6 ms·

He's infinitely more intelligent than me, but I fail to comprehend how a world without human labour could possibly lead to a richer experience. This isn't hard

He's infinitely more intelligent than me, but I fail to comprehend how a world without human labour could possibly lead to a richer experience. This isn't hard to answer. As a share of the U.S. economy, the entertainment sector (movies, TV, video games...) has grown consistently. Why? Because people are spending less money on almost everything else thanks to declining human labor input costs. Another big winner has been restaurants which are, on average, much more numerous and of dramatically higher quality and variety in your median metro area than they were 50 or 100 years ago. Air travel is also, of course, way up, as more people visit faraway places. I don't see why we should mourn the decline in traditional "labor". Robots aren't going to be cooking anyone a six course meal or directing the next Star Wars movie any time soon.

adventured 13y ago
Because traditional labor made up nearly all of the middle class jobs in 1967, when the US standard of living peaked. What do you replace 100 million labor based jobs with? So far, spanning decades, there hasn't been a good answer to that question, and the middle class continues to erode year after year. So now here we sit with 14% U6 unemployment ('the new normal'), and a labor force participation rate that matches 35 or so years ago (before the full influx of women into the work force, so the current numbers are that much uglier). I'll note that in the last several years, the radical majority of job creation has been both part-time and hospitality based (eg hotels and bars). Hospitality pays notoriously terrible wages for the average worker. That doesn't sound like a good future to me.
- hackinthebochs 13y ago
  >So now here we sit with 14% U6 unemployment ('the new normal'), and a labor force participation rate that matches 35 or so years ag The other important statistic you're missing is that corporate profits are way up, even better than pre 2008 levels in fact. The question is why, if the economy is so bad that employment is perpetually depressed, how are corporate profits so high? The answer is that production is in fact back to where it used to be. But through automation and piling more work onto fewer people, corporations are reaping ever bigger profits at the expense of the rest of the economy. In fact, the problem we're seeing is a prelude to the very future folks like kurzweli talk about: a future where human labor is obsolete in favor of automation. It's not that the future is necessarily one of destitution for the vast majority of humanity, its one where current thoughts on how to best distribute wealth will have to change. These really are easy problems to solve: some form of basic income. The hard question is how do we get from where we are to there without a very nasty revolution. One good step would be to simply mandate a reduced work-week. Full time becomes say 30 hours rather than 40. These sorts of steps are going to become necessary to maintain social stability as these trends towards fewer and fewer jobs increase.
  - adventured 13y ago
    Corporate profits are only way up for international corporations. That is to say, the S&P 500 and similar. And they're up so far, because many areas of the world such as the BRIC nations, have seen a boom the last decade while America has not seen a real improvement in its situation. We're taking on water, while nations like Brazil, India, Russia, Canada, Australia and China have seen impressive gains (some of the gains are immense, as in China). One reason labor in the US isn't do well, while corporate profits are booming, is because America's most successful corporations make most of their profits outside the US now. Companies like Apple and Microsoft hugely tilt the profit numbers, while earning very large portions of their profits from the global economy. Some examples: Exxon gets 45% of its sales overseas; GE 54%; Ford 51%; IBM 64%; Boeing 41%; Intel 85%; McDonalds 66%; Nike 50%; Dow Chemical 67%
  - LiweiZ 13y ago
    Sorry to chime in. But I do want to remind everyone that Federal Reserve System and other major central banks did print money like crazy since financial crisis in 2007. Perhaps Zero Hedge is a place to get some sense in that part. Maybe I'm wrong, but finance world is definitely a fundamental aspect we have to take into account when we want to talk about the future. When we have A, we tend to think we can achieve some dream with just A, however, usually there are B/C/D.. needed to actually make that dream come true. And at that point A might be not even a crucial driver. Just my 2 cents.
    - leot 13y ago
      In the 1950s the financial sector amounted to around 2.5% of GDP. It now amounts to more than 8%, and more than 30% of corporate profits. Anyone who is an apologist for such an increase needs to be able to convincingly argue that this increase has been instrumental in increasing the U.S. standard of living in spite of labor's receiving a decreasing share of gains. I for one think it's rather easy to imagine finance and the American standard of living getting along just fine with finance capturing a mere 2.5%. The question is whether this shift is a symptom or a cause: perhaps it's a symptom of a property of progress, whereby labor is becoming decreasingly remunerative, thereby forcing the best and the brightest into finance. The more cynical (and thus, to my mind at least, more likely) explanation is the pervasive, and plainly visible, influence that the financial sector has exercised on policy makers for the past half century, eventually leading to Wall Street's pull turning into an ever strengthening positive feedback loop, whereby savvy Ivy League-ers feel decreasingly adequate if they're not taking in seven figures within a decade of graduation. And so instead of inspiring and setting wonderful examples for everyone else, America's most charismatic are busy cutting deals with each other and exploiting private information asymmetries.
- pdonis 13y ago
  in 1967, when the US standard of living peaked What's your metric for this?
  - glenra 13y ago
    The people who make that claim usually base it on average hourly earnings rates, inflation-adjusted, for some class of (male) workers. On the other hand, if you look at "median household income", that's grown a fair bit since 1967. We have more dual-income families today where instead of one high-earning male and a housewife we have a couple who on average work maybe a little less and gets paid a little less as individuals than that single-earner male did, but their combined income is higher than the single-earner salary of old. (We also have smaller households today than in the past due to higher divorce rates. And a lot more salary taken in the form of "benefits" which makes comparison of the raw dollar rate misleading.)
    - aianus 13y ago
      And yet the smartphone I have in my pocket would be worth billions back then. Even the poor today are much richer in many ways than the richest people alive in 1967.
      - WalterBright 13y ago
        That could be the plot of a great time travel movie!
      - digitalengineer 13y ago
        Yes, but one cannot eat a smartpone. Poor families care more about things like healthy food, groceries and fuel. The sad part of this 'New Normal' is things like smartphones and TV's becoming cheaper and things a family can't live without are becoming more expensive. (Although I have to hand it to the US, they can export their inflation because of the reserve currency status).
        glenra 13y ago
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  ...when the US standard of living peaked. The US standard of living peaked back when the bottom 10% didn't have a flush toilet, houses were half the size they are today, amenities like air conditioning and washer/dryers were uncommon and entire families shared a single car. Many medical problems were simply incurable, and many of the technologies that make our lives happier (modern media, online dating, video games) simply didn't exist. You clearly aren't using "standard of living" in the same way as the rest of us.
  - digitalengineer 13y ago
    What? You are clearly in denial or living in a bubble: US Census report shows entrenched poverty and declining living standards "The report provides a snapshot of a society in immense crisis. Poverty is at a near-generation high of 15 percent, close to the high point since the 1965 War on Poverty, the 15.2 percent rate reached in 1983. According to Tuesday’s report, 46.5 million Americans, including 9.5 million families, live in poverty. Some 20.4 million people live on an income less than 50 percent of the official poverty line, 7.1 million of these being children under 18. More than 48 million remain without health insurance. More than 31 percent of the population experienced some period of impoverishment during the years 2009-2011. Median household income, at $51,017, was slightly lower than in 2011, and down by 8.3 percent from 2007. The number of people 65 and older living in poverty increased from 3.6 million to 3.9 million between 2011 and 2012." http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/18/cens-s18.html http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/18/cens-s18.html
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      The poverty line is a moving goalpost. People below the 2013 poverty line have more goods and services than the middle class of the 60's and 70's. The mean American with $0-5000 in income consumes $22.7k/year. The mean American in 1967 produced about the same amount (and therefore consumed at most that much, since consumption=production-investment). ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USARGDPC http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USARGDPC This data actually wildly overstates the real consumption of people in 1967, since CPI is a gross overestimate of inflation. If you believe living standards are declining, please list the set of goods and services that people had more of in 1967 than today. If you are correct, it shouldn't be hard - the answer should be most goods and services.
enko 13y ago
> Robots aren't going to be cooking anyone a six course meal or directing the next Star Wars movie any time soon Of course they won't be directing Star Wars - although a case might be made that that would be preferable - but I don't see any reason almost all cooking will not be done robotically 10 years from now. Hell, try and buy a non-sous-vide steak these days. That's a dramatic step towards automatic cooking right there.
- rpedroso 13y ago
  I think the OP was referring to the chef's work in designing courses and menus more so than the manual labor of cooking. That aspect of restaurants, of course, is a creative endeavor, as is directing a film.
  - krapp 13y ago
    I would not be at all surprised if most of the creative work of filmmaking isn't automated eventually, once you can generate photorealistic virtual actors and sets, and algorithmically generate plots, camera work, dialogue etc. As formulaic as popular movies tend to be nowadays, would anyone notice the difference? Just imagine having the same server cluster somewhere crank out the movie, its sequels, and the video games from the same models. Digital actors never get old, never get arrested, and never need to get paid. Also there's no reason at all menus and courses can't be automated as well. Everything from the design of the menus to the design of the building, to its construction, and staffing, everything but the eating can be automated somehow. I think people are going to come to a shocking, ego-blowing realization that, yes, creative work can and will be automated as well.
    - OvidNaso 13y ago
      Well, we've already had glimpses of this, with varying degrees of disruptions. CGI generated still pictures don't seem to have any real success except in some very niche communities. Video games are certainly successful with it although still dominated by human level design. Partially generated photo effects and CGI are enormously popular, but suffer much blow back and derision from many.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Six-course meal? No. Are there fully automated kebab stands and such? Already.

adventured 13y ago

Because traditional labor made up nearly all of the middle class jobs in 1967, when the US standard of living peaked. What do you replace 100 million labor based jobs with? So far, spanning decades, there hasn't been a good answer to that question, and the middle class continues to erode year after year. So now here we sit with 14% U6 unemployment ('the new normal'), and a labor force participation rate that matches 35 or so years ago (before the full influx of women into the work force, so the current numbers are that much uglier). I'll note that in the last several years, the radical majority of job creation has been both part-time and hospitality based (eg hotels and bars). Hospitality pays notoriously terrible wages for the average worker. That doesn't sound like a good future to me.

hackinthebochs 13y ago
>So now here we sit with 14% U6 unemployment ('the new normal'), and a labor force participation rate that matches 35 or so years ag The other important statistic you're missing is that corporate profits are way up, even better than pre 2008 levels in fact. The question is why, if the economy is so bad that employment is perpetually depressed, how are corporate profits so high? The answer is that production is in fact back to where it used to be. But through automation and piling more work onto fewer people, corporations are reaping ever bigger profits at the expense of the rest of the economy. In fact, the problem we're seeing is a prelude to the very future folks like kurzweli talk about: a future where human labor is obsolete in favor of automation. It's not that the future is necessarily one of destitution for the vast majority of humanity, its one where current thoughts on how to best distribute wealth will have to change. These really are easy problems to solve: some form of basic income. The hard question is how do we get from where we are to there without a very nasty revolution. One good step would be to simply mandate a reduced work-week. Full time becomes say 30 hours rather than 40. These sorts of steps are going to become necessary to maintain social stability as these trends towards fewer and fewer jobs increase.
- adventured 13y ago
  Corporate profits are only way up for international corporations. That is to say, the S&P 500 and similar. And they're up so far, because many areas of the world such as the BRIC nations, have seen a boom the last decade while America has not seen a real improvement in its situation. We're taking on water, while nations like Brazil, India, Russia, Canada, Australia and China have seen impressive gains (some of the gains are immense, as in China). One reason labor in the US isn't do well, while corporate profits are booming, is because America's most successful corporations make most of their profits outside the US now. Companies like Apple and Microsoft hugely tilt the profit numbers, while earning very large portions of their profits from the global economy. Some examples: Exxon gets 45% of its sales overseas; GE 54%; Ford 51%; IBM 64%; Boeing 41%; Intel 85%; McDonalds 66%; Nike 50%; Dow Chemical 67%
- LiweiZ 13y ago
  Sorry to chime in. But I do want to remind everyone that Federal Reserve System and other major central banks did print money like crazy since financial crisis in 2007. Perhaps Zero Hedge is a place to get some sense in that part. Maybe I'm wrong, but finance world is definitely a fundamental aspect we have to take into account when we want to talk about the future. When we have A, we tend to think we can achieve some dream with just A, however, usually there are B/C/D.. needed to actually make that dream come true. And at that point A might be not even a crucial driver. Just my 2 cents.
  - leot 13y ago
    In the 1950s the financial sector amounted to around 2.5% of GDP. It now amounts to more than 8%, and more than 30% of corporate profits. Anyone who is an apologist for such an increase needs to be able to convincingly argue that this increase has been instrumental in increasing the U.S. standard of living in spite of labor's receiving a decreasing share of gains. I for one think it's rather easy to imagine finance and the American standard of living getting along just fine with finance capturing a mere 2.5%. The question is whether this shift is a symptom or a cause: perhaps it's a symptom of a property of progress, whereby labor is becoming decreasingly remunerative, thereby forcing the best and the brightest into finance. The more cynical (and thus, to my mind at least, more likely) explanation is the pervasive, and plainly visible, influence that the financial sector has exercised on policy makers for the past half century, eventually leading to Wall Street's pull turning into an ever strengthening positive feedback loop, whereby savvy Ivy League-ers feel decreasingly adequate if they're not taking in seven figures within a decade of graduation. And so instead of inspiring and setting wonderful examples for everyone else, America's most charismatic are busy cutting deals with each other and exploiting private information asymmetries.
pdonis 13y ago
in 1967, when the US standard of living peaked What's your metric for this?
- glenra 13y ago
  The people who make that claim usually base it on average hourly earnings rates, inflation-adjusted, for some class of (male) workers. On the other hand, if you look at "median household income", that's grown a fair bit since 1967. We have more dual-income families today where instead of one high-earning male and a housewife we have a couple who on average work maybe a little less and gets paid a little less as individuals than that single-earner male did, but their combined income is higher than the single-earner salary of old. (We also have smaller households today than in the past due to higher divorce rates. And a lot more salary taken in the form of "benefits" which makes comparison of the raw dollar rate misleading.)
  - aianus 13y ago
    And yet the smartphone I have in my pocket would be worth billions back then. Even the poor today are much richer in many ways than the richest people alive in 1967.
    - WalterBright 13y ago
      That could be the plot of a great time travel movie!
    - digitalengineer 13y ago
      Yes, but one cannot eat a smartpone. Poor families care more about things like healthy food, groceries and fuel. The sad part of this 'New Normal' is things like smartphones and TV's becoming cheaper and things a family can't live without are becoming more expensive. (Although I have to hand it to the US, they can export their inflation because of the reserve currency status).
      - glenra 13y ago
yummyfajitas 13y ago
...when the US standard of living peaked. The US standard of living peaked back when the bottom 10% didn't have a flush toilet, houses were half the size they are today, amenities like air conditioning and washer/dryers were uncommon and entire families shared a single car. Many medical problems were simply incurable, and many of the technologies that make our lives happier (modern media, online dating, video games) simply didn't exist. You clearly aren't using "standard of living" in the same way as the rest of us.
- digitalengineer 13y ago
  What? You are clearly in denial or living in a bubble: US Census report shows entrenched poverty and declining living standards "The report provides a snapshot of a society in immense crisis. Poverty is at a near-generation high of 15 percent, close to the high point since the 1965 War on Poverty, the 15.2 percent rate reached in 1983. According to Tuesday’s report, 46.5 million Americans, including 9.5 million families, live in poverty. Some 20.4 million people live on an income less than 50 percent of the official poverty line, 7.1 million of these being children under 18. More than 48 million remain without health insurance. More than 31 percent of the population experienced some period of impoverishment during the years 2009-2011. Median household income, at $51,017, was slightly lower than in 2011, and down by 8.3 percent from 2007. The number of people 65 and older living in poverty increased from 3.6 million to 3.9 million between 2011 and 2012." http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/18/cens-s18.html http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/18/cens-s18.html
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    The poverty line is a moving goalpost. People below the 2013 poverty line have more goods and services than the middle class of the 60's and 70's. The mean American with $0-5000 in income consumes $22.7k/year. The mean American in 1967 produced about the same amount (and therefore consumed at most that much, since consumption=production-investment). ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USARGDPC http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USARGDPC This data actually wildly overstates the real consumption of people in 1967, since CPI is a gross overestimate of inflation. If you believe living standards are declining, please list the set of goods and services that people had more of in 1967 than today. If you are correct, it shouldn't be hard - the answer should be most goods and services.

enko 13y ago

> Robots aren't going to be cooking anyone a six course meal or directing the next Star Wars movie any time soon Of course they won't be directing Star Wars - although a case might be made that that would be preferable - but I don't see any reason almost all cooking will not be done robotically 10 years from now. Hell, try and buy a non-sous-vide steak these days. That's a dramatic step towards automatic cooking right there.

rpedroso 13y ago
I think the OP was referring to the chef's work in designing courses and menus more so than the manual labor of cooking. That aspect of restaurants, of course, is a creative endeavor, as is directing a film.
- krapp 13y ago
  I would not be at all surprised if most of the creative work of filmmaking isn't automated eventually, once you can generate photorealistic virtual actors and sets, and algorithmically generate plots, camera work, dialogue etc. As formulaic as popular movies tend to be nowadays, would anyone notice the difference? Just imagine having the same server cluster somewhere crank out the movie, its sequels, and the video games from the same models. Digital actors never get old, never get arrested, and never need to get paid. Also there's no reason at all menus and courses can't be automated as well. Everything from the design of the menus to the design of the building, to its construction, and staffing, everything but the eating can be automated somehow. I think people are going to come to a shocking, ego-blowing realization that, yes, creative work can and will be automated as well.
  - OvidNaso 13y ago
    Well, we've already had glimpses of this, with varying degrees of disruptions. CGI generated still pictures don't seem to have any real success except in some very niche communities. Video games are certainly successful with it although still dominated by human level design. Partially generated photo effects and CGI are enormously popular, but suffer much blow back and derision from many.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

Six-course meal? No. Are there fully automated kebab stands and such? Already.