Why the future isn't all that bleak

[blazespinnaker]

If you've ever have seen these Kiva robots you start to realize that the future may not be all that bleak after all.

How does inflation work in a world where people don't have to work? They can just spend all their time creating?

Innovations such as the Kiva system are coming down the pipe .. for *everything*. The first Robotic Fast Food diner is just around the corner.

A robot which has the arms, fingers, hands, and eyes of a regular human being will soon be available .. so companies like foxconn will be mostly automated.

This is the future and it makes things like money seem a little silly.


http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/03/soap-com/

[don]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

Destined to be a relic long after we're gone, of how far things went with cheap energy. The future:

Ever consider using robots....

[ASH]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

The problem is who owns the robots, and the products of their automated labor. A man "freed from labor" by a machine is also "freed" from his livelihood, unless he owns the machine. As machines become more and more capable, the labor of less capable humans becomes less valuable. It would be nice if those whose labor is taken over by machines were 'freed' to take on more creative challenges, but I would argue that if they had the ability to do so after being displaced by a machine, then they also had that ability before being displaced... and the fact that they were not already doing something more creative means they had inadequate economic value in that 'creative' role -- either through lack of ability, or lack of practical applicability. In short, a dishwasher is a machine that frees us from necessary manual labor, and allows us to do more productive things with our time. (Also, it is generally necessary to own said dishwasher to realize this benefit.) But a machine that performs the subsistence job of a human is something else. It isn't like flipping burgers at a fast food joint is a tedious but necessary task that humans have to do, which is preventing them from doing something more creative with greater value added. Flipping burgers at a fast food joint is sometimes the most economically valuable thing that a human being is able to do. Worse yet, it will be the owners of the fast food joint who own the robot -- not the displaced worker -- so the robot will not be doing work for the benefit of the displaced laborer.

EDIT: This is a rehash of the old Luddite argument, and as a worker in technology, I'm a little embarrassed to be echoing 19th century Luddites. Technical progress has so far tended to increase the aggregate wealth of society, and this is often cited as evidence that the Luddites were wrong to oppose mechanization of their textile industry. But at a personal level, the Luddites were probably right -- the mechanization of their industry did reduce the value of their labor, and the fruits of the increase in productivity enjoyed by society as a whole were offset by a much sharper drop in their own economic value. This is similar to arguments about globalization. Labor arbitrage and free trade do tend to increase the cost efficiency of production, resulting in cheaper goods for society as a whole and larger profits for the capitalists, but an outcome for displaced workers that is generally worse on an individual level. I am making an argument of degree, suggesting that when robots can replace low-end human labor in a broad spectrum of low-skill tasks, that will create significant social problems rather than a utopia of creative leisure.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

the mechanization of their industry did reduce the value of their labor

Presently we allocate worth on the basis of (1) one's labor, (2) the rent on the product of that labor, and (3) the financing of the rent yielding investments.

This presumes that labor "has value", that the harder, luckier or smarter worker tends to earn more.

This breaks down in a world where one's labor has little or no value, whether because there is too little of value (extreme poverty) or an over abundance of "stuff." It also breaks down in times of excess tyranny or excess anarchy.

In those places and times when there is some, but not too much, stuff, and when there is some peaceful order and freedom to pursue one's own goals, but not a collapse of social order, then motivated labor is rewarded, and also a marginal increase in stuff available (a good crop, say) increases the wealth of the average worker.

But if we dump all the goods of a dozen large container ships on the shores of some isolated Pacific island with but a few hundred primitive residents, we likely destroy their social order and remove the value of their labor.

We do not know how, as a civilization, to usefully and sustain-ably allocate wealth to workers when work has little value. The rentiers and bankers still seem to have wealth acquiring means, but without a productive working class, I doubt even that is sustainable.

Liberal social policies finesse this problem for a while by inventing various excuses to still get paid while not working, such as going to stupefying school longer, retiring earlier, working fewer hours per week, taking more vacations, getting paid while unemployed, getting paid leave while pregnant or one's spouse is pregnant, increased welfare benefits, increased disability benefits, increased prison populations, ... But these programs mostly move the power to decide who gets what from the individual deciding when and how to work, to the state deciding who gets what benefits. That centralization of power has its own problems, tending toward tyranny.

[ViC78]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

But these programs mostly move the power to decide who gets what from the individual deciding when and how to work, to the state deciding who gets what benefits. That centralization of power has its own problems, tending toward tyranny.

TPC -

I am curious as to how an individual would gain enough say as to enact his/her choice in when/how to work. To borrow from ASH's example, how will the burger flipper be empowered enough to decide what we he wants to do once the machines have taken over his former job.

[flintlock]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

All this makes the assumption that people are necessary. They seem to be becoming less relevant every day. As long as life on Earth is always measured in cold hard productivity numbers then the logical conclusion is to eventually let the robots take over, with perhaps a few of our best brains preserved in a pickle jar, to be tapped into by the robots whenever they hit a snag.

Seriously, we have all been so programmed to see technology as only a good thing that we have not always thought out all the consequences. The eventual result will be either 1) the general public is almost totally subsidized by those few who remain productive( already on the way to this) or 2) a reduction in the population.( not likely)

[ASH]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

The eventual result will be either 1) the general public is almost totally subsidized by those few who remain productive (already on the way to this) or 2) a reduction in the population. (not likely)

This would be my conclusion as well... provided we don't hit a resource constraint first. It takes a lot of energy to make and operate machines. The machines are only a good deal so long as energy is cheap. On the other hand, living creatures work pretty well off of a solar-power fuel cycle. I'm inclined to vote with Don about how the rise of the machines could end, if we don't have some breakthroughs in energy technology.

My only comment is that it won't be the "few who remain productive" that subsidize everyone else, so much as "the few who own the machines". Taken to an extreme (and after much political turmoil, as ownership of the machines is transferred) I think this ends in "workable" economic communism -- or something much like it -- wherein the people own the machines through the state, and each citizen is due a share of the national production. I say "workable" because one glaring problem with economic communism is that when outcome is divorced from work and risks taken, productivity and innovation suffer. But if the machines are doing all the labor and innovating, the machines could run the economy at the maximum level of productivity which could be technically achieved, distributing the unearned results equally to their human masters, without need for a profit motive. Right up until the cyborg revolution.

But Cow is right that once human labor has negligible economic value, our entire system falls apart.

[marvenger]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

who owns the machines isn't based on who had the creativity to create them, financial control ends up owning the control of production, not creativity. When are you guys going to realise that there is no such thing as reward comensurate with contribution in this world. Most truly creative people realise this and actually would like their inventions to benefit all rather than powerful interests who control capital and are interested in profits. I don't believe that there is aa neat a scientific process as descibed by Marx that leads to the end of capitalism but I do agree with him, and many others, that profit seeking causes problems and isn't the road to nirvana in and of itself. It needs to be significantly better managed to ensure aggregate demand or you need a drastically different system. In the interests of not changing things to drastically I'd currently go for the first option and then see where we're at.

[gnk]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

This would be my conclusion as well... provided we don't hit a resource constraint first. It takes a lot of energy to make and operate machines. The machines are only a good deal so long as energy is cheap. On the other hand, living creatures work pretty well off of a solar-power fuel cycle. I'm inclined to vote with Don about how the rise of the machines could end, if we don't have some breakthroughs in energy technology.

My only comment is that it won't be the "few who remain productive" that subsidize everyone else, so much as "the few who own the machines". Taken to an extreme (and after much political turmoil, as ownership of the machines is transferred) I think this ends in "workable" economic communism -- or something much like it -- wherein the people own the machines through the state, and each citizen is due a share of the national production. I say "workable" because one glaring problem with economic communism is that when outcome is divorced from work and risks taken, productivity and innovation suffer. But if the machines are doing all the labor and innovating, the machines could run the economy at the maximum level of productivity which could be technically achieved, distributing the unearned results equally to their human masters, without need for a profit motive. Right up until the cyborg revolution.

But Cow is right that once human labor has negligible economic value, our entire system falls apart.

I agree as well... but it doesn't have to be so tragic of an economic endgame.

Think like a European, not an American:

There will always be a need for work, just too many people for the jobs, right? So... just shorten the work week. Lengthen vacations to say, 3-4 months a year... and everybody that wants a job can get one.

[marvenger]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

man you guys are now starting to sound like jacques fresco and the zeitgeist movement. Good stuff.

[ASH]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

who owns the machines isn't based on who had the creativity to create them, financial control ends up owning the control of production, not creativity.

I agree with this 100%. I figured that "capitalists" are who will own the machines initially, since robots like factories or other equipment constitute "capital". Capitalists and financiers, just as you suggest. My point about "the few who own the machines" versus "the few who remain productive" was that if most economic activity is being performed by machines, then it isn't the minor produce of those whose labor remains valuable that will have to be redistributed, but rather the massive produce of the machines.

[marvenger]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

In wholehearted agreement with you. and the best thing is that the machine won't feel jealous or short-changed. Now we just have to slowly reduce hundreds of years of engrained capitalist self interest so the entitled powerful don't feel so short-changed about giving up their massive and massively arbitrary large share of the machine's produce.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

I am curious as to how an individual would gain enough say as to enact his/her choice in when/how to work. To borrow from ASH's example, how will the burger flipper be empowered enough to decide what we he wants to do once the machines have taken over his former job.

When labor is valued, then workers have a decent choice of jobs. Their labor is needed. The hard worker is rewarded more than the lazy.

But now we don't need the labor of many of our would-be workers. Many unemployed can find no decent choices of where to work. That burger flipper is not so empowered, even now, and will be less so as the job becomes more automated.

Hunter-gatherers rely on the land where they live, and their past generations lived, to connect them with their destiny, their meaning. Farmers and industrial workers rely on their labor; the fields and the factories can change. That connection is now being challenged, as abundant energy, fertile technology, automation and global mercantilism have diminished and commoditized the worth of the laborer.

The Luddite arguments blame this abundant energy, fertile technology and global mercantilism for this disconnect, and recommend downsizing, as if to say:

We don't know how to adapt to such wealth of material capacity, so should regress to simpler means of existence.

This would be unfortunate, in my view. I hope we can we find a new ethos, a new cultural emphasis. See further a good talk by Spencer Wells at The Unforeseen Cost of Human Civilisation. Our natural resources are limited, but our common labor is declining in value.

[ASH]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

In wholehearted agreement with you. and the best thing is that the machine won't feel jealous or short-changed. Now we just have to slowly reduce hundreds of years of engrained capitalist self interest so the entitled powerful don't feel so short-changed about giving up their massive and massively arbitrary large share of the machine's produce.

It is a dark day when I realize I'm a theoretical communist in a fantasy world of free energy and labor. Or maybe that's okay, because right now, free energy and labor are a fantasy. Or maybe it's not okay, because there certainly are a lot of people whose labor isn't particularly valuable... and yet mine is (so far), and I have little interest in sharing (much).

[Serge_Tomiko]

Re: Why the future isn't all that bleak

If you've ever have seen these Kiva robots you start to realize that the future may not be all that bleak after all.

How does inflation work in a world where people don't have to work? They can just spend all their time creating?

Innovations such as the Kiva system are coming down the pipe .. for *everything*. The first Robotic Fast Food diner is just around the corner.

A robot which has the arms, fingers, hands, and eyes of a regular human being will soon be available .. so companies like foxconn will be mostly automated.

This is the future and it makes things like money seem a little silly.


http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/03/soap-com/

There are many people, myself included, who find such a world terrifying. We are already dealing with the consequences of 100 years of modern technology and progressive ideals. The dysgenic trend will destroy us.