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> 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 econo

> 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.
    - yunwal 2y ago
      I didn’t need to, the question was about losing 80% of your capital instantaneously. A broken oven is most likely not worth anything.
      - roenxi 2y ago
        I don't follow. How is this meant to be interpreted? > 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. Gaining capital looks like buying an oven. Losing capital looks like not having an oven. I'm not sure how you plan to cook food without an oven but it'd be much harder than people having to cook their own food with a fully functional oven. I'm making a guess here and I think you've forgotten to account for depreciation. Gaining capital looks like buying a new oven - a whole new oven - because the old oven is depreciating and probably doesn't work any more. People don't randomly upgrade ovens unless their is either a big enough productivity differential to justify the spending or the old oven isn't functioning well any more and needs to be replaced. If I look at the depreciation rates of my local tax authority ovens only have a lifespan of 20 years or so for tax purposes (typically less). I'm sure there are still 1980s ovens in use somewhere that withstood the test of time but they'd be pretty rare by now and not really a factor in feeding large numbers of people.
        dns_snek 2y ago
        I'm not the person you replied to, but I think you're forgetting that physical capital, for example the oven, is designed and manufactured by human workers. There wouldn't be any capital without human work, so placing more importance on capital than human work doesn't make any sense. Take all the capital in the world away and we'll create more capital out of basic need for survival. Take human workers away and you have machines sitting idle and the world starving to death.
        roenxi 2y ago

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.
  - yunwal 2y ago
    I didn’t need to, the question was about losing 80% of your capital instantaneously. A broken oven is most likely not worth anything.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      I don't follow. How is this meant to be interpreted? > 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. Gaining capital looks like buying an oven. Losing capital looks like not having an oven. I'm not sure how you plan to cook food without an oven but it'd be much harder than people having to cook their own food with a fully functional oven. I'm making a guess here and I think you've forgotten to account for depreciation. Gaining capital looks like buying a new oven - a whole new oven - because the old oven is depreciating and probably doesn't work any more. People don't randomly upgrade ovens unless their is either a big enough productivity differential to justify the spending or the old oven isn't functioning well any more and needs to be replaced. If I look at the depreciation rates of my local tax authority ovens only have a lifespan of 20 years or so for tax purposes (typically less). I'm sure there are still 1980s ovens in use somewhere that withstood the test of time but they'd be pretty rare by now and not really a factor in feeding large numbers of people.
      - dns_snek 2y ago
        I'm not the person you replied to, but I think you're forgetting that physical capital, for example the oven, is designed and manufactured by human workers. There wouldn't be any capital without human work, so placing more importance on capital than human work doesn't make any sense. Take all the capital in the world away and we'll create more capital out of basic need for survival. Take human workers away and you have machines sitting idle and the world starving to death.
        roenxi 2y ago