Posted on 05/21/2015 10:57:10 AM PDT by youngphys01
This attitude begins with the assumption that buyers will buy just so much and no more, then it follows that if now that given quantity of goods can be produced with less labor because of the adoption of labor-saving machinery, then there will be correspondingly less work available for people to do, and thus that improvements in machinery cause unemployment.But there is not a fixed amount of work to be done and there is not a fixed quantity of output that is demanded.
The actual effect of the adoption of labor-saving machinery is to cause not unemployment but a higher standard of living. In the economy as a whole in the long run,the effect of the adoption of labor-saving improvements is that the same number of workers end up reducing vastly increased quantity of goods and obtain the benefit of these goods in their capacity a consumers. Improvements in machinery of the labor-saving variety are an essential prerequisite of labor becoming available for increasing the production of goods previously considered luxuries and for working with improvements in machinery or the kind that make possible altogether new products.
There will be no problem of a lack of demand for these additional goods. Because the need and desire for goods always far outstrips the ability to produce goods and increases further as that ability increase. Also, the actual true aggregate demand curve shows that even any given quantity of money and volume of spending is potentially capable of buying an unlimited quantity of goods at lower prices. No matter how great the output becomes at the point of full employment, it will be demanded.
But as Still Thinking points out, we have been automating for a long time and sometimes it does cause labor dislocations but the market has a way of eventually bouncing back and redistributing labor to productive areas.
I don't think that risk is a carte blanch to implement all socialist programs, much less all socialist programs now. But it is likely that safety nets and retraining programs may have to be expanded until the market can respond.
What's more, we have to find a way to finance those programs as unemployed people will not be paying either income tax or consumption taxes.
One of my frustrations is that America has lowered it import tariffs resulting in high unemployment. Our market has been flooded with cheap imports from countries with much lower labor costs than ours. Our tariffs are so low that we actually create a tax incentive to off-shore our industries, as if the wage differential between countries wasn't enough.
Thus we are already at crisis unemployment levels and it's not the result of automation but rather stupid government policies when it comes to international trade.
Automation can make this much much worse. Automation itself will likely create jobs but not nearly as much as it displaces.
Automation will transition us even more to Peter Drucker's "Dream Economy" where entertainment pursuits consume and employ a much larger amount of the economy.
I think the socialists are right that things will get much worse employment-wise due to automation. This is true even if we fixed our stupid trade policies, which neither party seems inclined to do. But Capitalism is still by far the best reallocator of resources to productive use. Any social programs that we implement should be temporary until the market conditions can adjust. We should never embrace full socialism. And one only needs to look at the history of socialistic states and planned economies to know why.
The point is what happens to the increased profits.
They can be invested and create new jobs.
Or they can be taxed and create welfare programs instead.
They can’t do both.
Previously they were invested and new jobs, demands were created.
Now- and these idiots are arguing for more- the increased profits will be diverted to welfare and that will aggravate the very situation these idiots are claiming it will ameliorate!
Idiots rule the world.
Few quick thoughts:
1: Nobody can predict the future. But their socio-economic predictions, so far, have been as completely wrong as it is possible to be. The utopian societies of Mao and Pol Pot have instead resulted in the mass starvation they wish to invoke and the deaths of millions in countless other horrific ways. And the solution is NEVER to re-examine the inherent value of their assumptions, but to claim that “if only we/they had the right people in charge”.
2: In an environment like a McDonalds, say, it would perhaps be possible to completely automate the entire operation. But in an operation like building a house, even if like 1955 Levittown, LI, the houses were essentially identical, the build can not be automated. OK, so we build identical dwellings in a factory and truck to the site. But as we have seen, humans have a need to be occupied in some way, so inevitably, once their vision has manifested itself and all tasks are automated, then these idle humans will have to be placed into mass-agricultural positions or as Milton Friedman observed, building things using spoons instead of shovels.
3: We have already lost millions of jobs since 2008 and it has resulted in discomfort, yes, and dislocation, but unless these things happen to YOU, then these kinds of broad-brush statements ignore the reality that a detached, intellectual class is here seeking to impose an intellectually-derived and self-arrogated platform of moral superiority (fending off the starvation of millions, they are, dontcha know) that sadistically consigns the people so affected to lives of the dullest form of uniformity and conformity imaginable. Their ideal seems to be a society much like that of North Korea. Is this some kind of vision they wish to sell? What is the attraction? The attraction is that the picture fits into their shriveled little inexperienced brains while the untold misery it has, in every instance, inflicted upon the poor victims of same, is NEVER considered. That it is never considered is proof positive that these are cold, unfeeling would-be overlord types who CAN’T EVEN FIGURE OUT that m,any of them, indeed, would be harvesting the rice in the same rice fields as those poor souls they wish to save from starvation. Again, that that they cannot even see that is proof positive that their theory is phenomenally myopic. It takes in very very little of what we KNOW about human nature (whatever that means to you, and them)
And, in these utopias, is there not still a distinct class of overlords or commandants who can impose their will on one or more or any number of drones by fiat? So instead of simply living your life as a worker bee, your superiors can come around and crush your skull with a rifle butt or just shoot you. Is that even better than the prospect of mere enforced conformity? Born as you are in the worker bee class, the chances of you ascending to that glorified plane are zero. You will live your life until the state has decided that you have no more economic value and since there is no morality nor any other reason to live, your next phase will be similar to that of garden fertilizer. Why this would be any sort of compelling utopia, forgive me, but I frankly don’t see it.
Referenced you in post 22
They said the same things when industrial factories appeared at the turn of the last century and every other improvement in making things before that.
“Steam-powered looms!? You are going to lay off most of your workforce, you evil suit! Tis the devil’s work!” - Luddites.
Imagine all of the people who have been brainwashed and forced into ignorance suddenly having access to a super smart AI able to show them what is true and what is false! It would be an instant revolution leading to a world ruled by an incorruptible benevolent AI able to bring liberty and justice to everyone.
In fact the tech may already be here but is being held back until it can be programmed to lie and ignore evidence while still appearing to be fully logical.
Just read some Bastiat and such. Good stuff.
First off, any response you give is wrong.
This your stock answer. “Automation creates new technologies which require capable people to operate. Liberal Art degrees won’t create these workers. So basically, Conservatives will have jobs. Liberals won’t. “
Then ask them how they propose to change it.
By the way, that answer makes you a racist so be prepared.
People who are too stupid to adapt to the new job market as a result of automation deserve to starve to death on the streets. If the birth rates of the poor outpace the birth rates of the wealthy, socialism would collapse by running out of money; in a world where egalitarianism is enforced at the point of a gun, who in their right mind would bother to work?
Of course, there is also the question of whether or not automation is possible or inevitable. Self-sustaining AI as applied to something practical has not yet been invented; if we are talking about replacing 20 workers with 5 workers and machines, the business would have to incur a number of short-term costs, which will sour many investors (and let’s not even get into government attempts to sabotage automation in the name of votes and union money).
Socialism and communism work great in an ant mound or beehive. The problem is that people are not bees or ants. Socialism must force people to do things they don’t want to do for little or no compensation...unless you are part of the elite.
Socialism is SLAVERY and always ends in misery and death for MILLIONS of people at the hands of their own fellow citizens and government.
Machines need to be maintained by people and they naturally will replace some workers. Capitalism is the natural order and it will always find the most efficient path that benefits everyone the most. Ask any former resident of a communist country and they will tell you that they would rather live jobless in a capitalist country than employed in a communist country.
If automation will eliminate those jobs without creating other jobs to replace them, then that will happen no matter what economic system we are in. Socialism and communism won’t make such a system (where only a minority of people have jobs) viable, because you can’t rob a minority to completely support the majority for very long.
Communism only works (for a little while) by robbing the majority of the means of production. Socialism similarly robs a majority, by excessive taxation imposed on everyone above the poverty line. Even then, the systems aren’t viable in the long run without external assistance. So they would be even less viable if the pool of people left to rob shrinks.
“Cuba is nearing an exception to this”
The real issue is: can they last without some external support or extraordinary assistance?
Cuba survives by sucking in external support via tourism revenues. Russia survived by conning the west into giving them wave after wave of food aid (North Korea is still doing this). Scandinavia persists because they have the good fortune of vast petro resources to draw on to prop up their economies.
Finding a socialist/communist country that can survive even a decade or two without a situation like that is going to be an exercise in futility.
We will always need bread and circuses.
Welcome to FR.
I would cite the example of textile workers I England. There used to be lots of small hand operated looks where workers worked 12 or more hours a day in their homes to produce small amounts of cloth. Water and steam powered textile factories replaced these resulting in lots of work for mill workers, large production of cloth available at falling prices. This drove the production of cotton. Automation will drive down prices, improve production and probably result in better work available for people.
*****it will only be possible for a minority of Americans to work for a living the way we see it now.*****
Check out current population data - by age for current stats. Very scary.
Population of US 308 million
working age (20-65) 186 million
Fed. State & other Govt. employees 20 million
UNEMPLOYED 94 million
Which means only 62 million people have jobs right now.
That doesn’t include those who may be disabled and not working.
This is really a question of patent protection.
See a similar discussion posted yesterday:
“What If Everybody Didn’t Have to Work to Get Paid?”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3292007/posts?page=32
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3292007/posts?page=66#66
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3292007/posts?page=32#26
Has iTunes and the App Store hurt the economy? This is an example of a fully automated virtual marketplace with virtual products and that produces and delivers each product with no employee intervention. There is no additional work for Apple if the company sells an app to one customer or that same app to 100,000 customers.
That virtual marketplace has created more jobs and built the most successful capitalist company of all time and they employ a large number of people and make money for millions of artists and developers who aren’t even employees.
The automation model has worked almost every time it’s tried.
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