Humans Need Not Aply

[Tommygun]

I wonder if this impact could be softened if the work week was slowly reduced.

Basically sharing the remaining labor. You might end up with a six hour day three days a week.

You would have to force companies to increase hourly wages at the time though.

Not an easy thing, but dealing with a large angry unemployed population can destabilize any government.

Promoting smaller families may be an additional area to look at.

[WestAir]

Promoting smaller families may be an additional area to look at.

There are 3 things I've learned in life. No man or law can ever curve the use of alcohol, illegal substances, and the opposite gender. Incidentally, laws that try to limit family sizes won't do anything but damage the families that violate those laws, and any PSA's you make to promote smaller families will just be ignored. Sadly, mankind is stubborn.

[magnemoe]

You're confusing central banks, which regulate the money supply, and regular banks which provide safe storage and lending services (among other things).

The gold standard was awful, it tied the growth of the economy to the gold mining rate whether that was appropriate or not. Fiat currency lets a government choose between inflation and deflation.

This, economy grows, gold supply grows slower. An gold based currency make sense for an irresponsible government, and yes most governments up during history has been irresponsible or at least often was depending on the king. Today countries who cannot be trusted with a mint use dollar as an unofficial currency.

Comparing wage earners to slaves is borderline offensive. While it is true that wage earners have to work to earn a living, all the other bad things about slavery don't remotely apply. A wage earner cannot have his/her family broken up through sale of family members. A wage earner can choose to leave a job with which they're unhappy; a slave cannot. A wage earner has property rights for the things they own; a slave is property for which their owners have rights. A wage earner is free to travel or relocate at their whim; a slave can only travel or relocate at their owner's whim. A wage earner has a reasonable right to personal security; a slave can be confined, tortured, raped or killed without recourse or consequence.

Every time you think you're a slave for a wage, get down on your knees and thank $Deity that you'll never experience true slavery.

Pretty much this.

[magnemoe]

I wonder if this impact could be softened if the work week was slowly reduced.

Basically sharing the remaining labor. You might end up with a six hour day three days a week.

You would have to force companies to increase hourly wages at the time though.

Not an easy thing, but dealing with a large angry unemployed population can destabilize any government.

Promoting smaller families may be an additional area to look at.

Work time has been reduced over time the last 100 years, we are likely to get more of this. An setting with economic growth combined with high unemployment would be an natural time.

[Tommygun]

There are 3 things I've learned in life. No man or law can ever curve the use of alcohol, illegal substances, and the opposite gender. Incidentally, laws that try to limit family sizes won't do anything but damage the families that violate those laws, and any PSA's you make to promote smaller families will just be ignored. Sadly, mankind is stubborn.

I didn't mean legally requiring it. There are other proven ways though.

Getting more women into college and into better paying jobs leads to smaller families.

Work time has been reduced over time the last 100 years, we are likely to get more of this. An setting with economic growth combined with high unemployment would be an natural time.

I would hope, but there has been a trend in the US at least to work more overtime over the last 30 years.

Companies have also been promoting work at home as a way to make people work off the clock more.

Edited September 15, 2014 by Tommygun

[Rakaydos]

My idealized view of "what should happen" involves basically giving everyone a baseline "wellfare check" starting at age 16, that is enough to make them consumers. There's only so much wealth production to go around, which means that this requires per-capita to be above the poverty line before it works, but once in place, there can be a boom in "starving artists", hobbyists, and dilettantes.

[Nuke]

Bingo! You win.

This whole automation of all labor has been in motion for some time. The video in the OP is just the next phase. You would think such a shift would be greeted joy and relief. No longer would people need to work as many hours, and eventually we will not need to work at all. Free from having to sell our labor to be able to consume, we could pursue our own more satisfying and enlightened activities.

But no... the established cultural expectation is that one must submit to labor to contribute to the economy in order to extract from it (ie. consume). Otherwise to consume without contributing is seen as amoral. Full employment still an economic goal. The fact that it is not needed any more is lost on people. It's simple inertia really.

One day this will all change. Until then, many of us will be busy pushing digital paper around, many thinking that what they do matters.

this will happen mostly in purely capitalist countries like the usa. especially with the anti-entitlement crowd slashing social services. the more socialist countries might be happy to have a mandatory basic needs policy in which everyone is granted enough money to live on. food, shelter, education, and healthcare would all be supplied to everyone. if you simply had a job you would be considered middle class. this kind of thing would be impossible in the usa for cultural reasons. beurocracy would simply be added to give people work to do.

back in the 70s they tried a mincome experiment in canada:

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100

it had nothing but positive outcomes. rates of crime and vagrancy was reduced. it also increased productivity because people were finding jobs that actually suited their personality and skill set, rather than being forced to take any job just to get by (most of the jobs ive had have just been ones i could get, not ones i would be good at). so we know this kind of thing can work. but probibly not in the usa.

Edited September 15, 2014 by Nuke

[Ralathon]

The easiest solution to the whole resource allocation problem is via a basic income system. Everyone, regardless of occupation or income gets a minimum wage by the government. The government gets this money via a percentage based tax on production.

This way people have a safety net to fall back on in case they lose their job yet aren't discouraged from finding new work (if possible) by the loss of their wellfare checks. It also scales very nicely with automation. More automation means less employed people but more production capabilities. So a higher basic income can be provided for a higher average standard of living.

[vger]

Comparing wage earners to slaves is borderline offensive. While it is true that wage earners have to work to earn a living, all the other bad things about slavery don't remotely apply.

It's irrelevant. These days, "offensive" often is just a blanket term for anything that doesn't coincide with social justice dogma. If slavery proved to be better in ONE specific issue even though it fails miserable on all the rest, it doesn't mean slavery is better. If you're saying THAT is offensive, that's just mindless carpet-bombing. I never said slaves had it better. I never compared modern wages to whips, chains, sales, etc (though the trade of workers still happens in the sports world ).

But if the amount of money spent on a modern worker in our allegedly more "civilized" society is at all comparable to, or is even less than what was spent on people who at the time, were not even granted the decency of being called humans, then we have a very serious problem.

There are 3 things I've learned in life. No man or law can ever curve the use of alcohol, illegal substances, and the opposite gender. Incidentally, laws that try to limit family sizes won't do anything but damage the families that violate those laws, and any PSA's you make to promote smaller families will just be ignored. Sadly, mankind is stubborn.

No matter what kind of a society we venture into in the future, family size WILL have to be addressed. There is no way around it. Earth is not going to magically get bigger and provide more land for growing food and building cities. You're right though. There is NOTHING people are more selfish about, than spawning. A woman who doesn't want kids will actually be called selfish by her peers. Given the kind of dire situation we're already in due to population issues (like available jobs vs. # of people) I can't even fathom what their logic is.

I daresay the horrid workforce situation will only make the urge to reproduce even worse. People generally want to contribute to society. I imagine there are even some criminals out there who would LOVE to be doing something good, if only somebody gave them half the chance. But that just isn't reality. And when you're denied the option to contribute anything else, you can still 'grow' a life. What's sad about it though is, by the concept of supply and demand, all reproduction does is eat away at the value of future workers, in addition to automation/robotization.

Edited September 16, 2014 by vger

[Rakaydos]

The way I see it, the way to "Rationalize" something like this is to, ironically, start a corporation. Aquire a broad enough base of production... then start loading on retirement benifits, scholarship incentive packages, corporate dorm housing, and so on until your entire workforce is rolling in, if not cash, all the things they would otherwise need to spend money on.

[Omicron314]

It is my view that fully automizing laborious jobs would enable communism of a sort. Higher education would be made compulsory, and upon graduation, people would have one of three job choices: an artistic job (e.g. musician, artists, etc.), a researcher (scientist, engineer, etc.) or a member of a workers' council (which both manages and repairs the robots), all relatively autonomous but still under the government's control. Base income would be determined slightly differently for each branch. Artists would be paid based on their popularity, scientists based on the significance of their experiments or discoveries, and workers' councils would be able to divvy up their government-provided income however they voted to (but extra income awarded due to an innovation or similar contribution would be given directly to the person responsible).

The 'companies' run by the workers' councils would be owned by the government, so the entire nation's economy could quickly turn itself into a command economy in the event of a crisis, and then transition back into a more market-type economy after the crisis passes. While the government would take a huge amount of the cooperative's income, the income provided to the cooperative by the government would increase if the company is particularly profitable. Non-government run corporations would be allowed, but would hardly have a chance competing with their government-owned counterparts as it would be harder for them to operate without the government's funding and would have a difficult time attracting more people to the cooperative as no base salary is guaranteed.

Without competition, prices would be kept down by strict regulations, but would be changeable to values within a certain range. The financial branch of the government would be able to change the range if it so desired.

Everyone would be also be guaranteed good healthcare, a home to share with one or two others, and probably some other thing I am forgetting. After saving up enough by working, people would be able to purchase larger houses and furniture of their choosing created by the nationalized cooperatives. These benefits would not be given to those who choose not to work in any of the three job sectors.

While this would be ideal, I highly doubt it would ever be instated in the U.S. Maybe one of the more progressive European countries would be willing to give it a go should the opportunity arise?

[magnemoe]

It's irrelevant. These days, "offensive" often is just a blanket term for anything that doesn't coincide with social justice dogma. If slavery proved to be better in ONE specific issue even though it fails miserable on all the rest, it doesn't mean slavery is better. If you're saying THAT is offensive, that's just mindless carpet-bombing. I never said slaves had it better. I never compared modern wages to whips, chains, sales, etc (though the trade of workers still happens in the sports world ).

But if the amount of money spent on a modern worker in our allegedly more "civilized" society is at all comparable to, or is even less than what was spent on people who at the time, were not even granted the decency of being called humans, then we have a very serious problem.

Not only the sport world, if you join the military you have the same issue, especially if you become an pilot or similar expensive education. And you can buy yourself out of it or get an employee to buy you out. And yes this is an legal contract, the sport issue is just an internal agreement, they can not do anything if they buy you for 20 million and you turn around and become an truck driver, no other clubs would touch you because of the agreement and you would not get the 2 mill/ year salary but its legal.

And yes slaves was the first in the US who got some sort of retirement plan, back in 17th and 18th century it was some who gave slaves to old too work their freedom, naturally they would have to beg for food, this was not very nice, also it was annoying and bad taste so they made a law so you had to take care of them.

And yes a pretty cool law in Maine I think, it's illegal to serve slaves or servants lobster more than 3 times a week, some idiot laws are too cool to remove.

No matter what kind of a society we venture into in the future, family size WILL have to be addressed. There is no way around it. Earth is not going to magically get bigger and provide more land for growing food and building cities. You're right though. There is NOTHING people are more selfish about, than spawning. A woman who doesn't want kids will actually be called selfish by her peers. Given the kind of dire situation we're already in due to population issues (like available jobs vs. # of people) I can't even fathom what their logic is.

I daresay the horrid workforce situation will only make the urge to reproduce even worse. People generally want to contribute to society. I imagine there are even some criminals out there who would LOVE to be doing something good, if only somebody gave them half the chance. But that just isn't reality. And when you're denied the option to contribute anything else, you can still 'grow' a life. What's sad about it though is, by the concept of supply and demand, all reproduction does is eat away at the value of future workers, in addition to automation/robotization.

Family size is not an problem for any of us, that is people living in cities or in industrialized countries, both settings promote small families, large families would be very expensive if you also have to maintain an acceptable standard of living.

Large families makes perfect sense if you do primitive agriculture without any safety net. I found out this myself playing sims 2 with an series of mod who put it in an medieval setting, yes it was some issues in the start as the lady was busy with babies but as soon as they become kids they could help on the farm, yes it again would break down then you run out of land but did not play as long.

[tgeak]

It is my view that fully automizing laborious jobs would enable communism of a sort. Higher education would be made compulsory, and upon graduation, people would have one of three job choices: an artistic job (e.g. musician, artists, etc.), a researcher (scientist, engineer, etc.) or a member of a workers' council (which both manages and repairs the robots), all relatively autonomous but still under the government's control. Base income would be determined slightly differently for each branch. Artists would be paid based on their popularity, scientists based on the significance of their experiments or discoveries, and workers' councils would be able to divvy up their government-provided income however they voted to (but extra income awarded due to an innovation or similar contribution would be given directly to the person responsible).

The 'companies' run by the workers' councils would be owned by the government, so the entire nation's economy could quickly turn itself into a command economy in the event of a crisis, and then transition back into a more market-type economy after the crisis passes. While the government would take a huge amount of the cooperative's income, the income provided to the cooperative by the government would increase if the company is particularly profitable. Non-government run corporations would be allowed, but would hardly have a chance competing with their government-owned counterparts as it would be harder for them to operate without the government's funding and would have a difficult time attracting more people to the cooperative as no base salary is guaranteed.

Without competition, prices would be kept down by strict regulations, but would be changeable to values within a certain range. The financial branch of the government would be able to change the range if it so desired.

Everyone would be also be guaranteed good healthcare, a home to share with one or two others, and probably some other thing I am forgetting. After saving up enough by working, people would be able to purchase larger houses and furniture of their choosing created by the nationalized cooperatives. These benefits would not be given to those who choose not to work in any of the three job sectors.

While this would be ideal, I highly doubt it would ever be instated in the U.S. Maybe one of the more progressive European countries would be willing to give it a go should the opportunity arise?

First off, the payment based on popularity is quite harsh if it is considered a primary income source for someone as well as significance of contribution in discovery, there will need to be some basic amount to be paid if we are considering this payment option. It would be better if there was no currency used or at least no value issued to a item (similar to the Star Trek-Federation approach).

The method in which to handle this can be to use some sort of global resource distribution platform in which stockpiles in their service area (typically where most grocery or supermarkets are now) will hold basic items for the survival of the populous, holding basic food, bottled water (if the current main water supply is not safe for consumption, or you just like bottled water), and other items for basic survival (assuming sewage, electricity, and other services are being supplied). If other items are required and are not supplied in the stockpile, then you would be able to order the item from some distribution platform.

The ordering process does have some restrictions (so people don’t order thing like 80g of deuterium or something). These restrictions are usually based on supply reasoning, if someone ordered a sizeable amount of something, it would require a reason for what it is being used for and if deemed excessive, the order will not go through and a suggestion for a different quantity may be given.

There will still be companies in this system, although the need for profit is gone, they will mainly be there to supply the product to the consumer, so stores will be able to supply a steady amount of products to distribute to the populous. The jobs in this system will mainly be automated and such occupations such as artistic, research, or bureaucratic occupations can still be available (although there is no payment involved as all things are supplied for free).

Keep in mind that I’m just briefly covering what could be done here and most of these ideas are subject to change. We still need to keep in mind that there need to be some steps that need to be followed before any of this could be done. Sorry if this is not structured well, this was slightly rushed and this is again, a very brief and possibly misrepresented thought.

Although Omicron does have an idea which will probably be more successful in implementation than this one, and sorry if I have just rambled about nothing here to try and make a conversation (since my post was a bit one-sided as a reply, and also slightly rushed).

[Nuke]

i dont see money disappearing. it would still need to be used to ration resources. especially when its a system involving a large number of idle individuals. those people need a disincentive to avoid uncontrolled reproduction. so you take the mincome idea, give everyone a no questions asked base income. this income is inversely proportional to the population (more people means less to go around) and so restraint in reproduction results in a better quality of life for everyone. it is also proportional to the gdp, so this provides an incentive to work to improve the quality of life for everyone. since their aren't enough jobs to go around, this promotes strong competition in the job market, so the people filling jobs in theory are going to be the best suited for the available positions. you aren't going to have a bunch of misplaced workers, and you aren't going to have a bunch of workers who dont care about their jobs degrading productivity.

you need an aggressive tax curve to pay for all of this. base income is never taxed, only earned income is taxed. you also want to avoid creating a welfare gap, so a job needs to be guaranteed to provide more than base income after taxes. so the tax curve needs to on a fairly shallow slope for the working class. this gives incentive to move from the idle class (those just collecting the base income) to the working class. as incomes move into the middle class tax rates start curving up more aggressively. this might culminate in a steep but linear slope into the upper class incomes.

other than that you can maintain mostly free enterprise so long that its not allowed to tweak the laws to suit their needs with lobbying. separation between buisness and state is essential. government also becomes less expensive, since your agencies can focus on their purpose and dispense with as much bureaucracy as possible. for one you dont have nightmare entitlement systems like in the us, you just have basic income. you can kill off social security, welfare, disability, food stamps, etc, because everyone has money to live on by default. you might get rich people complaining about high taxes but when you really think about it, even idle individuals have disposable income, which goes back into the pockets of buisness owners (presumably middle and upper class) anyway. so long as money is moving the economy remains strong, and rich people keeping most of their assets in a vault is bad for the economy. you give the surplus to the poor and its a win win no matter what. you might argue that this subsidizes laziness, but the desire for more will always trump that notion for most individuals.

Edited September 17, 2014 by Nuke

[Dedjal]

Machine works, humans do not. Thus we usher in a new era, the star trek era.

You contribute however you can.

Want to produce wine like Pickard? Have fun!

Want to create model planes? Have fun!

Your hobby is now your way of contributing.

[78stonewobble]

@kerbtreck

Funny I was thinking of star trek too, when reading this.

My interpretation of the society depicted there is this.

Everyone gets a minimum "allowance"/wellfare ration of... uhm "credits". Enough that noone has to starve or afford roof over the head. If you then contribute more actively to society, you get more credits and can thus afford more stuff. If you don't do much, you will only be able to afford the smallest apartments and no sailboat.

The purpose of the economy is to still save somewhat on ressources, while motivating people to stay active in one form or another. I rather like that I don't think people are forced to take dangerous or unhealthy jobs, unless they think that the job is worth it.

Doing away with money as you say might be impossible, but there is quite a free range in how we want to implement our society and economics. It is, afterall, just as much people that decide the value of this and that, as it is the amount of ressources needed.

[Nuke]

no matter how advanced we get i have a feeling resources will be finite and thus some form of rationing will be neccisary. the star trek lifestyle seems somewhat dependent on a whole lot of handwavium technology to be a viable economic model. i dont think that we will ever get to a point where we can break the second law of thermodynamics (infinite energy for replicators). i dont think its a good idea to throw away the finer points of capitalism. you dont want everyone to succumb to apathy and kill progress. instead you need a system that rewards hard work, but does not force people into the do or die mentality (and force the wrong people to do the wrong jobs out of personal necessity). work must come with rewards or no one will do it, and i doubt that robots will be able to take over all the jobs. the best way to incentive this is with more money for those who partake in productive activity.

[WestAir]

What if each individual owned an AI, and then you sent it to work and reaped its pay? Sort of like just making the AI the household breadwinner. If you really liked Google, for instance, you had your robot spend all its time working on maintaining Google servers, and its wage was sent to your Bank Account.

Fairly simple concept, progress is still made, and most importantly you decide what "businesses" live or die and how.

[Rakaydos]

no matter how advanced we get i have a feeling resources will be finite and thus some form of rationing will be neccisary. the star trek lifestyle seems somewhat dependent on a whole lot of handwavium technology to be a viable economic model. i dont think that we will ever get to a point where we can break the second law of thermodynamics (infinite energy for replicators). i dont think its a good idea to throw away the finer points of capitalism. you dont want everyone to succumb to apathy and kill progress. instead you need a system that rewards hard work, but does not force people into the do or die mentality (and force the wrong people to do the wrong jobs out of personal necessity). work must come with rewards or no one will do it, and i doubt that robots will be able to take over all the jobs. the best way to incentive this is with more money for those who partake in productive activity.

The concept of "Post Scarcity" isnt actually infinite production. The point is that after a point, the economic model of infinite wants breaks down... as shown by the failure of "Trickle Down Economics." (Which was a policy that if the rich get richer, they'll spend more, and the economy will get moe vibrant as a result. In practice, though, aside from people like Elon Musk, rich people could get anything they wnted and still put money in the bank- their wants were demonstratably NOT infinite.)

What this means for "Post scarcity" is that if fairly rationed resources go beyond a "affluent standard of living" threshold, then everyone can have an affluent standard of living.

[Ralathon]

What if each individual owned an AI, and then you sent it to work and reaped its pay? Sort of like just making the AI the household breadwinner. If you really liked Google, for instance, you had your robot spend all its time working on maintaining Google servers, and its wage was sent to your Bank Account.

Fairly simple concept, progress is still made, and most importantly you decide what "businesses" live or die and how.

Why would the companies hire your AI over one of their own? Yours cost wage, theirs costs pennies of electricity.

[Aningaaq]

Plus, a company cannot rely on their AI being repaired/maintained by third parties. Easier and more cost efficient to own their own AI, as you said!

[Nibb31]

Plus, a company cannot rely on their AI being repaired/maintained by third parties. Easier and more cost efficient to own their own AI, as you said!

Not in today's world where everything is outsourced. Most large companies these days outsource their IT and HR departments.

[WestAir]

Wouldn't that then be the role of the Government to enforce policies against companies doing that?

I mean, if it were legal, companies would pay $0.50 an hour to employees, but laws get in the way of that pretty swiftly.

[Rakaydos]

Wouldn't that then be the role of the Government to enforce policies against companies doing that?

I mean, if it were legal, companies would pay $0.50 an hour to employees, but laws get in the way of that pretty swiftly.

As long as the company is assuring a standard of living to go with that pay, iit isnt as much of an issue. In the military, I didnt get paid much, but housing was free, Gym was free, Free food 3 times a day, free utilities (except cable/internet), and the commute was a brisk jog.

[Aningaaq]

Not in today's world where everything is outsourced. Most large companies these days outsource their IT and HR departments.

Those are structured/organized departments whereas the other guy talked about "employees" sending their AI to work. That sounds like a bad recipe and nothing like you are talking about.