If Machines Produce Everything...

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#1405580 14-Oct-2015 11:22

Geektastic: Not everyone has those abilities and thus not everyone will be wealthy.

We don't need everybody to be wealthy.

We want everybody to be comfortable (well, I'd like to hope that everybody wants their fellow humans to live comfortable lives).

I think that is an achievable goal with only a little redistribution of wealth.

A Universal Basic Income would be a reasonable start along that road.

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MikeB4

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#1405588 14-Oct-2015 11:28

sleemanj:
Geektastic: Not everyone has those abilities and thus not everyone will be wealthy.

We don't need everybody to be wealthy.

We want everybody to be comfortable (well, I'd like to hope that everybody wants their fellow humans to live comfortable lives).

I think that is an achievable goal with only a little redistribution of wealth.

A Universal Basic Income would be a reasonable start along that road.

This has been tried and failed. It would be more advantageous if greater education was done on how to deal with ones income no matter how big or small it is. A good starting lesson is 'looking to the future and not over the fence'.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

sleemanj

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#1405599 14-Oct-2015 11:45

MikeB4:
This has been tried and failed.

Citation needed.

There is no point in saying "manage your money better", if in 30 years if there is a dearth of employment opportunity in order to get money - as it it wasn't already becoming a problem, with people living hand-to-mouth, not because they want to, not because they are bad at managing money, but because they are working every hour of the day, to support their family in the best way they can.

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MikeB4

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#1405615 14-Oct-2015 12:19

sleemanj:
MikeB4:
This has been tried and failed.

Citation needed.

There is no point in saying "manage your money better", if in 30 years if there is a dearth of employment opportunity in order to get money - as it it wasn't already becoming a problem, with people living hand-to-mouth, not because they want to, not because they are bad at managing money, but because they are working every hour of the day, to support their family in the best way they can.

Still does not change the need to manage ones money, be it personal, corporate or government.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

sleemanj

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#1405630 14-Oct-2015 12:30

MikeB4:
sleemanj:

There is no point in saying "manage your money better", if in 30 years if there is a dearth of employment opportunity in order to get money

Still does not change the need to manage ones money, be it personal, corporate or government.

There will be no money to manage, because, insufficient employment opportunities to get money from.

Just today from the World Bank: The world will have to create 600 million jobs over the next 10 years, or 5 million a month, just to prevent the situation from getting worse.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-13/if-you-re-young-the-job-outlook-is-grim-no-matter-where-you-live

If what you are saying is "yes, some alternative income stream is going to be necessary for the population, and we also need some education on monetary matters", then, yes, fine, that sounds reasonable, sensible even, but if you're just saying "teach the people how to handle their money and that will fix the problem", then no, not at all.

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DravidDavid

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#1405632 14-Oct-2015 12:34

A universal basic income won't work. If people do not work for their income, they are not being productive members of society. If there are few people being productive members of society, then all of a sudden you have a shortage of things to buy with your basic income. If it gets too bad, your basic income won't be able to buy anything at all because it would be so expensive.

I don't see "money" as we know it lasting much longer anyway. I give it 7 to 10 years before we see another massive dive and a huge correction. Some aren't so optimistic about the global economy. Things will eventually fall to bits.

I feel we need to focus less on how robots are taking over our jobs and more about how the next system works once the one we have collapses. Although, it's very likely that it will be relatively the same as the one we have now.

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sleemanj

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#1405641 14-Oct-2015 12:50

DravidDavid: A universal basic income won't work. If people do not work for their income, they are not being productive members of society.

Contrarily, a UBI provides income for those who wish to work for example as:

Volunteers
Artists and other cultural endeavours
Caregivers for children, and parents

It provides for income for:

Retired
  Injured
Disabled
Students

And ultimately, for the unemployed, or unemployable for whatever reason (circumstance, skill, redundancy, character). Trials have shown that reduction in "desire to work" is minimal - and remember BASIC income, it's not a luxurious life we are aiming for, just a sustainable one, people will always be driven to work both for money and fulfilment - although a shift in the types of work is likely to make traditiionally unpaid types of work more tenable - this is in fact arguably desirable.

The problem isn't that money isn't going to be made (subject to your idea of a monetary based system being one which is on borrowed time... not sure I'd agree with that in the near (<100 years) future), it's where it goes, with increased generalist automation tasks the money stays in the hands of the businesses as profit, not to workers as wages, because there will be fewer and fewer of those wage earning workers required (or in the best case, the number of jobs required will increase, but the number of jobs available will not increase at a sufficient rate) over the next few decades.

Trickle-down economics doesn't work if there isn't a path for it to trickle down through (if it ever did).

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frankv

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#1405642 14-Oct-2015 12:52

MikeB4:
This has been tried and failed. It would be more advantageous if greater education was done....

Agree up to this point.

Reality for some people is that they are in a poverty trap... they aren't looking over the fence, and can't look to the future.

For example, we might all agree that it's a good idea to buy in bulk and save money. Except that buying one commodity in bulk would mean there's not enough left this week to buy everything else that's needed. Or buy at a supermarket. Except that then you really need a car to transport all your groceries home.

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#1405647 14-Oct-2015 13:03

frankv:
MikeB4:
This has been tried and failed. It would be more advantageous if greater education was done....

Agree up to this point.

Reality for some people is that they are in a poverty trap... they aren't looking over the fence, and can't look to the future.

For example, we might all agree that it's a good idea to buy in bulk and save money. Except that buying one commodity in bulk would mean there's not enough left this week to buy everything else that's needed. Or buy at a supermarket. Except that then you really need a car to transport all your groceries home.

In my work over decades I dealt with this daily(until I moved to IT, I needed a break). Many people are in a bad place but management of their situation is critical. I know one can only do this for so long without a blow out. They did have blow outs and it became my role to help manage that for them, with them but manage was still a must.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

MikeAqua

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#1405708 14-Oct-2015 14:50

If automation really progresses, and most work is undertaken by technology, then only people who have own productive productive assets (food production, technology, real estate) will make money.

That suggests we will have to restructure our economies so that people primarily derive income not from employment but from cash yielding investments.

Mike

Fred99

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#1405769 14-Oct-2015 16:02

MikeAqua: If automation really progresses, and most work is undertaken by technology, then only people who have own productive productive assets (food production, technology, real estate) will make money.

True

MikeAqua: That suggests we will have to restructure our economies so that people primarily derive income not from employment but from cash yielding investments.

That's a very grim prospect - even in a wealthy country like NZ, median net assets per person is remarkably low - not in your wildest dreams could 50% of the people survive on income from investments of less than USD $76,607. Most of that is presumably already invested in real estate.

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surfisup1000

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#1405810 14-Oct-2015 17:28

It will not be a big bang change. You can't stop the juggernaut, automation is a creeping technology.

Language translators might already be losing work. I've been impressed with the improvement in language translation tools.

Baxter type robots are starting to become more common.

Computers are taking parts of various jobs already, such as in legal , factories , medical . All this stuff is well documented.

Driverless cars are now starting to look like a reality as processing power is sufficient / cheap/ small form factor to run in realtime.

NZ post are cutting back due to falling letter numbers.

The social changes will be huge -- unemployment contributes heavily toward increased crime/obesity/mental health issues/family stability problems.

And, it will not be like the old days where people could just switch to new industries.

Batman

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#1405816 14-Oct-2015 17:35

I'm not sure if this is a hypothetical question or not.

Machines already produce most things that machines could produce. Eg TV, canned food,

The rest are either not machine producable, or not conducive. Eg flying an aircraft, removing an appendix, playing competitive sport.

sleemanj

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#1405820 14-Oct-2015 17:44

joker97: The rest are either not machine producable, or not conducive. Eg flying an aircraft, removing an appendix

Pilotless aviation is a matter of time, as we already know somewhat autonomous aircraft are in use daily militarily, pilotless or remotely piloted transport aircraft with 1 pilot overseeing many aircraft, most in cruise, is an economic and potentially safety improvement. It's no different to driver-less land transport.

Removing an appendix, is further out certainly but even if it's a surgeon still doing the work, the anaesthetist, the nurses, and all the various support staff... that's bot work in perhaps 30 years.

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sir1963

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#1405835 14-Oct-2015 17:58

sleemanj: Tesla have in the last couple days announced that they have approvals to soon be enable existing vehicles to self-drive hands-free (well, at least during cruise, parking etc).

Think about the size of the transport industry.

Think how transport operators might feel about being able to, in the not very distant future, have a vehicle that can drive itself, can do so 24 hours a day, without getting tired, making fewer errors, drive in manners which consistently optimise between time and wear, can monitor and problems and all manner of other advantages, consequently reducing the cost of operations and increasing profit.

The transport industry WILL switch to self-driving vehicles (unless it's artificially restricted from doing so due to laws), it's not a question of IF at all, it's just WHEN. An entire industry.

The time to prepare for this shift, and in other industries which will suffer similar fates, is now, not in 20 or 30 years when things are looking pretty bleak and we say "damn, why didn't we see this coming".

I will believe it when I see it.
I think the Americans are as likely to give up driving as they are to give up guns.

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