Another robot story...

[doodle]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100592545

I'm convinced that this robotic future will eventually lead us by necessity towards a larger welfare state. How else do you get consumption when the workers dont have a means to earn an income. It will be interesting to see how this plays out:


If you meet Baxter, the latest humanoid robot from Rethink Robotics – you should get comfortable with him, because you'll likely be seeing more of him soon.

Rethink Robotics released Baxter last fall and received an overwhelming response from the manufacturing industry, selling out of their production capacity through April. He's cheap to buy ($22,000), easy to train, and can safely work side-by-side with humans. He's just what factories need to make their assembly lines more efficient – and yes, to replace costly human workers.

Ohhh and what about the jobs building and managing the robot. Theyve got that figured out too.

At the factories that are buying Baxter, employers now create robot "managers" to oversee Baxter. Baxter is also made in the U.S., and Rethink employs some 100 people in factories and distributors – though in an ironic twist, they're already planning to use Baxter to help build Baxter.

[Pointedstick]

I think the real question is not "what will robot-replaceable people do for money?" but "what will society look like when increasing numbers of people have nothing to offer?" Adding more safety nets or transfer payments is a band-aid. People want to feel valuable, like they have something to contribute to their fellow human beings. When more and more people feel like they're just a drag on society because they have nothing of economic value to offer others… I dunno what that society looks like. I suspect it's not that great a place for those people to live.

[Tyler]

I think the real question is not "what will robot-replaceable people do for money?" but "what will society look like when increasing numbers of people have nothing to offer?"

Just a hypothesis -- Like the Bay Area. 

When the workforce skews away from manual labor and all the remaining jobs are unattainable by many, those people who want to contribute move to where the jobs are.  The society that remains will become elitist, expensive, and polarized at the high and low ends of the economic spectrum with a net negative immigration pattern in the long run. 

[Pointedstick]

I think the real question is not "what will robot-replaceable people do for money?" but "what will society look like when increasing numbers of people have nothing to offer?"

Just a hypothesis -- Like the Bay Area. 

When the workforce skews away from manual labor and all the remaining jobs are unattainable by many, those people who want to contribute move to where the jobs are.  The society that remains will become elitist, expensive, and polarized at the high and low ends of the economic spectrum with a net negative immigration pattern in the long run.

Sometimes the truth just hits you in the face. You're absolutely right. I even live there, and it seems I've become a bit blind to the reality all around me. Thanks for the wake-up call.

[dualstow]

I think the real question is not "what will robot-replaceable people do for money?" but "what will society look like when increasing numbers of people have nothing to offer?"

Lots of parks.

[stone]

I actually think a robot future potentially solves one of the biggest "issues". When lots of brute labour was needed, any industrialist needed to have a potential workforce who were desperate to work for him. When America was being colonized every new comer wanted a farm of their own rather than working as an employee and so there was a labour shortage. First indentured labour was used to provide staff then that morphed into bringing slaves from Africa. It used to be necessary to have a downtrodden class of people.
In the robot future we would just need people who knew what to set the robots doing (eg set the robots inventing better robots with certain characteristics). Potentially everyone could be in the owning class. Obviously that would require the wisdom (as I see it) to recognize the need for a certain level of wealth equality.

As Jeremy Grantham put it:
“the final position is that automation, and thereby capital, produces everything while all of
the mere mortals sit on the beach. And starve? The worthless unemployed who are
obviously not carrying their weight? Ah, there’s the rub! Up the beach, in a protected,
cordoned-off section is the capital owners’ club. There, a handful of equally
“unemployed”?owners sit, enjoying tea and the ocean.”?

All we need to do is to move everyone into the "capital owners' club" with (you guessed it) an asset tax and citizens' dividend .

[Tyler]

The printing press did not make everyone a publisher. The cotton gin did not make everyone a textile mill owner. And robots will not make everyone a manufacturer. The utopia of an "evolved" 100% owners class neglects to recognize that all men are not equal. A machine is only as useful as the intellect, creativity, and entrepreneurialism of the man programming it.

[MachineGhost]

All we need to do is to move everyone into the "capital owners' club" with (you guessed it) an asset tax and citizens' dividend .

Not that B.S.itting asset tax again...

I say you need to provide real world evidence where it actually works instead of scaring capital away before you can propose it with a straight face.

[Pointedstick]

Not that B.S.itting asset tax again...

I say you need to provide real world evidence where it actually works instead of scaring capital away before you can propose it with a straight face.

I can confirm that my capital would definitely be scared away. No way I'm cool with the government explicitly whittling down the basis every year, especially for non-financial assets that can't really be subdivided for incremental sale (furniture, a car, a house, etc). Anyone who owned much of anything at all would simply be paying off their asset tax liability with the proceeds of their citizen's dividend just to break even.

[stone]

The printing press did not make everyone a publisher. The cotton gin did not make everyone a textile mill owner. And robots will not make everyone a manufacturer. The utopia of an "evolved" 100% owners class neglects to recognize that all men are not equal. A machine is only as useful as the intellect, creativity, and entrepreneurialism of the man programming it.

You say quite rightly that a machine is only as useful as the task it gets set by a person. I totally agree. That is why as a capital owner, I employ just such a capable person to do that for me. I'm stupid but not stupid enough to think that I'm not stupid. That is why I employ someone who isn't stupid.
Everyone one on here who owns a stock fund is also such a capital capital owner following that logic too.
You can be an imbecile and be perfectly capable of receiving a stream of dividends. As capital becomes all important and labour becomes more and more dispensible, the fact that people have different levels of talents should logically make less and less impact on who gets what.

[stone]

IMO when labour is no longer a limiting factor, rich people are poorer if everyone else isn't also rich. I think we need to think about what is the constraint on how "rich" everyone can be.  Back in the day much of the constraint was how much labour could everyone employ. Not everyone could be a mill owner or plantation owner.  It was labour that was limiting.  Each mill owner needed thousands of mill workers. Each plantation owner needed thousands of cotton pickers. But upper class people ALL were rich -however stupid or inept they were. In the near future won't the robots be the equivalent of the mill workers and the cotton pickers? Won't other robots be the equivalent of the people who in 1800 designed the machines and directed the slaves? the only role for people will be that of the owning class.
Of course we COULD choose to have just a few in the owning class and have everyone else either rioting or being employed as security guards shooting the rioters. BUT the owning class would get no benefit at all by keeping itself select. In fact that would make each member of the owning class less rich because the market would be smaller.  Just think, if all seven billion people on earth could afford an ipad, how much better Apple's earnings would be. If only 0.01% of current ipad owners were rich enough to own one, then probably the development costs would not have been worth it and so we would be using crap 1980s style computors.
I think it is a mind bending concept but actually true that it can make the rich richer in real terms to take money off the rich and redistribute. Only if you only want to have lots and lots of staff to command does it make any sense not to redistribute. If you want cool high tech stuff or goods and services produced by robots, then you want everyone rich enough to buy anything they want.

[stone]

On reflection, I guess there will robots to do the riot control too.

[Pointedstick]

Maybe they could even do the rioting as well.

[RuralEngineer]

IMO when labour is no longer a limiting factor, rich people are poorer if everyone else isn't also rich. I think we need to think about what is the constraint on how "rich" everyone can be.  Back in the day much of the constraint was how much labour could everyone employ. Not everyone could be a mill owner or plantation owner.  It was labour that was limiting.  Each mill owner needed thousands of mill workers. Each plantation owner needed thousands of cotton pickers. But upper class people ALL were rich -however stupid or inept they were. In the near future won't the robots be the equivalent of the mill workers and the cotton pickers? Won't other robots be the equivalent of the people who in 1800 designed the machines and directed the slaves? the only role for people will be that of the owning class.
Of course we COULD choose to have just a few in the owning class and have everyone else either rioting or being employed as security guards shooting the rioters. BUT the owning class would get no benefit at all by keeping itself select. In fact that would make each member of the owning class less rich because the market would be smaller.  Just think, if all seven billion people on earth could afford an ipad, how much better Apple's earnings would be. If only 0.01% of current ipad owners were rich enough to own one, then probably the development costs would not have been worth it and so we would be using crap 1980s style computors.
I think it is a mind bending concept but actually true that it can make the rich richer in real terms to take money off the rich and redistribute. Only if you only want to have lots and lots of staff to command does it make any sense not to redistribute. If you want cool high tech stuff or goods and services produced by robots, then you want everyone rich enough to buy anything they want.

The trick is how do you get the means of production (robots) distributed amongst the population more evenly than today?  Even if they are cheap.  What's to stop the people currently controlling the capital from owning all/most of the robots as well?

The only two ways I can see are either prohibit corporate ownership, which is distasteful, or leave it alone and then individuals could get into manufacturing by creating their own markets through creativity and competition the way they do now, but perhaps easier by making it cheaper and with a lower barrier to entry (much more desirable).

Of course, most of humanity isn't very creative and doesn't see interested in developing what little creativity they do have so we still have a problem.

[stone]

Rural Engineer, I was meaning that the people currently owning the capital would hopefully have the good sense to realize that nothing is gained for themselves by keeping everything for themselves. We wont get the best system of robots to serve us unless we realize that. Instead we will have a few rich people holed up in a bunker with no customers to buy the products of the under-capacity and underdeveloped robot factories.

High tech requires big markets. Big markets require a large level of widespread prosperity. If capital is all that is needed and so few well paid jobs are required then the only hope IMO is to replace current taxes with a generalized tax on all assets (cash, real estate, stocks, robots etc) and to pay out to everyone a citizens' dividend. Most people seem to see that idea as deeply unfair but I can't see any other route to our civilization progressing to prosperity rather than a mess with everyone poorer (even the richest people).

[AgAuMoney]

The printing press did not make everyone a publisher.

But the desktop printer nearly did, and the Internet has/is picking up the rest.

And robots will not make everyone a manufacturer.

But the 3-d printer might.

[AgAuMoney]

As capital becomes all important and labour becomes more and more dispensible, the fact that people have different levels of talents should logically make less and less impact on who gets what.

I don't find that at all logical.

There are other talents beyond labour.  If none of them were needed and capital is the be all and end all, then only those with capital would deserve anything.  Instead of a utopian fantasy, because people are people it would be more likely to be distopian as all such dreams have ended in the past. More Clockwork Orange and Soylent Green than Star Trek.

[AgAuMoney]

I think the real question is not "what will robot-replaceable people do for money?" but "what will society look like when increasing numbers of people have nothing to offer?"

Lots of parks.

With headstones.

[Pointedstick]

I hate to be the one that has to break it to you, but there's no conspiracy of capital holders out to get you.

And furthermore, if you're posting on this forum, you're also a capital owner! Are you oppressing yourself? 

From what I've observed of my travels in the UK, the attitude that wealthy property-owners are and hoarding resources that could be more equitably redistributed is a pretty entrenched part of the cultural undercurrent. Kind of like the American obsession with driving anywhere more half a mile away.

[stone]

People with capital (myself included) don't build empty factories or hoard stuff.  People with capital look for a rate of return and if widescale prosumer robot adoption takes hold such that commoditization starts to occur with things we produce, we just look for areas with better return.  Hazmat robots, space robots, or even something yet unknown.
I hate to be the one that has to break it to you, but there's no conspiracy of capital holders out to get you.  And they don't operate on the level of a five year old that gets annoyed when other people get stuff.  The wealthy don't even care what you have.
Labor dislocation is a serious problem.  The solution, as it always was, has been education.  But sadly, we've short circuited that process by imposing poverty programs instead of safety nets.  Which one is the citizens' dividend?  Progress or dead end?

I think you misunderstood what I (as pointed stick has said, a fellow "capital owner") was trying to say. I'm not saying that anyone plans to build idle factories and hoard stuff. I'm saying that much below capacity economic outcomes are the unfortunate consequence of our economic framework not being suited to labour becoming dispensable and capital becoming all that is needed.
I'm not saying that there are robber barrons with malign intent. I'm saying it is like when a large crowd panics and people get crushed to death. It isn't that any person in the crowd has wanted anyone to get hurt, it is simply that the system of exits and crowd controls etc were not up to the job. I'm saying our current economic set up is like an ineptly set up sports stadium where a crowd crush is inevitable.

The wealthy don't even care what you have

If that were the case then why would anyone  have any objection to a citizens' dividend? The money only takes a mouse click to be brought freshly into existence. From what I can see the only conceivable objection would be because  people have the opinion that other people should be less well off (for whatever reason).

This thread set me off writing a blog post about how true Pareto efficiency requires redistribution in a high tech world:
http://directeconomicdemocracy.wordpres ... also-rich/

[stone]

Slotline, I think consumption needs to be the driver of investment. Then investment will be simply in order to produce what people actually want. If production of consumer goods/sevices can't keep up with demand, then new machines and technologies will get developed in order to keep up. I think the key thing to grasp is just how under capacity our economy is. Consumption is not at the expense of investment. Unemployment and under employment (of machines as much/more than of people) is what is what we are getting instead of real investment building economic capacity to deal with the future.
Think of how economic production massively shot up in WWII. We now have far better technology than then. Our potential to give everyone on the planet anything they want is something I think is massively under-appreciated.

PS we went on vacation to Alberta a couple of years ago. Fabulous part of the world you live in. Bears, glaciers, eagles, great beef steaks .

[stone]

Slotline, the thing is that Darwin and Einstein did much of their work in their own time. Wouldn't a citizens' dividend give the wider public the financial freedom to create new innovative technologies? I'm not so sure that funding education more and more doesn't eventually become pushing on a string. I have a bias towards things starting from individuals from the ground up rather than from the top down. The technological leaps forward in WWII were driven by demand for weapons. I think demand for robots or whatever could potentially do the same. Top down funding through educational institutions might well just lead to formalized rote learning of "the classics" rather than innovation. If people choose to spend lots of their money on services such as say piano lessons and manicures, then at some point advances in manufacturing etc will be needed to allow goods to be delivered without the labour of the people who are now piano teachers rather than factory workers. 

[Pointedstick]

Slotline, the thing is that Darwin and Einstein did much of their work in their own time. Wouldn't a citizens' dividend give the wider public the financial freedom to create new innovative technologies?

But clearly they didn't need a citizen's dividend to pursue their work. Why should the Darwins and Einsteins of today be any different? Don't exceptional people have a tendency to transcend their situations by virtue of their exceptionality? I think you're assuming that there are a huge amount of geniuses toiling in factories or making sandwiches, unable to benefit society with their potential. But if that were the case, wouldn't we expect them to have already figured a way out of their menial jobs?

[stone]

Pointed Stick, Darwin had independent means because he was rich (and taxes were low then). You are correct that Einstein just found the time out of hours to do his work. I am sure though that many many people out their are capable of far more than they currently do. IMO the leap in productivity in WWII really drives that point home.

[stone]

Slotline, thanks to a citizens' dividend other people would have the financial freedom to set up in competition with you as an inefficient manufacturer.