patrick.net

A full blown welfare state won't work. People need to work, and if pay for that work is subsidized by the government, or by corporations (which one is an interesting question), then so be it.

I guess that is a welfare state in a sense. The question becomes, what do people do? How are they living useful beneficial lives.

PEople even need to be motivated to excel. That probably won't be lost in anycase. But I'm not for having people on the dole, without doing any work at all. Not for lonhg anyway.

marcus says

A full blown welfare state won't work. People need to work, and if pay for that work is subsidized by the government

In this robotics future, ppl's work won't be of economic value, only cultural. So sure, we can have barflys at conferences, improv comedians/musicians, etc, but none of that will have anything to do with real work vis-a-vis money.

I don't know if you remember him but George Plimpton, a trust fund baby "Yankee" Philips Exeter/Harvard Univ/Cambridge Univ educated elitist, accomplished almost nothing in life except talking about sports, the classics, etc, and his whole life was about posturing as some Anglo-American storyteller of the 1800s/1900s except that it involved Boston sports and other non sequitors.

John Bailo says

Hedge funds are run by computers whose owners could not match their speed. The web has eliminated the need for thousands of bureaucratic positions doing form filling and knowledge transfer.

Blue collar work is down to a sliver of its former self and white collar work is pro forma. Projects conceived like gameplay or scientific experiments...no need for a specific result. People work for two hours and spend 4 hours reporting on it. Then have lunch and go to the company gym.

More people working from home means less driving and less need for commuter transportation. A shift to fuel cells and solar generated hydrogen could spell a complete deindustrialization of society.

Ok, but the management/ownership don't want to pay ppl six figure salaries, if software/'bots can perform those same exact tasks.

Right now, at an insurance company, there are a couple of dozen actuaries who report to a couple of certified fellows. In the future, that 20+ headcount will be replaced by an IBM Watson server, while the two fellows verify the work and communicate with the clients. Right there, that's a severe collapse of a long lasting line of employment for educated workers, actuarial support. This will happen to every single line of work out there, rendering a large percentage of the population on the dole.

In my prior example... George Plimpton was living off his family's money, to be this roving, story telling, entertaining retro-Yankee gentleman of the 19th-to-20th century. In effect, that's all that there will be left for the general public, a type of non-paid for lifestyle coach. Since Deepak Copra's clients have jobs today, they pay his bills but in the future, his audience will be unemployed and thus, no speaking fees, it'll all have to be pro bono.

Rin says

Since Deepak Copra's clients have jobs today, they pay his bills but in the future, his audience will be unemployed and thus, no speaking fees, it'll all have to be pro bono.

BTW, the success coach, Dwayne Dyer, a type of an everyman American Deepak Chopra or Norman Pale/Earl Nightingale, has a daughter who's a so-called musician. Well, strangely enough, much of her outings were at her dad's seminars. That's kinda snarky, if you ask me, because in reality, her dad's followers are her captive audience.

You see, down the road, ppl won't be able to make money. Sure, they'll tout having artistic or creative endeavors, however, the audience will simply be broke and underemployed when software/'bots take over much of the work out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_XQ5ITv7p0

John Bailo says

It would seem like a very volatile situation to have a second tier of the best and the brightest completely disenfranchised unless the people in the 1% are truly superior and are confident in their ability to control the masses up to and including those who do well in school.

During the transition era, misinformation campaigns will help in keeping the disenfranchised from rising up. The best students will do what they've always done... play the academic game, hope to get into some elite internship program, and then, support some sales force or govt operation. The top 1% (the ownership team) doesn't have to be all that smart, if/when expert system cameras analyze the day-to-day stream of activities and pretty much, model the life of ppl out there on the streets. Any deviation from the "script" will set off a red flag for the Drones. Since Drones are all the rage with the Air Force today, in tomorrow's world, civilian based Police Patrol Drones will be able to monitor much wider areas of land than what any Police dept can do today.

Data analytics, the current bastion of white collar hood is also being challenged ...

https://www.groksolutions.com/product.html

So how many direct marketing or business systems analysts, will corporate America need, when software can provide the perfect white collar support staff to the executives?

More on this subject ...

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/robots-artificial-intelligence-jobs-automation

Please add to this thread than the Robot overlord one. This has all the pre-existing discussions.

Rin says

Please add to this thread than the Robot overlord one. This has all the pre-existing discussions.

Just what are those robot overlords going to do to us?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/dD_NdnYrDzY

All it says is that the Mick Jaggers and Steve Tylers of the future will be androids.

futuresmc says

Many didn't survive without welfare in the past. They died, usually from disease that took advantage of their emaciated states and wiped them out. Many went to work houses where they were worked to death for nothing but rotten food and rat infested living conditions. Some died of exposure or starvation outright, but that was the exception. You may like to return to this Darwinian nightmare. I'd prefer a social safety net.

I need proof. In fact the only examples I can think of off hand in the modern, but pre-welfare society where a machine replaced people was when the cotton gin was invented. And that resulted in increased demand for labor! Presumably nobody starved to death because if the invention of the cotton gin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin
Prior to the introduction of the mechanical cotton gin, cotton had required considerable labor to clean and separate the fibers from the seeds.[11] With Eli Whitney’s introduction of “teeth” in his cotton gin to comb out the cotton and separate the seeds, cotton became a tremendously profitable business, creating many fortunes in the Antebellum South. New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston and Galveston became major shipping ports, deriving substantial economic benefit from cotton raised throughout the South. Additionally, the greatly expanded supply of cotton created strong demand for textile machinery and improved machine designs that replaced wooden parts with metal. This led to the invention of many machine tools in the early 19th century.[12]

The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the South became even more dependent on plantations and slavery, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of the Southern economy.[13] While it took a single slave about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day.[14] The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850.[15] By 1860, the Southern states were providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton, and up to 80% of the crucial British market.[16] The cotton gin thus “transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse, and – according to many historians – was the start of the Industrial Revolution"

When the assembly line was, it also potentially put people out of work. But when I research that I see this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_line
The gains in productivity allowed Ford to increase worker pay from $1.50 per day to $5.00 per day once employees reached three years of service on the assembly line. Ford continued on to reduce the hourly work week while continuously lowering the Model T price.

Doesn't seem to me that creating an assembly line there resulted in lower employment levels either, since he dramatically increased wages.

OK, so I picked probably the two most famous examples of machines putting people out of work in the pre-welfare society, and I have no evidence of it causing unemployment and starvation. But with an open mind, I research further, because, you know, it just had to happen someplace, right? So I go back to wikipedia and research the Industrial Revolution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_revolution

The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes that occurred in the period from about 1760 to some time between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use of steam power and development of machine tools. The transition also included the change from wood and other bio-fuels to coal. The Industrial revolution began in Britain and within a few decades spread to Western Europe and the United States.

The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. Most notably, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. In the words of Nobel Prize winner Robert E. Lucas, Jr., "For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth ... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior is mentioned by the classical economists, even as a theoretical possibility.

As I read further down:

Food and nutrition

Transportation improvements, such as canals and improved roads, also lowered food costs. Railroads were introduced near the end of the Industrial Revolution.

So far I am only finding examples where machines taking the place of people increases their standard of living.

The industrial revolution only replaced manual labor with intellectual labor (hence, intellectual capital became the standard for success in modern times).

AI/machine learning/'bots will attempt to replace most knowledge workers. IBM Watson project below, is only the starting point ...

http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/will-ibms-watson-kill-your-career

Bellingham Bill says

Rin says

Nanny State of Sweden

the horror, LOL

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mef45jgim/3-sweden/

"The nation ranks 2nd in entrepreneurship opportunity"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/9645959/Sweden-pays-jobless-youth-to-move-to-Norway.html

Sweden was one of the few countries, unaffected by both World Wars, and had the strongest economy by the early 70s. Then, it went into full blown stagnation, as its policies were not sustainable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Sweden

As for welfare, it was avoidable for much of the time period from 1950 to 2010, when most able persons had the capacity for some paying work. This is where the old expression, 'Pull oneself up by the bootstrap', had some meaning because it was basically true.

However, starting from 2020 till 2070, when the means of development & production, move from humans to machine labor, ppl simply won't be getting paid for any work. If I'm an owner of a company, I'll assign expert systems to manage development, QA, production, and delivery. I'll even have a secondary expert system, to help tune the 1st one. Nowadays, database tuners earn $120 per hour as consultants. These will then be made obsolete, by secondary expert 'bots. In reality, I'll only need human salesmen to talk to other 'live' potential clients. Thus, with a headcount of 5% of today's employees, I could run an entire enterprise.

Rin says

o, this time around, the 'bots will be creating 'bots and then, will service them. This is the beginning of the end.

You will never live to see it.

JodyChunder says

Rin says

o, this time around, the 'bots will be creating 'bots and then, will service them. This is the beginning of the end.

You will never live to see it.

That is my hope but I have a feeling that I'll see it in old age.

Rin says

That is my hope but I have a feeling that I'll see it in old age.

Don't worry. For example, the government contains a huge number of jobs that can never be outsourced to machines. Obvious examples include POTUS and the Congress, whom the Constitution requires to be citizens over 25-35 (and POTUS must be born in the U.S.). Less obvious examples include the folks at the Pentagon who decide to pay $400 for a hammer - how on earth are you going to persuade a machine to pay $400 for a hammer? Even in the private sector, advertising, publicity, and promotion all require human creativity: how would a machine persuade you to fill your gullet with corn syrup? Even Max Headroom had human helpers. In a world where all the necessary work got done, and only the necessary work, then you could imagine robots doing all the work. But what kind of machine would paint a Klimt, and what kind of malfunction would cause another machine to pay $100 million for said Klimt? Machines can make things work, usually according to some sort of discernible logic, but the real money is in making things happen arbitrarily and capriciously, yet not randomly.

JodyChunder says

Rin says

o, this time around, the 'bots will be creating 'bots and then, will service them. This is the beginning of the end.

You will never live to see it.

I agree. Rin has been watching too many episodes of Battlestar Galactica.

zzyzzx says

I need proof. In fact the only examples I can think of off hand in the modern, but pre-welfare society where a machine replaced people was when the cotton gin was invented. And that resulted in increased demand for labor! Presumably nobody starved to death because if the invention of the cotton gin

Your useless segway into the cotton gin aside, a world without social welfare programs kills and impoverishes a lot of people. You don't need to starve to death to die from poverty. You can go hungry enough so that a night out in cold weather or a simple infection that a healthy, well fed person could easily fend off, takes your life. You can be so desperate that you take work that is hazardous to your health or work in unsafe conditions that get you killed. We have health and safety regulation and social welfare programs because of the misery that preceded them.

Industrialization did create new jobs and new opportunities for wealth, but many didn't survive to see it, not because they were lazy or otherwise undeserving, but because they didn't have the resources to make the transition without dying first.

Thankfully we don't have to live like that anymore. When we do live like that it's because our governments have been coopted by those who put economic gains above the survival of their fellow citizens, not because it's some inevitable force of nature.

zzyzzx says

Rin has been watching too many episodes of Battlestar Galactica.

Don't forget the Terminators series.

And given the 5-6K of present-time flying drones, with some ~10% having some expert systems guidance, I'd say that we're not too far away from a Skynet future in that dept either.

This time around, however, neither John nor Sarah Conner is going to help anyone. So while the human spirit is never broken, the human body can easily be extinguished. The James Cameron movies were only 20-30 years off in their predictions.

Luckily for us, we control the kill switch on the flying killing machines. Hopefully, that switch stays in human hands.

Dan8267 says

I would suggest that an economy based on the principle that all rents are paid to the government and used to provide equal distribution of wealth to all citizens is the ultimate solution to a fully automated economy.

That was the ultimate wet dream of a communist. It went really well in East Germany. Did you ever look at their version of a German automobile?

gsr says

Dan8267 says

I would suggest that an economy based on the principle that all rents are paid to the government and used to provide equal distribution of wealth to all citizens is the ultimate solution to a fully automated economy.

That was the ultimate wet dream of a communist. It went really well in East Germany. Did you ever look at their version of a German automobile?

Did you consider:

1) the German industrial base was destroyed by the war.
2) the Soviets HATED the Germans.
3) the West realized a despondent Germany was what facilitated the war. A strong West Germany was also necessary to buffer the eastern threat.
4) despite the help from the west many cars produced in West Germany also sucked.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1657867_1657782,00.html
http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/1962/262505/bmw_700.html

As for modern German engineering the BMW X5 my stepdad had was the absolute WORST POS I have seen in a very long time! The X5 was so bad he bought a Fiat because he thought it would be more reliable!

My brother in law had a mid 90's Mercedes. Also a horrible POS. The electrical insulation - made from recycled materials - degraded after 10 years causing all kinds of fun. The valve lifters also went bad, the distributors failed, the list goes on and on.

Dan8267 says

As for the rest of the original post, I would suggest that an economy based on the principle that all rents are paid to the government and used to provide equal distribution of wealth to all citizens is the ultimate solution to a fully automated economy. In such an economy, there would be little to not wealth disparity as few if any persons are actually producing any wealth.

Equal redistribution gives no incentive to better oneself. Humans need that or we rebel. Like I said before, we're not herd animals. We need unequal redistribution based on merit, as well as a social safety net for all.

New Renter says

My brother in law had a mid 90's Mercedes. Also a horrible POS.

Are you really that dense to compare Mercerdes and BMW with Trabant?
Perhaps a link to another time magazine article will help you about that.
Google is your friend.

Just tell this to a German, and he/she will laugh at you. Better yet, tell that to a former east German.

futuresmc says

We need unequal redistribution based on merit,

Not just that, if we assign one monopoly institution (un)popularly known as the government to dole out so called products, it is bound to generate hell on earth.
Anyone with a basic engineering know-how should understand something called fault-tolerance and avoidance of a single point of failure in building a system. It is astonishing that people fail to see this.

I am not opposed to social safety nets. However, government sponsored social safety nets have increased the rich poor gaps a lot more. It is not just ineffective, it is detrimental, as it destroys the middle class.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/01/canada-income-gap-harper-budget-cuts_n_1246853.html
We are approaching the eventual destruction of this form of safety net.

gsr says

I am not opposed to social safety nets. However, government sponsored social safety nets have increased the rich poor gaps a lot more.

As a member of the starting dozen at a private firm, it is not to my LLC's benefit to be contributing to someone outside of our clients and then, the key employees, the ones with P/L statements in-house.

Thus, I don't see a private sector solution to the problems of mass automation and thus, a flow of much of the wealth to only the ownership of various entities. The middle class, by virtue of expert systems and robots, will be gone in a few short decades.

It's either welfare or bust.

Rin says

As a member of the starting dozen at a private corporation, it is not to my LLC's benefit to be contributing to someone outside of our clients and then,

You guys get a lot of help from the government. So you have already created a society of two groups of people: super rich people controlling the government, and super poor people perpetually under welfare.

I am sure that is the best way to survive and prosper, as it has been proven in the history.

The survival of any safety net, monopolistic or otherwise, depends on productivity of middle class. Without productivity, everything falls. Do you even realize who build and design machines?
Do you really believe machines and all consumer products just lie on earth, and it is the job of the government to dole out to the populace?

I am not sure what kind fund you are running. I am sure as hell won't put any money there.

gsr says

Dan8267 says

I would suggest that an economy based on the principle that all rents are paid to the government and used to provide equal distribution of wealth to all citizens is the ultimate solution to a fully automated economy.

That was the ultimate wet dream of a communist. It went really well in East Germany. Did you ever look at their version of a German automobile?

You are confusing georgism with communism. Communism seeks state control of all economic activity. Georgism seeks tax the privileged such that a person's wealth is determined entirely by what he actually produces rather than by what he controls.

Don't fall into the false dichotomy fallacy that all economic systems either have to be capitalism or communism. There are literally an infinite number of alternatives.

http://povertythinkagain.com/controversies/a-word-from-the-sponsor-of-the-film-the-end-of-poverty-georgism-capitalism-and-socialism/

futuresmc says

Dan8267 says

As for the rest of the original post, I would suggest that an economy based on the principle that all rents are paid to the government and used to provide equal distribution of wealth to all citizens is the ultimate solution to a fully automated economy. In such an economy, there would be little to not wealth disparity as few if any persons are actually producing any wealth.

Equal redistribution gives no incentive to better oneself. Humans need that or we rebel. Like I said before, we're not herd animals. We need unequal redistribution based on merit, as well as a social safety net for all.

The economic philosophy I stated has nothing to do with "equal redistribution". Another example of the false dichotomy I mentioned one post up.

gsr says

You guys get a lot of help from the government. So you have already created a society of two groups of people: super rich people controlling the government, and super poor people perpetually under welfare.

I am sure that is the best way to survive and prosper, as it has been proven in the history.

The survival of any safety net, monopolistic or otherwise, depends on productivity of middle class. Without productivity, everything falls. Do you even realize who build and design machines?

Do you really believe machines and all consumer products just lie on earth, and it is the job of the government to dole out to the populace?

I am not sure what kind fund you are running. I am sure as hell won't put any money there.

I was once an engineer. Granted, it feels like another lifetime but starting a few years ago.... I understand this, there's a quantum world of difference between those who make things (engineers, machinist, architects, etc) and the money changers (banking, trading, DC/insiders, etc).

The people with real money, basically some of our clients, do not living in the world occupied by the middle class. They can do pretty much, whatever they want, & whenever they want. And second, we only solicit their money, not that of the general public, and thus provide 'em with some 'alpha', as a counter balance to their standard portfolio of private equity, commercial businesses, etc. This isn't some Vanguard index fund and isn't for public consumption.

With that said, I can see clearly, where our society is going. There's a drive towards full automation & during this drive, the ownership classes do not care about the headcount of their corporations. Therefore, the concept of caring for the middle class is more political bantering than anything else by our elected buffoons. If the govt doesn't figure out how to get all the people, dispelled by automation, into some sort of social sponsorship, then the remaining DCers, traders, salesmen, and bankers will need RoboCop bodyguards for the avalanche of homeless ppl, out there and on the loose.

I didn't create the world around me but now that I've arrived, I'm gravely concerned about the decades ahead.

gsr says

New Renter says

My brother in law had a mid 90's Mercedes. Also a horrible POS.

Are you really that dense to compare Mercerdes and BMW with Trabant?

Perhaps a link to another time magazine article will help you about that.

Google is your friend.

Just tell this to a German, and he/she will laugh at you. Better yet, tell that to a former east German.

Did you even read my post? My point was even BMW and Mercedes - icons of supposed GERMAN super wonder engineering sometimes make crappy cars. I could include a few Porsches, VWs and Audis as well if you like.

But OK, lets do a comparison of apples to apples. Lets look at Trabant to some of its western contemporaries:

East Germany - Trabant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant_601

West Germany - Auto Union (Audi):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Union_1000

Sweden - Saab:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_96

(The latter is an example of a car made by a nearly country whose industry was NOT devastated by war.)

Three companies, two western one communist, two countries rebuilding after a devastating war one untouched yet they all made similar vehicles.

In 2008, Time magazine rated the Trabant as one of the 50 worst cars ever made.[4] In the West, much has been written about the Trabant, mostly negative. Emphasis was placed on the shortcomings of the Trabant, rather than its good points, such as that it could be easily fixed with duct tape. However, many of the former owners of the Trabant still emphasize advantages such as high capacity—the Trabant being able to carry over 1000 kg of cargo.

In 1997, the Trabant was celebrated for passing the "Elchtest" ("moose test"), a 60 km/h (37 mph) swerve manoeuvre slalom, without toppling over like the Mercedes-Benz W168 (1997 A-class) infamously did. A newspaper from Thuringia had a headline saying "Come and get us, moose! Trabi passes A-Class killer test".[19]

It had its good points too.

To gsr, Dan, and others, part of the reason why I'm posting here is that I'm experiencing a sort of survivor's guilt. Yeah, I'm aware that STEM careers (most applied sciences/engineering areas. not just software & related services) have been decimated by corporate America and that the middle class is being continually eroded.

Yet, unlike everyone else, I've survived because a few friends and I have figured out how to get some ppl to make money, simply by sloshing money around between boundary conditions. And as a result of that bogus work, my mortgage is paid off and in a couple of years, I may never have to worry about money, ever again, as I live simply and don't have a profligate lifestyle. Does it make me feel good that in a few short decades that much of the American middle class will be living on skid row, while a few persons like myself [ who made it during the final Gilded Age ] will have Auto-matron sentries posted outside our houses to prevent break ins? No, that doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy.

Rin says

And given the 5-6K of present-time flying drones, with some ~10% having some expert systems guidance, I'd say that we're not too far away from a Skynet future in that dept either.

I will have to rewatch that movie. I think I have the first one on DVD. I really do not recall it from the first Terminator movie.

But it's on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28Terminator%29

Skynet is a fictional, self-aware artificial intelligence system which features centrally in the Terminator franchise and serves as the franchise's main antagonist. Scarcely depicted visually in any of the Terminator media, Skynet's operations are almost exclusively performed by war-machines, cyborgs (usually a Terminator), and other computer systems, with its ultimate goal the extinction of the human race.

Obligatory:

I'm not sure fembots were C3PO's type...

Another 'bot posting.

http://patrick.net/?p=1225054

Let's stick to one robot thread, the one which discusses the outcomes, and not let the posts scatter around.

A panel agrees with a guaranteed income / widespread welfare:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/KOoHRircmhM

curious2 says

Even Max Headroom had human helpers.

Bwahahaha.

Rin says

I didn't create the world around me but now that I've arrived, I'm gravely concerned about the decades ahead.

But the Baby Boomers say it's all our fault for not working hard enough. You know, the usual far-right drivel.