80% of employees go on strike at a company and the company keeps working. Maybe you could use twitter as a counter-example but I think anything more significant than a social media company (hospital, etc) would be a disaster (and I think most people would consider twitter a disaster as well).
  - roenxi 2y ago
    You didn't account for depreciation; for example the rollback to the 1980s ovens probably fails because they don't work after 45 years. > We’ve never seen 80% of employees go on strike at a company and the company keeps working. Typically because the strikers are physically blocking access to the building in the cases I've seen. The capital doesn't just sit idly because the owners are in a state of deep despair, but because the strikers are forcing it to be so. Strikes fall apart pretty quickly without government support because of dynamics like that. Naturally speaking, with plain property right logic, the strikers lose all their ability to produce, the capitalist loses a fraction of their ability. It is very lopsided.