Which is why the actual numbers are fairly meaningless in these hypothetical examples. Inflation isn't even a problem worth thinking about, because you're overhauling the entire economic system and you don't know whether that inflation will end up happening or what its impact would be if it did. What supply and demand look like in a system that's deliberately designed to ensure a redistribution of wealth to prevent poverty is incredibly hard to predict. The entire market for housing would change, for one thing, to the point where this example likely wouldn't reflect reality anyway. It's another reason why this is almost absurdly unlikely to take place; it would be an enormous upheaval to how society works.
Inflation is worth thinking about. it has the potential to devastate the middle class.
Inflation is worth thinking about. it has the potential to devastate the middle class.
What does the middle class even look like in ten years as automation does its thing? What does it look like if UBI is implemented? Is there a middle class anymore, as we know it? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. You're trying to fit the current societal structure into a model where it doesn't apply.
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I run a small business, and none of those services can be automated. I need to answer the phone and speak to customers.
How long do you think it'll be before something like this can deal with 95% of those calls?
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Originally Posted by blankall
I need to have a person track my finances. A computer can physically print the letter, but I still need someone to physically input the data into the computer.
What about this task makes you think that a computer can't do it just as well - if not better - than a human? What step in the process is so subtle that it can't be performed automatically? Obviously it isn't data entry.
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I think you are vastly over-estimated the current abilities of automated technology. AI cannot respond to nuanced and dynamic situations. Real life scenarios require an actual human mind to navigate around.
I think you're vastly underestimating how far AI is advancing all the time, and how close we are to AI that exceeds human minds in all aspects - it's likely a matter of decades, and what we're talking about is far easier to accomplish. This is a talk from last week that's very optimistic but really puts what we're facing front and center.
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We also are very far away from having robots who can climb into someone's apartment and remove a clog from a sink. We can barely build a robot that can walk in a straight line. We haven't even built a machine that replaces a simple plunger.
You've taken the one thing that I admitted you probably still need - a plumber - and created multiple examples based on that. The reality is, that plumber's entire business structure - accounting, scheduling, transportation, even diagnosis of problems - will be automated to a significant extent such that we need fewer people working in plumbing businesses, even if we still need plumbers. This is true in basically every small business context you could imagine.
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Basically, my point is that there are few real life situations, run by small businesses, that you could totally automate.
And I completely disagree with that point, because it ignores a whole bunch of automation capability that currently exists, even if it's not broadly available to be used in those businesses yet. In ten years, it will be, and it'll be even more effective.
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I think it is a fairly large assumption on your part that a UBI will cover this.
I just don’t see it as a sustainable option in any event. As money funnels into fewer and fewer hands there will be less and less incentive for the “haves” to support the “have nots”
No it’s not. What does someone need to re-train? Primarily, they need to be able to afford to do so and the time to do so. What does UBI provide? Enough money to live and the time to go back to school. I don’t see how it’s a large assumption to say that, given they’d have money covering living expensives (food, shelter, the “basics”) that people would be able to work part time in addition to their UBI to cover the cost of schooling.
And I don’t get your second point. UBI literally funnels money into more and more hands, not into fewer and fewer. We’re talking about giving the population are large enough money to live. It literally remakes the entire landscape. The rich will still be rich, and the poor still poor, but the relative understanding of that would be unrecognisable.
Basically, what I'm seeing here is that some are arguing that we should implement a system that totally ignores basic economic principle and experience in order to prepare for a hypothetical future, where computers have progressed to the point they can essentially think for themselves and replace the guiding human mind.
While I see that many jobs in fabrication are likely to be replaced by machines, I don't see machines ever being capable of replacing the human decision maker. For example, a pre-fab home will require less labour, as things like drywall installation will be a thing of the past, but we'll still need a human to work customer service with the unhappy customer who's drywall is a shade lighter of white than expected.
If computers do progress to the point they can make their own decisions, your essentially talking about self-awareness. In which case, we should focus our efforts on genetically engineering our own John Connor.....
Unfortunately, I just doing see a UBI fulfilling its goals. The implementation of a UBI is also likely only to further take our economy down the wrong path. The government needs to focus on making entrepreneurship more accessible. This means lower taxes for the middle class, more access to capital and labour, and correction of the wealth imbalance between the baby boomers and everyone else. Canada needs a dynamic economy that focuses on building service and technology sectors. Anything that further hampers the innovative and/or entrepreneurial spirit is counterproductive.
No it’s not. What does someone need to re-train? Primarily, they need to be able to afford to do so and the time to do so. What does UBI provide? Enough money to live and the time to go back to school. I don’t see how it’s a large assumption to say that, given they’d have money covering living expensives (food, shelter, the “basics”) that people would be able to work part time in addition to their UBI to cover the cost of schooling.
And I don’t get your second point. UBI literally funnels money into more and more hands, not into fewer and fewer. We’re talking about giving the population are large enough money to live. It literally remakes the entire landscape. The rich will still be rich, and the poor still poor, but the relative understanding of that would be unrecognisable.
Wouldn't it make more sense for governments to offer free education and living stipends for people actually engaged in retraining in fields where demand exists, as opposed to providing wages universally.
As it stands right now, the government very heavily subsidizes education. The solution should be to encourage people into sectors of high demand, by funding education in those sectors and cutting funding in others. Giving people a guaranteed income, and then allowing them to do whatever they want doesn't seem efficient.
If computers do progress to the point they can make their own decisions, your essentially talking about self-awareness. In which case, we should focus our efforts on genetically engineering our own John Connor..
This is a misapprehension about AI. It's entirely possible, theoretically, to have superhuman AGI that can do everything a person can do without consciousness. So no, awareness is a totally separate topic.
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Unfortunately, I just doing see a UBI fulfilling its goals. The implementation of a UBI is also likely only to further take our economy down the wrong path. The government needs to focus on making entrepreneurship more accessible. This means lower taxes for the middle class, more access to capital and labour, and correction of the wealth imbalance between the baby boomers and everyone else. Canada needs a dynamic economy that focuses on building service and technology sectors. Anything that further hampers the innovative and/or entrepreneurial spirit is counterproductive.
Who will constitute the middle class when 98% of transportation, manufacturing, retail, front-line (e.g. grocery store stockists), telephone operators, and myriad other things are automated? Why do you think there will be a middle class? What does "more access to capital and labour" mean in that context?
This is a really myopic perspective, in my view - you seem to think that throughout our lifetimes societal norms and structures will continue much as they have been for the past 70-odd years, but there's every reason to think the opposite.
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This is a misapprehension about AI. It's entirely possible, theoretically, to have superhuman AGI that can do everything a person can do without consciousness. So no, awareness is a totally separate topic.
Who will constitute the middle class when 98% of transportation, manufacturing, retail, front-line (e.g. grocery store stockists), telephone operators, and myriad other things are automated? Why do you think there will be a middle class? What does "more access to capital and labour" mean in that context?
This is a really myopic perspective, in my view - you seem to think that throughout our lifetimes societal norms and structures will continue much as they have been for the past 70-odd years, but there's every reason to think the opposite.
The middle class ideally will be composed of small business owners and people employed in technology and service sectors. Canada has natural resources, which produces energy and material, there will always be some degree of employment there too.
it's hilarious that you're accusing me of not seeing the future or change, when I'm stressing Canada's technology and innovation sector. A bloated government that provides free money to it's constituents is hardly a new idea. It's been tried repeatedly and on various scales for the last 100 years, and always ends up with the same result. Canada needs to foster innovation and access to resources. Anything else is counter-productive.
No it’s not. What does someone need to re-train? Primarily, they need to be able to afford to do so and the time to do so. What does UBI provide? Enough money to live and the time to go back to school. I don’t see how it’s a large assumption to say that, given they’d have money covering living expensives (food, shelter, the “basics”) that people would be able to work part time in addition to their UBI to cover the cost of schooling.
The only assumption you’re making is that there will be a part time job for them to actually work to help pay for their upgrading. I’m not saying there necessarily won’t be, however without having a crystal ball to see how fast jobs will be eliminated I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that there may not be enough available part time work to allow for this.
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And I don’t get your second point. UBI literally funnels money into more and more hands, not into fewer and fewer. We’re talking about giving the population are large enough money to live. It literally remakes the entire landscape. The rich will still be rich, and the poor still poor, but the relative understanding of that would be unrecognisable.
It was alluded to earlier but when you give everyone the same fixed amount of income you aren’t increasing anyone’s economic mobility, you’re just shifting their starting point or “rock bottom”. If a UBI is meant to cover the basics then that money isn’t staying with the poor, it’s going to their landlord, the grocery store, etc.. Meanwhile the people who are receiving the money from the poor in exchange for these services also receive their own UBI. Unless the UBI includes room for more discretionary expenditures the money received would essentially be used in the same manner as food stamps, but food stamps only help to boost economic mobility if you also have additional income that they are providing you an opportunity to spend/invest elsewhere.
When people say where will the money come from are missing what automation will do.
If automation reduces the need for humans in certain jobs it creates surplus.
This surplus could pay everyone who was automated (the cost of the automation absorbs some of the automated people with new jobs automating things) their same wage to do nothing if the cost of goods remained constant. Historically this surplus has been split between workers, profits, and lower prices rather than to the unemployed automated person.
Automation is deflationary so giving this money in some kind of UBI in itself does not cause inflation.
Last edited by GGG; 07-12-2018 at 06:08 PM.
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If automation reduces the need for humans in certain jobs it creates surplus.
This surplus could pay everyone who was automated (the cost of the automation absorbs some of the automated people with new jobs automating things) their same wage to do nothing if the cost of goods remained constant. Historically this surplus has been split between workers, profits, and lower prices rather than to the unemployed automated person.
Would you mind elaborating on how in your view this surplus created from the job losses resulting from automation would be attributed to what were once profits and lower prices as opposed to the the labour cost savings being the sole contributing factor?
In my circle of friends I am always the guy who is a little on the opposite side of certain things like the automation and all this amazing "forward and progressive change" Maybe I am just old fashion but a ton of this stuff doesn't make a lot of sense to be and I can't understand why as a society we are going down this path or want to go down this path in some ways??
Why should I scan my own groceries at the check out? Am I saving anything? Who's benefiting? Wal-Mart executives? What about some legit service?
Why can't I do some of the basic service on my own car? So I pay a shop $150 an hour? Why do I need 7 steps to change the radio station and up the fan speed?
Do I really need to order from every garbage chain via Skip the Dishes and than tell people I paid $18 for a Subway sandwich? Why do I need to order paper towels and sea salt for the kitchen via Amazon while I am on the can? Don't I walk or drive by a thousand stores daily who carry these things? Do I really need to download some app so I can eventually control my washing machine while I am out of town?
At my family's business we have mountains of people who come in and try and pay for their purchase's with their phones, but than there phones are dead, they have no cash or debit and are totally lost as to what to do.
I know change is coming but I don't seem to think that this is going to really benefit people like they all think they do. It's not all negative as I also use modern tech, I just don't like the extremes or where we are headed. I do fondly remember the simpler times in a lot of ways/
Last edited by curves2000; 07-13-2018 at 02:42 AM.
Now imagine you’re a horse in 1905 watching a car go by, making this argument.
That’s what you’re doing right now.
The total cost per HP of a horse was higher than the cost per HP of a car. The cost delta between these two options is surplus.
We chose to give this surplus to Dodge and Ford and Fsctory workers and people with low cost transportation and to send the horses to the glue factory. That isn't the inevitable result of a surplus it's an economic choice that is made.
You could have set aside some of that money to send the horses to field where they could choose to live there or repurpose their skills
Would you mind elaborating on how in your view this surplus created from the job losses resulting from automation would be attributed to what were once profits and lower prices as opposed to the the labour cost savings being the sole contributing factor?
I'm not sure what you are asking here when you say sole contributing factor?
The total cost per HP of a horse was higher than the cost per HP of a car. The cost delta between these two options is surplus.
We chose to give this surplus to Dodge and Ford and Fsctory workers and people with low cost transportation and to send the horses to the glue factory. That isn't the inevitable result of a surplus it's an economic choice that is made.
You could have set aside some of that money to send the horses to field where they could choose to live there or repurpose their skills
So a business is going to save money by automating things and letting people go.. and that money is some how going to go to a UBI program? Is that what you are getting at?
So a business is going to save money by automating things and letting people go.. and that money is some how going to go to a UBI program? Is that what you are getting at?
That’s how I see it working. But they aren’t going to do it willingly. I’m not an economist but some type of taxing is how I see it playing out.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
When people say where will the money come from are missing what automation will do.
If automation reduces the need for humans in certain jobs it creates surplus.
This surplus could pay everyone who was automated (the cost of the automation absorbs some of the automated people with new jobs automating things) their same wage to do nothing if the cost of goods remained constant. Historically this surplus has been split between workers, profits, and lower prices rather than to the unemployed automated person.
Automation is deflationary so giving this money in some kind of UBI in itself does not cause inflation.
This aspect of automation is true - automation increases surplus.
However, what happened during the major first wave of automation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was that the surplus accumulated led to massive increases in wealth disparity. Capital accumulated at the top until the 1920s at a level not seen again until, well, very recently.
The Great Depression, massive government intervention, and WWII combined had enough of a disruptive effect to redistribute wealth and grow a middle class - which may have been an unlikely fluke of history, as the brief decades between 1950 and 1990 were the only time in human history that a middle class has developed, and the other millennia of human existence see massive wealth disparity as the norm. (Even then, the middle class only extended to Western nations, of course.)
But: inequality is destabilizing. Communist or socialist revolution, for instance, sure made a lot of sense to a lot of people when social mobility was zero and inequality pervasive before the Depression and WWII. Indeed, much of the horror of the two World Wars, the Communist Revolutions in the USSR and China, the rise of militant nationalism (etc etc) can be attributed in large part to inequality as a primary motivating factor.
The private sector and private wealth - if they want to keep it and keep the rule of law protecting property rights - will need to play ball with the government in some fashion to redistribute wealth. Not sure if this is UBI or not, but high numbers of unemployed or underemployed people don't lead to good things historically.
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The private sector and private wealth - if they want to keep it and keep the rule of law protecting property rights - will need to play ball with the government in some fashion to redistribute wealth. Not sure if this is UBI or not, but high numbers of unemployed or underemployed people don't lead to good things historically.
Yes, it's clear government won't be able to fund UBI with our existing taxation model. There must be buy-in from private wealth and corporations. Not only to head off the unrest that steepening inequality will provoke, but to keep the wheels of the economy spinning. Our economy is built on middle-class consumer spending. If we no longer have a middle class, or if people simply don't have the money to spend on consumer goods and services, corporations will take a big hit. I doubt the 20 per cent alone can keep the consumer economy humming, though I expect we'll go through a period where do try to rely on the 20 per cent before it becomes apparent it won't work.
I've been thinking one of the ways the corporate world may prime the pump to keep the wheels spinning is to subsidize their own customers in exchange for market share. A person could sign a contract with Amazon or Walmart or some other retailer (or maybe a package of aligned sellers) in exchange for steep discounts in price. No idea how feasible that would be, but it's just an example of how consumer capitalism will need to evolve dramatically to succeed in a world where only highly skilled labour has value and only the highly skilled have money.
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