[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by GGG

Your arguments are identical to the Luddites. You are falling victim to a goldilocks argument where the current level of automation is good but anymore is bad. So why are tractors good but self checkouts bad?

Economies expand with efficiency because eiter the price of goods drops which allows more consumption or profit increases allowing more investment. How you distribute this win fall can be debated but to say that efficiency doesn't drive expansion ignores 6000 years of society.

So if McDonalds completely automates that'll be good for the economy? Because it'll either lower their prices or give them more money to invest in expansion? Funny their prices didn't drop when they installed the order taking machines, according to you that means they will expand, but as they continue to automate that will create fewer and fewer jobs as they expand would it not? So are you suggesting that once they fully automate they will then drop their prices? That's a gamble you'd be willing to take?

When did humans become freed from labour? Slowly over the last 6000 years. From manufacturing to farming the amount of human energy required to do anything has dropped significantly. We used to have a 16hr 7 day per week work day in hunter gatherer societies. 7 X 12 was common in the industrial revolution. We now work 5x 8 with oil companies in boom times down to 4.5 X 8.

100 years ago people were working 12 hour days 6 days a week, I hate to break this to you but it wasn't automation that changed that, it was the organized labour movement. According to you in 5900 years we went from 7 16 hour days to 7 12 hour days, and then over the next hundred years we went to 5 8 hour days and this is due to some form of evolution created by automation? You do realize many countries in the world have the same technology but very different averages for work/life balance right?

In fact one of the solutions to automation is to change the maximum hours of work down to say 32 so we share the limited jobs available. This can happen because the efficiency of the economy has lowered the cost of goods to allow for less labor to be required to survive.

Again the efficiency of a company does not automatically translate to those savings being passed on to consumers. What we would basically be doing in this situation is taking a cut as workers, which would then lead to reduced business for employers. At which point they could lower their prices, but according to many in this thread they are more likely to pack up and leave so do you really believe it's best to just keep automating?