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> Maybe we'll simply have 80% unemployment; We already do depending on how you look at it. 150 years ago 95% percent of the population worked on providing bas

> Maybe we'll simply have 80% unemployment; We already do depending on how you look at it. 150 years ago 95% percent of the population worked on providing basic needs, like food, shelter, clothing, etc. In modern economies like the US, less than 3% of the population works in agriculture. We already live in this so called dystopia where people work on making social networks, inventing treatments for obscure diseases, or making triple soy lattes. All of these things are pointless for survival. The "dystopia" you describe is already here, and it is a wonderful place to live.

scarmig 14y ago
That's more than a wee bit different than the parent's scenario. It's about interaction with the formal economy. Making a complicated camera or the social network to share its photos might not be necessary for survival, but it is the result of a series of conscious economic decisions to satisfy some human desires by all parties involved. Unemployment simply means someone providing nothing in that sphere. Interestingly, it's happening even now. Much of the apparent decline in unemployment seems to be coming from people dropping outside of the workforce permanently, not people having their desire to participate in the economy satisfied. What happens if/when this trend continues to 60%? 50%? 40%? My ideal solution would be a basic income guarantee and a cultural acceptance of people working only in the gray or uncompensated sectors, but we'll see if the political impetus for that ever occurs. Edited to add: well, apparently author leads up to the same suggested solution I do. A thousand jackass points for me =)
- jcampbell1 14y ago
  > My ideal solution would be a basic income guarantee A bit of Econ 101. Structural unemployment is caused by income guarantees and minimum wages. This is why we don't do that, and instead use programs like EITC (a wage multiplier for low income people). Your ideal solution has been tried. It sucks, and we have moved on to better solutions to income allocation. I sincerely hope we move forward with larger income leveling policies, but I am grateful you are not designing them.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    Denmark has a $20/hr minimum wage, and a nearly impossible to fall out of last-resort welfare payment (the kontanthjælp, "cash assistance") which provides a minimum income. And yet, it has quite low structural unemployment. What those policies did do is destroy the low end of the labor market, the poorly paid dishwasher jobs supporting cheap restaurants. So what? That forced them to move upmarket. Denmark doesn't have $6 hamburger joints; instead, it has $12 hamburger joints. But it doesn't matter. The people who might be most impacted by that are precisely the people who now make the higher minimum incomes: when your income as a burger-joint dishwasher is triple what it is in the USA ($20/hr vs. $7/hr minimum wage, not to mention healthcare), you can certainly afford a doubling of the prices, and still come out ahead. Now as a middle-class professional, it's probably bad for me: in the U.S. I could make a bunch of money and buy $6 hamburgers, while in Denmark I make a bunch of money and buy $12 hamburgers. But I can easily afford them either way, so I don't think social policy should be based on what benefits me.
    - jcampbell1 14y ago
      How does Denmark keep people out? There must be a million Poles banging on the doors for $20/hr dishwashing jobs. I suppose those jobs are only open to those that have the right blood line. How is there not a massive black-market for labor?
      - _delirium 14y ago
        There are indeed a number of people moving to Denmark. For well-educated people, the job market is particularly lucrative: Maersk can't find qualified office workers fast enough. For blue-collar jobs, though, language can be a significant barrier: many minimum-wage jobs require fluency in Danish, or at least in a related language such as Swedish. You can have any blood you want, but you've got to speak fluent Danish, which most foreigners don't...
        jcampbell1 14y ago
        Interesting. The language barrier seems to be higher than our fence.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
What happens when automation completes all tasks more efficiently than humans?
- saraid216 14y ago
  While that's an interesting question for sci-fi, I don't find it useful to ask it as a policy matter in the next century. I am somewhat bemused by Dresden Codak's answer: self-sabotage: http://dresdencodak.com/2008/06/07/eloi/ http://dresdencodak.com/2008/06/07/eloi/
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    If that's too far in the future to contemplate, then what about when it reaches a tipping point? We don't have to get all the way down that road for it to be a serious problem. Given the nature of technology, it's more likely to come in the form of large bursts of disruption than a gradual slide. Once robots reach a certain level of sophistication, they take over a large number of tasks all at once. Same with more knowledge oriented systems. Even if complete human replacement is far off, what happens when 200 million jobs are made obsolete in a matter of years?
    - saraid216 14y ago
      I dunno. The horror of this confuses me: I don't derive a huge amount of meaning from my job, and I'd find as much enjoyment from life just from a life made mostly from thought and casual socialization. I imagine we'd carve ourselves niches where we'd intentionally do things ourselves for the enjoyment of using our hands and our minds for funsies. We'd probably transition to a purely attention-based economy or something. /shrug
- beatpanda 14y ago
  At that point, it will be obvious that coming up with ever-more-difficult tasks for the robots to complete, just for the sake of them having something to do, would be ridiculous. Then, time will stand still, as this 'obvious' fact becomes a mirror for human society, in which we'll see the destruction and pain we've wrought for basically no reason, and weep. And hopefully, at that point, we'll use the knowledge in automation we've gained to dramatically downsize civilization, and hopefully spend a lot more time swimming, because by the time all this happens it will be fucking hot outside most of the year.

scarmig 14y ago

That's more than a wee bit different than the parent's scenario. It's about interaction with the formal economy. Making a complicated camera or the social network to share its photos might not be necessary for survival, but it is the result of a series of conscious economic decisions to satisfy some human desires by all parties involved. Unemployment simply means someone providing nothing in that sphere. Interestingly, it's happening even now. Much of the apparent decline in unemployment seems to be coming from people dropping outside of the workforce permanently, not people having their desire to participate in the economy satisfied. What happens if/when this trend continues to 60%? 50%? 40%? My ideal solution would be a basic income guarantee and a cultural acceptance of people working only in the gray or uncompensated sectors, but we'll see if the political impetus for that ever occurs. Edited to add: well, apparently author leads up to the same suggested solution I do. A thousand jackass points for me =)

jcampbell1 14y ago
> My ideal solution would be a basic income guarantee A bit of Econ 101. Structural unemployment is caused by income guarantees and minimum wages. This is why we don't do that, and instead use programs like EITC (a wage multiplier for low income people). Your ideal solution has been tried. It sucks, and we have moved on to better solutions to income allocation. I sincerely hope we move forward with larger income leveling policies, but I am grateful you are not designing them.
- _delirium 14y ago
  Denmark has a $20/hr minimum wage, and a nearly impossible to fall out of last-resort welfare payment (the kontanthjælp, "cash assistance") which provides a minimum income. And yet, it has quite low structural unemployment. What those policies did do is destroy the low end of the labor market, the poorly paid dishwasher jobs supporting cheap restaurants. So what? That forced them to move upmarket. Denmark doesn't have $6 hamburger joints; instead, it has $12 hamburger joints. But it doesn't matter. The people who might be most impacted by that are precisely the people who now make the higher minimum incomes: when your income as a burger-joint dishwasher is triple what it is in the USA ($20/hr vs. $7/hr minimum wage, not to mention healthcare), you can certainly afford a doubling of the prices, and still come out ahead. Now as a middle-class professional, it's probably bad for me: in the U.S. I could make a bunch of money and buy $6 hamburgers, while in Denmark I make a bunch of money and buy $12 hamburgers. But I can easily afford them either way, so I don't think social policy should be based on what benefits me.
  - jcampbell1 14y ago
    How does Denmark keep people out? There must be a million Poles banging on the doors for $20/hr dishwashing jobs. I suppose those jobs are only open to those that have the right blood line. How is there not a massive black-market for labor?
    - _delirium 14y ago
      There are indeed a number of people moving to Denmark. For well-educated people, the job market is particularly lucrative: Maersk can't find qualified office workers fast enough. For blue-collar jobs, though, language can be a significant barrier: many minimum-wage jobs require fluency in Danish, or at least in a related language such as Swedish. You can have any blood you want, but you've got to speak fluent Danish, which most foreigners don't...
      - jcampbell1 14y ago
        Interesting. The language barrier seems to be higher than our fence.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

What happens when automation completes all tasks more efficiently than humans?

saraid216 14y ago
While that's an interesting question for sci-fi, I don't find it useful to ask it as a policy matter in the next century. I am somewhat bemused by Dresden Codak's answer: self-sabotage: http://dresdencodak.com/2008/06/07/eloi/ http://dresdencodak.com/2008/06/07/eloi/
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  If that's too far in the future to contemplate, then what about when it reaches a tipping point? We don't have to get all the way down that road for it to be a serious problem. Given the nature of technology, it's more likely to come in the form of large bursts of disruption than a gradual slide. Once robots reach a certain level of sophistication, they take over a large number of tasks all at once. Same with more knowledge oriented systems. Even if complete human replacement is far off, what happens when 200 million jobs are made obsolete in a matter of years?
  - saraid216 14y ago
    I dunno. The horror of this confuses me: I don't derive a huge amount of meaning from my job, and I'd find as much enjoyment from life just from a life made mostly from thought and casual socialization. I imagine we'd carve ourselves niches where we'd intentionally do things ourselves for the enjoyment of using our hands and our minds for funsies. We'd probably transition to a purely attention-based economy or something. /shrug
beatpanda 14y ago
At that point, it will be obvious that coming up with ever-more-difficult tasks for the robots to complete, just for the sake of them having something to do, would be ridiculous. Then, time will stand still, as this 'obvious' fact becomes a mirror for human society, in which we'll see the destruction and pain we've wrought for basically no reason, and weep. And hopefully, at that point, we'll use the knowledge in automation we've gained to dramatically downsize civilization, and hopefully spend a lot more time swimming, because by the time all this happens it will be fucking hot outside most of the year.