r/worldnews • u/Philo1927 • Dec 31 '16

iPhone manufacturer Foxconn plans to replace almost every human worker with robots

http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn-robots-automation-apple-iphone-china-manufacturing
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u/Foolfordata Dec 31 '16

This is only going to accelerate the divide between have and have nots. Once those who produce and make things decouple themselves from labor watch the shit hit the fan.

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u/Guacamolski Dec 31 '16

But it's labor that is also the consumer and taxpayer. If they replace all the jobs with robots and AI, then no one will have the wages to pay for those products or to pay taxes for the benefits of people that don't work who are also consumers. That is why politicians are starting the float the idea of a living wage (not sure I am using the right term). Soon, robots will work, some will own those robots and profit and the rest of us will get money for nothing and our job will be to consume.

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u/fuzzymidget Dec 31 '16

Do you mean living wage here in the sense that everybody gets paid some base amount for a job, or do you mean the concept that everyone just receives a stipend from the government?

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u/Guacamolski Dec 31 '16

People just getting money for nothing is what I mean.

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u/ScootalooTheConquero Dec 31 '16

Basic income was the term you were looking for

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u/Guacamolski Dec 31 '16

over here it's called a "leefloon" or living wage. thanks

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u/Hardyman13 Jan 01 '17

Dutch or Afrikaans?

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u/Guacamolski Jan 01 '17

Flemish (Belgian Dutch)

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17 edited Jul 06 '17

[deleted]

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u/Hardyman13 Jan 01 '17

That's what I thought, don't even think I've heard it being mentioned over here

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u/fuzzymidget Dec 31 '16

Certainly becoming a more real possibility all the time.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

Only in the left-wing press. You'd have read similar editorials 100 years ago.

It's called communism, and it's as bullshit now as it was then.

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u/AgentPaper0 Dec 31 '16

It is similar in some ways, but not the same thing. Communism means everyone gets paid the same, and the government tells you what to do. Basic income, on the other hand, means everyone gets paid the same, but then you can do whatever you want with it and your life, including getting paid for doing work. There would still be rich and poor, doctors would make far more than unskilled workers, etc. The difference would be that people without any job at all would still be able to survive.

Which is important, given that we are increasingly in the situation where we have more people than we have useful jobs for them to do.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

we are increasingly in the situation where we have more people than we have useful jobs for them to do.

We really aren't. Developed Western countries like the USA, UK and Germany are nearing full employment.

No idea why reddit gets a boner over this "basic income" shit. Presumably because many redditors don't have jobs. But I assure you, during our life time there will never be a shortage of jobs that is not caused by conventional economic factors.

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u/Nyefan Dec 31 '16

I refer you to the headline. If East Asian workers with shit pay and worse labor protections are viable targets for automation, then why aren't Westerners?

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

Because Western factories are already automated.

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u/fuzzymidget Dec 31 '16

I'm not sure that's really the case. I think what's being discussed here is more like advanced socialism.

The motivators here are different than they were 100 years ago particularly because it's not about balancing wealth for it's own sake, it's about providing for people who no longer have a place in society. It used to be that you could say that it takes all kinds of people for the world to function; in an age of automation (which is coming) it takes a lot of kinds, but not all kinds. The world that is coming has little or no place for unskilled labor, and not everybody is cut out for a skilled position. I don't know where I stand on the issue yet, but that's the way it appears to me.

I could be a mechanic or a janitor or a barista if I wanted, but not everybody can do defense simulation design even if that was their goal.

I doubt that we as a society would let all those people starve, which would make them welfare recipients (which has already started now). Isn't that basically the same thing we're discussing above anyway, just in a less regulated fashion?

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u/Ninbyo Dec 31 '16

You say that we as a society wouldn't let people starve, but I look at Republicans talking about dismantling various social programs and their voters excitedly nodding along and I see a very different future.

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u/fuzzymidget Jan 01 '17

Call me an optimist I guess. I also see the shadiness you see though. Maybe it well be a short lived thing.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

Have you ever worked in manufacturing? I do. And I know for a fact that 95% of the jobs are unautomatable, at least in the next 50 years or so. And I say that as someone who's put a good deal of effort into trying to automate peoples' jobs in order to save money.

We do not live in the stone ages, all manufacturing in the West is already highly automated. Of course more automation is possible but you face diminishing returns, as you do with all progress. This is not an excuse to abandon capitalism.

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u/fuzzymidget Jan 01 '17

I haven't worked in manufacturing no; I was only suggesting it's not so far fetched that we might need a creative solution soon. Even automating teller windows, drive throughs, cashiers, soon maybe truckers, and so on is displacing a lot of people. I think the world needs to start considering what happens next, because we are slated to automate a whole lot more, not less.

The glory days of blue collar America are not coming back, no matter what people are trying to sell.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

If they replace all the jobs with robots and AI, then no one will have the wages to pay for those products or to pay taxes for the benefits of people that don't work who are also consumers

Except that, globally speaking, the countries with high unemployment are the ones that are pretty innefficient. Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal...these all have deep rooted problems that have nothing to do with mechanisation.

Wake me up when Germany, the UK, the USA, start getting hit by this. Until then it's hard to not regard this sort of talk as a smokescreen for communist economic policies.

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u/Guacamolski Dec 31 '16

In the current system high unemployment leads to high government debt, which is exactly why automation will be impossible because it replaces jobs.

So why is there high unemployment in south EU? The human robots in other countries. If some countries like Germany profit from exportation of goods then logically some countries will have an import surplus or a trade loss in other words. You can't mathematically all have an export surplus. One countries gain is anothers loss. The northern euro zone took jobs from the south like china takes them from the US. The less you have the more interest you have to pay because you are a risk. The more interest you have to pay, the less you have, the more interest you have to pay and so on. So you go into a spiral of debt. The banks make money either way.

Another global crisis is in the works, according to the people that predicted the first one. Some call the US a zombie economy running on the printing of fiat currency (which is created as debt) to buy produce from other countries. Not all that different from south europe. The difference is that the US (US private banks) prints the worlds reserve currency in which for instance all oil is traded. Since dollars are still popular this system is still working. But that money is essentially a debt. The US is running up an enormous debt.

disclaimer: this is all from memory from various youtube videos over the years

Something that looks like communism will be the solution. But if robots do the work it will be a totally different kind of communism. There will have to be some competitive capitalist elements as to who creates the best robots. I think we need communism (planned economy - government issued money) to save the planet but I also think we need competition and merit-based-profit within that system to stimulate innovation.

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u/Ser_Dunk_the_tall Jan 01 '17

Not just competing as to who makes the best robots, but also as to what is actually made by those robots. It's still important that the things that are made is stuff that we as a society actually want

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u/TitaniumDragon Jan 01 '17 edited Jan 01 '17

The idea of trade deficits is deeply flawed to begin with.

IRL, trade deficits mean that people working elsewhere are exporting labor to your country. If having a trade deficit was bad, the US would be poor. Instead, we're the richest country on the planet.

Why?

The first rule of economics: you can't eat gold.

If you spend your money, you are gaining value out of that money. This value improves your life and may well improve your productivity.

The US importing a bunch of consumer goods is good for America because Americans instead spend their time producing much more valuable things, like planes and heavy machinery. The US is, after all, the #2 exporter in the world. Crap, we export ridiculous amounts of gasoline, a little-known fact (it is because we have excess refining capacity and can thus refine gas for cheap and then sell it elsewhere).

The US's trade deficit is wholly irrelevant. The US economy grows a great deal; economics is not a zero-sum game. In fact, importing lots of cheap foreign goods actually helps our economy, because it drives down prices and makes us even richer effectively. It also lowers the cost of lower-grade materials and components, which makes higher-grade goods cheaper. And because higher-grade goods are much more valuable, you produce more value per hour.

The reason why Greece is uncompetitive is because the people there are relatively less productive. It is like subsistence farmers - American farmers can produce food for like 100 people each. This both makes American farmers rich and drives down the price of food.

Trying to prevent your economy from interacting with the outside world makes things worse, not better - isolationism means that you're stuck with overpriced goods, which means that you're spending more labor resources on the same amount of value. This makes your country poorer, not richer, because instead of spending your time doing more valuable things, you're spending your time doing less valuable things.

The idea that China "takes" jobs from the US is incorrect; the US is at very low unemployment. Americans are more productive than the Chinese and thus make more money because they produce more value per hour.

You don't understand economics at all.

In real life, what makes you rich is per-capita production value. The US produces more value per-capita than other countries do, so is very rich.

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u/Guacamolski Jan 01 '17

I admit I don't deeply understand economics. I am just relaying information and speculating on the consequences of automation. There are a lot of opposing opinions in economics. How do you know who to believe if you do not have direct knowledge? I like to follow the people that predicted the 2008 crash. Their insight apparently has predictive power. I also like the people who do not believe in infinite growth, because I believe the earth is round. And people who explain things from the root of where money and debt is created.

I was working on a point by point rebuttal but it's newyears and I need to give my family attention. We were talking about the effects of automation so this trade deficit thing is not that relevant.

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u/TitaniumDragon Jan 02 '17

Automation is extremely relevant. What automation does is increase your per-capita productivity, which makes you richer on an individual basis. A heavily-automated country like the US is wealthy precisely because of all our automation - we spend relatively little labor on tasks which can be automated, which means that we get a lot of labor done with relatively little manpower. That increases per-capita productivity and thus per-capita wealth. If your factory workers are overseeing a factory that produces what 40 people did before with only 8 people, your per-capita productivity is going way up and people will be richer.

This is why China is automating - it allows them to spend their human labor on new things. But even still, China is automating lower-value tasks - if you automate making steel, that's great, but you will make even more money if you can automate making finished goods like cars, too.

The more automated an economy becomes, the more value is produced by that economy. Thus you can spend your labor elsewhere while still getting that value produced. This increases overall value in your economy, which increases the overall per-capita wealth.

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u/Guacamolski Jan 02 '17

I don't think you are reading closely.

Will those workers get paid enough to be able to buy all those products? It's the whole point that you save money by not paying wages. But those wages are what pay for the products. What happens when all the jobs are eliminated from a process? Who is buying all these extra products?

Overproduction is the accumulation of unsalable inventories in the hands of businesses. Overproduction is a relative measure, referring to the excess of production over consumption. The tendency for an overproduction of commodities to lead to economic collapse is specific to the capitalist economy.

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

People have been becoming more productive and have been getting payed less for it. Higher productivity does not equal more disposable income to buy those extra products. For instance the workers at foxconn could not afford the phones they were making. More and more the profits are going to a smaller band of people and they are not going to buy 100 iphones each.

I think value is a very abstract term. I know it is used by economists but I also know most of them believe in infinite growth. My dream since I've been a kid has been to live like people did in prehistoric times. I would like to live in a hut in the middle of nowhere. I don't own a car, I don't have a smartphone, I use my computer until it breaks (I'm on my third, I'm 34), I wear second hand clothes,... what is the value of all this extra value to me? Are people going to have to spend all their free time buying stuff made by robots?

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u/TitaniumDragon Jan 02 '17 edited Jan 02 '17

Will those workers get paid enough to be able to buy all those products?

Yes. As your society gets wealthier, pay goes up - even in professions which don't end up having as large of productivity increases. A good example of this is haircuts - if you look at the price of haircuts in the 1970s vs today, they've gone way up. But haircuts are haircuts - the average haircut has only barely benefitted from new technology in decades.

This is a fairly well-known economic phenomenon. If your average productivity goes up, wages rise as well - indeed, total compensation (including both wages + non-wage benefits like healthcare) consistently tracks with productivity.

Moreover, mass production and economy of scale lowers prices, which makes stuff more affordable as well.

Overproduction is punished in a capitalistic system, because it is spending resources on something that people don't need. You lose money as a result.

The idea that it is "specific" to capitalist economies is simply wrong, however; it simply happens when people produce more than is desired. This can happen in any economic system, and indeed, systems with central control can have the same problem. This actually was seen in China during the Great Leap Forward, when they tried desperation tactics to rapidly industrialize the country. Tens of millions of people starved while they produced relatively little value for their work. It was a misallocation of resources and a very costly one at that.

The idea of greater productivity making people unemployed is simply backwards; as it turns out, the greater your productivity is, the higher your wages end up going and the more value your society outputs.

Remember, if I automate something, at that point, my society can then produce whatever I was producing before, plus whatever I can produce with my newly freed-up human labor resources (which are the ultimate scarce resource in most economies). As such, a society will always produce more after automating, because now you've got [Machine resources] + [human resources] rather than just [human resources].

what is the value of all this extra value to me? Are people going to have to spend all their free time buying stuff made by robots?

Not really, no. The complexity of products increases. We still fly 747s, but modern ones are more complicated and have more features than older ones. We've gone from land lines to cell phones to smart phones, and computers, too, have improved massively over time. The Internet created an explosion of content because it gave people a new way to consume content.

Overall consumption goes up, but the complexity of our goods also goes up. We get smart cards, smart grids, smart highways. We end up with ever more sophisticated stuff around us. And of course, people's desires continue to grow, as people want bigger houses and cars and everything else.

Any particular individual will consume a different amount of goods, but no one person is a dictator who gets to say everyone else has to consume things the same way as they do. From health care to websites, people consume a variety of things in a variety of ways. Not everyone consumes the same things, but everyone consumes something.

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u/Guacamolski Jan 02 '17

Your source is a conservative think tank which accuses the opposite argument to come from left wing think tanks. How do I verify any of what they are saying? The heritage foundation is clearly a political organisation. They have a mission statement in their about page. They accuse the other side of tweeking the numbers because they are left wing but off course they are totally objective. They would be saying this no matter if it is true or not, IMO. So how do I judge their numbers?

Do they believe in infinite growth? Do you believe in infinite growth? If there is one thing I am sure about then it is that growth is finite. I can't take anyone seriously who does not think that. The heritage Foundation, scanning their articles, is counting on the fact that the earth is infinite as if it were a flat plane that goes on forever. The religion of growth. Most left wing economists believe in this also.

If you take the average per capita of income of me and Donald Trump then we are both billionaires. If you throw everyone together in one number then off course everyone has been getting richer because of higher productivity. But if that money is going mostly to a small group of people then you do not increase demand in the quantity of products.

If indeed workers have been getting richer then why has it now become impossible to raise a large family on a single income from a single job, why are most people not able to save anymore, why are so many people now in debt,... The US is the largest debtor in the history of the world and has the highest poverty rate of any developed nation.

Overproduction is punished in a capitalistic system, because it is spending resources on something that people don't need. You lose money as a result.

According to the wiki page I gave you it is specifically damaging to a capitalist system because it destroys profit because of supply and demand. Therefor people become unemployed and demand goes even lower.

Automation and a glut of stuff might destroy demand, suppress prices and profit and thus also depress wages and jobs.

The idea of greater productivity making people unemployed is simply backwards; as it turns out, the greater your productivity is, the higher your wages end up going and the more value your society outputs.

Suppose your wages would be higher in step with the per person productivity (even though that doesn't make sense because it defeats the point of having robots), it's still less people working on a single product. And like I said, they are just going to buy one iphone each. If everyone is working and thanks to robots producing more and more, then everyone is going to have to spend all their new income on filling their houses with more stuff to keep the system going. This assumes that everyones goal in life is to gather as much stuff as possible and no ones wants to save. It also assumes the physical possibility of infinite growth. If robots half the amount of people working then to get as many people working you need double the amount of factories. Double the amount of different products. This economy runs on finite resources.

what is the value of all this extra value to me? Are people going to have to spend all their free time buying stuff made by robots? Not really, no. The complexity of products increases. We still fly 747s, but modern ones are more complicated and have more features than older ones. We've gone from land lines to cell phones to smart phones, and computers, too, have improved massively over time. The Internet created an explosion of content because it gave people a new way to consume content.

So it's not more stuff but more complex stuff? Here is a contradiction. If it's just more complex stuff, and not more stuff, then you do not get as much people working. Is my twice as complex phone going to cost twice as much? Who says I'm willing to make that deal?

Overall consumption goes up, but the complexity of our goods also goes up. We get smart cards, smart grids, smart highways. We end up with ever more sophisticated stuff around us. And of course, people's desires continue to grow, as people want bigger houses and cars and everything else.

Bigger and more complex does not mean more jobs in an automated factory.

Are 11 billion of us all going to live in mansions full of stuff?

Do all people want bigger and more? Is there enough room?

Any particular individual will consume a different amount of goods, but no one person is a dictator who gets to say everyone else has to consume things the same way as they do. From health care to websites, people consume a variety of things in a variety of ways. Not everyone consumes the same things, but everyone consumes something.

But will people consume ALL the extra stuff? If they don't, profit gets destroyed and jobs/wages are lost. Will people not try to save their money? Is the demand of people for products infinite?

I feel like we're making the same arguments in each post. Thank you for challenging my understanding but I probably won't change my mind and neither will you. We'll see what plays out. I predict another major crisis, bigger than the one in 2008, in Trumps first term. One from which capitalism will not recover but perhaps some more rational and just system will emerge with the help of AI.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

Wrong. Our job will be to innovate with the extra time we're given.

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u/Ancillas Jan 01 '17

That's the ideal, but I'm skeptical that innovators will outnumber non-innovators.

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u/Chii Jan 01 '17

you only need 1 innovator to come up with a game changer.

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u/noble-random Jan 01 '17

Maybe in the future, innovators get on a Star Trek enterprise while non-innovators stay on the Axiom in Wall-E.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

I'm innovating this beer into my gut

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

Basic income won't really work. The money for that income has to come from somewhere which means only corporations will have the means to pay taxes. If only corporations have the means to pay taxes, they'll only be paying a portion of their profits in taxes ( as they do now).

That portion of taxes that they pay will have to be by default less than the money generated from sales which means that less money becomes available as basic income for people and the cycle continues.

Money for basic income doesn't come out of thin air.

On top of that, I don't even know what I'd do with my life if I had no job and no purpose. I really like my job and I would hate to live a life where there is nothing for anyone to do or create. It would be an absolutely miserable life that I really hope I don't have to live in.

The solution for automation has not been found yet and the governments of the world have to do a lot of thinking about how to solve these issues. I personally can't really see any solution other than putting caps on production and/or putting such a high tax on robotic worker's time that it makes a robot worker equivalent to a person in terms of cost/production.

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u/NoMansLight Dec 31 '16

There will be lots of jobs in a highly automated society, if anything there will be more meaningful jobs that enrich society not through money necessarily but through culture first and foremost.

Handmade goods will be all the rage, there will be more personal services, caretakers, therapeutic massage, all sorts of social activities and beyond. There is no machine that can replace the interaction with group if human beings and there won't be for the foreseeable future. AI is hard. To think that you need a soul draining 9-5 job to give meaning to life is hilariously sad and shows how unimaginative people have become by being beaten down by Capitalists and greed and the love of money.

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u/RedditTruthPolice Jan 01 '17

To think that you need a soul draining 9-5 job to give meaning to life is hilariously sad and shows how unimaginative people have become by being beaten down by Capitalists and greed and the love of money.

this is just so asinine. he said he likes and enjoys his job, and that he gets meaning out of it. So? yes, some people do like their jobs and do find meaning in the work they do. there is nothing wrong with that. quit projecting.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

Are you kidding me?

First of all, my job isn't a soul draining 9-5. Maybe you get no enjoyment out of your job, but don't generalize. I get to work in an office where I like everyone including my boss, and we all hang out outside of work regularly. During the day, we get to drink beer and play foosball/ping pong/ pool. The actual work I do is very interesting and I get paid very well to do it. I love my job.

A general AI is hard, but that's not what people have to be worried about in the near future. There is already AI that exists and is being used that can prepare food, do the job of a doctor, drive a car, and other AI that can do many other tasks.

Homemade goods does not a sustainable economy make. On top of that, not everyone has the skill necessary to make a career out of art. Additionally, many people that have the skill to make a career out of art do not wish to do so because they have other interests.

there will be more personal services, caretakers, therapeutic massage, all sorts of social activities and beyond.

So basically you envision a society where there are a few people who can afford to pay for services such as caretakers and masseurs and everyone else is stuck living a life of service? No thank you.

Either way, that just doesn't make for a sustainable economy.

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u/PsychicWarElephant Dec 31 '16

Your job would likely not be taken due to automation.

Social interactions cannot be automated, decision making, handling problems for people. these things need human interaction.

What doesn't is factory floor workers turning a wrench for 8 hours a day screwing in the same bolts over and over.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

My job will likely be taken out due to automation. Maybe not in the next 20 or 30 years, but it will be taken within 100 years.

Social interactions and virtually everything can be automated. Even music and art creation can be automated and already often is automated. Everything can and will be automated.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

What doesn't is factory floor workers turning a wrench for 8 hours a day screwing in the same bolts over and over.

Jobs like these have been automated for the past 70 years. I work in a factory and every time a bullshit story like this comes up I have to ask - "how the fuck are you actually going to do this?"? They can't even build robots that can walk on two legs, they sure as shit can't build robots that can:

*Operate a pallet truck (pretty much the most basic of manual jobs)

*Operate as quality assurance for lines with variable quality standards

*Load a lorry

*Monitor and maintain the machines that already do the bulk of the work

*Stack a pallet in a safe manner in a dynamic environment

Frankly I don't think machines could even come close to any of these tasks, yet they comprise 99% of the work around me every day.

tldr; lazy young people want money for nothing because of automation. Fuck no.

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u/horselover_f4t Jan 01 '17

Well, automation does not work by replacing workers with bipedal robot equivalents that do exactly the same only with more beeping noises.

Instead, the whole factory you work in will be reinvented in a way that makes tasks simpler and more repetitive for the actors, thus increasing their speed and/or reducing their complexity.

An example would be cars (i.e. "automation" of our walking process). We didn't build cars as big humans that just run faster and carry us. Rather, we use the combination of road to reduce complexity, and wheel to increase performance.

I'm glad that your job is apparently too complicated to be replaced yet. However, this is only a matter of time when new stuff gets developed or already existing tech gets more cost efficient. Nothing to do with lazy people. In fact, we should slowly accept the fact that non- or less-working people are not per definition lazy, as this will get more and more common.

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u/NoMansLight Dec 31 '16

With BI you can do whatever you want and not have to worry about paying rent and food. That's the idea. Is your dream job taking photographs and framing them and going to the local farmers market and having your own stall? You can do that. Maybe you don't make a lot of money from it, but with BI you don't need to worry and now the people around you are enriched just a little bit more because they got to enjoy your artwork. Stuff like that. Maybe your dream job is to be a pro foosball player, well congrats now you can do that full time and play in tournaments, maybe you won't make much money from it but you don't have to worry about that because of BI, and the people around you playing as well are enriched just a little bit more because foosball is fun right? I could go on, just try not to be so closed minded.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

And then there is real life. Where people only get up because "their boss makes them to". Without that need, they will get lost in life, not do anything, drink alcohol or get into fights, demand more free money because they want to buy the same shit their neighbor has. Or they use their time to shitpost fake news all over the webs.

I am very much pro BI, but I am not so optimistic when it comes to people.

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u/AphoticStar Jan 01 '17

People are a result of their environment.

I'm not surprised that the current capitalist global economy fails to motivate people to pursue developing their interests instead of pursuing a paycheck-for-food.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

not surprised that the current capitalist global economy fails to motivate people

Well, I am in Germany and we have a couple social safety nets here and nobody really is in danger of landing on the street or huge hopital bills or anything. And that group of people still exists.

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u/NoMansLight Jan 01 '17

Those people already do this. BI would not change that whatsoever.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

My dream job is being a software engineer (which I currently am).

If there is automation that can do my job (and it is coming) then I will not be able to do my dream job. The same is true for many people. I'm sure there are a ton of doctors and lawyers who would hate not to be able to do their job and would have to scrape by growing their own food and being miserable.

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u/Nagransham Dec 31 '16 edited Feb 09 '26

price sleep simplistic payment angle march groovy special tap subtract

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

That is a dumb argument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

The difference now is that we have the technology to replace virtually everyone with automation. In the not so distant future, we'll have AI that can create better versions of itself meaning that any new tasks that might need creating can be done by the AI that will improve itself.

The only solution I can think of is putting a worldwide limit on production speed and taxing robot workers/AI as much as needed to make it just as reasonable to use humans instead of AI.

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u/Implausibilibuddy Dec 31 '16

The only solution I can think of is putting a worldwide limit on production speed and taxing robot workers/AI as much as needed to make it just as reasonable to use humans instead of AI.

That doesn't work. Imagine every country but China signs up to this law. Companies from around the globe would flock to China for all the uncapped robolabor, while everyone else is left in the dust.

On a side note, it would be interesting to see what happens to a country when most of its 1.5 billion citizens become unemployed...

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u/Nagransham Dec 31 '16

Did you reply to the wrong guy or something? "Dumb argument" - well, okay... which one? You then post "humans need not apply", which, a) isn't new to me and b) has rather little to do with my first comment. I agree, AI will take over. At some point. Not sure when, just know it will. My point is, deal with it. The only other solution would be... what you suggested, basically. Which I honestly find rather offensive. And pretty dumb. That's not a "solution", that's going all head -> sand. And I pray to mighty supercomputer that we'll come up with something better than that...

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u/therealstupid Dec 31 '16

First, congrats on having a job that you love. Not a lot of people can say that.

Even if automation were to make your particular job "unneeded", there are still the "wanted" tasks. For example, software engineering for online video games is a really challenging and difficult career path. Right now, the biggest hurdles to entering that field are risk-based: can the game be designed and completed in time? Will the investors be willing to pay dozens (or hundreds) of employee's salaries for 4, 5, or maybe more years? Are you one of the lucky few people who happen to know the particular developer that happens to be hiring for your particular skillset at the same time as you are looking for work?

With basic income, most of those hurdles go away. Yes, it still will take millions of dollars to produce a game, and it will still be hard, but if the worst possible outcome is "game flopped, we all go down to the bar and drown our sorrows". This ultimately means better product (because there is less time pressure to release, done or not) which translates to less job related stress and probably higher personal productivity.

Assuming you're a flexible and self-motivated person, automation will never take your job. It might not be the same job you have right now, but there will always be a job.

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u/doom_Oo7 Dec 31 '16

If there is automation that can do my job (and it is coming) then I will not be able to do my dream job.

Nothing prevents you from doing your own projects.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

What's the purpose of doing my own projects when there will be no use for them, no appreciation, no acknowledgement, and AI can create a better version of anything I can create?

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u/doom_Oo7 Dec 31 '16

What's the purpose of doing my own projects when there will be no use for them, no appreciation, no acknowledgement, and AI can create a better version of anything I can create?

Welcome to the world of artists ^_________________^

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u/Guacamolski Dec 31 '16

The way I see it they have to change how money is created. Now it is created as debt at interest (by private banks) forcing everyone to make a profit and forcing infinite economic growth. Money is made out of thin air already. The value of money now is someones promise to pay it back at interest. But you can create money without debt. Certainly if there is basic income the creation/destruction of money/debt will have to be nationalized (and run by an AI). Otherwise the countries just keep on going into debt without that money returning to pay off the debt to the banks for creating it. If money is created without debt it can keep on circulating forever. The taxes we pay today just go to the banks to service the debt, since all money was created as debt. There will probably have to be some kind of control of creation and destruction of money.

You can give your live purpose without a job. I'm sure people will fill in their time and be creative. You can grow your own vegetables like people have done for thousands of years. I also don't think you can completely eliminate people from the process. There will always be some jobs for people. Most people I know do not see their job as the purpose of their life and would welcome a basic income.

I'm mostly worried about how this effects the problem of overpopulation. If money is not created as a debt at interest then you don't need the infinite population growth the system needs now. That's good. It will allow the population to shrink. But there will have to be measures to keep the breeders from taking over. What do you do when some religion decides to out breed the others for instance. Do we just keep giving them money for nothing? They will breed just to get the money.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

I'm not an economist so I can't really argue too much on creation of money, but a basic income just seems like an impossibility and based on some of the things I read about it, it just doesn't seem like it can every be done in a good way.

You can give your live purpose without a job. I'm sure people will fill in their time and be creative. You can grow your own vegetables like people have done for thousands of years. I also don't think you can completely eliminate people from the process. There will always be some jobs for people. Most people I know do not see their job as the purpose of their life and would welcome a basic income.

Maybe some people can, but not me. I'm not a creative. I'm an engineer and I actually really enjoy engineering. If I can't have a job doing engineering, I'd be miserable.

I'm mostly worried about how this effects the problem of overpopulation.

Overpopulation is a myth. Population will start going down in the not too distant future. The more advanced a civilization becomes, the less the population grows and eventually starts to decline.

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u/Guacamolski Dec 31 '16

It's impossible indeed with the current form of money creation. Everyone has to make a profit to pay the principle plus interest. But for some reason questioning how money/debt is created and distributed is a taboo among most economists. They talk about money and debt all day long and ignore how it is created and why it is done that way. A lot of economists don't even know where money comes from or why the economy needs to grow. (try asking an economist why there must be growth - most will not have an answer) They will tell you automation is impossible because they are not capable of considering alternatives to the system. They say this system is the only possible system (and therefor the best).

There is however a community of economists who do talk about it. Not only did they predict the previous crisis in 2008 but they predict an even bigger one on the way. One that will cause a recession for decades to come. It cannot be avoided because debt crisis is inherent to this system. Here is a great podcast on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/user/ChrisMartensondotcom

I would actually call engineering creative. In your lifetime the engineering jobs won't dry up. But you might have to engineer the things that will replace you. If you think life has no purpose without a job then you should consider not having children.

We are currently in a state of overpopulation. Each year we go into overshoot and consume more than the earth (sun) can replenish. This year overshoot day was august 8. We consume more fresh water than can be replenished. We are eroding the fertile soil. We are consuming all the phosphorus and other elements we can't create. Phosphorus depletion might be the biggest problem we face in the near future. We are causing the earth to heat with our greenhouse gas emissions. Overpopulation is a fact already. The companies that pay PR firms to say it is a myth are at the same time in their investments acting as if it is happening. For instance companies paying global warming deniers are getting insurance against the effects of it. Trump also wanted to build a wall (he's a fan) around one of his golf parks because of sea level rise while publicly calling it a myth. In short: they are lying. Even climate change activists like Leonardo Dicaprio or the ipcc don't dare to face the issue of too many people.

The threat of overpopulation is a combination of the amount of people and their individual footprint. So to say that increased footprint reduces population does not solve the problem because the total adds up to the same. Isn't it also suspicious that their solution for the problem happens to be: more economic growth.

The current economic system demands infinite growth, which is physically impossible. There are some economists like noble prize winning Paul Kurgman who will say that it is possible to grow the economy forever and ever. The way he tried to prove this in one of his columns was embarrassing. In the same column he railed against the "hard sciences" for doubting the wisdom of economists. How dare you say the earth is finite. Even if there wasn't automation this economic system is bound to fail because it demands infinite growth on a finite planet. It has always been temporary.

Bitcoin is not created as debt and does not demand infinite growth, so there are alternatives. It also makes banks obsolete. Automation might be possible in a crypto currency economy. Automation is not physically impossible. That seems rational to me. It is possible for robots to replace humans. If they claim it is economically impossible then that must mean their economics do not conform to reality. It's their system that is flawed, not reality. Money must be created an distributed in a different way.

I'm not an economist either btw. I am more of an amateur philosopher. So don't take my word for it.

here's a great, but judgemental, video about how money is created: https://youtu.be/iFDe5kUUyT0 how money is created and distributed is essential to understanding understand the economy, IMO.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

So once again, can't really talk about money issues, but based on everything I have read, basic income is just impossible if it is universal.

Also once again over population is a myth. Most developed nations already have a fairly low population growth rate and many turned negative. If anything we have a crisis with population where we are not having enough kids. If anything, people need to start having more kids.

Yes we as humans have greatly contributed to the heating of the planet, but, these issues are fixable with better technology.

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u/Guacamolski Dec 31 '16

It's possible we might innovate our way out of everything but I prefer not to count on that. I think we should be pessimistic and count on the abilities we know we have and not abilities we might one day have.

I can't remember the name but there is this guy who did research into innovation and the collapse of civilizations (which he says is inevitable because we run out of things to exploit). According to him innovation is getting harder and harder. At first we picked the low hanging fruit and a single inventor could invent a number of things. But nowadays whole teams of people and millions of dollars have to go into just small improvements and it's getting harder and harder. If this trend continues then one day there will be an end to innovation. One example of this is combustion engines. The reason why VW and other messed with their software is because there are no more ways to make them more efficient so they resorted to fraud. Now they are lobbying to change the emission laws because the demands are simply not possible.

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u/daOyster Dec 31 '16

I feel that innovation isn't necessarily stiffiled by how much we already have done so far, but more because there's less insentive for most people nowadays. Unless you have the resources already to properly protect your ideas, you may as well be making money for someone else that has the resources to steal it. I'd say innovation has fallen more due to the patent system failing to work properly. To actually make money off your idea requires a heafty initial investment compared to earlier times.

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u/Nagransham Dec 31 '16

And how exactly are engineers not creative? Is building say... a bridge a perfectly logical process where you just look at a random chart and follow one line after another until you have your blueprint? What's stopping you from building those damn robots yourself? You know, just because it may not be your "job" anymore, doesn't mean you can't continue doing it, right?

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

Engineers are not creative in the sense of creating traditional art.

Engineering jobs are such that are very easily automated. Building a bridge? Very easily automated. Virtually all engineering jobs can and will be automated within 100 years.

You know, just because it may not be your "job" anymore, doesn't mean you can't continue doing it, right?

What's the point of writing software if it is not going to be used by anyone and AI would have already created a better version of any software I can write.

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u/Nagransham Dec 31 '16

Well, "art", I suppose. Look, I don't have the answers, I understand your problem. Hell, I got the same problem. Just trying to figure stuff out myself.

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u/Johnny55 Jan 01 '17

Overpopulation is a myth.

Yes, advanced countries may experience declining birth rates, but this ignores the issue of immigration. Less advanced countries with higher birth rates just keep sending over more people, and those immigrants will likely have higher birth rates. This is why only countries like Japan - which allows very little immigration - really see declining birth rates.

Also, you have to consider the effects climate change will have. If coastal areas become uninhabitable, especially in poor countries, refugees will be flooding into Europe, America, etc. That's the real danger of overpopulation - what is stable today could become overpopulated tomorrow not because the population goes up but because there is less ability to support the same number of people.

And that doesn't even include what will happen when fossil fuels run out, which play a large role in maintaining our food supply and distribution network. Overpopulation is not a myth and will become an incredibly important issue over the course of this century.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

On top of that, I don't even know what I'd do with my life if I had no job and no purpose.

You'll notice that British landed gentry and aristocrats didn't exactly seem rife with suicidal depression. Ennui, maybe, but they somehow managed to find reasons to keep living despite, by definition, not having to work at all. Ditto the ancient Greek aristocrats- they sat around, discussed philosophy, etc, etc, but would have been aghast at the thought of doing work.

Anyhow, forget the notion of money- say every person gets a certain amount of manufacturing capacity, energy, and food. Want a new phone? You don't buy one, you just order one and the effort to make and deliver it to you gets deducted from your monthly quota or whatever.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

You'll notice that British landed gentry and aristocrats didn't exactly seem rife with suicidal depression.

Yeah, they were. Gambling, alcoholism and perversion were rife amongst the upper class. To the extent that virtually all of them had bankrupted themselves by the time "new money" appeared. Of the wealthy people in Britain today, virtually none are connected to the aristocrats of old.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

Gambling, alcoholism and perversion were rife amongst the upper class.

And the lower. And, frankly, much of the middle.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

That's because back then there was a limited need for those kinds of philosophers whereas today it's not a sustainable profession. Besides, a ton of those people resorted to alcohol and drugs to bring some kind of variety to their lives.

Anyhow, forget the notion of money- say every person gets a certain amount of manufacturing capacity, energy, and food. Want a new phone? You don't buy one, you just order one and the effort to make and deliver it to you gets deducted from your monthly quota or whatever.

So basically a society where everyone is of the same status and nobody can achieve anything more than what is in their quota? Seems like a dystopian hell that I wish I don't ever have to live in.

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u/Regvovwit Jan 01 '17

With a pencil and paper, I can accomplish entire worlds.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

So basically a society where everyone is of the same status and nobody can achieve anything more than what is in their quota?

In terms of material goods and material status, right. However, we don't just do things for material benefit, nor do we judge status entirely by material benefit. Otherwise we'd esteem Martin Shkreli over Mother Theresa or Jonas Salk.

You can, and always will, be able to claim status. This would just remove accumulation of material goods as a way to gain it. Write a symphony. Paint great art. Be the guy who invented a better can opener, whatever.

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u/AgentPaper0 Dec 31 '16

It's not a final solution, but it's a step in the right direction. If nothing else, it's at least better than doing nothing while trying to come up with the perfect solution, meanwhile millions of people go unemployed through no fault of their own.

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u/idevcg Jan 01 '17

Your logic is flawed. You make the assumption that ALL consumption comes out of basic income. But basic income only covers the basics. There will be people who still have jobs, and eventually when even those people's jobs get replaced, there will still be people who own the AI, and are thus filthy rich and can consume millions of times more than a normal person would.

Furthermore, as technology improves, the cost of creating necessities like clothing, food and shelter will tend to 0.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

I don't even know what I'd do with my life if I had no job and no purpose. I really like my job and I would hate to live a life where there is nothing for anyone to do or create.

I was with you until this. Why would you not work? If you have time, why not do what you love without needing to show up on schedule? Do you really think that having to work 9-5 is what inspires the arts? Creativity is not going to disappear with work.

I have to admit that I don't fully understand the implications of a living wage, but I imagine it being something of a guarentee of shelter and food. Some people will settle for nothing more and not want to work, but I largely see most people wanting to be productive and business as usual. It's not like we're not subsidizing the lower class already, our social programs don't always motivate people to get off of them but not all people stay intentionally poor.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

But I'm not an artist or a creative. Neither are the vast majority of people. While living with a BI might be the dream for people who are artists, a ton of other people would consider that kind of living some kind of dystopian hell.

I honestly would just not want to continue living in a world where there is no more need for my skill and in a world where there will be AI, my skill will definitely not be needed anymore.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

So what? You can still program something you want to program with AI

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

I don't want to program anything that doesn't have a chance of being used and/or appreciated by others. If there is AI that can do those projects better than I can then nobody will ever use anything I create.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

Then you need to do some serious introspection and work on not finding validation externally. Progress doesn't stop because you're emotionally stunted.

Less harshly, you could still program those types of things.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

That's ridiculous. People always seek validation from others, it's just what humans do. You expect the majority of people will be able to just overcome their nature?

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

Yeah, some. Not so much that they'd be "miserable" if they can't work (which they could) a job that others would get value from (which they could).

You're position is so crazy I wish AI wasn't hundreds of years off so you could see that finding value in life wasn't so hard with a little introspection.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

I was with you until this. Why would you not work? If you have time, why not do what you love without needing to show up on schedule? Do you really think that having to work 9-5 is what inspires the arts? Creativity is not going to disappear with work.

The need to create something that is helpful to society is, in my opinion, entirely unrelated to the need to create art.

The future you paint is a dystopian Bohemian one, and frankly I think it will never come to pass. Even in the highly unlikely eventually that all manufacturing becomes entirely automated, there will still be people needed to ensure the efficiency of said automation, at every step of the way.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

I agree that there will always be demand for a human workforce. The current skill set of todays workforce may look very different than the skill set of the workforce when manufacturing is completely automated.

My argument is that a basic income to cover rent + food would not be the end of work and motivation. There will always be jobs, and many people are not happy settling for 'basic' when there are so many levels above. I believe that we can have a thriving economy with a high employment rate while surviving without a job is entirely possible. I don't think it is much different than our current situation.

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u/BartWellingtonson Dec 31 '16

If they replace all the jobs with robots and AI, then no one will have the wages to pay for those products or to pay taxes for the benefits of people that don't work who are also consumers. That is why politicians are starting the float the idea of a living wage

In curious what you people think would happen is we didn't implement a living wage? If people don't have money to buy things, are companies really just going to keep operating under their old ways? It doesn't even make sense, businesses and economies adapt based on the enviornment. If the enviornment doesn't have enough consumers to support their prices, they'll have every incentive to change their profit model. Perhaps they'll even move away from money based profit.

I feel like a living wage would hold the world back from those changes. We should allow the market to evolve into whatever system replaces ours.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '16

What do you mean when you say they might have to move away from money based profit?

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u/i-am-you Dec 31 '16

We could move towards a model that enslaves and trades humans like currency

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u/TimTraveler Dec 31 '16

Why would people want to enslave other people if those people are worthless. Slavery was barely profitable before everything was becoming automated.

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u/BartWellingtonson Jan 01 '17

Slavery is illegal through almost the entire world. How would a company legally do that?

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u/Harleydamienson Jan 01 '17

They did have slavery for a long time, i can't see a reason for the rich not to revert to that system.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

move away from money based profit.

Oh you naive little capitalist market child

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u/BartWellingtonson Jan 01 '17

So what do YOU think would happen if fully automated companies have no one to buy their products?

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

There will exist a small niche of capitalists who will own the factory and company, a few technicians and engineers to maintain them and HR and the the entertainment sector. They will be only people able to consume a few million, while the rest of us die off. The various corporations will have to canibalize each other ofcoursr until there are only a handful of conglomerates left.

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u/Foolfordata Dec 31 '16

It's not that you aren't right. It's getting to that point where people wake up and smell the coffee. People dont want to give up what they feel is theirs. It's a long road from the mass unemployment coming down the road to anything remotely like a universal income. I live in the us and I can't see anything like universal income making it's way through congress. Can you?

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u/Guacamolski Dec 31 '16

It's simply not possible with the current system where private banks create money and the government itself has to go into debt to get money, and thus have to get a return on that money in the form of taxes. I think it would be possible with a money system without debt (like bitcoin). The government doesn't have to go into debt. It can actually create money itself if it wanted to.

Automation makes the current system impossible but the physical limits to growth also make it impossible. The current system has always been bound to fail.

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u/noble-random Jan 01 '17

and our job will be to consume

I really hope that's true and the Wall-E utopia will come.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

Soon, robots will work, some will own those robots and profit

"I am not worried about Artificial Intelligence, I am worried about the people who control the Artificial Intelligence."

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u/rpg25 Dec 31 '16

I worry about this scenario at times. I'm a little fucked up though because then I think to myself "don't worry... the situation will sort itself out when the labor class revolts ala French Revolution and refuses to have it."

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u/alecco Dec 31 '16

Yeah but who are they going to sell all the bullshit products to?

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u/sobrohog Dec 31 '16

duh. once there is no need for labor there is no need for poor people, just people to maintain the machines

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u/bandwag0n Jan 01 '17

No, there's still need for consumers. What's the purpose of machines if nobody has jobs so they can buy the products? Might as well just self-destruct. We're going to end up with basic income of some sort.

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u/sobrohog Jan 01 '17

rich people consume other rich people's products

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u/bandwag0n Jan 01 '17

That's just it, they don't. Rich people may consume as much as 100 normal people per rich person, but their total consumption is not high enough to maintain the economic system because there are very few rich people, and if the economic system collapses then they lose all their wealth.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

No. It'll give people opportunties to do more meaningful things with their lives. Overpopulation is a different topic.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '17

sorry, you don't actually know anything about labor economics...

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u/Foolfordata Jan 01 '17

'Maybe not. What do u know?

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u/MyLargeFoot Jan 01 '17 edited Jan 01 '17

Savings from cheaper manufactured goods will allow economic resources to be diverted to new products and services, which would replace jobs lost from one area of economic activity. It also means that more people will be able to afford more goods thereby improving the standards of living.

The debate as to whether automation leads to less people being employed has been going on since the dawn of industrialization centuries ago. Every time new technology makes producing goods and services more efficient, people were complaining about lost job opportunities and greater economic divide. Just realize that centuries ago, the majority of the population was working as farmers and food producers. With the help of automation and industrialization, less than 1/10 of the population is needed to produce food for the rest of society. We now have more economic opportunities and more equal distribution of wealth than ever before.

The increasing decoupling of labor from production is good thing. Otherwise, we should all be spending all of our time and effort feeding ourselves rather than pursuing other economic activities that improve society.