Posted on 03/02/2015 4:49:50 AM PST by expat_panama
As robots increasingly adopt human qualities, including those that allow them to replace actual human labor, economists are starting to worry. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, some “wonder if automation technology is near a tipping point, when machines finally master traits that have kept human workers irreplaceable.”
The fears of economists, politicians and workers themselves are way overdone. They should embrace the rise of robots precisely because they love job creation. As my upcoming book Popular Economics points out with regularity, abundant job creation is always and everywhere the happy result of technological advances that tautologically lead to job destruction.
Robots will ultimately be the biggest job creators simply because aggressive automation will free us up to do new work by virtue of it erasing toil that was once essential. Lest we forget, there was a time in American history when just about everyone worked whether they wanted to or not — on farms — just to survive. Thank goodness technology destroyed lots of agricultural work that freed Americans up to pursue a wide range of vocations off the farm.
With their evolution as labor inputs, robots bring the promise of new forms of work that will have us marveling at labor we wasted in the past, and that will make past job destroyers like wind, water, the cotton gin, the car, the internet and the computer seem small by comparison. All the previously mentioned advances made lots of work redundant, but far from forcing us into breadlines, the destruction of certain forms of work occurred alongside the creation of totally new ways to earn a living. Robots promise a beautiful multiple of the same.
To understand why, we need to first remember that what is saved on labor redounds to increased capital availability for new ideas...
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Only if government intervenes. There are plenty of jobs available for nonworkers now. Government makes it illegal or too expensive.
I understand his thinking, but I think the application is flawed. It’s simple enough. We’re getting to the point where the only thing we can do that computers can’t is be creative. And computers are even making that far more efficient.
Heck, as a grade schooler in the 1960’s I used to lament at what humans would do when machines made everything - even each other. I think the final outcome is that nobody will really have to work much and we’ll end up with a 99% welfare state - though at a standard of living even better than the current middle class - and the 1% will be mind bogglingly rich.
Then again, I believe that humanity itself is at the brink and I can’t see it being much longer before the Lord returns. I think we are less than 50 years from cracking immortality.
So why did manufacturing ever leave America?
As long as there are evil printers, there will be need for people or robots to support them.
I hate, loathe, despise, and detest printers.
At least Lotus Notes is mostly out of my life.
whoa— Classic!
Good question.
I believe a mix of two things:
First off, we must make it more expensive to export jobs, and to import manufactured goods from countries which don’t likewise support American manufacturers. Bigtime. Which means we need import tariffs.
Meanwhile we need to (greatly) decrease the amount of government interference in manufacturing stateside.
Those two things together.
Bring manufacturing back to America.
So will robots free Chinese peasants or will they free the American lower class?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again...unless they program the robots to BUY STUFF, then we’ll all lose our jobs, whether or not a robot can do it.
One of the things the Longshoremen at our ports fight against tooth and nail is automation. I am rooting for the bots on this one.
Not sure about that. Friend of mine got a degree in philosophy and started work immediately as a waitress...
All of the above. The combo of 3D printers and robots has the potential of making the vast majority of the work force (think the entire retail supply chain, from base parts through to the clerk you takes your money) simply being unnecessary.
Our critical manufacturing base, the arsenal of democracy, is now a hollow shell.
Well, I’m just putting on my Milton Friedman hat... otherwise, there is justification to weaken free-market capitalism, and room to grow government.
How do you propose that we cure ‘greed’? What law or regulation would you put in place to end ‘greed’ in America?
LOL
That was exactly my first thought. If robots replace workers then who is that will be buying what these robots are producing?
Their called tariffs, and our founding fathers knew haw to use them. It isn’t a new concept.
haw = how, sorry.
Most of the engineering work that I did back when I first graduated is now done by computers --so most work economists used to do is now automated. We got more engineers working now than ever --so I expect the same for economists. Obama voters are a different case w/ their min.wage hikes. They're making robots seem very affordable...
“Why is it allowed to hamstring US companies to foreign competition, but then not hold foreign companies to the same stringent standards US companies are?”
Since 1990 the globalists in academia, Congress, and business have perverted the concept of free trade.
The founding fathers view of free trade had nothing to do with tariffs. Under British rule colonial merchants chafed at British government restrictions as to what nations they could trade with as well as crown grants of exclusivity for various products to individual politically favored companies. Free trade to our founders meant the freedom to trade with any nation, company or individual without government restriction.
For the first 130 years of the nation’s history high tariffs funded the operation of the federal government (there was no income tax) and prevented foreign nations from interfering with the development of industry inside the United States. During that period, US merchants freely traded around the world (except during the Civil War when the US government blockaded southern ports) while the US developed the largest manufacturing economy on the planet and the world’s highest standard of living. High tariffs did not prevent Yankee merchants from developing a global trading network.
The founders understood that tariffs represent a fee to foreign enterprises for access to a market. Why should a Chinese government subsidized factory have free access to the US market when a domestic US company pays a federal tax rate of 30%+ and state taxes for the privilege of selling its products to US citizens? The founding fathers would consider our current definition of “free trade” as being “no tariffs” laughable.
The elimination of tariffs benefits big banks, multinational corporations, and third world countries at the expense of the middle class in developed nations. If our founding fathers looked at the USA of today, and the undeclared economic war we are losing to China, they would immediately levy a stiff tariff on imported goods, reversing the failed 25 year experiment with no tariff free trade.
For an answer to your specific question, talk to the politicians owned by the “too big to fail” Wall Street banks and multinational corporations.
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