The RICH economy

[doodle]

So, I came across some stuff from the Polymath Robert Anton Wilson today that very closely resembled the unemployment argument that I was making (or attempting to make) in the monster thread a few weeks ago. Dr. Wilson called his proposition "The RICH Economy"

You can find the whole piece here. http://www.deepleafproductions.com/wilsonlibrary/texts/raw-RICH.html

Here is a snippet.

If there is one proposition which currently wins the assent of nearly everybody, it is that we need more jobs. "A cure for unemployment" is promised, or earnestly sought, by every Heavy Thinker from Jimmy Carter to the Communist Party USA, from Ronald Reagan to the head of the economics department at the local university, from the Birchers to the New Left.

I would like to challenge that idea. I don't think there is, or ever again can be, a cure for unemployment. I propose that unemployment is not a disease, but the natural, healthy functioning of an advanced technological society.

If you are like, "who the hell is this Wilson fellow?" well this little video gives a pretty good idea of the angle he approaches things from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEZtw1yt8Kc

Processing, interactions. Tuning interactive processes. Processing interacting is all I ever tune in. I cannot tune in anything but interactive processing.
- Robert Anton Wilson

i am a big fan of a lot of Wilson stuff, especially his Illuminatus Trilogy books, his philosophical writing and some of the stuff he has done in video. i am not sure he or Dr Tim Leary are the best source for economics, but they are a fun source for an interesting (and some times psychedelic) take on the weird (and interactive) nature of reality.

[doodle]

This describes the area that I think that Gumby and I got hung up on. We were calling it "Hedonistic Consumption"...RAW uses the more descriptive F'ing, smoking dope, and watching TV. 

Stage IV is a massive investment in adult education, for two reasons. (1) People can spend only so much time fucking, smoking dope, and watching TV; after a while they get bored. This is the main psychological objection to the workless society, and the answer to it is to educate people for functions more cerebral than fucking, smoking dope, watching TV, or the idiot jobs most are currently toiling at. (2) There are vast challenges and opportunities confronting us in the next three or four decades, of which the most notable are those highlighted in Tim Leary's SMI2LE slogan -- Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension. Humanity is about to enter an entirely new evolutionary relationship to space, time, and consciousness. We will no longer be limited to one planet, to a brief, less-than-a-century lifespan, and to the stereotyped and robotic mental processes by which most people currently govern their lives. Everybody deserves the chance, if they want it, to participate in the evolutionary leap to what Leary calls "more space, more time, and more intelligence to enjoy space and time."

What I am proposing, in brief, is that the Work Ethic (find a Master to employ you for wages, or live in squalid poverty) is obsolete. A Work Esthetic will have to arise to replace this old Stone Age syndrome of the slave, the peasant, the serf, the prole, the wage-worker -- the human labor-machine who is not fully a person but, as Marx said, " a tool, an automaton." Delivered from the role of things and robots, people will learn to become fully developed persons, in the sense of the Human Potential movement. They will not seek work out of economic necessity, but out of psychological necessity -- as an outlet for their creative potential.

("Creative potential" is not a panchreston. It refers to the inborn drive to play, to tinker, to explore, and to experiment, shown by every child before his or her mental processes are stunted by authoritarian education and operant-conditioned wage-robotry.)

As Bucky Fuller says, the first thought of people, once they are delivered from wage slavery, will be, "What was it that I was so interested in as a youth, before I was told I had to earn a living?" The answer to that question, coming from millions and then billions of persons liberated from mechanical toil, will make the Renaissance look like a high school science fair or a Greenwich Village art show.

[doodle]

Slotine,

I'm not sure I follow all of your monetary arguments. I tend to think money sometimes obscures the simplicity of an economy and that often it is ascribed the role of the horse when in reality it is the cart. So, if we could just take money out of the situation for a moment....let's look at a couple of case examples that machine ghost brought up starting with the fully automated fast food machine. Basically you feed raw ingredients into this machine and it kicks out over 350 burgers an hour. Let's say this machine is wildly successful and it eliminates a couple million fast food jobs. Let's combine this occurrence with RFID implementation at all supermarkets and stores. That could eliminate another couple million cashier type jobs. In fact, with a little work, I'm pretty sure a grocery store will soon require very few people to work as machines are perfectly capable of taking care of 90 percent of the tasks that go on there. Educated workers are not safe either. Machine ghost also posted another article that machines will soon be able to accomplish 80 percent of what doctors do.

Machine automation has the ability to reduce the necessary size of our labor force tremendously. We are able to maintain the current level of production in many cases with a quarter of the workers. How does this issue get addressed? Should these workers whose jobs were lost be demeaned as lazy? Pushed onto welfare in an insulting fashion and denigrated by society as useless? Presently this is how we deal with this process. It seems to create a lot of negative outcomes and antisocial behavior.

[doodle]

The idea of technological unemployment is a contentious one it seems among economists. There are arguments that the "Luddite Fallacy" might not be so falacious anymore. In other words, it would be an error to assume that the past performance of this theory is indicative of future outcomes.

Marshall Brain[33] and Martin Ford[34] are IT engineers who have worried that advancing IT will displace workers faster than current economic structures can absorb them into new kinds of jobs. Ford presents an argument for why the Luddite premise, although it was fallacious for two centuries, might lose its fallaciousness as machines become qualitatively different from those of the past. He compares this to the standard warning in financial prospectuses that "past performance is not a guarantee of future results". Brain and Ford both advocate pursuing some permutation of basic income or guaranteed minimum income simply to keep the recirculation of value throughout the economy from stalling due to poor employment. Although the earliest variations of these ideas involved government (for taxation and distribution), such ideas have been evolving to include market-based analogs, such as laws (analogous to existing minimum wage requirements) that require the private sector to employ humans, but that leave the job descriptions to private innovation. In these lines of thinking, it is recognized that automation can continue to yield ever higher per capita standard of living (in contrast to classical Luddism), but the basic income is merely a way to decouple consumer purchasing power and confidence from the traditional labor market, which might suffer market failure. In its place would grow a new labor market.

The Wikipedia article on this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment had an especially interesting discussion happening on the talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Techn ... t#Disputed

[doodle]

Watched documentary last night titled: plug and pray.

The movie talks about some of the implications and concerns regarding continued development in the field of AI. While the films premise concerned more the dangers that these developments have for future wars as well as the sanctity of human life, my concerns are more economic in nature.

I'm curious when I look at certain fields like accounting for example why these jobs still exist. Accounting is numbers and math combined with rules and regulations. It seems like a computer could easily fulfill the role of an accounting department today. In the near future, I'm sure that legal robots can be programmed with case law to determine clients chances or at least provide a quick avenue to mediation. Architecture is another field I could see going by the wayside. We already have computers that can compose music by analyzing past compositions and recreating variations, why couldn't the same technology be applied to designing buildings?

This film really made it clear that the march of progress in the field of robotics is proceding at a very fast pace. I think that we are already starting to see effects of automatization in the unemployment rate today. Does anyone else see this development as something that will need to be addressed in the near future to avoid structural high unemployment?

[Pointedstick]

No, not really. AI, computers, and automation may in some cases replicate human performance, but they can never replicate the human touch. This is why mass-produced products are never quite as nice as handmade ones, and it's not like the industrial revolution destroyed demand for craftsmanship. If anything, increasing mechanization of work will probably increase the demand for humans who can mediate between the customer and the machine, or put the finishing touches on the machine's output to make it seem less cold and impersonal.

[doodle]

No, not really. AI, computers, and automation may in some cases replicate human performance, but they can never replicate the human touch. This is why mass-produced products are never quite as nice as handmade ones, and it's not like the industrial revolution destroyed demand for craftsmanship. If anything, increasing mechanization of work will probably increase the demand for humans who can mediate between the customer and the machine, or put the finishing touches on the machine's output to make it seem less cold and impersonal.

I disagree. The industrial revolution has by and large destroyed craftsmanship which was often handed down in an apprenticeship process. I live in a building that was built more than 100 years ago. The craftsmanship and attention to detail are incredible. Even the way that floorbeams were joined has a certain art to it. There are few construction workers and craftspeople left who possess these skills today. In a similar way aboriginial survival skills have died off. Certain people like Cody Lundin might teach nature survival skills, but it is a dying art form that is perserved among a few people trying to keep it alive.

Im not getting freaked out or worrying about this march of progress, but I think economists are too quick to overlook the ramifications. I dont think we are going to create 300,000 jobs a month for "finishing touchers"

I think this author makes some good points:http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2011/03/ ... -workweek/

The Luddite fallacy says that innovation destroys jobs. It is believed to be a fallacy because increased productivity causes prices to fall, which then boosts demand which then creates new jobs. While locally or temporarily, there might be economic growth without job creation, economists believe that job growth will always follow. In effect, it represents the belief that technological innovation is always good economically.

This is a central dogma among economists. Why? Because jobless growth would destroy mass market economies. Indeed, jobs are the primary mean by which money flows back from the corporations to the consumers. Without jobs, consumers leave the market, effectively destroying it. Should the Luddite fallacy fail—if labour-saving technologies did increase unemployment—we would be pushed into some form of communism where the governments would need to either artificially create jobs, or provide direct financial support to the population. And it is not necessary for the Luddite fallacy to fail entirely to have problems. Imagine that as we innovate, maybe through better machine learning and robotics, we keep losing 2% of all jobs every year. For every 100 jobs destroyed, only 98 new jobs are created. Within a few short years, we would be left with a sizeable fraction of the population which has left the job market entirely, and another fraction which is either unemployed or underemployed.

As bank tellers, cashiers, secretaries and middle managers are being replaced by software and robotics, the conventional wisdom is that new jobs are created. Maybe people become robotics technicians or solar panel experts. However, how many futuristic jobs are really created? Many of the jobs created in new companies are the same jobs that disappeared: administrative assistant, accountant, manager, engineer, and so on. Certainly, Facebook is a futuristic service. But while it serves hundreds of millions of users, it only has 2000 employees.

In his latest TED talk, Bill Gates hinted that the future looks bleak for governments. Health costs are rising faster than government revenues, even if you assume that the economy will do well. Thus,  it is entirely possible that we will need to drastically reduce the cost of healthcare and education. Automation might be the only path forward which would not sacrifice our quality of life. Will we be closing schools and sending the kids to Khan Academy? We may have to automate much of the medical testing and diagnosis. Robotics might be needed to help support an aging population. All these great innovations might be necessary, and they may also lead to further job destruction (or the equivalent lack of job creation).

To make things worse, much of the recent gains from technology are non monetary. They fall outside the realm of economics. For example, while journalists have been losing their jobs, I have had access to better content than ever, through blogs and e-books, mostly for free or for little money. Recently, the giant free porn site RedTube has been killing much of the online porn industry: it offers unlimited porno for free.

Should the Luddite fallacy fail, there is an alternative to communism. We should be consider entering into the age of the 4-hour workweek. We have been investing our productivity gains into more production, which has lead to more jobs. But what if the cycle breaks at some point in the future?  The solution might be to redefine “work”?. Many bureaucrats only create work for themselves and others. Most of accounting, for example, could be automated. Researchers famously publish papers only for the sake publishing papers. Instead, we should call on accountants or researchers a few hours, here and there, to handle the interesting and difficult problems. Employers, instead of buying 40 hours of someone’s time, would buy the option of calling on the individual in times of need. We would all work far fewer hours, we would preserve the market economies and we would be happier. To make this possible, we need a deep cultural change. How do you feel about people who work only a few hours a week, or a month? My impression is that we look down on anyone who works less than 30 hours a week. Presumably, we inherited this prejudice from the industrial age. We need to let go. 

[doodle]

Oftentimes resistence to new technologies comes from the craftspeople themselves as they realize that their craft is becoming obsolete. Plumbers for example have generally resisted new technology in favor of the old ways because the new technology is so easy that almost anyone can do it. They often use construction codes to fight off innovation.

Piping a house with copper is not an easy job. It is labor intensive and requires quite a bit of skill to get right. On the other hand, piping a house with flexible PEX tubing (which has a longer lifespan than copper) is so easy that a total oaf could undertake the task. In addition, the total process requires about 1/10th of the time...if not less.

What do you do with this guy now...a victim of the housing downturn and an industry that for residential construction requires maybe 1/10th the labor input that it did before?

Tim Barker never thought he'd have to live in his truck. Four months ago, the plumber was in a one-bedroom apartment in California's San Fernando Valley, with a pool and a Jacuzzi. Then, on his birthday in October, he and 199 other plumbers were laid off by their union, Local 761 in Burbank. Now Barker's son sleeps on the sofa of his cousin's one-bedroom Hollywood apartment, and Barker sleeps on the roof of the apartment building - or in his 2003 Ford Ranger pickup. "I'm 47, and I've never lived in my car," says Barker, a husky 220-lb. single father with sandy hair and a rapid-fire voice. In January, as torrential rains pelted the streets of Southern California, father and son were sleeping in the truck in San Pedro, next to the Los Angeles Harbor. "We were able to spend four nights in the Vagabond Motel, but for two nights we slept in the car," says Barker. "It was raining, cold, and the cat was jumping on us. We both got sick."

[Pointedstick]

And yet, how many homeowners do their own plumbing, despite how simple PEX is? Also, when a new house is built, it still needs plumbing, and the people who are going to do it are going to be… wait for it… plumbers! Isn't it more likely that plumbers will charge the same price as before and do less work, thereby keeping more profit? Or that they'll eventually get into a price war with each other, driving down prices and suppressing their profit margin to what it was before, but with prices lower, to the benefit of those paying for their work?

It just seems like your narrative implies that people are incapable of adapting to changing conditions.

[doodle]

And yet, how many homeowners do their own plumbing, despite how simple PEX is? Also, when a new house is built, it still needs plumbing, and the people who are going to do it are going to be… wait for it… plumbers! Isn't it more likely that plumbers will charge the same price as before and do less work, thereby keeping more profit? Or that they'll eventually get into a price war with each other, driving down prices and suppressing their profit margin to what it was before, but with prices lower, to the benefit of those paying for their work?

It just seems like your narrative implies that people are incapable of adapting to changing conditions.

Pointedstick, my argument is not that people wont eventually adapt to changing conditions. It is that our present economic system requires workers earning an income in order to purchase products. I am making an argument that unemployment is going to be an increasing problem as outright automatization combined with huge increases in efficiency leave many people without jobs. Will this system work itself out eventually, yes probably. But presently this jobless recovery that we are experiencing might not be purely cyclical in nature. There is a structural component to it that doesn't only involve workers not having the correct skills, but also workers not being a necessary input into the production process.

The beginning of the industrial revolution was a very difficult time for massive numbers of people. The 1850's were a very revolutionary time in Europe with great social upheavel as society lurched forward into industrial capitalism. My contention is that we might me lurching forward now into a post-capitalistic system.

Look at debt for example. Americans have taken on huge amounts of private debt to fuel a consumption binge over the last 30 years. This consumption binge has kept a lot of people employed (including millions of Chinese), but at the same time was unsustainable from a monetary perspective. So something has to give, we cant have an entire class of people growing indebted in order to maintain full employment. 

Mainstream economists argue that increased productivity causes prices to fall, which then boosts demand which then creates new jobs. While locally or temporarily, there might be economic growth without job creation, economists believe that job growth will always follow. In effect, it represents the belief that technological innovation is always good economically.

This is a central dogma among economists. Why? Because jobless growth would destroy mass market economies. Indeed, jobs are the primary means by which money flows back from the corporations to the consumers. Without jobs, consumers leave the market, effectively destroying it. Should the Luddite fallacy fail—if labour-saving technologies did increase unemployment—we would be pushed into some form of communism where the governments would need to either artificially create jobs, or provide direct financial support to the population. And it is not necessary for the Luddite fallacy to fail entirely to have problems. Imagine that as we innovate, maybe through better machine learning and robotics, we keep losing 2% of all jobs every year. For every 100 jobs destroyed, only 98 new jobs are created. Within a few short years, we would be left with a sizeable fraction of the population which has left the job market entirely, and another fraction which is either unemployed or underemployed.

[Pointedstick]

One thing you fail to take into account is that there are lots of jobs that aren't manufacturing.  Think of the amazing multiplicity of jobs that exist today that didn't in the past: all kinds of engineers, therapists, pet veterinarians, tax attorneys, yoga instructors, eBook writers, physical therapists, energy efficiency consultants, cable TV installers, traveling car washers, pizza delivery men, toy designers, and so on and so forth. We have fewer factory workers, but more of other kinds of jobs. The kinds of jobs that people need done isn't static. A small and shrinking supply of jobs implies an end to human desires. I don't think such a thing exists.

I mean, there are 95% fewer farmers today than there were 100 years ago. Somehow those former farmers found work providing other goods and services to their fellow man. I just don't see how this time is really that different.

[doodle]

One thing you fail to take into account is that there are lots of jobs that aren't manufacturing.  Think of the amazing multiplicity of jobs that exist today that didn't in the past: all kinds of engineers, therapists, pet veterinarians, tax attorneys, yoga instructors, eBook writers, physical therapists, energy efficiency consultants, cable TV installers, traveling car washers, pizza delivery men, toy designers, and so on and so forth. We have fewer factory workers, but more of other kinds of jobs. The kinds of jobs that people need done isn't static. A small and shrinking supply of jobs implies an end to human desires. I don't think such a thing exists.

I mean, there are 95% fewer farmers today than there were 100 years ago. Somehow those former farmers found work providing other goods and services to their fellow man. I just don't see how this time is really that different.

Yes, there will certainly be new jobs....I'm simply arguing that there wont be enough to replace those that are lost. Imagine that as we innovate, for every 100 jobs destroyed, only 98 new jobs are created. Within a few short years, we would be left with a sizeable fraction of the population which has left the job market entirely, and another fraction which is either unemployed or underemployed.

Also, another fundamental question that I dont understand about our economic system is why it is necessary for private consumers to take on trillions of dollars of debt so that we can maintain full employment. If consumers hadn't taken on this private debt over the last 20 or 30 years would the employment picture have been as rosy in the face of increasing technological automation?

I mean, there are 95% fewer farmers today than there were 100 years ago. Somehow those former farmers found work providing other goods and services to their fellow man. I just don't see how this time is really that different.

All my investment literature states that "Past performance is no guarantee of future results...."

[Pointedstick]

Yes, there will certainly be new jobs....I'm simply arguing that there wont be enough to replace those that are lost. Imagine that as we innovate, for every 100 jobs destroyed, only 98 new jobs are created. Within a few short years, we would be left with a sizeable fraction of the population which has left the job market entirely, and another fraction which is either unemployed or underemployed.

I'm glad you agree with me, but what makes you so sure that there will only be 98 jobs for every 100 lost? Why not 99.5? Why not 100.1? Why not 120? Does your number come from anywhere other than unsubstantiated pessimism?

Also, another fundamental question that I dont understand about our economic system is why it is necessary for private consumers to take on trillions of dollars of debt so that we can maintain full employment. If consumers hadn't taken on this private debt over the last 20 or 30 years would the employment picture have been as rosy in the face of increasing technological automation?

It's a function of the debt-based monetary system we live in. Besides coins, all money creation comes from debt. So in order for the money supply to grow, individuals, firms, or the government needs to become more indebted. I don't like it either, but it's a necessity so long as we live in a debt-based monetary system, unless the government wants to drop thousands of tons of coins from helicopters. 

[doodle]

Yes, there will certainly be new jobs....I'm simply arguing that there wont be enough to replace those that are lost. Imagine that as we innovate, for every 100 jobs destroyed, only 98 new jobs are created. Within a few short years, we would be left with a sizeable fraction of the population which has left the job market entirely, and another fraction which is either unemployed or underemployed.

I'm glad you agree with me, but what makes you so sure that there will only be 98 jobs for every 100 lost? Why not 99.5? Why not 100.1? Why not 120? Does your number come from anywhere other than unsubstantiated pessimism?

Maybe I am just being pessimistic....but quickly increasing automatization and ecological limits to production in my mind make a nasty soup for workers to swallow.

Also, another fundamental question that I dont understand about our economic system is why it is necessary for private consumers to take on trillions of dollars of debt so that we can maintain full employment. If consumers hadn't taken on this private debt over the last 20 or 30 years would the employment picture have been as rosy in the face of increasing technological automation?

It's a function of the debt-based monetary system we live in. Besides coins, all money creation comes from debt. So in order for the money supply to grow, individuals, firms, or the government needs to become more indebted. I don't like it either, but it's a necessity so long as we live in a debt-based monetary system, unless the government wants to drop thousands of tons of coins from helicopters. 

So at least we agree that some part of the present system is totally screwy. Now....how can this be resolved so that future consumers dont have to become debt slaves in order to fuel the consumption which allows them to have a job a first place? Who out there is talking about that? Or does  the model for a functioning libertarian economy depend on creating debt slaves?

[Pointedstick]

So at least we agree that some part of the present system is totally screwy. Now....how can this be resolved so that future consumers dont have to become debt slaves in order to fuel the consumption which allows them to have a job a first place? Who out there is talking about that? Or does  the model for a functioning libertarian economy depend on creating debt slaves?

Yes, I absolutely agree that a debt-based monetary system is screwed up. It tends to enslave people to the banks and enable government boondoggles. It also confuses the hell out of the very people who play a big part in running it (congress), leading to extremely sub-optimal results.

But Libertarianism hates the debt-based monetary system. In fact, Austrian economics hates it so much that it doesn't even acknowledge it exists, and pretends we're still on the gold standard.

I would see a move toward a pure, non-debt-backed fiat system as an improvement, and the government could do that at any time (as Lincoln did during the civil war). I also see private currencies as being a reasonable way forward too. Bitcoin is a pure fiat currency not based on debt, for example.

In the end, money exists to facilitate smooth exchange. The better it does that without externalities such as needing to strip mine the land to search for gold or enslave people to endless monthly debt payments), the better, IMHO.

[doodle]

I'm glad you agree with me, but what makes you so sure that there will only be 98 jobs for every 100 lost? Why not 99.5? Why not 100.1? Why not 120? Does your number come from anywhere other than unsubstantiated pessimism?

Why are you so optimistic that this isn't an issue? MIT research scientist Andrew Mcafee (I'm assuming a pretty bright guy) studies the impact that information technologies have on industry. He thinks our economy might have a problem.

McAfee’s argument isn’t wholly new, and he explains how fears surrounding unemployment due to technology have been around for 200 years. Famed economist, John Maynard Keynes, voiced concerns regarding automation in the 1930’s and coined the term “technological unemployment.”? In the early days of the industrial revolution, many worried that the automation of agriculture would leave everyone unemployed. Of course, Keynes’ vision of a world with little work left for humans never transpired, and his argument has been widely regarded as a fallacy. McAfee, however, tells a convincing story as to why it may finally be time to worry.

To articulate the core of his argument, McAfee draws from the concept of exponential growth patterns. The numbers at the beginning of any exponential curve (1+2+4+8+16….etc) are easy to comprehend. It isn’t until later in the progression that intuition breaks down and human imagination is outstripped by the explosive growth in the doubling pattern. With regards to the digitization of labor, McAfee argues that we may have just entered the “knee”? of the curve; the portion of the growth pattern characterized by massive acceleration.

The encroachment of digitized labor into the economic system is now accelerating, and the scope of the phenomenon is as of yet unknown. McAfee admits that much of today’s economic pain is probably caused by the hangover left from the 2008 crisis in the U.S., and the current crisis in Europe. McAfee points out, however, that corporate profits in the U.S. have never been higher and that companies are back to spending; especially on things like IT. What companies are not doing is hiring new employees. McAfee shows BLS data showing that the 2000s were the first decade since World War II in which there were fewer people working at the end than at the beginning. Hiring hasn’t returned, suggests McAfee, in part because technology is being injected into the economy at such a staggering rate that there is a decreasing need for human workers.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity ... the-alarm/

[doodle]

So at least we agree that some part of the present system is totally screwy. Now....how can this be resolved so that future consumers dont have to become debt slaves in order to fuel the consumption which allows them to have a job a first place? Who out there is talking about that? Or does  the model for a functioning libertarian economy depend on creating debt slaves?

In the end, money exists to facilitate smooth exchange. The better it does that without externalities such as needing to strip mine the land to search for gold or enslave people to endless monthly debt payments), the better, IMHO.

Money is like manure: Spread around, it helps things grow. Piled up in one place , it just stinks."

Have you looked at the wealth distribution lately of the United States? I think it falls somwhere between Uganda and Ethiopia.

Its hard to acknowledge systemic issues when you are on the top of the heap (as I assume both of us are). Everything from this vantage point looks pretty rosy. I am concerned  that our system is presently sewing the seeds of its own destruction if we don't address some of these issues that I bring up.

John Maynard Keynes is widely credited with saving capitalism by introducing social measures that stopped the Great Depression from turning into the Great Revolution. I'm afraid if we dont address the issues of our times in an intelligent manner and continue to try to sweep the problems under the rug, we are going to suffer long term.

[Pointedstick]

There you go again about exponential growth. We're not growing exponentially. If we were, human civilization would collapse in a matter of years, if not months. It's not happening.

As for why I think the number will be above 100, it's just optimism, I guess. I'm pretty optimistic about the capacity of humans to grow and adapt to changing conditions. It's our greatest evolutionary advantage over other creatures, after all.

If mechanization ever becomes the kind of problem you're worried about, there will be so many robots that the demand for robot builders, repairers, programmers, trainers, deployers, assemblers, and troubleshooters will have gone through the roof. People will have to adapt to survive--just like they have for the sum total of human history.

[doodle]

Digitilization of labor is growing exponentially according to MIT researcher....did you read anything that I wrote?

But what does he know? He has only been researching the issue at one of our country's finest educational instutions.

I'm going to just trust my instincts and intutions on this issue....

[Pointedstick]

Have you looked at the wealth distribution lately of the United States? I think it falls somwhere between Uganda and Ethiopia.

Its hard to acknowledge systemic issues when you are on the top of the heap (as I assume both of us are). Everything from this vantage point looks pretty rosy.

Well? Why not do your part and spread some of it around! Spend it on consumer products and Hawaiian vacations! It seems ironic to be concerned with wealth distribution while hoarding a lot of wealth.

[doodle]

Have you looked at the wealth distribution lately of the United States? I think it falls somwhere between Uganda and Ethiopia.

Its hard to acknowledge systemic issues when you are on the top of the heap (as I assume both of us are). Everything from this vantage point looks pretty rosy.

Well? Why not do your part and spread some of it around! Spend it on consumer products and Hawaiian vacations! It seems ironic to be concerned with wealth distribution while hoarding a lot of wealth.

How can the workers "spread it around" if they dont have a job?

PS,

I respect you...but once again you are totally off topic here and starting to veer off into ad hominem attacks.

I have posted a legitimate issue and provided supporting evidence for it from one of the leading research institutions in the United States. You respond that you are "intuitively optimistic" that everything will turn out fine...and that humans adapt.

I'm not disagreeing with you that humans will adapt. That is besides the point. You come off a bit like Marie Antoinette on the eve of the French Revolution telling the peasants to "'just eat cake".

The problem with humans "adapating" to matter like these is that lots of heads usually roll in the street. But hey, you are well armed and Im sure ready to kill lots of people if it comes to that.

What a crazy ass fantasy world libertarians live in....

[doodle]

Time will tell...my money is on a very bumpy ride for a long time as our society adjusts to and sorts out these new issues. Will it be catastrophic? No....rather just an uncomfortable grinding sensation as our economic model grates against human realities and natural limits. Sooner or later we figure it out, our it gets figured out for us. I know which one im hoping for.

[Pointedstick]

You're right, I was rude and flippant, and I apologize.

I read the article, but I'm still not buying it. All this technological change requires people who can build it, understand it, repair it, and tailor it to specific needs. The company I work for is hiring a gazillion people a day. I think you (and McAfee) greatly overestimate how much machines can truly accomplish on their own. I work with computers and robots every day and let me tell you… they're dumb. They need humans to tell them what to do, how to do it, how to recover from failures, and how to handle unexpected conditions. Not to mention that thousands of people who design and program them, and the tens to hundreds of thousands who manufacture them. Take a look at the factory cities in China. There are millions of people in them. These are highly mechanized factories, and they're still employing millions of actual people.

Robots don't obsolete humans any more than power drills do. They are utterly, hopelessly dependent on humans for their every action. More complicated machines require more people to maintain them than ever before.

One could easily have said years ago that web design software that allows you to create websites with a few clicks might have tossed the web designers out on the curb… instead, it just increased their productivity and lowered the barrier to entry to more people could become web designers. I don't think you're giving people enough credit for their adaptability.

[doodle]

The documentary that I watched called Plug and Pray clearly demonstrated I think how far robots have come in 50 years....but also how much farther they have left to go. I too am a bit skeptical if digiTalization of the workplace will follow moores law or not. I don't think though that we should solely use past formulas to interpret present issues. Paradigm shifts do occur.

Classical physics was forced to adapt and revise many laws and assumptions when quantum physics came into being. My guess is that our economic system (and this is hunch) is going to be a very turbulent affair for quite some time before we settle into a new normal. I don't think this latest recession in other words is a simple cyclical phenomenon. There are much bigger issues at play here....environmental, technological, social, and demographic to name a few.

[doodle]

You're right, I was rude and flippant, and I apologize.

I read the article, but I'm still not buying it. All this technological change requires people who can build it, understand it, repair it, and tailor it to specific needs. The company I work for is hiring a gazillion people a day. I think you (and McAfee) greatly overestimate how much machines can truly accomplish on their own. I work with computers and robots every day and let me tell you… they're dumb. They need humans to tell them what to do, how to do it, how to recover from failures, and how to handle unexpected conditions. Not to mention that thousands of people who design and program them, and the tens to hundreds of thousands who manufacture them. Take a look at the factory cities in China. There are millions of people in them. These are highly mechanized factories, and they're still employing millions of actual people.

Robots don't obsolete humans any more than power drills do. They are utterly, hopelessly dependent on humans for their every action. More complicated machines require more people to maintain them than ever before.

One could easily have said years ago that web design software that allows you to create websites with a few clicks might have tossed the web designers out on the curb… instead, it just increased their productivity and lowered the barrier to entry to more people could become web designers. I don't think you're giving people enough credit for their adaptability.

Apology accepted  I also apologize for comparing you to Marie Antoinette