Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

[LazyBoy]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

With a few different decisions in the past (or now, I would guess) from our leaders, we would have tons of jobs. The U.S. government can borrow trillions. Those trillions could be spent to modernize our infrastructure. China has demonstrated that it can be done. There is at least $20 trillion worth of improvements that could be made in the infrastructure in the U.S. After that is done, perhaps we can talk about jobs springing into existence.

China has shown how to pull 100's of millions of people out of poverty, not through hand-outs, but through jobs. I cannot believe the U.S., with all its current resources (including credit), could not make a few tens of millions of jobs. It is laughable.

I like the infrastructure idea and it should definitely be done. (Anything that helps!) But I worry that it won't scale enough. Builders want 1 trained backhoe operator not 50 ditch diggers. If we're trying to employ "everybody" than we need a difficult mix of jobs.

Regarding China: China did it building cities that weren't needed. The people in poverty were subsistence farmers, so at least they were eating. And it's not clear that China's pulled-up workers live better than our unemployed. So Ghent12 will tell us that we have to knock them down first. (Which may be a fair point in theory, but it's brutal in reality.)

Poverty in America is, to some extent, voluntary. People magically find jobs in large numbers after various effective welfare reform measures. You don't need to bother trying to find employment for them--they will do that on their own.

"To some extent" is quite a qualifier, but at least you acknowledge the need for magic.

"Remove the safety nets" and people will find jobs "to some extent". And the rest? What happens with the safety nets gone? I wonder what your acceptable success rate is.

[Ghent12]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

I like the infrastructure idea and it should definitely be done. (Anything that helps!) But I worry that it won't scale enough. Builders want 1 trained backhoe operator not 50 ditch diggers. If we're trying to employ "everybody" than we need a difficult mix of jobs.

Regarding China: China did it building cities that weren't needed. The people in poverty were subsistence farmers, so at least they were eating. And it's not clear that China's pulled-up workers live better than our unemployed. So Ghent12 will tell us that we have to knock them down first. (Which may be a fair point in theory, but it's brutal in reality.)


"To some extent" is quite a qualifier, but at least you acknowledge the need for magic.

"Remove the safety nets" and people will find jobs "to some extent". And the rest? What happens with the safety nets gone? I wonder what your acceptable success rate is.

You might ask what happens to "the rest" after minimum wage laws increase and bring new people into the ranks of the permanently unemployable.

Enough of the poor in America live in poverty by choice as to make my statement valid. You can misconstrue what I've said as much as you want, but the facts speak for themselves--when welfare is reduced, people suddenly find jobs as if by magic. People often take care of themselves pretty effectively, and with the exception of the socially dead (i.e. the substance addicted homeless), they have every incentive to do so when their sugar daddy stops paying for their lifestyle. On a related note, American poverty can, statistically speaking, be reduced by greater than half if poor unwed mothers married the fathers of their children. Welfare setups are designed in such a way as to disincentivize that basic human association as well.

Regardless, and back on the main subject, technological increases in productivity through automation can only help the poor very substantially. It sucks to be poor, but it's better to be poor when prices of things you need are falling generally because they can be produced much more cheaply.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

Microsoft enjoyed its status for so long not because of the principles of a "natural monopoly" but rather because of intellectual property laws. Supporters of IP laws unknowingly often support monopolies and retarding of scientific and technological progress--see the Wright brothers for another example.

I don't believe that a substantial private software industry would exist without intellectual property laws. That is, if government did not have laws against software piracy, I don't think the software industry would be where it is today since very few people truly enjoy writing that much software for practically nothing. Outside of government laws prohibiting software piracy, Microsoft's monopoly came about due to the relative quality of their software. What I'm saying is that if we allow for reasonable intellectual property laws--and I'm saying anti-software-piracy is reasonable--Microsoft created a virtual monopoly without any other government interference.

The very nature of networked systems creates an environment where monopolies are practically guaranteed to arise. Once a company gets enough users into its system, it becomes very difficult for competitors to mount a credible threat to the big player. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and eBay are very clear examples of the winner-takes-all aspect of these systems. In the old days, the network was AT&T's telephone system. The next monopoly is something to do with cloud computing. That's why Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are throwing so much money to develop the dominant platform.

These are monopolies that are developing without government interference.

If you think the cell phone industry is an example of monopoly, you are utilizing pointless definitions. A single firm having 90% market share is an acceptable case of a monopoly. Two firms at 70% (your claim for the cellular industry), with a dozen or more filling the rest of the market, is hardly acceptable.

The cell phone industry, strictly speaking, is an oligopoly where AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile probably control well over 90% of the market. However, isn't it peculiar that prices for cell phone service from each of the big vendors in the U.S. is practically the same? Furthermore, cell phone service in other wealthy, developed nations is far less expensive than in the U.S. despite being better in quality.

I wish I had saved it but there was a Bloomberg article recently that detailed why foreign investors are so interested in buying into the U.S. telecommunications market. The reason was that over the past five years, the profits of mobile phone plans and Internet service fell in most developed nations. However, in the U.S., it grew by over 20%. For all of the purported competition of capitalism present in the U.S. markets, I find it strange that socialist countries trounce us on pricing for communications.

If I can find the news article, I'll post it here. Between that article and what I've seen of communications costs in other countries, something is clearly very wrong with the U.S. markets.

--

Update: And here is the relevant quote from the Bloomberg article, "Why Billionaires Salivate over the U.S. Wireless Market."

Americans have kept on paying a steady rate for wireless services as speeds get faster and new features like video are added to their plans. U.S. carriers got an average of $48.17 a month in revenue per user in the fourth quarter, compared with $32.51 in France, according to researcher Informa Plc.


Wireless revenue per capita rose 17 percent in the U.S. from the beginning of 2009 through the middle of 2013, compared with a 4 percent decline for the rest of the developed world, according to MoffettNathanson LLC.


“We have witnessed a jaw-dropping 21 percent divergence between the U.S. and the rest of the world in just four short years,” analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a January report. “The U.S. wireless market has steadily grown, first on the back of wireless voice and now, more recently, on the back of wireless data.”

[dcarrigg]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

Unfair game is unfair.

You can point to intellectual property law as proof of "Government involvement."

I can point to all property law as proof of "Government involvement."

That means not only are all monopolies caused by government according to your new expanded definition.

All markets and businesses bar none are caused by government if you want to give government so much credit for business results that it becomes responsible for the success of Microsoft et all.

Show me one land with no government where markets and business are booming. Show me a place that respects property rights without government, police, law, and courts. Even if you come up with an example, I bet I can find a strongman/strongmen that are acting as a government.

See?

Unfair game is unfair.

You can redefine terms as you want. But if you go looking for any government connection whatsoever to "prove" all bad things are 100% the government's fault, you're falling into a conspiracy theorists' fallacy.

It becomes clear you think all businesses are angels and all governments are devils. But the way I see it, if government gets 100% of the credit for "bad" monopolies in your story, it should get 100% of the credit for "good" competitive markets too.

Either that or maybe you should rethink the "all business results that interact with law become the government's fault" position.

Because the government and the market are not antithetical. In fact, the two always go together. Every single time. Without private property rights and law, there is no market.

So yes, you can say the NFL, MLB and such are because of intellectual property law. You can say that US Steel and Standard Oil were "good" monopolies. You can say that Ma Bell was because of state law.

But all property is protected by law. And law establishes the fact that land is for sale and the rule by which it is sold.

Without law, it's just might makes right.

No way a frail 60 year old white woman gets to automatically and safely inherit $63,700,000,000 from WalMart without law. Someone in Arkansas would just come up and take "their share." Without law, what's to stop them?

Law's what makes the whole damn system work.

So just saying "laws were involved" doesn't make me think monopolies are "unnatural" in any way sense or form. Because if it did, then markets themselves would be "unnatural."

And this "natural" "artificial" thing is a fool's distinction anyways.

In the beginning there were hunter-gatherers. They lived like they were on a permanent camping/hunting trip. Carrying a lot of extra stuff was a pain in the ass. They didn't have private property. They didn't own land. They didn't have law. Everything was shared within the tribe. Just like you might share everything in your house with your family without charging them any money now.

Then came the agricultural revolution. And people grew crops. But to do this they had to stay in one spot. And they had to protect that spot. Staying put let them generate and store surplus food. The farmland was held in common and food and everything else was shared. But the surplus could be traded with other tribes outside. The beginning of the gift/reciprocity economy formed.

And so the seeds were sown with those first fields for governments and trade both. Warriors needed to protect an exclusive geographic area from other men and other animals. Surplus existed for the first time and allowed pre-market gift-style trading. All because people learned how to farm.

So law and trade arrive around the same time.

Both as natural as farming ever was for man.

The two go together like peas and carrots.

[Shakespear]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

If you’ve seen a sci-fi flick with autonomous robots in the last 40 years, you may be wary of giving robots any semblance of control.But new research coming out of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) suggests that letting robots have control over human tasks in manufacturing is not just more efficient — it’s actually preferred by workers.While manufacturers have long recognized the benefits of automation in streamlining processes and freeing humans from tedious tasks, such as aisle-running, there’s always a concern that workers may feel devalued or even replaceable.“In our research we were seeking to find that sweet spot for ensuring that the human workforce is both satisfied and productive,” says project lead Matthew Gombolay, a PhD student at CSAIL. “We discovered that the answer is to actually give machines more autonomy, if it helps people to work together more fluently with robot teammates.”

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/want-...s-take-control
Bring them on. I am waiting for the take it to bed version.

The subject of robots will not go away. Will it be for the better or worst for mankind ? WILL SEE. But I am certain of one thing, there are technologies that are beyond our control, as best as can be ascertained in public today. And Fuckushima (poisoning Pacific as we speak) is one such example, though the rest of the nuclear industry cadavers are well shielded from public discussion or attention. In this area there is complete loss of control by the nation, because control is with corporations.

[don]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

Shakes, you have some catching up to do. Fukushima was solved here on the 'tulip months ago

[Shakespear]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

Shakes, you have some catching up to do. Fukushima was solved here on the 'tulip months ago

Great. All that worrying for nothing.

[don]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

Great. All that worrying for nothing.

drink up!

[vinoveri]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

Because the government and the market are not antithetical. In fact, the two always go together. Every single time. Without private property rights and law, there is no market.

The framers understood the goal and challenge before them. They succeeded in part, but wealth and power has succeeded in corrupting the gov to serve only those interests at present.
How many American children read or are taught the substance embodied in Federalist Papers? Not many. Why?
Who's fault is it? The plutocrats who want a dumb down population? The leftist reformers who never heard of a white westerner they didn't want to demonize?

Please, any educators in the audience tell me why? I learned and read then 35 years ago; they are important; they go to the heart of how this country's government was to be set up and embody the principles of liberty, commonwealth, consent of the governed etc.

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.


http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm

[Ghent12]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

Unfair game is unfair.

You can point to intellectual property law as proof of "Government involvement."

I can point to all property law as proof of "Government involvement."

That means not only are all monopolies caused by government according to your new expanded definition.

All markets and businesses bar none are caused by government if you want to give government so much credit for business results that it becomes responsible for the success of Microsoft et all.

Show me one land with no government where markets and business are booming. Show me a place that respects property rights without government, police, law, and courts. Even if you come up with an example, I bet I can find a strongman/strongmen that are acting as a government.

See?

Unfair game is unfair.

Intellectual property ownership as a concept is not very similar to the concept of physical property ownership. Physical property ownership extends from the notion that you own your own body and are entitled to the fruits of your labor. Intellectual property ownership extends from no similar notion, but rather from the playground notion of "winners keepers, losers weepers." Physical property ownership as a concept says that if you create an object, you are entitled to own that object. Intellectual property ownership as a concept says that if you create an object which is sufficiently different from other objects as determined through arbitration, you are entitled to prevent others from creating that or similar objects.

While the concept of intellectual property ownership may spur on some innovation, it also serves to retard technological progress and invention by quashing the interaction which would normally take place in a more free society. For every successful new technology or idea to survive the patent process, there are an unseen number of others which are quashed by people seeking to stop others from using "their" discovery (occasionally more efficiently) or by corporations buying and squatting on huge numbers of patents for various (typically nefarious) reasons. You talk about an unfair game, but in reality there is no fairness in economics beyond voluntary transactions. You cannot clearly see the damage done by intellectual property schemes, you can only clearly see some of the benefits. However, in terms of principle, "intellectual property rights" means, exclusively, the use of force to stop innovation.

Another problem with intellectual property rights is the arbitrary nature of them. Physical property ownership is principled--I own my body, my labor, and the fruits of my labor in accordance with whatever agreements I make to exchange either my labor or the fruits of my labor. Intellectual property rights are arbitrary--I own an intangible idea and all arbitrarily-defined similarities to it, and I own this idea for who knows how long (increasingly, due to government capture, the limit of ownership of an idea goes to infinity as time goes to infinity) before I lose ownership of it, then it becomes free domain.

No, intellectual property is not at all similar to private property.

As for laws, they are a mechanism to enforce private property rights and any other "rights" invented under any political/economic system. They are as necessary for capitalism as they are for socialism, communism, feudalism, or any other -ism. A technical distinction is that a free and unfettered market wouldn't have laws (except against laws), but a capitalist economy would have legal protection for private property (including life) and agreements (contracts). The legal environment sets the stage for the economy, and the economy can be defined by the legal environment. We do not live in a capitalist economy, but rather in a capitalist-like economy rife with various forms of politically palatable corruption. The government works in the interest of various sectors of the economy, and that's okay to Joe the Voter because those poor farmers, poor poor people, poor domestic companies, poor union members, poor state government employees, poor energy companies, poor green companies, poor auto companies, poor foolish financial companies all need a little help from time to time, amiright?

By the way, Lucas will own Star Wars for 75 years after his death. How's that for an impressive incentive to be creative?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

I assume you're saying you believe private property is a Natural Right handed down from God a la John Locke. Even then, there's a social contract component once money comes into the picture and theological components against letting surplus spoil and starving out the poor through property ownership. That's the basis of the Two Treatises.

Regardless, let's say you do believe that you own yourself as private property, like any other slab of beef or slave on the auction block at the slave market.

And let's say from there that you believe you own the fruits of your labor since God granted man dominion in Genesis. Why would you not also own the fruits of your intellectual labor? Is your brain not part of you? Are your thoughts not your own? Do you not have the same right to intellectual labor as you do physical labor?

And sure, Lucus' heirs will get to own Star Wars for 75 years after his death, you're right.

Then again, Christy Walton gets to be a multi-billionaire homemaker who never went to school or had a job because Sam Walton willed it.

Property law dictates what's allowable.

Of course a free and unfettered market would have laws. You need contract laws. You need laws banning theft and fraud. You need laws establishing a medium of exchange. In the end of the day, you probably even need a couple naval groups to keep tariffs out, ensure trade, and deter piracy. As they like to say in the service, "Freedom isn't free."

There is no free market in a vacuum. Never has been. Never will be. It always comes with a government attached.

So I don't see to much point in arguments that begin, "Well, if laws just did not exist, then..."

That doesn't mean you can't take on laws or regulations you feel are wrong or unnecessary as they come up.

But to lay all the blame for all monopolies, market failures and externalities squarely at the feet of Uncle Sam is absurd.

And to assert that market failures would not occur if the government didn't exist is equally absurd.

It's like saying that gravity wouldn't occur if the mass didn't exist.

It's a meaningless statement.

[Shakespear]

Robot Brain

Robo Brain – a large-scale computational system that learns from publicly available Internet resources – is currently downloading and processing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals. The information is being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format that robots will be able to draw on when they need it.To serve as helpers in our homes, offices and factories, robots will need to understand how the world works and how the humans around them behave. Robotics researchers have been teaching them these things one at a time: How to find your keys, pour a drink, put away dishes, and when not to interrupt two people having a conversation. This will all come in one package with Robo Brain.

http://phys.org/news/2014-08-robo-br...-internet.html

I like this comment, though I think the guy is a wild conspiracy theory lover.

This "Robo Brain" will be like the Brain Bug in Starship Troopers, directing and coordinating huge swarms of flying and crawling robots to kill us all. It will take minimum time to replicate the bug robots by the billions. If you think that they can be programmed to respect the sanctity of life, think again. Then look at those Youtube videos of people pouring molten aluminum into ant colonies with no regard of the hundreds of thousands of lives that they are killing in the most horrible way. When robots became intelligent, we will be just like those ants and suffer the same fate.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-08-robo-br...ernet.html#jCp

I would change this sentences to as follows,

Then look at those Youtube videos of people pouring molten aluminum into ant colonies with no regard of the hundreds of thousands of lives that they are killing in the most horrible way.

to

Then look at those Youtube videos of intelligent beings pouring molten aluminum into ant colonies with no regard of the hundreds of thousands of lives that they are killing in the most horrible way.

[touchring]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

With a few different decisions in the past (or now, I would guess) from our leaders, we would have tons of jobs. The U.S. government can borrow trillions. Those trillions could be spent to modernize our infrastructure. China has demonstrated that it can be done. There is at least $20 trillion worth of improvements that could be made in the infrastructure in the U.S. After that is done, perhaps we can talk about jobs springing into existence.

China has shown how to pull 100's of millions of people out of poverty, not through hand-outs, but through jobs. I cannot believe the U.S., with all its current resources (including credit), could not make a few tens of millions of jobs. It is laughable.

Can individual state governments go ahead and begin their own massive investment in infrastructure? Just wondering. Especially California and state of New York?

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

By the way, Lucas will own Star Wars for 75 years after his death

Recent trade agreements force countries to rewrite intellectual privacy laws to match America’s. The agreements dissolve worker rights and screw up court systems for decades. The need for IP is clear, but the pendulum has swung so far toward corporate monopoly, libertarians are making a good case for no IP at all.

Ideology vs. Ideology. Compromise and common sense are dumped.

As any Thai rice farmer would tell you the world has gone screwy. Texas “Jasmati” took market share with a tweak, a patent, and multiple lawsuits.

Government and corporate/business interests have always had tremendous overlap, but currently one circle seems to fit perfectly on top of the other. The revolving door is spinning at RPM’s up there in the red zone. Corruption is an amazing thing…the tolerance of it, its creeping expansion, the new markets it creates, the way people see it in other cultures, but not their own.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Greenspan the Un-Rand

Monopoly isn't inevitable or even likely under capitalism. Monopoly requires complete ownership of something unique or complete ownership of all the means to produce and acquire a good or service within an economy of a given size. Monopolies in the United States are almost exclusively government-sponsored, government-supported, or otherwise products of political practices and not capitalist economic ones.

Let's play a game. You name a monopoly you think is a result of capitalism, and then you can take a turn explaining how that monopoly is not a product of the legal environment it resides in. Look to the laws which restrict competition and it should become apparent really quickly.

How did public policy create the AT&T monopoly on phone service? Activities which have large economies of scale can become monopolies without any political/legal action. If AT&T had raised rates too much, competition might have appeared. But the difficulty of putting an an alternative network of phone lines would have given them lots of margin to play with.

Regional railroads might have been in a simlar state before autos arrived.