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The myth of the robot job-ocalypse (timharford.com)

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[–]catapultation [スコア非表示]  (5子コメント)

This assumption relies on there being a fixed supply of labour

Why didn't the lump of labor fallacy apply to horses? If there wasn't a fixed amount of labor for horses to do, why did they do less and less of it?

Couldn't the same argument be made with humans? There will be an ever increasing amount of work that needs to be done, but humans (like horses) need not apply?

humans will be outmatched in fucking everything which is ludicrous.

Just enough to make a significant portion of the population obsolete.

we don't need to keep them around anymore.

...and we won't need to keep as many humans around anymore either.

Let's say automation kills 99% of all jobs, you don't think that humans, some of the wiliest beings in fucking creation, are going to find a way to support themselves?

Uh, no I don't. Well, outside of revolutions or similar things.

Furthermore, as societies get richer, that wealth spreads out to everyone.

In the past, but past performance doesn't predict the future. It's certainly possible for the gains in an economy to focused primarily at the top, and the rest of society gets very little.

[–]Homeboy_Jesus [スコア非表示]  (3子コメント)

Why didn't the lump of labor fallacy apply to horses?

It is generally accepted that a mathematical representation of the productive capabilities for a country is a function with two arguments: capital and technological labour. In this case, we write it as

Y = F(AK,AL)

Y = Income

K = Capital

A = Technology

L = Labour

In such a scenario, A is an ordinal number that is a technological multiplier when applied to either K or L.

Horses fall under C, humans are L. The comparison is not the same and we shouldn't treat it as something that is. There are fewer horses today because the market for generating returns by using them as capital is much smaller and generally limited to what most would consider luxury goods.

The use of new technology by humans means that they will be able to achieve greater and greater returns to their labour function. That's what technology does, right? It makes us more productive.

Just enough to make a significant portion of the population obsolete.

This claim, to me, is bananas. Humans can't possibly be outmatched because time is a resource. Anytime an automatic machine is doing something it is, by definition foregoing the possibility of doing something else.

Are you saying that a human is completely incapable of doing something that generates value? This is why comparative advantage is such a big fucking deal. We could do something that the machine couldn't by virtue of just doing something.

Obsolescence is not something that humanity will end up at because each person will find a way to be productive in some capacity. For example, I'm showing how my time is valuable by explaining this to some idiot on the internet.

...and we won't need to keep as many humans around anymore

So, who decides that? You? Donald Trump? Me and my economist buddies? What is your barometer for success here? And why does your barometer get to dictate how anyone lives their fucking life? Haven't we always said that human lives are great?

THEY FUCKING ARE. Each person is a productive person, and I think we can agree that having more of them leads to a more diverse environment further leading into more and more success stories. Is further diversity bad in some new evolutionary sense?

Are we going to stop the evolutionary train and cull our population because we've managed to make amazing robots that do everything extremely well? I mean, why the fuck wouldn't you? Everything would have to be FUCKING AMAZING for people to stop deliberately finding ways to do things that make their lives better.

I don't [think so] ... outside of revolutions or similar things.

Why the hell not? Income inequality? There will be a massive market for cheaply made things. If incomes relative to labour are so much lower than the returns of those to capital the people with less capital have a greater incentive to work to increase their income.

Even if that labour has such a low return the prices of everything will be so low that people will be able to sustain themselves. Everything will be so fucking dirt cheap it will be amazing. Revolution, or similar things, will be the last thing that you want to do.

[A]s societies get richer, that wealth spreads out to everyone

In the past, but past performance doesn't predict the future, ... the gains in an economy focused primarily at the top ... rest of society gets very litte.

Marx said that once capitalism got going the whole world saw more growth than in the thousands of years prior combined. Along with that we also got way better at feeding, clothing, educating, entertaining, etc. for a way larger number of people. More wealth has been spread out amongst more people allowing more people to get more wealthy.

It doesn't really matter if the gains are focused too much at the top though because everyone is getting richer and prices are going down.

TL;DR Fuck your bullshit. Humans aren't horses and the job-ocalypse is a myth.

[–]catapultation [スコア非表示]  (2子コメント)

  1. There is a finite set of things a horse can do.
  2. Machines surpassed horses in their ability to do a significant number of those things.
  3. When machines surpassed horses in the performance of those things, horse labor fell out of favor.

Compared to:

  1. There is a finite set of things a human can do.
  2. Machines will eventually eclipse humans in their ability to do a significant number of those tasks.
  3. When machines surpass humans in the performance of these things, human labor will fall out of favor.

Which point are you specifically arguing against? Make sure to use bold and different size fonts and whatnot, it really helps me understand your argument.

[–]Homeboy_Jesus [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

Holy shit you are relentless.

When machines surpass all humans in the performance of doing all things it will specifically mean that the human is better off buying any thing from the robot than doing it herself. Human labour falls out of favour only when people can afford to buy the things they want exclusively through capital. (1)

  • If they cannot, people will work to provide some income for themselves.
  • If they can, then they won't HAVE to work. Jobs will be gone but we're at fucking utopia so who gives a fuck.

(1) A person who does not have access to capital will still have access to labour because they are a person. Horses are implemented and used by people as capital. People are labour.

[–]catapultation [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

Thanks for bolding stuff, it helped.

Well, actually, even with the bold I'm not entirely sure I follow your argument. Let me try to break it down line by line:

When machines surpass all humans in the performance of doing things it will specifically mean that the human is better off buying that thing from the robot than doing it herself.

So when machines are better than humans at doing things (producing goods/providing services) it means (specifically?) that the human would be better off buying something from that robot instead of doing that thing (producing a good/providing a service) itself.

I feel like you just jumped from production to consumption midway through that sentence. Let's replace it with an actual thing:

When machines are better at driving a person from point A to point B than a human, it means that the human would be better off paying the machine to drive someone else from point A to point B than driving that person from point A to point B theirself? Yup, you definitely switched from talking about a produce of a good to a consumer of a good for no (specific?) reason halfway through that sentence.

You should look at it from the perspective of two separate humans. Human X takes drives people from point A to point B for money. Human Y pays people to drive them from point A to point B. A self driving car comes onto the market, better at transporting humans from point A to point B than Human X. Human Y is now better off paying the robot car to drive them around. This does not improve Human X's situation, it makes his situation worse.

Human labour will fall out of favour only when people can afford to buy the things they want. If they cannot, people will work to provide some income for themselves.

Well, the whole point of this conversation is about how those people will generate income for themselves. How will Human X generate income for theirself when Human Y now pays the robot car to drive them around instead of Human X?

If they can, then they won't HAVE to work.

You seem to be conflating Human X and Human Y here. There is no reason to think that Human Y benefiting from a self driving car will benefit Human X in any way.

Jobs will be gone but we're at fucking utopia so who gives a fuck.

A utopia for those that have access to the robots. A dystopia for those that don't.

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